Reworking Mesmer Specs

[Evodium.6058]

inspired by Shadowpass, I think these would be good changes for mesmer in general and make other specs besides mirage viable.@"Ben Phongluangtham.1065"My goal was not to kill builds but to apply some fair nerfs in my opinion while buffing old builds that haven't been in the meta, increasing the variety of viable builds mesmers can play.Here is my mock patch notes :Mesmer

Traits

• Critical Infusion: Increased vigor duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Ineptitude: Increased confusion stacks from 2 to 3. Increased duration from 2 1/4 seconds to 2 1/2 seconds.
• Maim the Disillusioned: increased torment stacks from 1 to 2.
• The Pledge: increased burning stacks from 1-2.
• Compounding Power: increased damage from 2% to 3%. increased condition damage from 30 to 90.
• Chaotic Persistence : Increased duration from 2% to 3%.
• Restorative Mantras : along with its original effects, Restorative Mantras now reduce the cooldowns of mantras by 20%.

Greatsword

• Mirror Blade: Increased damage by 8%.

Sword

• Blurred Frenzy : Increased damage by 5%. Increased cast time to 1.5 seconds. Increased blur duration to 1.5 seconds.

Staff

• Phantasmal Warlock: Renamed to Phantasmal Warlocks to match the number of phantasms created. Increased damage by 7%.

Pistol

• Magic Bullet : now hits one foe and doesn't bounce. Reduced stun duration from 2.5 seconds back to the original 2 seconds.

Utility Skills(along with the changes talked about in the potential future balance changes seen here : ( https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/85188/potential-future-balance-changes#latest )

• Mantra of Pain : Decreased might stacks from 12 to 4. Increased cooldown from 1 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Decoy: reduced cooldown to 35 seconds. No longer interrupts skills that are being cast when you use the skill. We wanted Decoy to compete with the popular signet of midnight. But not be an obvious best in slot stun break. We feel the extra 5 seconds for a clone on stun break was a fair cooldown. (Desperate Decoy no longer interrupts skills that are being cast when the trait is triggered to better match Decoy).
• Mirror Images: Reduced cooldown to 25 seconds. (Previously 30 seconds)
• Portal Entre: This skill his now been moved to the elite slot for Mesmer. Increased starting portal duration to 50 seconds. Removed from the Glamour category of utilities and put in it's own category portals.

Chronomancer :Following the rework of the elite specialization Chronomancer, the play rate of it in ranked and unranked has reduced dramatically. This was not our intent and have decided to undo the rework.Chronomancer: The Chronomancer has been reverted to count as a clone to better compete with Mirage.Shatters

• We decided to return continuum split to the f5 slot and put distortion back to f4.
• Mind Wrack : Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Split Second.
• Cry of Frustration: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Rewinder.
• Diversion: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Time Sink.
• Distortion: This skill has been renamed to Reversal. Along with the additional affects of distortion, Reversal now additionally reduces the cooldowns of Wells by 5 seconds.

Traits

• Lost Time : This trait now has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds.Reduced slow duration to 2 seconds. Reduced critical damage increase to 50% previously 100%.
• Improved Alacrity: removed the reduced duration applied by this trait.
• Illusionary Reversion : reduced clone requirement to 2, previously 3. This trait now has an ICD of 3 seconds to prevent spammy gameplay.
• Delayed Reactions: Reduced slow duration to 2 seconds.

Shield

• Echo of Memory: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.
• Deja vu: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.

MirageMirage has been overperforming lately. Following the constant reworks of traits and elite specializations of mesmer, we have decided to rework every specialization in an aggressive fashion.

