Quadox.7834

Maybe not better, but different. More aoe focus.

Auto -> power instead of condition

Phantasm -> only one, ground targeted summon (uses his aoe attack, then turns into clone and runs to target as usual).

Chaos Armour -> replace by any close range aoe attack (damage, control or blind would be ok).

Chaos field -> made a bit scarier possibly some damage, currently people just walk into it because of powercreep.

Phase retreat -> perfect. best skill in this game.

Shiny Gold would be awesome.

Black would be good but a bit "basic".

2 stacks would make it more insteresting, but my suggestion:

Give us back shattered strength (might on shatter).

Even better:

Buff to 2 stacks vuln, add shattered strength to replace the shitty new trait "egotism".

Yeah, revealed has never appropriate or enough to counter stealth. You don't counter invulnerability by simply giving some classes an ability to hard shut-down all invulns in an AoE around them.

Perhaps the best/easiest fix is to reduce Damage / CC / Healing while in stealth by for example 50%. Maybe Thief #1 skill should be the only exception since it's made for this purpose. But things like Mug would still be reduced. This would be healthy longterm for Mesmer, Thief, Druid, Engi. Would like to hear arguments against this, to convince me otherwise!

Firstly, agreed with most people here, Elusive Mind is a broken trait by design and definitely needs a change, and exhaustion probably isn't the way to do it. A 10-second internal cooldown is also a terrible suggestion. First of all it would be very annoying, unfun, and inconsistent to keep track of as a Mesmer. The last thing you want is to not get a stunbreak because you misscounted as 9,7 seconds instead of 10. ICD should mostly be kept to things that don't change your playstyle, such as on-hit condition applications. It'd be better to remove the Stunbreak altogether.

Secondly, I suppose many will be surprised when they realize that Mirage is still broken with Infinite Horizon over Elusive Mind. The concept of never having to think about your dodge, being able to use it at any time you wish even when CCd or immobilized, is broken by design and limits counter-play massively.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that just the effect of not doing a physical "roll" animation when you dodge is huge because you don't get the visual feedback which means you have to either watch the UI or try to quickly spot the inconspicuous animation around the Mesmer. But this is fixable.

The change that probably **does** needs to happen to Mirage sooner or later is to disable Dodge in CC and while immobilized.

If you would have asked me a couple days after the patch, I would have unequivocally said "Yes, I like the rework". But ask me now I have to say the opposite. I understand why the change was done for PvE, but from a PvP perspective, it just made some problems worse and created some new ones.

1. Clone generation is slower than before. Especially on some weaponsets like staff. Makes for a slow "build-up" kind of playstyle.

2. More unreliable, you need to wait and hope that your AI doesn't bug out in order to get the clone. Which means it's inconsistent esp. vs for example thief which stealths or teleports away, fucking up phantasm AI.

3. No more choice, between shattering or keeping your phantasm. More straightforward.

5. Probably some more problems that I don't recall right now.

First, you have the shatter build. Phantasms are summoned as fast as you can. Since they might just walk around mindlessly for 5 seconds or suffer from any other arbitrary bug of your choice, it feels like you are working with a random-duration countdown timer. You pray to RNGesus that they might one day turn into clones but you don't count on it, especially since it is likely they will just die to AoE before that anyway. It's ok though, with Shatter Mirage you don't really have to care about phantasm management anyway. A basic MB + Daze mantra + Jaunt + Mind Wrack combo gives you a 3 clone shatter right on target anyway.

Second, you have the new phantasm builds and variations thereof. I'm speaking of the SS / Staff builds. Similar to the shatter build, this build's phantasm/clone management revolves around spamming out your phantasms as quickly as possible, periodically shattering just to clear your illusion limit. Don't keep track of your phantasms or make sure they hit their skills or anything, they are too slow and inconsistent to do anything interesting with anyway; better to just spam them out and then go on with your regular attacks/kiting. The phantasm attacks intermingled with the shatters will provide such a constant stream of damage that you can't and don't have to do any interesting combos with it, and your opponents can't dodge or do any interesting counters. It's basically just as uninteresting as the phantasm builds of vanilla gw2, but this time they are actually viable. It's kind of a Spirit Ranger situation in my mind.

