Kencu.5846

That's a good point, to be fair I had a mostly WvW mindset when thinking about it.

Here I'm gonna list some ideas I'd love to see changed in the mesmer traitlines and skills. I think many of us agree that mesmer in its current state is a bit messy. And I think that many of us also agree that there is a lot of room for improvement. Here are my ideas, please let me know what you think (I didn't give unique names).

Domination - The main focus still remains power and interruption but with a little buff.

Minor Adept - Inflict vulnerability when you interrupt a foe.

Major Adept - Improves greatsword skills. Mirror Blade bounces additional times, and Phantasmal Berserker summons an additional berserker and deals less damage.

Major Adept - Illusions deal more damage to foes with vulnerability.

Major Adept - Shatter skills deal increased damage for each boon on your target.

Minor Master - Dazing or stunning a foe inflicts vulnaribility. Corrupts protection into vulnerability eact hime you interrupt a foe.

Major Master 1 - Shatter skill 1 also steal a boon on hit.

Major Master 2 - Deal more damage to foes with a lower health percentage than you.

Major Master 3 - Gain quickness when you interrupt a foe.

Minor Grandmaster - Deal more damage for each stack of vulnerability on your target. Shatter skills transform vulnerability from you to your target.

Major Grandmaster 1 - You and your illusions deal increased damage to foes without boons. Disabling a foe damages and removes boons from them.

Major Grandmaster 2 - Shatter skills deal more damage. This bonus damage is doubled against foes that are not activating skills.

Major Grandmaster 3 - Interrupts deal damage and inflict weakness. Enemy skills that you interrupt have an increased cooldown.

Dueling - This is the "high risk high reward" traitline. I removed the bleeding traits and focused purely on critical damage.

Minor Adept - Gain vigor when delivering a critical hit.

Major Adept 1 - Your phantasms have fury.

Major Adept 2 - Shattering 3 clones grants increased power and precision to you and nearby allies.

Major Adept 3 - Pistol attacks from you and your illusions have increases your ferocity. Interrupting a foe recharges pistol skills.

Minor Master - Gain fury when you strike an enemy whose health is below the threshold.

Major Master 1 - Shatter skill 1 becomes unblockable

Major Master 2 - Shatter skill 1 becomes an ammo skill.

Major Master 3 - Gain a stacking ferocity effect when you or one of your illusions strikes with a one-handed sword or a spear. Reduces recharge on sword and spear skills.

Minor Grandmaster - Gain fury, retaliation and increased precision when your health drops bewlow 50%.

Major Grandmaster 1 - A portion of your health is converted into power. Your critical hits deal more damage.

Major Grandmaster 2 - Interrupting a foe inflicts blind, and blinding a foe inflicts chill. Gain alacrity for each condition on your target.

Major Grandmaster 3 - Create a clone at your current position when you dodge.

Chaos - Remained the defensive traitline with some changes.

Minor Adept - Gain regeneration when struck while below the health threshold.

Major Adept 1 - Cast Lesser Chaos Storm when you use a healing skill.

Major Adept 2 - Gain stacking damage reduction whenever you summon an illusion.

Major Adept 3 - Glamour skills gain recharge reduction and grant superspeed to yourself and allies affected by them.

Minor Master - Gain protection when you gain regeneration.

Major Master 1 - Convert damaging conditions to boons whenever you gain Distortion or become disabled.

Major Master 2 - Gain condition damage based on your vitality. Staff and trident skills gain reduced recharge.

Major Master 3 - Gain stability when you use a Shatter skill. Gain an additional boon based on which Shatter is used.

Minor Grandmaster - Outgoing boon and condition duration increase for every boon on you. Gain swiftness when you cripple, immobilize or chill your target.

Major Grandmaster 1 - Grant Chaos Aura to you and nearby allies when you use a glamour skill. Chaos Aura also converts conditions to boons on you and your allies and corrupts boons to conditions on foes when struck.

Major Grandmaster 2 - Increased stealth duration from mesmer skills for all allies affected. Gain random boons while you are in stealth.

