Nuu, on 01 July 2012 - 08:43 PM, said:
This is blowing my mind right now....
Yes mind wrack & cry of frustration shatters need help, but the other 2 are fine. Swapping is ridiculous & I won't change my views on that. The Mesmer is already the most squishy class because of lack of attunements such as water/earth or life-steal/death shroud of necros & killing people requires damage. NOT swapping. As I said before, symbols will take care of that. Just swapping around delays the inevitable.
Moa being instant kill...? LOL hah. Right. There are 2 kinds of skills. Skills powering you up, or skills powering people down. This is the latter. Again, the Mesmer is the softest. Oh and umm....it's an elite. An ELITE. People aren't going to be popping elites all day anyways. Cool down. I've been Moa'd a lot as a Mesmer and I never died...so i can't exactly relate. And if you can talk about Moa, then what about Lich & guardian elites...?
The random nature of Mesmers is fine. And effective. Staffs inflicting burn and bleed is much more effective than short confusion. Confusion doesn't do that much (and is good that way) because it's supposed to mix w/other conditions. That's the point of the Mesmer. Confusion and randomness. If you all did the math, your see the "randomness" is much better. I'll make a video about it later...but I just don't get these suggestions...
TL;DR
Swapping - ridiculous
Moa Bird - Fine
"Randomness" - Fine -- conditions "random" damage output is not (I'll do the math later)
Shatters - yes need quite a bit of help
Confusion - fine -- more damage would be OP, but longer original durations would help.
Please don't misunderstand. I'm NOT saying the Mesmer is done. BUT I am saying majority of the things you all mentioned is completely left field.
You really don't think swapping is a more useful mechanic than shattering? Sure, our profession needs damage from somewhere, but it doesn't need to come so much from our core profession mechanic. Giving Mesmers swap would make them masters of positioning and elusiveness, which, by the way, is kind of something they're leaning towards as is. That and, the shatter mechanic isn't a good one anyway, I still don't see you suggesting anything better.
There are many transformation elite skills, but I'm sure if you took a look you'd notice a trend. The Mesmer's is the only one that transforms an enemy, and it is effectively a 10 second daze that can't be removed. For a game based off of ability usage, CC should be relegated to interrupts, not lockdowns, and that's what Moa Morph is, it's a lock down that requires zero effort from the Mesmer to pull off. An interrupt requires you to time a skill right to give you an opening or prevent a spell, but there's little to no timing involved with it. Other Elites empower a single target, who can be brought down if you try to fight them and outskill them, while Moa Morph basically only allows the ability to run away. While using LoS and evading indeed may be skills on their own, it's still not equivalent.
All I'm hearing here is you being a casual player. That is to say, you don't understand what competetive means, and why it requires no randomness. And incidentally, as I've said more than once, this game's PvP is intended to be competitive, being an E-Sport. To last as that, it has to be pure skill. At the moment, with random elements, it is not. If you like randomness, good for you, but it's your kind of views that aren't helpful to the game's integrity.
Shriketalon, on 01 July 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:
The main problem with attempting iterative fixes on the Mesmer's main mechanic is that it is simply designed wrong. So are many mesmer fixes (including some of my own
), for the simple reason of overdesign. Too many people approach the main mechanic as designing the way the class is supposed to play, rather than a way of enhancing all the ways a class can play. A good mechanic does not dictate your playstyle, only improves upon the numerous builds the profession can bring to bear.
What does a Warrior do? Smash, bash, crash, and dash his opponents to ribbons using every armament under the sun. What does adrenaline do? Crank up his chosen weapons to add more smashing, bashing, crashing, and dashing. What does a Necromancer do? Unleash disease, despair, and death upon his opponents to drag them downward to their doom. What does life force do? Give him an extra edge for surviving conflict in order to keep his head above the water while his opponent drowns. What does a guardian do? Smite his foes and protect his friends. What do Virtues do? Beef up smiting and protecting for himself and everyone else. Good mechanics
don't care how you play, they've got your back in every situation and enhance everything your profession is supposed to do.