The rework just promotes a spammy fire-and-forget playstyle where you spam out phantasms, then ignore them and play your build like normal while the phantasms "tick in the background". Phantasms can sometimes remain for way longer than intended if the enemy stealths / moves away / goes into LOS, so that the AI can't complete its attack. This results in a build-up of phantasms which can quickly get very overwhelming and unfun to fight against, and that's not even mentioning Chronophantasma.

Sorry for the rant-y post. Would love to hear feedback, esp if you play Shatter. If you really stop and think about it and compare playstyle to before patch, what are your feelings about the effects of the rework on PvP?

Sidenote; Why not give phantasms a second skill activation so can / have to have to choose when to attack like every other summon/minion in the game?

In light of the discussion that's going on concerning Mirage and Mesmer burst, but aside from that, in general also an in my opinion much-needed discussion about stealth and stealth spikes in PvP.

Some leading questions;

* Do you think stealth (incl. stealth bursts, etc.) is a problem in PvP as it currently functions?

* Should it be changed / reworked somehow? Is it too late in the lifespan of the game to change it now?

* If so, how would you change it? A duration decrease, a cooldown increase, adding more reveal, a full rework, or something else?

____

If I had to rework stealth, I'd probably make it so that whilst in stealth, you get **locked out of all your weapon skills**. Utilities can be used as normal. By pressing **any weapon skill you could then manually cancel stealth** for when you want to perform attacks like normal. The exception would be Thief stealth auto. This would hinder excessive stealth spikes (Including the ones caused by giving stealth to other classes like hammer guard or fa ele). I think Mesmer, S/D thief, Druid and Engi could relatively easily be rebalanced according to this, but the most affected spec would obviously be D/P thief. It would have to be compensated in other areas.

____

Personally, I think that changing stealth _might_ be healthier for the game in the long run, but it also might not. When talking about this from a PvP point of view, we should consider that very **few games allow fully invisible, long-duration stealth that is also available in combat, can be shared with allies, with the ability to cast any skills while remaining stealthed.** Additionally, any potential rework would probably have to take WvW and PvE into consideration, as we have heard from the PvP balance team that splits can generally only be based on numerical values and not the functionality itself.

However, it is also important to consider that **currently in the top levels of play, for instance the latest monthly AT, stealth and particularly stealth spikes, are not prevalent.** For example, the Mesmer in the winning team in EU (Misha), ran a S/S Staff Mirage with zero access to stealth rather than shatter Mirage, and thief runs S/D with little stealth access. So perhaps right now stealth is most common on Druid and Holo (elexir S) in high levels of play.

____

Tell us your perspective.

What if all Thief duel wield skills are made ammo skills (2 ammo probably)? This prohibits shadow shot spam (with the upcoming buff), DD death blossom evade spam, flanking strike evade spam, and unload spam all in one go. Buff other skills if this makes the weaponsets too weak (most probably pistol/pistol).

> @"Vicko.1204" said:

> > @"Quadox.7834" said:

> > > @"Vicko.1204" said:

> > > Don't focus on mirage. The main problems come from phantasms and core mesmer traits,mainly from the recent rework. Chrono power is also super strong. By nerfing mirage even more you basicaly destroy it. Lots of people gave very good suggestios. Power mesmer indeed needs more nerfs. Mainly damage ones, shatter storm and a change to daze/mantra combo into stun. But not the mirage traitline.

> >

> > Okay, show us how good base power Mesmer is. As compared to Mirage shatter or Chrono.

>

> Like I said,chrono is also powerful.Along with mirage.That means,the things that make both specs strong are the new changes of core mesmer traits.Chrono and mirage just make these things shine even more.There were no phantasms criting for 10k before the rework.Chrono and mirage couldnt double mind wrack before the rework.Why nobody cared about power chrono and power mirage (aside from wvw roaming power mirage) but now they do?It's because of the recent rework.Come on now man.You act like I'm not asking for nerfs.I said power needs more nerfs and especially the new reworked traits.

You are correct that some things need to be nerfed on core mesmer, disenchanter for instance. However, Mirage (and to some extent chrono) are still by far the main problems rather than base Mesmer. Nobody plays core mesmer for a reason, it is not good.

> @"Vicko.1204" said:

> Don't focus on mirage. The main problems come from phantasms and core mesmer traits,mainly from the recent rework. Chrono power is also super strong. By nerfing mirage even more you basicaly destroy it. Lots of people gave very good suggestios. Power mesmer indeed needs more nerfs. Mainly damage ones, shatter storm and a change to daze/mantra combo into stun. But not the mirage traitline.