Major Grandmaster 3 - Transfer conditions on your target to nearby foes.

Inspiration - Still the main support traitline with some added stuff

Minor Adept - Cast Lesser Power Cleanse when you use a healing skill.

Major Adept 1 - Cast Feedback while reviving an ally. Feedback revives allies inside its dome.

Major Adept 2 - Heals allies around you when you finish preparing a Mantra.

Major Adept 3 - Gain stealth for a short period of time after casting a Manipulation. Gain swiftness, aegis and resistance for 1 second each time you are revealed.

Minor Master - Grant aegis to other nearby allies whenever you give yourself distortion or use Shatter skill 4.

Major Master 1 - Focus weapon skills reflect projectiles. Reduces recharge on focus weapon skills.

Major Master 2 - Heal yourself and lose conditions when you use a Shatter skill.

Major Master 3 - Phantasms spawn with 2 seconds of invulnerability and increased health.

Minor Grandmaster - When healing yourself, nearby allies are also healed. Gain healing power based on a portion of your vitality.

Major Grandmaster 1 - Cast Lesser Phantasmal Defender on your attacker when you successfully block or evade an attack.

Major Grandmaster 2 - Summoning an illusion heals all allies around you. When a phantasm becomes a clone, it removes a condition from nearby allies.

Major Grandmaster 3 - Signets have improved active effects, and activating one grants you distortion.

Illusions - Still the primary condition trait with better focus on illusions.

Minor Adept - Shatter skill 2 inflicts more stacks of confusion for an increased duration.

Major Adept 1 - Deal increased damage for each condition on your target.

Major Adept 2 - Shattering 3 clones give you superspeed and your next skill is unblockable.

Major Adept 3 - Reduces recharge on torch skills. Flame bursts from torch skills inflict additional burning.

Minor Master - Creating an illusion increases your outgoing damage and gives increased condition damage for a short duration.

Major Master 1 - Increases attack speed while wielding a scepter. Reduces recharge on scepter skills.

Major Master 2 - Phantasms spawn with quickness. Gain quickness when you create a phantasm.

Major Master 3 - Shatter skills inflict torment on hit.

Minor Grandmaster - Shatter skills gain recharge reduction.

Major Grandmaster 1 - Phantasms deal increased damage for each stack of might you have. Gain might when your phantasms become clones.

Major Grandmaster 2 - Your Shatter skills are improved.

Major Grandmaster 3 - Instead of summoning clones, you gain Illusionary Charge. Gain access to F5 shatter skill, which is available to use once 3 clones are charged.

F5 - Illusionary Vortex:

Create Chaos Vortex at the target location which forces foes to spiral to its core, attacking themselves. All enemy skills except the autoattack and stunbreaks is disabled. For 3 seconds, the enemy attacks itself with the autoattack. After 3 seconds, the vortex explodes, damaging them and corrupting 3 of their boons into conditions. (With stunbreak or stability, foes can escape from the vortex, hence not attacking themselves but if they stay in the AoE, the explosion still damages them and corrupts their boons.

Damage: 500

Number of Targets: 5

Radius: 240

Range: 1200

Skill changes:

Phantasmal Warlock

Phantasm. Mark the area at the target location. For 10 seconds, the area is marked and you can teleport there, leaving behind 2 clones. If you didn't teleport, all of your skills are recharged by 5 seconds.

Phantasmal Warden

Phantasm. Create a phantasm that takes all the damage from you for 3 seconds. When the phantasm dies, it heals you for all the damage it absorbed.

Decoy

Clone. Gain stealth, superspeed and summon an illusion to attack your foe. When the decoy clone dies, it triggers a trap, immobilizing and confusing foes.

Number of targets: 3

Radius: 240.

Ether Clone - the clone summons at your location.

> @"manu.7539" said:

> Push out GvGers from WvW (with awesome maps and rewards exclusive for them) so we can deal with the real WvW population. That could solve lags problems and mostly this annoying mix of players upset by each others because they dont play WvW for the same goals.