Traits

• Infinite Horizon* : This trait has been reworked. Now Infinite Horizon reduces deception skill cooldowns by 20%. When a deception skill is cast, your clones will cast an ambush ability corresponding with the main hand weapon they are holding. Clones no longer gain mirage cloak. Has an ICD of 5 seconds.
• Elusive Mind: Removed the stun break on dodge, and removed the exhaustion on stun break. It now clears 2 conditions on dodge.
• Mirage Mantle: Increased protection cooldown to 2 seconds (previously 1 1/2 seconds)
• Riddle Of Sand: Increased confusion duration to 3 seconds(previously 2 1/4 seconds)

Utility Skills

• Mirage Advance : increased duration to 15 seconds. Increased Range to 1200. Now breaks stun on return.
• Sand Through Glass : Increased evade duration to 1 second. Increased distance to 450.
• Illusionary Ambush: Clones no longer cast an ambush skill when this skill is cast, or gain mirage cloak. Instead this skill is now an ammo skill with a charge of 2. You and clones still teleport around the target and break enemy targeting. Increased cooldown to 60 seconds. The mirage still casts an ambush skill when this skill is activated.

[Tiipi.6750]

Quick question, have you ever played mesmer ?

[phokus.8934]

Hard pass on those sword and pistol changes. I kind of stopped reading there as those are pretty bad changes.

[Evodium.6058]

@everyman.4375 said:Quick question, have you ever played mesmer ?

i've mained it since HoT :) have you played anything besides chaos condi mirage or mantra mes?

[Evodium.6058]

@phokus.8934 said:Hard pass on those sword and pistol changes. I kind of stopped reading there as those are pretty bad changes.

pistol change is absolutely needed. pistol 5 isn't skillful at all. the blurred change was just a fun little buff.

[Tiipi.6750]

@"calebswag.8265" said:

@everyman.4375 said:Quick question, have you ever played mesmer ?

i've mained it since HoT :) have you played anything besides chaos condi mirage or mantra mes?

Well that's quite surprising to say the least, not to be mean but your suggestions are useless at best and just awful for mesmer at worst.

[Evodium.6058]

@everyman.4375 said:

@"calebswag.8265" said:

@everyman.4375 said:Quick question, have you ever played mesmer ?

i've mained it since HoT :) have you played anything besides chaos condi mirage or mantra mes?

Well that's quite surprising to say the least, not to be mean but your suggestions are useless at best and just awful for mesmer at worst.

the portal change would change mesmer a lot and bring it back to when you always ran portal. and the infinite horizon change removes the dodge spam cancer rewarding horrible gameplay. at the very least there wouldn't be anymore chaos condi mirage spam and portal would be the go to elite to use.

[Tiipi.6750]

@"calebswag.8265" said:

@everyman.4375 said:

@"calebswag.8265" said:

@everyman.4375 said:Quick question, have you ever played mesmer ?

i've mained it since HoT :) have you played anything besides chaos condi mirage or mantra mes?

Well that's quite surprising to say the least, not to be mean but your suggestions are useless at best and just awful for mesmer at worst.

the portal change would change mesmer a lot and bring it back to when you always ran portal. and the infinite horizon change removes the dodge spam cancer rewarding horrible gameplay. at the very least there wouldn't be anymore chaos condi mirage spam and portal would be the go to elite to use.

There's no way you would pick portal over gravity well or jaunt. Except maybe in AT but why would you balance around ATs ?Your IH change without any compensation would just destroy mirage. IH has 2 uses, being the biggest damage source of mirage and keeping clones alive, so without IH you have no damage and no clones, this trait alone pretty much carries mirage.

[shadowpass.4236]

@everyman.4375 said:There's no way you would pick portal over gravity well or jaunt. Except maybe in AT but why would you balance around ATs ?Your IH change without any compensation would just destroy mirage. IH has 2 uses, being the biggest damage source of mirage and keeping clones alive, so without IH you have no damage and no clones, this trait alone pretty much carries mirage.

I think reducing the cooldown on Sand through Glass from 25 seconds to 20 seconds would be really nice to compensate for this. It'd basically give you 2 extra dodges, a stun break, and Ambush skill for you and your clones every 16 seconds while traited (compared to the current 10 seconds without vigor).

I'd still like it if the ability to dodge while hard-cc'd and immobilized was removed before this goes into play though. A 16 second cooldown stunbreak is very short.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

Mesmer needs a bunch of reverts, some of those were pointed out on OP.Critical infusion, nomads endurance, BF, Jaunt.Chrono IP, IR and distortion.Mirage and chronos utilities need a change as well.But this is raining on the wet, ANerf doesn't care about taking mesmer suggestions, they're busy nerfing what's left.