Okay, show us how good base power Mesmer is. As compared to Mirage shatter or Chrono.

> @"Atmaweapon.7345" said:

> The change list so far has targeted things like Scourge, but most of the other offenders of offensive instant casts haven't been touched so far.

>

> I posted this in the main thread, but I'll phrase these in the form of questions this time:

>

> 1) Is there any problem with making instant cast abilities share a significant global cooldown? I'm not talking about WoW's 1 second global cooldowns, but something a bit slower than the .25 second global cooldown on Shade skills. Is there a problem where this can't be implemented in PvP without changing it for PvE?

>

> 2) Is it really ok to be able to use teleportation abilities while using other attacks? The point of the dodge system is that you can anticipate enemy attacks to some extent, but the ability to mask an attack by standing behind an obstacle or running away and then immediately teleport on top of the enemy to unleash it throws a lot of that out the window.

>

> I'm not gonna hide my bias here, in the patch notes absolutely nothing was done about Mesmer and especially F/A Eles with the exception of buffing Ele Scepter's non-instant attack. Meanwhile, there's a very deliberate attempt to reign in the spike burst of other power specs. It seems questionable when the two prime offenders of blowing people up in one frame aren't being touched.

I just wanted to respond to number 2. I think it is okay to use skills during teleports, _but_ perhaps teleports should only work when in LOS similar to how Blink and Lightning flash work, rather than going through walls.

> @"Exciton.8942" said:

> > @"Cal Cohen.3527" said:

> > The list in the main thread isn't final; one of the reasons we wanted to get it out way early is for you guys to give feedback. We agree that mirage could use more nerfs and it's something we will be looking at in the next few days. If you have any specific ideas (preferably splits) feel free to post them along with any reasoning and we'll take them into consideration.

> >

> > Thanks!

>

> How is mirage the culprit?

>

> There are some mesmer skills in general overtuned for damage. But for mirage only, the EM nerf alone is already very heavy.

>

> Mirage power completely revolves around ambushes and EM. Nerfing EM the way you do means less dodges which again result in less ambushes. The whole mirage trait line is honestly pretty garbage already except for this trait, i.e. EM.

>

> Instead of looking at mirage, you should just focus on tuning down some high damage skill like phantasmal disechanter, avenger. Maybe even 0 and 1 clone mind wrack, so you can encourage setting up multiple clone burst rather than just mirror blade into mind wrack.

>

> Another trait you might consider nerfing in confounding suggestion ICD. 5s ICD gives it a bit too strong synergy with daze mantra.

Play a comparable core shatter mesmer build for a while (in plat+ at least) and compare is to mirage shatter. The difference will be obvious. Mirage has the huge problem of being almost unpunishable due to the ability to dodge in immob/stun/while using skills. It also has immense mobility which makes it even harder to chase down. It also has daze on sword leap which synergizes with Confounding Suggestions and Power Block.

You are right however in that core Mesmer also has some problems. Disenchanter should be reworked (more clear animation + lower damage probably). Confounding Suggestions should be reworked (not just icd increase). Phantasm spam could be toned down a bit as it produces too much visual noise especially with traited greatsword / staff phantasm / chronophantasma. It looks and feels too spammy.

While I'm not sure what should be done, this does sound a lot better than what mantras currently are. People have complained about mantras for years and as a result they got buffed so many times. It should be relatively easy to see that the design doesn't lend itself well to a PvP environment. The slow charge time feels bad for the Mesmer and the instant effect feels bad to the opponent.

Whilst Arenanet's changes make passives less prevalent, and your suggestion makes them more active, the better solution would be to remove/rework all overpowered passives from the game. This includes all passive invulns, stealths, stunbreaks as well as other powerful traits such as Protective Ward.

If ANet still wants the traits to provide similar functionality, a better alternative would be to make traits such as "Reduce the cooldown of your blocks by 20%" and such. Although I think it would be better to just make them into something completely different.

> @"thijsken.5031" said:

> Portal has been in need of a nerf for years now. By far the most impactful skill in pvp, ports around your intire team ( mutiple times if wanted) across the map on a very low CD while not even being an elite skill.

It should be an elite to compete with Jaunt. What do you think about that?