Imagine having Guild Wars in a game called... well...

The game desperately need a proper GvG system. I never understood why it's not a thing from release. GvGers don't need fancy map or fancy map mechanics. They just need an arena to fight in a system similar to sPvP. Ladder, regular tournaments, championships. 10v10, 15v15 and 20v20 or even higher numbers if people want it. There could have a "gg" (resign) button and if more than half of the squad presses it, the game is over. Etc. Devs can make it work easily and WvWers could play WvW as intended. GvG rewards would be GvG exclusive and considered as high end reward. Potentially it could mean eSports, top winners of tournaments earning money. Gfuel could sponsor it :P

Nah I won't type that much.... :D

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > @"Kencu.5846" said:

> > Recently I've been running power interrupter chrono, it's fun, until the commander cries for veil and illusion because the other mesmers are slacking :D

>

> Can you post the build? :smile:

Yeah if I'm not designatet to being veilbot tonight, I'll record a video and show the build)

Have Stability or Aegis and you're safe from pulls.

Imagine Illusionary Warden dealing any damage in WvW! :)

> @"Guilan.5760" said:

> I say give back the 2nd dodge but put a small cooldown on ambush skills.

>

> Then to make the clones more usable in WvW, have a trait or a rune maybe, that can give them something like aegis or some evasion when they go shatter themsleves on a target.

They have aegis on Inspiration line. Does it help? No. They die in the 2. hit, which happens 0.00001 seconds after the first. This is the same problem with every AI stuff like minions, pets, clones, turrets, renegade summons. They are completely useless in a coordinated zerg v zerg when the enemy team uses proper meta classes.

I'm not suggesting to give back the second dodge not because I don't want it but simply because it's highly unlikely that Anet is gonna do it.

My basic ideas for the new elite specs. I'm mainly creating these from a WvW perspective so I focus on teamplay and minimal visual clutter or 1hit AI mechanics like clones, pets and minions. I'll update them on the go if I have new ideas:

Guardian -

Weapon - Off-hand Sword

Warrior - Monk

Weapon - Staff

The monk is the master of analyzing the enemy and punishing it for it's mistakes. Gain access to "Divination" skills. The Divination skills are either strong buffs to the allies or strong debuffs to the enemies. The monk can swap between different "Foreseight" modes with F1-F4 which uses adrenaline.

F1 - "Forseight of Damage". Mark your foe with the Foreseight of Damage. For each strike of adrenaline, the enemy damages up to 5 foes (including itself) in the area for 3% of their damage for 1 second.

F2 - "Foreseight of Movement". Mark your foe with the Foreseight of Movement. For each full stages of adrenaline, the enemy gets punished if they move. 1 stage: 5secs of Cripple and 5 secs of Chill. 2 stages - 5secs of Cripple, Chill and 3secs of Fear and Torment. 3 stages - knockback, 5 secs of Cripple, Chill, Torment and 3secs of Fear.

F3 - "Foreseight of Offense". Give yourself and nearby allies the Foreseight of Offense. You and your allies gain increased damage against foes with boons (+1% for all strikes of adrenaline) and superspeed for 5secs. You and your allies gain Might and Fury for 5secs if you have less boons than the enemy.

F4 - "Foreseight of Defense". Give yourself the Foreseight of Defense. For each stages of adrenaline, grant yourself and nearby allies (5) 1 second of invulnerability.

The staff is hybrid melee and ranged weapon for the warrior. In combat using weapon swap while a staff is equipped swaps between the weapon's melee and ranged modes.

Overall the monk could go either offensive or defensive depending on the situation.

The utilities would follow a similar pattern, focusing on teamwork and coordination. For example:

"Divination of Union" - Utility. Grant yourself the Divination of Union for 10secs and gain Protection and Aegis for 5secs. Each time you receive a boon from another source, grant nearby allies 5secs immunity to movement-impairing conditions. Using the skill again breaks stun for you and nearby allies and gives 5secs of Stability and increases the recharge duration by 10secs.