[Tayga.3192]

Staff

• Phantasmal Warlock: Renamed to Phantasmal Warlocks to match the number of phantasms created. Increased damage by 7%.Just make it spawn 1 clone.

Pistol

• Magic Bullet : now hits one foe and doesn't bounce. Reduced stun duration from 2.5 seconds back to the original 2 seconds.Just make it 2s, keep the bounce.

Utility Skills(along with the changes talked about in the potential future balance changes seen here : ( https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/85188/potential-future-balance-changes#latest )

• Mantra of Pain : Decreased might stacks from 12 to 4. Increased cooldown from 1 seconds to 8 seconds.12 might is too much but 4 is too less. It's already a mediocre skill.

• Decoy: reduced cooldown to 35 seconds. No longer interrupts skills that are being cast when you use the skill. We wanted Decoy to compete with the popular signet of midnight. But not be an obvious best in slot stun break. We feel the extra 5 seconds for a clone on stun break was a fair cooldown. (Desperate Decoy no longer interrupts skills that are being cast when the trait is triggered to better match Decoy).Midnight will be still better.

• Portal Entre: This skill his now been moved to the elite slot for Mesmer. Increased starting portal duration to 50 seconds. Removed from the Glamour category of utilities and put in it's own category portals.I'd say instead of making it an elite skill, make it a non-tradeoff F5 with lesser value while it won't be a glamour nor a shatter.

Shatters

• We decided to return continuum split to the f5 slot and put distortion back to f4.
• Mind Wrack : Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Split Second.
• Cry of Frustration: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Rewinder.
• Diversion: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Time Sink.
• Distortion: This skill has been renamed to Reversal. Along with the additional affects of distortion, Reversal now additionally reduces the cooldowns of Wells by 5 seconds.If that was the case, chrono would be better than core. I'd say keep F4 continuum split and buff wells a lot.

TraitsShield

• Echo of Memory: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.
• Deja vu: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.Unnecessary.

MirageTraits

• Infinite Horizon* : This trait has been reworked. Now Infinite Horizon reduces deception skill cooldowns by 20%. When a deception skill is cast, your clones will cast an ambush ability corresponding with the main hand weapon they are holding. Clones no longer gain mirage cloak. Has an ICD of 5 seconds.Extremely bad. This would kill mirage. Just nerf clone ambushes and buff player ambush.

Utility Skills

• Illusionary Ambush: Clones no longer cast an ambush skill when this skill is cast, or gain mirage cloak. Instead this skill is now an ammo skill with a charge of 2. You and clones still teleport around the target and break enemy targeting. Increased cooldown to 60 seconds. The mirage still casts an ambush skill when this skill is activated.This is very bad as well. Current IA is fine.

[Swagg.9236]

whoops double post

[Swagg.9236]

Best way to change mesmer would be to address their class-defining playstyle engine: the shatter skills. There's never really been anything unique about Mesmer outside of Portal, and, if we're exclusively talking about PvP, nobody even brings that along anymore because it's just generally more meta-friendly to be another generic, unkillable clodhead dancing around a point. If you wanted a unique Mesmer with a functional role, you'd maybe want to turn the shatter skills into utility skills and then replace them with actual mis-direction and repositioning abilities like Decoy (ideally with an added, backwards blink), Blink, Mirrored Images, Portal and/or Illusionary Ambush (probably worthwhile to remove any stun breaks). Maybe leave Mind Wrack behind in the F1, re-work it into a ranged, ground-targeted AoE with a delayed strike (around which clones--also possibly the player--all teleport before the shatter occurs just for a visual cue), then dump the other 3 shatters into the utility pool, replacing them with some revamped (FAIR) versions of Mesmer's more unique utility options (possibly or ideally with clone-scaling aspects). I would have included Mimic in that line-up, but anet hates fun and unique mechanics, so now it's not really worth adding to anything.

