22 replies to this topic

[Mr_Finesse]

So I personally have a ton of faith in the Mesmer.  It was my favorite class in GW1 and I love the ideas that they have translated to GW2.  We can all agree, though, that there are a lot of actual class mechanics that are works in progress and I would say that most people that are perusing the Mesmer branch of this forum have faith that ANet will deliver on providing us with a great/unique class to play.

That being said, what's up with the 3 elite skills?  I play with the build editors on a daily basis and I'm constantly finding myself avoiding the 3 elite skills for the Mesmer.  They all have their uses, but they are extremely situational and some are even catered to 1 specific type of gameplay (coughpvpcough).  I'm corralled into using Time Warp, but i'm still not sold.

What i'm having a hard time understanding is why are there no elite skills associated with...
- clones/phantasms
- mantras
- signets
- condition manipulation

There are signet elites for the Warrior and Ranger.
There are minion elites for the Necromancer.
There is a glyph elite for the Elementalist.

and so on and on and on...

Does anyone agree and/or have any thoughts on this?  Wouldn't it be a lot cooler if we had elites related to our class mechanics?

[Jairyn]

I want Anise's Phantasmal Army so bad it hurts. I don't think a shatter is in line with an elite (nor should an army of phantasms be able to be shattered), but I think it's a fine place for powered up illusions. Perhaps if not Phantasmal Army, then an Ether Nightmare.

[Mr_Finesse]

J1083, on 03 August 2012 - 02:47 PM, said:

I want Anise's Phantasmal Army so bad it hurts. I don't think a shatter is in line with an elite (nor should an army of phantasms be able to be shattered), but I think it's a fine place for powered up illusions. Perhaps if not Phantasmal Army, then an Ether Nightmare.

Does that follow the idea of like...

Summon 3 phantasms to do 3 different actions? 1 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Magical?

I would be all for that for sure.  I was looking for Anise's post about it but couldn't find it.

[Crowley]

Mr_Finesse, on 03 August 2012 - 03:01 PM, said:

Does that follow the idea of like...

Summon 3 phantasms to do 3 different actions? 1 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Magical?

I would be all for that for sure.  I was looking for Anise's post about it but couldn't find it.

#1 holds his legs
#2 holds his arms
#3 goes to town

[Jairyn]

Oh, she's an NPC mesmer, I may've gotten the name wrong. In the human personal storyline she summons about a dozen sword/sword wielding phantasms at a single time.

Other people have proposed the different attack style phantasm loadout, as well. So long as there's lots of phantasms, I'm happy.

[Zorian51]

It seems a lot of people want that type of illusion that she has. I think in order for them to pull it off it would have to be a fake type of illusion. Perhaps you summon 10 clones/phantasms (seperate from the 3 you have) and they all do a few attacks or just shatter on the opponent to do massive damage?

It would be way to OP to just simply be able to make a clone for ever enemy on the field. They could max the limit but still.. could you imagine this in world vs world with a few mesmers making a army of a bazillion clones. It would be awesome but way to OP.

[Zendharma]

I agree about having an elite illusion, an elite mantra, and an elite signet.  I would like to see:

• an elite clone that has our half our total health and uses all our weapon skills to attack an enemy for 10 seconds, while we are made invisible (and unable to attack) for its duration;
  
• an elite phantasm that attacks fast both melee and ranged (which cannot be shattered); and,
  
• an elite mantra that removes the charge and cooldown times of all our mantras for 8 seconds.

Since I have no suggestions for an elite signet, I didn't include one in the list, but I would still like there to be one for signet builds.

Truth be told, though, this to me is all wishful thinking.  I would be knocked on my backside with total astonishment if our elites get overhauled or if new ones were added anytime sooner than about six months to a year in from the Official Release.  There's just too much other stuff they've got to work on with this profession that haven't happened yet in the right ways.

Edited by Zendharma, 03 August 2012 - 03:37 PM.

[Mr_Finesse]

Signet Elite ideas:

Keystone Signet -
  Passive: +x (insert attribute) for each unused signet
  Active: Recharge all of your other signets

Signet of Disruption -
  Passive: Causes any skill targeting you to fail (only once per 10 seconds)
  Active: Stun target foe and adjacent foes, deals x amount of damage, and knocks down foes using skills.

Zendharma, on 03 August 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

Truth be told, though, this to me is all wishful thinking.  I would be knocked on my backside with total astonishment if our elites get overhauled or if new ones were added anytime sooner than about six months to a year in from the Official Release.  There's just too much other stuff they've got to work on with this profession that haven't happened yet in the right ways.

Absolutely agree with this.  The good news is, they haven't been afraid in the past to make drastic changes to an underpowered class post-release...

[SCLOBERNOCKER47]

Zendharma, on 03 August 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

• an elite mantra that removes the charge and cooldown times of all our mantras for 8 seconds.

That would be ridiculously overpowered. Id love it

[Tannet]

I think Anise's whole Phantasm army would be too powerful. Maybe five phantasms, which attack up to 5 different foes or all one foe for a set duration like Fiora's Bladewaltz from LoL, would be enough.