> @"Cal Cohen.3527" said:

> The list in the main thread isn't final; one of the reasons we wanted to get it out way early is for you guys to give feedback. We agree that mirage could use more nerfs and it's something we will be looking at in the next few days. If you have any specific ideas (preferably splits) feel free to post them along with any reasoning and we'll take them into consideration.

>

> Thanks!

Thanks for the post! I know you guys like lists, so, as an exclusively Mesmer player;

* I like the Mirage dodge stunbreak nerf. Perhaps the stunbreak should be removed altogether, but we'll see in the future.

* I realise the next step for you in balancing Mesmer will be to nerf power mesmer. Most probably via reducing shatter damage / prevalence, nerfing confounding suggestions trait (which should honestly be reworked/removed), or reducing the damage of weapon skills (most probably on greatsword in that case). I hope you will consider what such changes would do to core power shatter Mesmer first (such as Domination/Dueling/Illusion or Inspiration). Mesmer damage is not a big problem in and of itself. A better way to nerf mirage is the following, in my opinion;

* **Make Mirage more punishable. Dodging in stuns and immobilize and while channeling skills is obviously the main culprit.** <-- This is most important.

* Balance Mirage mobility. Jaunt+blink+portal+swordleap is too much. I suggest making portal an elite skill, so mirage gets to choose portal _or_ Jaunt.

Portal has been a "locked utility" for mesmer since release of the game. Without that change, Jaunt needs to be nerfed in PvP. Too many clones and mobility.

* Balance stealth. One of if not the main complaint people have about power mesmer has always boiled down to getting extreme damage with no tell from stealth. Unless stealth is reworked entirely, one bandaid fix could be to reduce stealth duration of The Prestige (torch), Decoy, and possibly Signet of Midnight by one second each.

* Balance illusion spam. Most of the current meta builds for power mesmer revolve around spamming some combination of the following; traited 2x berserkers, disenchanter, defender (incl trait), warlock, mage, swordsman. Even for an experienced Mesmer player the visual noise is immense when fighting such a build and it is almost impossible to keep track of everything (especially disenchanter which has an inconspicuous animation). Easiest fix is to increase cooldowns of the phantasm-summoning skills. You could also nerf disenchanter damage heavily, altough it would be better to redesign it as detailed below.

* Increase phantasm usability and reliability. I realize this is not a possible skill split, but it does really need to happen. All/most phantasms should follow lead of the phantasmal berserker. There are three core issues even with the post-rework phantasms;

1. Some take way too long to perform their attacks. It feels bad for the mesmer, because the clone summon takes way too long and the phantasm runs a high risk of dying before that happens. It also feels bad for the opponent, because you don't feel like you can outplay and dodge some phantasms like you can with others. The berserker and swordsman well designed in this regard, but Warlock, Warden and Duelist should be quicker and more burst-y (rather than a slow volley).

2. Some phantasms regularly get stuck, in the terrain or otherwise, and never get to perform their attack especially if the opponent is moving. It becomes a game of hoping and excessively waiting for the phantasm to hit so you get a clone. Mage and Shield phantasms suffer from this problem.

3. Some phantasms don't have clear enough animations. This is the case for Disenchanter and Shield phantasm.

* Overall, Swordsman and Berserker are the best designed phantasms. Without the "phantasm gain quickness" trait Mesmer feels very clunky and annoying to pay at the moment.

Sorry for the long post!

* When it comes to the passives, they should honestly just be removed rather than the cooldown increased. Now it just incentivizes that you burst them down quickly before the cooldown comes up again.

* Buffing conditions is also a bad idea if nothing is done to make condition cleansing more predictable, as has been seen in the past. The only way to deal with a condi-heavy meta is just to add lots of small and spammy condition removals rather than being smart about when to use them. Perhaps conditions should be grouped according to the following categories; Debilitating Conditions (Immob, Blind, Cripple, Chill, Vulnerability, Fear, Taunt, Slow, Weakness) and Damaging Conditions (Bleed, Burn, Poison, Confusion, Torment). Allow skills and traits to remove conditions only from a certain category. This way condition removal at least becomes a little less random.

~~Didn't mean to comment.~~

This makes Mirage choose between Jaunt and Portal. Balances Mirage mobility and improve core Mesmer at the same time (it frees up an important utility slot). Mesmer has had a locked utility in PvP since the start of the game and as we know, core Mesmer elites are fairly ineffective at the current time anyway. Mainly from a PvP perspective.

I'm stuck in queue.