[Evodium.6058]

@everyman.4375 said:

@"calebswag.8265" said:

@everyman.4375 said:

@"calebswag.8265" said:

@everyman.4375 said:Quick question, have you ever played mesmer ?

i've mained it since HoT :) have you played anything besides chaos condi mirage or mantra mes?

Well that's quite surprising to say the least, not to be mean but your suggestions are useless at best and just awful for mesmer at worst.

the portal change would change mesmer a lot and bring it back to when you always ran portal. and the infinite horizon change removes the dodge spam cancer rewarding horrible gameplay. at the very least there wouldn't be anymore chaos condi mirage spam and portal would be the go to elite to use.

There's no way you would pick portal over gravity well or jaunt. Except maybe in AT but why would you balance around ATs ?Your IH change without any compensation would just destroy mirage. IH has 2 uses, being the biggest damage source of mirage and keeping clones alive, so without IH you have no damage and no clones, this trait alone pretty much carries mirage.

any mesmer with a brain would pick portal over jaunt or grav well because it has the potential to do huge things. what did you think mirage ran before IH? elusive mind. IH carries bad players rewarding them spamming dodges. The change alone would stop a lot of the cancerous gameplay mirage brings. My goal was to not destroy a elite spec, but give other viable options for elite specs and traits and utilities.

[Evodium.6058]

@"Tayga.3192" said:

Staff

• Phantasmal Warlock: Renamed to Phantasmal Warlocks to match the number of phantasms created. Increased damage by 7%.Just make it spawn 1 clone.

Pistol

• Magic Bullet : now hits one foe and doesn't bounce. Reduced stun duration from 2.5 seconds back to the original 2 seconds.Just make it 2s, keep the bounce.

Utility Skills

(along with the changes talked about in the potential future balance changes seen here : (

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/85188/potential-future-balance-changes#latest

)

• Mantra of Pain : Decreased might stacks from 12 to 4. Increased cooldown from 1 seconds to 8 seconds.12 might is too much but 4 is too less. It's already a mediocre skill.

• Decoy: reduced cooldown to 35 seconds. No longer interrupts skills that are being cast when you use the skill. We wanted Decoy to compete with the popular signet of midnight. But not be an obvious best in slot stun break. We feel the extra 5 seconds for a clone on stun break was a fair cooldown. (Desperate Decoy no longer interrupts skills that are being cast when the trait is triggered to better match Decoy).Midnight will be still better.

• Portal Entre: This skill his now been moved to the elite slot for Mesmer. Increased starting portal duration to 50 seconds. Removed from the Glamour category of utilities and put in it's own category portals.I'd say instead of making it an elite skill, make it a non-tradeoff F5 with lesser value while it won't be a glamour nor a shatter.

Shatters

• We decided to return continuum split to the f5 slot and put distortion back to f4.
• Mind Wrack : Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Split Second.
• Cry of Frustration: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Rewinder.
• Diversion: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Time Sink.
• Distortion: This skill has been renamed to Reversal. Along with the additional affects of distortion, Reversal now additionally reduces the cooldowns of Wells by 5 seconds.If that was the case, chrono would be better than core. I'd say keep F4 continuum split and buff wells a lot.

Traits

Shield

• Echo of Memory: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.
• Deja vu: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.Unnecessary.

Mirage

Traits

• Infinite Horizon* : This trait has been reworked. Now Infinite Horizon reduces deception skill cooldowns by 20%. When a deception skill is cast, your clones will cast an ambush ability corresponding with the main hand weapon they are holding. Clones no longer gain mirage cloak. Has an ICD of 5 seconds.Extremely bad. This would kill mirage. Just nerf clone ambushes and buff player ambush.

Utility Skills

• Illusionary Ambush: Clones no longer cast an ambush skill when this skill is cast, or gain mirage cloak. Instead this skill is now an ammo skill with a charge of 2. You and clones still teleport around the target and break enemy targeting. Increased cooldown to 60 seconds. The mirage still casts an ambush skill when this skill is activated.This is very bad as well. Current IA is fine.