Btw this is her army

Edited by Tannet, 03 August 2012 - 06:18 PM.

[Sage Of The Wise]

Tannet, on 03 August 2012 - 06:17 PM, said:

I think Anise's whole Phantasm army would be too powerful. Maybe five phantasms, which attack up to 5 different foes or all one foe for a set duration like Fiora's Bladewaltz from LoL, would be enough.

Btw this is her army

I'm for some reason less bugged by the fact she gets a phantasm army and more bugged by the fact her phantasms don't shatter on target death. Why can't we ever have nice things

[lujate]

I have been checking out the racial elites, since the Mesmer elites do not inspire me.

[luminumcan]

Since the Mesmer's mechanic does not allow for a player to control more than three illusions at once, the "illusion army" doesn't seem feasible. My favorite idea mentioned here is the trio of phantasms that attack at different ranges. It fits into the existing framework of Mesmer mechanics and has precedent with the Thieves' Guild and Warband Support elites, with the added utility of being able to shatter the summoned NPCs.

A Keystone Signet elite sounds fantastic as well.

[nverbe]

i'm a big fan of mass invisibility in wvw

I'm also a big fan of time warp just about everywhere I am in a group.  it's one of the most damaging elites in the game when there are other players around, but it has a dependency on other players being around.  It scales up tremendously with every additional player, whereas other professions elites are pretty much capped on how effective they are because of the AOE cap at 5.

Solo play I'll probably just take one of the racial elite golems since I'll be asura or perhaps the mistfire wolf pending evidence of it's effectiveness.

[Phys]

Mr_Finesse, on 03 August 2012 - 02:37 PM, said:

So I personally have a ton of faith in the Mesmer.  It was my favorite class in GW1 and I love the ideas that they have translated to GW2.  We can all agree, though, that there are a lot of actual class mechanics that are works in progress and I would say that most people that are perusing the Mesmer branch of this forum have faith that ANet will deliver on providing us with a great/unique class to play.

That being said, what's up with the 3 elite skills?  I play with the build editors on a daily basis and I'm constantly finding myself avoiding the 3 elite skills for the Mesmer.  They all have their uses, but they are extremely situational and some are even catered to 1 specific type of gameplay (coughpvpcough).  I'm corralled into using Time Warp, but i'm still not sold.

What i'm having a hard time understanding is why are there no elite skills associated with...
- clones/phantasms
- mantras
- signets
- condition manipulation

There are signet elites for the Warrior and Ranger.
There are minion elites for the Necromancer.
There is a glyph elite for the Elementalist.

and so on and on and on...

Does anyone agree and/or have any thoughts on this?  Wouldn't it be a lot cooler if we had elites related to our class mechanics?

time warp is the phantasm/support skill
moa is basically the interupt, though it wont make use of real interupt mechanics.
mass invisibility is glamor style, though it doesnt seem that is really well developed in mesmers currently

[Chronos12360]

Moa Morph is obviously too PvP driven and Mass Invisibility is useful but honestly should just be toned down a bit and turned into a Utility skill since its so situational atm. That said Time Warp is sooooooooooo good. Its the Bloodlust of GW2 and honestly its such a good skill atm I feel like mesmers might be heavily requested for tougher PvE.

The idea of summoning 2-3 phantasms that are separate from our original 3 is blah imo. Summoning team mates is all over the racial elites and alot of class elites as well so putting another one in the game is kind of a boring solution. When I see the concept art the one thing I always thought would be cool on the mesmer is something similar to Byakuya's ability in the anime bleach (watched it ages ago lol), but instead of flowers we have a storm of butterflies and illusionary blades that look like shattered glass flying all around. Would prefer it not too be just an AoE on the caster, but even that would be an improvement over Mass Invisibility as an Elite.

[Sebrent_Tehroth]

This thread is just an example that, no matter how good something is, there are going to be people that gripe about it and/or want something more/else ...

[Shriketalon]

Sebrent_Tehroth, on 04 August 2012 - 02:48 AM, said:

This thread is just an example that, no matter how good something is, there are going to be people that gripe about it and/or want something more/else ...

You complain much about any complaining.  

More to the point, I think this thread reflects something larger: there aren't enough elites.  Quite a few professions are grumbling about the lack of an elite that caters toward their particular build, and there isn't enough room to even cover support, damage, and control with any room left over.  Many classes lack one of these roles, and a lot of them have a problem with very niche abilities turned into elites more for the cool factor than their actual practicality.

Thus, it's not specifically a Mesmer problem, it's a three-elites-per-profession problem.

[Dastion]

Sebrent_Tehroth, on 04 August 2012 - 02:48 AM, said:

This thread is just an example that, no matter how good something is, there are going to be people that gripe about it and/or want something more/else ...

He has a point and you undervalue the importance of that special ability type tag.  None of our elites are effected by traits because none of them are special ability types.  Though I wouldn't consider signets unique to professions, they are at least something most people have a trait for.

I went through the profession list to see if each had at least 1 skill related to either their Mechanic or a unique ability type (so I'm not looking at Signets).