A system that siphones away weapon skills just to fuel a cookie cutter gimmick like blowing up NPC does not qualify. Shatters do not have the mesmer's back, nor do they enhance the playstyles available to the class or improve upon any style of play the mesmer wants to enjoy. No quick fix is going to change this, nor will anything short of revising the main mechanic give the mesmer the flexibility it needs to fit into different game modes and present numerous ways to participate in different roles.
Someone I can agree with, you see, this is a large part of the reason for the mechanic suggestion in the first place. Trying to give Mesmers something that is always useful, that fits with what they can already do, and doesn't rely on particular builds to be useful at all.
What can a Mesmer do? Confuse, Decieve, Evade, Manipulate. Do shatters accomplish this? Not really, sure Cry of Frustration applies confusion, but it doesn't really confuse the player, distrortion does allow them to evade, but that's about it. What do swaps allow a Mesmer to do? Confuse and decieve enemies by swapping when they don't expect it, evade attacks, and manipulate the battlefield through superior positioning. That isn't to say that swapping is the only idea that can ever be utilized for the Mesmer's main mechanic, but it works with them better, and could easily work with all builds.
Nuu, on 01 July 2012 - 11:06 PM, said:
" let's not parse words. You know what I mean. I don't mean instant kill as in you cast, they die. I mean what you mean...which I think isn't true. It certainly is not a free kill. Anyways, it's whatever....
I hate to say this and I'm usually the one who argues for everything, but if you don't like the Mesmer...maybe instead of complaining, try to find some redeeming qualities. Xeph & other plays like dimensionPvP & other players have. A couple have acknowledged the Mesmer NEEDS help in certain areas yes. Especially damage for shatters (just a little bit more) and some fixing w/confusion...bugs etc, but some make it seem like its unplayable. No one has directly said that, but that's what's being implied. That these problems completely saturate the good aspects of the Mesmer. I won't say go pick another class, but I can't lie...I'm tempted to..I do sympathize because it seems the Mesmer needs a lot of help. But guys....
First before even talking about issues, let's see what you guys are doing? Do you have any video? What builds we're you playing? What gear did you use? What play style did you employ? I wanna hear about THAT first...then people talking about shatters sucking. Tell me you have over 1000 power & shatters only do like 30 damage (since mindwrack is based off power). Give me evidence first. We know the obvious: that shatter damage in general needs help & whatever among other things. I'm just saying, I'm tired of people asking for revisions when they clearly haven't thought about the remifications or reasons they're not already here, like swapping. Seriously....swapping. SWAPPING. How vanilla of a mechanic is that? Others have pets, death shroud, passive/active skills & attunements....and you want US to have swapping...? Ok.
Here's the core problem with your reasoning. All you see is Mesmers needing help, being underpowered. You don't see that it's not just a matter of the power of our profession, but of how clunky it is, how in the long run it will end up only being over or underpowered, not balanced. Shatters, simply put, are holding the profession back, because it's a mechanic we are reliant on that doesn't even work well, requires our weapon skills to have clones all over the place only to use as a resource, and is completely ineffectual if untraited. You could buff shatters to deal obscene damage, and Mesmers still wouldn't ultimately be fine. Think on that a moment.
As for builds, not that it should matter, but I've tried all weapons and probably all weapon combinations, I've tried clone factories, phantasms, mantras, stealth, support, mobility. I've tried both power and condition builds. The point isn't a lack of effectiveness entirely, I did well most of the time. The problem was, certain elements of the profession are lacking, unrefined, dependant on RNG, or simply not good design.
Xionix, on 01 July 2012 - 11:26 PM, said:
That or someone learned to dodge and los properly. I only use time warp, but i've never died to moa (although i've been close decoy is there as soon as it drops). If it is overpowered or "toxic" then Anet will fix it eventually. I just can't grasp begging for nerfs with many other things needing higher priority than wah I died in a 1v1 because I forgot where my dodge key is.