Recharge: 40secs.

"Divination of Rebirth" - Utility. Grant yourself the Divination of Rebirth. For 10secs you and nearby allies (5) ignore the lethal blow and instead of going to down state, recieve a barrier with 10% of your health for 5 seconds. Increase recharge time by 10secs for each ally saved by this skill.

Recharge: 60secs

Radius: 240

Revenant -

Ranger - Warden

Weapon: N/A

The Warden can choose to deploy its pet to the mist to channel powerful attacks or strong buffs, utilities etc. The weapon skills are replaced by the mist pet skills. The warden gets access to Ward skills. (So the ranger can be viable in WvW in various roles as the pet-weapon skills would provide great opportunity for the ranger not to be a meme in WvW any longer. And of course outside of WvW too. Iboga pet-weapon skills could be condi spam, bear tanky etc).

Engineer -

Thief -

Elementalist - Something Astromy themed since Kaineng city people are obsessed with celestial objects. Gain access to a new element. Dark Matter maybe? (Or some more fitting GW2 lore version of an energy type, layline? bloodstone? etc.) As for the role I'd love to see something crazy with the new elements. Something a bit unpredictable and on the "high risk - high reward" side. So the elementalists in Cantha tapped into some very volatile unstable elemental energy which can be dangerous but they must be very careful with it.

Necromancer -

Mesmer - I've made a concept about it in the mesmer thread (Mentalist) but actually I would love to see something without clones because in WvW zergs that game mechanics is completely useless. I'd love to see a Hex mesmer, who doesn't necessarily deal a lot of damage on it's own but more like drains the enemy and forces them to kill themselves. On the line of "Feedback" and "Arcane Thievery" when the enemy basically damages itself, if the mesmer plays well. So I'd love to see something which makes the enemy to think when dealing with the new mesmer elite spec. The clones definitely need a rework in WvW.

Recently I've been running power interrupter chrono, it's fun, until the commander cries for veil and illusion because the other mesmers are slacking :D

Keep one dodge but make the Mirage Cloak last twice the time.

As for WvW, my suggestion for a traitline change:

Replace either Mental Anguish or Master of Fragmentation (both can be recycled to replace useless traits like Escape Artist) to a new trait: Web of Disruption

Each time you would summon a clone, instead you gain a charge of "energy" (bit similar to how warriors generate adrenaline). Your shatter skills become AoE skills (like necro shades). The shatter effect happens at your and the target location. So you could actually spike in WvW with F1-F3. F4 Aoe would give 5 allies distortion for 1 second (useful on spikes, melee bomb etc). Continuum Split would be the same for chronos.

So mesmers would be more useful in blob fights because in blob fights the mesmer profession mechanic is almost completely useless.

As I said before: make walls functioning as defensive constructs. So people can't get pulled down that easy. It would fix the problem without nerfing skills.

Make clones act more like the player. Make them dodge and use more than autoattack and make them signets and food etc. visible. And make them weaker. This way the enemy is forced to kill the clones to cripple the mesmer. Make a trait which replaces clones with a "charge" (like adrenaline) like skill and make F1-F3 aoe skills, like necro shades. So the mesmer can shatter the charged "energy" in aoe. It would work much better for WvW or even PvE. In PvP it could be an option to be a cloneless mesmer with aoe shatters.

"Phantasmal Force" could be changed like this.

The problem is not mesmer pull. The problem is the walls. Crenellations like those make no sense. Devs should reconstruct the walls which protect those on top of them better.

Some of these seem way too OP in PvP (like 2 pets) and unusable in WvW. The biggest issue with minions, pets, clones etc is that they instadie in WvW. I hope eventually we get less summoning AI bots.

There are skins for this. Check out orchestral staff skin. I use it on my meme mesmer.