I think the IH change is fine. It wouldn't kill mirage. you still have elusive mind to run or dune cloak. The new IH would be similar to the old one just it happens on a deception skill and your clones aren't evading while it happens. If you want more IH proc's you could run the new illusionary ambush i had in mind. I made the cooldown 60 seconds because imo you would run that if you ran the new IH. So, it would be 48 seconds but you have 2 charges. The shield changes were to keep chrono bunker more in check because of the buffs to the shatter. My goal with lots of the stun breaks like mirror images or decoy was to make it compete more with signet of midnight, while not nerfing midnight to where you chose decoy for example as the new best in slot. My goal in general with this theoretical patch was to give mesmers more options including builds and utilities. While getting rid of builds that were cancerous to play against like chrono mantra or chaos condi mirage. And to promote skillful gameplay with portal again. Some changes might have been a bit too aggressive like the pistol 5 change and you're right mantra of pain could be 6 stacks of might instead. I'm not a balance dev and all of this was ideas i had(but we all know anet won't listen to any of us). But thanks for your input. i definitely agree with a few of them.

[Evodium.6058]

@Swagg.9236 said:Best way to change mesmer would be to address their class-defining playstyle engine: the shatter skills. There's never really been anything unique about Mesmer outside of Portal, and, if we're exclusively talking about PvP, nobody even brings that along anymore because it's just generally more meta-friendly to be another generic, unkillable clodhead dancing around a point. If you wanted a unique Mesmer with a functional role, you'd maybe want to turn the shatter skills into utility skills and then replace them with actual mis-direction and repositioning abilities like Decoy (ideally with an added, backwards blink), Blink, Mirrored Images, Portal and/or Illusionary Ambush (probably worthwhile to remove any stun breaks). Maybe leave Mind Wrack behind in the F1, re-work it into a ranged, ground-targeted AoE with a delayed strike (around which clones--also possibly the player--all teleport before the shatter occurs just for a visual cue), then dump the other 3 shatters into the utility pool, replacing them with some revamped (FAIR) versions of Mesmer's more unique utility options (possibly or ideally with clone-scaling aspects). I would have included Mimic in that line-up, but anet hates fun and unique mechanics, so now it's not really worth adding to anything.

yeah. i did this because of a post i saw earlier and thought it would be a fun thing to do as a mesmer main since HoT. But we all know anet isn't going to listen or take any of the ideas seriously.

[Curunen.8729]

@"calebswag.8265" said:inspired by Shadowpass, I think these would be good changes for mesmer in general and make other specs besides mirage viable.@"Ben Phongluangtham.1065"My goal was not to kill builds but to apply some fair nerfs in my opinion while buffing old builds that haven't been in the meta, increasing the variety of viable builds mesmers can play.Here is my mock patch notes :Mesmer

Traits

• Critical Infusion: Increased vigor duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.Good.
• Ineptitude: Increased confusion stacks from 2 to 3. Increased duration from 2 1/4 seconds to 2 1/2 seconds.Is this necessary?
• Maim the Disillusioned: increased torment stacks from 1 to 2.Too powerful - used to be 2 stacks before HoT (also before they made IP baseline). Now it would be excessive adding to the power creep.
• The Pledge: increased burning stacks from 1-2.Torch is fine traited, only thing it could do with is iMage cooldown shave to base 25s.
• Compounding Power: increased damage from 2% to 3%. increased condition damage from 30 to 90.Not necessary, it's already a decent trait in a good line.
• Chaotic Persistence : Increased duration from 2% to 3%.2.5% first, but Chaos doesn't need buffs aside from the grandmaster majors (better yet, a trait reshuffle - maybe move Chaotic Dampening to gm major for example).
• Restorative Mantras : along with its original effects, Restorative Mantras now reduce the cooldowns of mantras by 20%.I would rather any Mantra cooldown trait was in Domination to spread out the utility skill categories. But overall it would be nice to think about which utility categories should be where - especially if Glamour ever got a trait again.