Let me make something clear. I'm not asking for a nerf, I'm asking for a removal and replacement with something else. Whether you die to it or not, a 10 second daze doesn't belong in the game. I haven't died to it, but if you ever get hit by it, have fun not being able to do anything for 10 seconds.
Merryem, on 02 July 2012 - 01:04 AM, said:
I disagree completely. It's not like during Moa you can't move; you can still move. If we followed your ideals, skills like Endure Pain, buffs like Distortion, all would be removed as it's not "fair or fun". There are some really good uses for Moa; ex. You're fighting a 1v1 and you see an enemy Ranger come in from the side; you Moa the ranger, finish off the Warrior, stomp him and change your attention. That's called skilled use of Moa.
The invincibility or high damage reduction skills require good timing to make use of the effect, otherwise you will simply be ignored rather than absorbing a potentially dangerous spell and putting it on cooldown. On the other hand, being able to daze someone for 10 seconds to survive a 1v2 hardly sounds like skilled play, you're just using it because it's avilable, not timing it. You could do the same sort of thing in a more skillful sense if you used a normal duration daze or stun to open up just enough time to stomp one of the two, rather than having a 10 second window to do it. It doesn't get any easier than that.
Xeviant, on 02 July 2012 - 01:10 AM, said:
Perhaps a tweak to moa to make it a CC. While one is a MoA your regen is increased so that way people cant wail on you excessively but you still take some dmg. An other option would be to have direct dmg decrease its duration. That said, Moa isn't like a stunlock, you can LoS, evade, etc. One thing to consider, can it be dispelled like a condition? I've not seen that done, but that might be a way to balance it.
Even with that kind of stuff, 10 seconds are still too much to lock someone down. That'd be better, sure, but still wouldn't fix the issue. Direct damage sounds good in theory, but the result is dodge for 10 seconds, not being able to do anything, or let yourself take a bunch of damage just so that you can do things again. As far as I know, it can't be dispelled.
TYphoon34, on 02 July 2012 - 04:15 AM, said:
Instead of trying to rework the class, wouldn't it be better to fix the current class. I believe it's entirely possible.
Shouts
Mind Wrack - Have it deal X amount of damage per clone. 1500-1800 per clone seems sufficient making for 4500-5400 damage with 3 clones and when traited 5400-6480 damage. That is a pretty nice burst amount for when the situation requires. Have Mind Wrack do this as a flat amount of damage, not influenced by critical chance, crit damage, power. I say nothing is wrong with allowing Sigils to affect it (5% more damage) but that is pretty much all.
Cry of Frustration - No problem here at all!
Confusion
Right now confusion is 80 damage without a condition damage build. 8 stacks of confusion (which is pretty easy to obtain I've seen) will cause 640 damage per attack.
Now, my math may be incorrect, but I heard Confusion follows the same Condition damage formula as bleeding, which means 20 condition damage equals 1 additional damage for a stack of confusion. Your average conditon damage focused build should have around 1300 condition damage. So we will work with 1300, an additional 65 damage per stack of confusion. Now confusion deals 1160 damage per attack, which is actually pretty respectable considering a condition damage build would be using more than just confusion to inflict their conditions. Now, builds centered around Confusion may not have much luck in -shutting down- their opponents, but 1160 damage is quite a bit for a SINGLE condition. If my math is incorrect and anyone has a recent, up-to-date formula for condition damage and confusion, please do let me know.
Weapon Skills
Scepter - Remove the clone from 1, increase the base damage to be a somewhat hard hitting skill. 459 per hit seems decent, comparable to the Elementalist's 1 skill on Scepter. Everything else is fine as is.
Sword OH - Bump up the damage of the Phantasm to about 1k-1.5k a strike.
Pistol - Fine
Torch - Fine
Focus - Fine
Staff - Fine
Greatsword - Ok, here we go. The greatsword should be our go to weapon for a bit of spike damage.
