14 replies to this topic

[Kuskah]

I've been thinking about the human gods, namely Lyssa, who is basically, although not directly implied, a mesmer. As some of you know, or not, there are those two pistols name after the twins, Ilya and Lyss, which are glowing purple and fit the mesmer theme really well. That's how I came across this idea. It would be really nice to wield two purple glowing pistols. The weapon doesn't seem unfitting, since mesmers already have an off-hand pistol...

I mainly want to ask about your opinion on this guys but just for the sake of it, some sample skill-set:

Skill 1: Auto-attack, may or may not consist of 3 skills. Possibly a bouncy projectile (2-3 bounces?).
Skill 2: Shoot a piercing bullet creating a clone at the end of it's range.
Skill 3: I don't want to sound unoriginal, but a partial, one-handed Unload, would be quite fitting, unless you guys could suggest sth else/better.

I mainly want to hear your opinions on the main idea - getting a main hand pistol and how it could possibly affect the game. The skill-set is there purely for the sake of being there.

Edited by Kuskah, 25 December 2012 - 08:09 PM.

[Endlessly]

I would love it. But it's been mentioned before that it doesn't exactly fit the 'mesmer-y' theme. It's hard to stay within the boundaries of 'mystical illusion-weaver' when you're parading around as a gunslinging clone cowboy.

Still would love it, though.

[draxynnic]

That's pretty much it. Mesmers could certainly do with another mainhand ranged weapon, but when you get down to it, mesmers are primary spellcasters, and thus having a mesmer that feels too much like 'gunslinger with illusions' would not fit well with the flavour of being a mesmer. It could be done, but the developers would have to take care to make sure that it still feels like dedicated magic user rather than a gunslinger with purple bullets and the ability to create illusions.

I'd also say that given it a chain that produces a clone as part of the chain would be defeating the point - scepter already does that, and what a lot of people want is a mainhand ranged weapon that allows them to control when and whether they spawn a clone.

Another thing to comment on is that while Lyssa is a patron of mesmers, she also used to be one of the patrons of assassins, and with thieves having lost the focus on causing death they're probably going to have moved more into Lyssa's camp, so the pistols in question are probably now quite fitting for thief characters.

Edited by draxynnic, 26 December 2012 - 12:51 AM.

[timmyf]

Who says Mesmers wield weapons the same way as everybody else? Greatsword showed they don't need to.

1: Clone Gun - slow autoattack that creates a half-health clone at the enemy's location.
2: Ethereal Rift - tear a rift in front of you that reflects projectiles (closes after a projectile is reflected)
3: Boomerang - throw your pistol at foe, dazing and applying confusion (perhaps 1s daze and 3-5s confusion x3)

[Just Horus]

draxynnic, on 26 December 2012 - 12:43 AM, said:

That's pretty much it. Mesmers could certainly do with another mainhand ranged weapon, but when you get down to it, mesmers are primary spellcasters, and thus having a mesmer that feels too much like 'gunslinger with illusions' would not fit well with the flavour of being a mesmer. It could be done, but the developers would have to take care to make sure that it still feels like dedicated magic user rather than a gunslinger with purple bullets and the ability to create illusions.

I don't know about you but when I think spellcaster I don't think about some guy/gal with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other (one of the possible weapon sets of the mesmer). Honestly, whatever "mesmer-y" feel I had to the class died with the transition from GW1 to GW2. Right now the only thing I see as defining the class is the ability to create illusions and that can easily be added to dual pistols.

Would I like to see that OP? Yes. But I know it's never going to happen. Ever.

[keith_arkandji]

I don't feel like it would be much of a thematical issue.
A pistol doesnt have to be a pistol. I always felt like the Mesmer could need rework on the weapons, especially since in PvE you mainly play Greatsword + Staff while in PvE you stick to Mainhand Sword + Sword/Pistol and one of the mentioned above OR you chose Scepter + Focus. But that makes up for like 4 different sets.

Main hand pistol could work if it was valid to be played in both PvE and PvP and would work with either of the off-hand items, maybe especially working well with the torch as nobody ever uses the torch. And of course be fine with dual pistols.