Greatsword

• Mirror Blade: Increased damage by 8%.Perhaps, but any buffs to more sustained power damage application also requires shaves to instantaneous burst - ie reducing F1 damage. I would be in favour of reducing overall mesmer massive direct damage application spike in favour of more sustained power damage from other sources such as weapon skills, but this kind of change cannot be made in a vacuum.Sword
• Blurred Frenzy : Increased damage by 5%. Increased cast time to 1.5 seconds. Increased blur duration to 1.5 seconds.From an aesthetic viewpoint, sure - current blurred frenzy looks ridiculous (like with old quickness) - I prefer the smoother slower animation. But this is highly unlikely to go backwards as they intended to reduce the evade frame window.Staff
• Phantasmal Warlock: Renamed to Phantasmal Warlocks to match the number of phantasms created. Increased damage by 7%.Sure, Staff 3 phantasms could do with improvement.

Pistol

• Magic Bullet : now hits one foe and doesn't bounce. Reduced stun duration from 2.5 seconds back to the original 2 seconds.Hell no - the bounce is the best part providing aoe cc on an otherwise single target weapon with no defenses.

Utility Skills(along with the changes talked about in the potential future balance changes seen here : ( https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/85188/potential-future-balance-changes#latest )

• Mantra of Pain : Decreased might stacks from 12 to 4. Increased cooldown from 1 seconds to 8 seconds.Sure, MoP is stupid design but ideally don't want to kill it either.
• Decoy: reduced cooldown to 35 seconds. No longer interrupts skills that are being cast when you use the skill. We wanted Decoy to compete with the popular signet of midnight. But not be an obvious best in slot stun break. We feel the extra 5 seconds for a clone on stun break was a fair cooldown. (Desperate Decoy no longer interrupts skills that are being cast when the trait is triggered to better match Decoy).Yes - Decoy needs cooldown reduction since they removed IC trait. 35s is solid. Perhaps even 30s to directly compete with Midnight (as that also has other benefits - blind, passive condi duration and can be traited to be even stronger with Blurred Inscriptions).However it should still interrupt any cast as present. Sand through Glass has this problem and makes it a bit clunky at times. Rather Desperate Decoy gets changed to something new.
• Mirror Images: Reduced cooldown to 25 seconds. (Previously 30 seconds)Good - ideally Mirror Images should spread the clones a tiny bit wider on either side (eg 240 radius) and shuffle your position like a defensive version of Illusionary Ambush.
• Portal Entre: This skill his now been moved to the elite slot for Mesmer. Increased starting portal duration to 50 seconds. Removed from the Glamour category of utilities and put in it's own category portals.Portal is a weird one. On one hand I agree with making it an elite skill, however on the other hand don't want to either have it be best in slot rendering other elites useless (no choice), or useless itself so other elites become playable. It can work, but needs to be very finely balanced.Perhaps it could become F5 for all mesmer (assuming both Mirage and Chrono stay at F1-4), eg"shatter your clones and place a portal - duration 4s plus additional 2s per clone shattered" all other mechanics as normal. That would be 10s (4 +2 +2 +2) duration on core mesmer including player shatter. But only 6s for current Chrono without IP (and maybe if they do the same with Mirage).Could be interesting.

Chronomancer :Following the rework of the elite specialization Chronomancer, the play rate of it in ranked and unranked has reduced dramatically. This was not our intent and have decided to undo the rework.Chronomancer: The Chronomancer has been reverted to count as a clone to better compete with Mirage.Shatters

• We decided to return continuum split to the f5 slot and put distortion back to f4.
• Mind Wrack : Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Split Second.
• Cry of Frustration: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Rewinder.
• Diversion: Keeps the rework and has been renamed to Time Sink.
• Distortion: This skill has been renamed to Reversal. Along with the additional affects of distortion, Reversal now additionally reduces the cooldowns of Wells by 5 seconds.Traits
• Lost Time : This trait now has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds.Reduced slow duration to 2 seconds. Reduced critical damage increase to 50% previously 100%.
• Improved Alacrity: removed the reduced duration applied by this trait.
• Illusionary Reversion : reduced clone requirement to 2, previously 3. This trait now has an ICD of 3 seconds to prevent spammy gameplay.
• Delayed Reactions: Reduced slow duration to 2 seconds.