-Make Spatial Surge do equivalent damage to the Ranger's longbow 1 skill
- 1000+ - 509 damage
- 500-1000 - 302 damage
- 0-500 - 254 damage
- Mirror blade is fine as is, maybe a bump to 300-350 damage
- Mind Stab is fine as is
-Berserker - Cripple is perfect for this weapon type.
-Illusionary Wave - Equivalent damage to the ranger knockback, 539. I would also not mind removing the knockback and bumping the damage to 700 with a condition such as 3 stacks of bleed or aoe cripple with a 10 second cooldown increase.
These changes, although they seem small, would certainly add a bam to the greatsword and make it a nice spiking weapon alongside MH sword.
Elite Skills
Moa Morph - Fine
Mass Invisibility - Yes, swiftness seems like a nice addition to this skill or maybe a regen effect.
Time Warp - fine
Trait Lines
Funny, my problem with the Mesmer's trait are because so many revolve around dazes and interruptions. I swear, there are like 15 traits (exaggeration). A little more variety will go nicely in the Mesmer trait line, but it's not terrible compared to other classes. I actually find myself upset I cannot pursue another trait line to pick up X trait.Unlike my elementalist, where I generally knew that 20 points would go in Arcane, 10 in Water, 10 Fire, 10 in Air and the remaining 20 points wherever I feel like it.
Downed State
The goal of the down state is to not save you 100%, but to give you a chance. The daze on the 2 skill would be helpful, and the teleport is pretty bad...a cloak like stated above would be excellent.
Conclusion
I doubt we would get a skill mechanic rework by now, but I think most of the mechanics are fine. Now I haven't played the class, and my reasoning is all second hand knowledge. If you feel I am incorrect in any form or manner, feel free to bring it up or correct me. From what I see, the only problem is number changing that is required.
Alright, now I understand that mesmer isn't a profession that you've played, only theorycrafted. So to clear one thing up first, numbers aren't actually the issue. In fact, if numbers really were th eonly issue, there would be no problems whatsoever because numbers we can guarantee would change even after release. On the other hand, when talking basic mechanics, those don't change so easily, and sadly, in the case of the mesmer, these are the problem.
So first off, Mind Wrack. Yes, the damage is too low right now, but the issue has more to do with dependency on it, it interacting badly with phantasms, requiring clones only to act as shatter fodder, generally being buggy, and feeling like busy work. By shattering at every opportunity, you are simply becoming even with other professions damage output, because that's what it's balanced to be, damage that we are required to do. Other professions give you a mechanic that enhances your gameplay, rather than demanding that you use the mechanic just to maintain status quo. Also, changing it to not scale at all pretty much would go against the standard that's set by pretty much everything else in the game.
Cry of Frustration is most definitely not fine. It has double the cooldown for no real reason, applies a condition that is difficult to balance, and just generally overlaps with Mind Wrack as just a source of damage, nothing more.
On Confusion, the problems are numerous. First off, stacking 8 stacks of confusion is actually difficult unless you are underwater, the only way that comes to mind at all is the scepter's third skill, Confusing Images, combined with Cry of Frustration. That would allow for 8 stacks, requiring three clones, and Cry Of Frustration to be up. That's an awfully specific situation, and only then does Confusion look decent damage-wise. Of course, the problem isn't just damage, but that Confusion at low levels is completely ignoreable, and at high levels acts as a daze or die. For example, using that same concept, and selecting Illusionary Persona and that one trait that gives all shatters an additional stack of Confusion, the result would be 13 stacks, so 1885 damage per attack. Remember also that it isn't capped per second, so let's say we use this on a thief and he uses one quick combo of a four abilities on you, that's 7540 damage. At that point, attacking or using abilities at all becomes foolish, which means that to survive, you must do nothing, IE, you are basically dazed. Combine that with condition duration increases, and the 33% boost to it's duration through a trait, and it gets silly.