There are better classes for cleanse and strip but the satisfaction from pulls on chrono can be awesome)

Sometimes I run Feedback, good against necro and rev autoattacks

Something like this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiwAEx3lZwsYbsKWJOqSqtfA-zVJYjRNAA-w

Full minstrel

> @"Tseison.4659" said:

> I’d rather prefer a new Elite Spec that focus on Hexes since they can easily implement it in as a reverse barrier/regen essentially but it wouldn’t be a condition and would have a static duration of 2-3sec or something....

>

> But anyways, I’ll offer my two cents to the “Minstrel” idea... when I think of Minstrel, I think of a variety of instruments used to make music, so I’m going to assume that we would get “Bundles/Kits” that give us access to a variety of abilities. Yes it does seem like Mesmers would be getting a lot but there are other classes that are overloaded as well.

>

> How would it work with clones/phantasms? To be honest, that’s always the one thing that’s causing problems for the Mesmer to explore new and fresh builds. So I’d be perfectly fine to sacrifice having no clones/illusions summoned to get bundles that give us XX number of new skills.

Check my take on a new wlite spec)

For real, we will get something totally different probably

I made a post about it but it is disappeared... anyway:

Rethink objective capping. Make it so that a keep has 3 points to capture and keep for some time. It exists for bloodlust, why not for capping a keep?

keep crenellations look bad. Lazy design. No castle has crenellations like that. It exists to protect those on the wall. In WvW if you are on the wall and enemy behind, you are dead.

Sentries: Again, lazy design, They could be in a lookout tower which can be upgraded or commander could deploy sentries wherever they want etc. Now it's just a dumb NPC on the road.

More use of space. Why are there champions on EB? Nobody ever touches them. Instead make "building sites" where players can build structures. I'd love to build supply camps or lookout towers or idk something cool. It would encourage pugs and players with unwanted professions to contribute while the blob fights.

More options for small scale fights. Blob vs blob is fun and all but it got boring over 8 years. I'd love some content for groups of 5-10 which helps the blob somehow. Something that requires the coordinated teamwork of a dozen players. Not something that can be karmatrained by a blob of 50. Like... on EBG after taking the dredges, they could dig a tunnel and damage SM wall or something. There's tons of opportunity for WvW, I often still feel like it's in beta testing lol.

Do something with AoE range. For necro and rev aoe spikes we have ranges of 1200 and 900 and it's so predictable. We stack, they stack, we pull,rev spike and move on.

Make it possible for coming up with crazy new strats instead of everyone running the same meta builds. Make it possible for more professions to enjoy WvW. Because right now... you're ranger? Thief? Any core class? You'll be frowned upon and being kicked from squad. For sure, some specs are better for blob vs blob and it's fine but make opportunity for others to do something too. Unfortunately, what will happen is we get new elite specs, they will be OP to get players to play them and that's it.

Need new mechanics, unique to some classes to make them more viable. We have boons to buff and conditions to debuff and pretty much that's it. We need more (NOT OP) things which doesn't count as conditions and we need new ways to get rid of them. But I know it's easier to make everything boon and condition.

I'll record some gameplay now and send you the build

Yeah I don't like those skills either. Scrapper stealth is much better and Illusion assumes we are bad and are gonna die :D Now in WvW I run mantra healer, usually only scrappers cleanse more and often top in boon strip (no null field for me, I use phantasmal disenchanter with chronophantasma plus GS. The mantras only heal insane amount (3-4k) which you can spam with Mantra of Pain every few seconds if you want to. Illusionary Inspiration heals 3-500 on each ilusion which is ok support with GS and chronophantasma. Rune of flock heals 2k itself on top of the mantra heal which is just insane. I imagine my build outheals scrappers and firebrands lol

and now I'm on nomad runes, gonna take minstrel, it's gonna be even higher lol

In WvW they expect veil and illsuion of life from you pretty much

I disagree that we need a minstrel mesmer. A minstrel-bard type of class would be ok but why mesmer? I don't want my mesmer to play instruments in battle. I want them to confse the shit out of the enemy. Maybe a minstrel-bard type new class? We got a revenant after all

Usually I use my shatters to get stab while stomping lol