Fragility

Simple ranged Auto-Attack that deals bonus damage when theres at least one condition on the enemy.



Phantasmal Nightmare

Phantasm. Hits the enemy and spawns an illusion on your enemies position. Activate again for three seconds to pull the enemy towards the illusion (1200 range)

Imagined Burden

Hits and immobilizes a foe for 2 seconds. When you're invisible while using this spell, you will stun the enemy instead for 2 seconds and deals bonus damage.

*I know its not the right icon, I just felt this would be fitting


-> This works well with the combination Pistol-Pistol or Pistol-Torch but also could be used for Hard-CC with a Pistol-Focus Combination.

[Calebrus]

keith_arkandji, on 03 January 2013 - 03:31 AM, said:

Phantasmal Nightmare

Phantasm. Hits the enemy and spawns an illusion on your enemies position. Activate again for three seconds to pull the enemy towards the illusion (1200 range)

In the hypothetical situation we're talking about here, this skill doesn't fit.
If you look at the weapons as they exist, all sets have a clone main hand and a phantasm off hand.  Even the two handed weapons follow this theme if you break their skills up into the appropriate slots (with the exception of staff, which has it's phantasm on skill 3).
You'd create a situation where pistol/anything would have two phantasms and zero clones.
So basically you'd need to make this a clone rather than a phantasm.

Edited by Calebrus, 03 January 2013 - 01:06 PM.

[draxynnic]

Horus Moonlight, on 03 January 2013 - 03:24 AM, said:

I don't know about you but when I think spellcaster I don't think about some guy/gal with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other (one of the possible weapon sets of the mesmer). Honestly, whatever "mesmer-y" feel I had to the class died with the transition from GW1 to GW2. Right now the only thing I see as defining the class is the ability to create illusions and that can easily be added to dual pistols.

Would I like to see that OP? Yes. But I know it's never going to happen. Ever.

There's a few things you're missing here:

First, every profession was going to have a melee option. Sword happens to be that for the mesmer, for reasons we'll get into later.

Second, the impression I get from the mesmer's sword attack routine is that the sword itself isn't truly the weapon. In the autoattack chain, it's effectively serving as a conductor for the magic that the mesmer is using against the target. For Blurred Frenzy, it's a focus for creating an illusion in which the enemy is struck by multiple illusionary blades, where the mesmer may or may not be actually swinging the sword at all. Slot 4 is mechanically nearly identical to a sceptre skill, and the illusion-summoning skills are obviously illusion summoning skills. Essentially, mesmer sword is a spellcaster weapon, just one that's intended for use in close quarters. Pistol use works similarly - the primary function of the offhand pistol is as a focus for generating the phantasm, while it can also serve to generate a spell that can interrupt multiple targets. It's questionable, however, if an actual, physical bullet actually plays a role in that, or if the offhand pistol is ever loaded.

Third, ArenaNet always had a duellist feel in mind for the mesmer. There's promotional artwork for the mesmer that predates the release of Prophecies showing a mesmer with a rapier in hand. Fencing and duelling fits the general mesmeric theme of misdirection, and there's a clear connection between illusion and deception and the feints and dodges of light swordplay. A single pistol, with the occasional powerful shot, also fits this theme... but historical formal pistol duels were about making the one shot that counted, not simply blazing away at your opponent. A pistol with a high rate of fire as a primary weapon fits neither this theme nor the theme of a primary spellcaster, unless something suitably extreme is done to show that it's not just a gunslinger with fancy bullets (a theme already well filled by the engineer).

[ZCKS]

Really the dagger would be more fitting as the mesmer is a spell caster.


That being said I'm entirely in favor of more weapons being made available to more of the professions.

Things like

1: Daggers & warhorn for mesmers.
2: Warhorns & Axes for guardians.
3: Axe & longbow for thief.
4: Something for the engineer to allow the rifle to act as a rifle or shotgun instead of a missmatched version of both at once.
5: Torch for the elementalist

IDK about the others but expanding the number of weapon types available to the classes would be a good thing.