For weapon skills, the scepter could still use a second way to generate clones, otherwise bumping up it's attack isn't something I'd complain about as it feels rather weak. Buffing the phantasm isn't the route I'd go to improving the offhand sword, because people would still pick the offhand pistol instead anyway, because it has both a high damage phantasm and a stun. I'd say definitely do not remove the knockback element of the fifth skill on greatsword, as it's about the only thing that gives it any utility period, the problemw ith it is it's focused on damage to the exclusion of everything else on a utility profession.
Moa Morph, as I keep saying, is not fine. Glad you agree on the swiftness effect on Mass Invisibility.
The interruption and daze tendency for Mesmers is because in GW1, they were basically just interrupt bots, nothing more. I wouldn't mind seeing abit more variety myself, but as I said, Chaos needs some real changes.
The issue with the Mesmer downed state, is in PvP it will never help you due to no interrupts and too little damage to even finish of someone who's low without phantasms. Regardless of PvP, PvE, or what, the blink is currently useless as well.
Culture Shock, on 02 July 2012 - 08:18 AM, said:
I think you've answered your own questions here. In PvE content foes do quite often stop attacking when stacks of confusion are on them, I have this on video and have discussed this with several other Mesmers. Also players who can't remove conditions with their build have chosen to be without defense against ALL conditions and you said your self confusion is "no different than continual attacks".
Confusion can play a role in your damage whether the foe attacks or not because its not your only source of damage, so to ignore it should be possible without instant death. (it doesn't have to be cranked up to OP levels) But does that mean foes SHOULD ignore it? Auto-attacks are not always the highest damage skills on your bar, but does that mean foes should ignore it? Clones have a singular threat of damage in the future as they currently do almost zero damage while alive, these can arguably be ignored since they are for shatters according to Eric Flannum. This is also "delayed" damage which one could arguably ignore. Even health degeneration such as bleeding can arguably be ignored since it's slow, but does that mean you "should" ignore it?
The fact that Mesmers are still a major force to deal with in PvP is a testimony that Mesmers do in fact kill other players even with confusion only having one decent skill that applies it, says something to the cause. Mesmers should have a profession condition or they become cheap half done Engineers with really pretty grenades.
In fact confusion along with skills such as empathy were passive damage that annoyed many other players because it did not have the "flash bang warning" that you are about to take damage. Players would kill themselves because they didn't realize they were under a serious attack. It's not that the skill was OP, it was just a bit too subtle for GW2, clean crisp visuals have taken care of that now.
If you research the lore of Mesmers you will see just how fitting confusion is to the class, and why it is a much better core mechanic than shatters. I disagree with Anet for tying most of our class mechanics to illusion magic, because it was only one area of Mesmer magic. I do like stuns, and dazes because without confusion they are all we have left of Domination Magic. And chaos storm also counts.
First off, Mesmers regularily succeed in PvP without needing Confusion at all. In fact, they're probably better suited to just forget it exists and focus on phantasms or just raw power with mind wrack and regular attacks. You could remove Confusion entirely from them, and you wouldn't see a significant damage difference in any builds but the most focused condition damage ones. While I tried confusion builds, I spent most of my time succeeding with an all around build that focused on evasion and stealth more than anything, and I still killed plenty of people without need of confusion.
Let me aks you a question. You have 10k health, and the stacks of confusion on you will deal 1500-ish damage per ability you use. Do you fight, or do you try and run away and hope that the Mesmer doesn't apply more stacks or have a lot of condition duration? And as a reminder, the Mesmer is fully capable of attacking you even if you fight, meaning you will be taking that 1500 damage per ability use on top of whatever else they can throw at you. Which is the right answer? What I'm trying to say is, both are bad choices, they give the illusion of choice, which is a horrible mechanic. You either let them kill themselves, or not fight back and possibly get killed anyway.
You really don't see why they went the illusion route? A mesmer's abilities all had to do with attacking the targets mind. That is exactly what their illusions are, attacking their mind. Instead of being a debuff, it's become an actual manifestation. Your preference for stuns and dazes also makes it sound like you're a fan of the shutdown Mesmer, which couldn't even be called an actual profession, just an interrupt bot.
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