Guardian - Renewed Focus - Brief Invulnerability followed by refreshing your Virtues
Warrior - Battle Standard - Awesome standard - unique ability type (Rampage would count if it had a Burst skill)
Engineer - They're pretty much all unique ability types. Elixirs, controllable Turret, and mass turret summon.
Ranger - Rampage as One and Spirit of Nature
Thief - Basilisk Venom
Elementalist - Conjure FIery Greatsword and Glypth of Elementals (since it works off attunements).
Necromancer  - Summon Flesh Golem and Lich Form (Has both Minion and Mark abilities).

Meanwhile, the Mesmer has no Shatter, Illusion, Glamour, or Mantra based Elites (Not even a Signet).   So his point is quite accurate, it doesn't mean that our Elites aren't good - it simply means that we're the only profession who's unique aspects aren't represented by an Elite skill - if only 'technically' (see Time Warp below).

However, I really like most of our Elites.  While they don't represent any of our unique ability types they are, mostly, extremely unique skills:


Time Warp:  Honestly, this one SHOULD be labeled as a Glamour - if it was it would nip the OP's point in the bud.  But it's currently not which means it's not affected by Traits like Confusing Enchantments, Glamour Mastery,  Temporal Enchanter (Temporal? come on!), and Dazzling Glamours.   So even though it really is a Glamour based on what it does, it not being labeled as one really hurts us.  Otherwise, it's an extremely good skill as it grants the longest Quickness effect to several allies without any draw backs.  The only other skill that does this is Tomb of Wrath's Zealot's Fervor skill, which is only 3s.   To top it off, it's a combo field too.

Moa Morph: The only transform skill the effects an enemy.  It fits the Mesmer's playstyle because it allows them to counter enemy transformations, and also is the longest 'disable' in the game currently.  I used it on King Adelbern in BWE2 and it gave us a good window of focus fired damage on him - something that if you've done that fight you can appreciate.

Mass Invisibility: Easily my least favorite Elite.  I was happy to see it considered our 'top tier' Elite instead of Moa or Time Warp.  It's a really cool effect.  But it's cast time and competition with Veil of Invisibility really hurt it for me.

Shriketalon, on 04 August 2012 - 04:19 AM, said:

You complain much about any complaining.  

More to the point, I think this thread reflects something larger: there aren't enough elites.  Quite a few professions are grumbling about the lack of an elite that caters toward their particular build, and there isn't enough room to even cover support, damage, and control with any room left over.  Many classes lack one of these roles, and a lot of them have a problem with very niche abilities turned into elites more for the cool factor than their actual practicality.

Thus, it's not specifically a Mesmer problem, it's a three-elites-per-profession problem.

As I said above, it technically is Mesmer specific since we don't get even one.  However, I agree that it's really an issue of the limited amount of skills they're launching the game with.   If there were a few more Signets (a heal, for example) then Keystone Signet could pretty much directly ported to GW2 from it's GW1 form.  Instead, they appear to have tried to choose elites that will be useful in a variety of builds, even if they don't fit them exactly.

TLDR: We'll get more skills eventually, but Time Warp should be labeled as a Glamour.

Edited by Dastion, 04 August 2012 - 04:33 AM.

[Sebrent_Tehroth]

@shrike:
Nah, the complaints about people complaining are just me being a grumpy-old-man these past few days ... a lot of the baseless complaining and whining is starting to get tiresome.

It's a lot better than complaining because it's a Snickers when you wanted a Twix ... which is mostly what we see.

Or complaining because it's a Ferrari but the CD player doesn't play MP3s.

If people would only stick to legitimate things to complain about that truly mattered ... that'd be nice (and hell would probably freeze over ... twice).

-----

@ Dastion:
I understand the OP, but let's be honest, the Mesmer has two of the best Elites in the game ... and people are still complaining because they want more ... i.e. traits to affect them, other elites to pick from, etc.

[SCLOBERNOCKER47]

Would be nice if they rolled a few mesmerish abilities into one.

For instance:
If the idea of the mesmer is to mess with the opponents mind, why not have an ability where we, and all of our clones go *poof* as if shattered, and can reappear at a targeted location (blink style targetting).

Would be a great confusion/escape mechanic.

Of course, this would only work if shatter was changed to my suggested *poof* in place and desired effect directly on the target change happened.

[Carighan]

I think Mass Invis fits perfectly.

As for the other two, yeah. Time Wrap rocks ofc, but even that is somewhat nonfitting.
What I'd like is for one a seriously souped up version of Chaos Storm for an ultimate (maybe a semi-lasting PBAE Chaos Storm which moves with us?), and for two something which instantly summons 3 clones which can exist in addition to my other clones/phantasms, and these actually hurt with their attacks!

[chaoslizard]

It ain't gonna happen but-

I'd like to see an elite that did something like:

Phantasmal Killer - create a phantasm(however it should look like a clone) of your opponent which attacks him with his own abilities. While phantasm killer is active target opponent is affected by his allies skills as if he were a foe. (OR even a skill where you assume the appearance of your opponent)

Of all the elites Moa Bird, to me, feels the least mesmer like and mass invisibilty seems too close an effect to Veil of Invisibility.