[Sans]

a medium range pistol would be cool

Skill 1 = 3 Skill attack, first attack applies bleed, second stack applies vulnerability, third attack does AoE damage.
Skill 2 = Teleports you back, creating a clone at your original location and triples your attack range for 7s
Skill 3 = Short range blink that cripples all nearby enemies and grants 10s speed boost

Edited by Sans, 08 January 2013 - 02:59 PM.

[Wifflebottom]

They could make a mainhand pistol without making the mesmer feel like a gunslinger. I'm pretty sure that no one saw the greatsword as a mesmer weapon but they made that work and mh pistol is certainly more fitting then the greatsword, because lets face it "FIRIN' MAH LAZEH" isn't very duelist-ey either. A mesmer with dual pistols is by no means lore-breaking, our patron's the dual-faced goddess and the whole theme of the many of our skills are focused on duality, blurred frenzy's offensive and defensive nature, chaos armor and storm's boon granting and condition infliction, null fields boon and condition removal, winds of chaos, etc.

Edited by Wifflebottom, 08 January 2013 - 03:33 PM.

[zip]

Sans, on 08 January 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

Skill 1 = 2 Skill attack, first attack applies bleed, second stack applies vulnerability.
Skill 2 = Teleports you back, creating a clone at your original location.
Skill 3 = 100 range blink that cripples 1 nearby enemy and grants 5s speed boost

fixed

Edited by zip, 08 January 2013 - 05:00 PM.

[dynia666]

1 - skill animation same as thief 1st pistol or and ... give random condi bleed/burn/pison or chain skill 1st bleed 2nd burn 3 poison all for 4 sec at least
2-  don't care xD some good conditions or stun
3-  don't rly care ^^ some good boon maybe like protection 5 sec

this pistol would be focus on condition/boon/support thing we got sword and gs for dps already

[draxynnic]

Wifflebottom, on 08 January 2013 - 03:33 PM, said:

They could make a mainhand pistol without making the mesmer feel like a gunslinger. I'm pretty sure that no one saw the greatsword as a mesmer weapon but they made that work and mh pistol is certainly more fitting then the greatsword, because lets face it "FIRIN' MAH LAZEH" isn't very duelist-ey either. A mesmer with dual pistols is by no means lore-breaking, our patron's the dual-faced goddess and the whole theme of the many of our skills are focused on duality, blurred frenzy's offensive and defensive nature, chaos armor and storm's boon granting and condition infliction, null fields boon and condition removal, winds of chaos, etc.

Greatsword is, however, clearly magical, and the way it's used as a package clearly has applications as part of a magical duellist's repertoire - a powerful, single-target attack, a couple of means of hindering an opponent from closing, and a couple of means of stripping away a target's defenses (Mirror Blade in particular is especially dangerous against a single target at close range...).

However, I'm not here to argue greatsword as a duelling weapon. The mesmer has a couple of overlapping themes - one being the magical duellist, one being the master of chaos magic and illusion, with the various weapons representing different mixes of these themes (with the staff obviously being the most 'chaos wizard' and sword/sword or sword/pistol being the most 'magical duellist').

What I'm afraid might happen is, well, pretty much exactly what the poster immediately above seems to be proposing - visuals similar or identical to simply firing a pistol, and the mesmer on the whole feeling like they've foregone magic in favour of gunplay, making them pretty much equivalent in feel and behaviour to pistol/pistol thieves except with illusions instead of stealth.

Now, I don't think that's impossible to avoid - but if ArenaNet implements a mainhand pistol for mesmers, I think the need to tread carefully to ensure that it is avoided.

[ZCKS]

draxynnic, on 10 January 2013 - 12:50 AM, said:

What I'm afraid might happen is, well, pretty much exactly what the poster immediately above seems to be proposing - visuals similar or identical to simply firing a pistol, and the mesmer on the whole feeling like they've foregone magic in favour of gunplay, making them pretty much equivalent in feel and behaviour to pistol/pistol thieves except with illusions instead of stealth.

This is what I would be afriad of & that is why I would be more in favor of mesmers getting daggers instead.