Shield

• Echo of Memory: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.
• Deja vu: Reduced damage by 5%. Reduced protection duration to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 40 seconds.

Chrono depends on one thing - do they return IP baseline for self shatter, or do they change how clones function to allow chrono to be able to use F mechanic in large fights.

Part of me likes that Core Mesmer has self shatter to incentivise building it as oldschool pure shatter build, and elite specs should differ from that - thus making Chrono more deliberate/requiring more setup as with old school mesmer builds without IP, and assuming Mirage will also get similar changes next patch.However with clones able to be destroyed by breathing on them, this creates issues scaling from small to large fights where as in the past before IP became baseline. Mesmer should have consistency in playability regardless of the scale of the fight, so in this way clones - what they do, how they take damage etc should be looked at to support the changes made.

MirageMirage has been overperforming lately. Following the constant reworks of traits and elite specializations of mesmer, we have decided to rework every specialization in an aggressive fashion.Traits

• Infinite Horizon* : This trait has been reworked. Now Infinite Horizon reduces deception skill cooldowns by 20%. When a deception skill is cast, your clones will cast an ambush ability corresponding with the main hand weapon they are holding. Clones no longer gain mirage cloak. Has an ICD of 5 seconds.Hell no. Mirage needs much deeper changes to its foundation regarding clone ambush and overall vision for the trait line. I maintain IH should be grandmaster minor, and most of clone ambush damage should be moved to player such they remain mostly visual distractions but not largely passive sources of damage application. Certainly don't want more hidden ICDs.
• Elusive Mind: Removed the stun break on dodge, and removed the exhaustion on stun break. It now clears 2 conditions on dodge.No. We don't need more powercrept cleanse, and it's also a creatively boring trait design. If anything, Elusive Mind should get the 20% recharge reduction on Deceptions (but I prefer Anet not pigeonhole grandmaster trait choices by forcing cooldown reduction traits on there).
• Mirage Mantle: Increased protection cooldown to 2 seconds (previously 1 1/2 seconds)Sure this is good.
• Riddle Of Sand: Increased confusion duration to 3 seconds(previously 2 1/4 seconds)Don't think it needs a buff.

Utility Skills

• Mirage Advance : increased duration to 15 seconds. Increased Range to 1200. Now breaks stun on return.I prefer Mirage Advance to simply get the 3/4s evade frame to match Axe 3. Range increase and stunbreak on return look nice though.
• Sand Through Glass : Increased evade duration to 1 second. Increased distance to 450.No to distance increase - at the moment the range is perfect for axe 2 and I believe it was designed as a pseudo "backwards dodge" in place of mirage losing normal dodge, also being designed around the espec's weapon to be able to synergise moving back through the mirror to cover with the evade frames. This doesn't mean immediately used - can delay and reposition with lining up target and mirror, but I enjoy this synergy and do not want to lose it.If anything StG could benefit from ammo mechanic - though don't want it to become too poweful. Cooldown reduction could be nice, but again needs to be carefully though about depending if we get Deception cooldown trait or not.

What it really needs is to remove immobilise - it is HUGE problem that if immobilised, StG will not move you and the mirror spawned is IMMEDIATELY BROKEN. Then it becomes a 3/4s evade on 25s cooldown which is stupid. This really needs to change first.

• Illusionary Ambush: Clones no longer cast an ambush skill when this skill is cast, or gain mirage cloak. Instead this skill is now an ammo skill with a charge of 2. You and clones still teleport around the target and break enemy targeting. Increased cooldown to 60 seconds. The mirage still casts an ambush skill when this skill is activated.IA just needs to be brought down to 30s (in line with Blink and Signet of Midnight for example) and it will be fine.

[Lunalight.8120]

Echo of Memory needs a CD decrease not increase. It was originally put at 35 because there were several traits and skills that would reduce its cooldown, which are all reworked or nerfed now.Also bring back its HoT-Launch property of the cooldown starting as soon as you use the first block and deja vu is still available. Allowing for more flexible use of EoM might help to fill the awkward void left behind by removing distortion.