Reply With QuoteI don't think you're supposed to think of mesmer illusions/clones as pets. They're more like conditions that happen to have a physical form.Originally Posted by Stridergg
BTW Hark, what do you mean by this? I didn't see you posting about this at all. Not in the last week at least. :)
And if it was longer than a week ago, then people are not ignoring you, they are forgetting. :)
I don't think you're supposed to think of mesmer illusions/clones as pets. They're more like conditions that happen to have a physical form.
They're more than conditions. They're needed for shattering as well as healing effectively, through Ether Feast.
In this case, they are conditions that don't work in mass PvP (or anywhere where there is lots of aoe) because their "physical form" dies before they even acquire a target.
These "conditions" have to be alive in order to cast spells or shoot pistols at the enemy or run up to them and smack them with a sword or run up to them and explode. All of that takes time and dying to aoe negates the entire "condition".
So yes, they are pets, even if their lifetime is limited to the duration of a fight (or less, if you shatter them).
Well ok, but there are AoE spells that remove conditions, too. I guess they're somewhere in between. To me, they don't seem to be pets in the sense that they only really exist while in combat.
They're not pets, but that's irrelevant to needing them to be alive in order to be of use.
I agree with KevinC here. It doesn't matter whether you call a Mesmer Illusion/Clone a pet. The fact of the matter is that they die too easily and have some issues which makes playing Mesmer problematic.
There are a lot of talents that proc "on death" of clones, so their quick death maybe more feature than bug. Also, why the premature balancing? People seemed to enjoy their mesmers and do well during beta...
That's an interesting theory but I don't buy it - if you've played a Mesmer you'd see that they die if the mob even looks at them, they die to any sort of AOE, they die if you sneeze after you cast them. There may be some talents that produce effects on clone death, but 90% of their purpose is additional DPS (so much so that there are discussions as to whether it's worthwhile detonating them at all!). So creating them and having them die almost instantly is counter to the class design.
I don't think it's premature to say "hey, clones are really weak and die fast." And I don't think it relates to balance as much as class design.
As for enjoying mesmers during beta, I have played a mesmer a lot and have enjoyed it. That said, they're still weak and clones have a lot of issues.
There's some truth to that and I don't think anyone here is drawing a line in the sand and saying Mesmers suck or whatever. But Illusions definitely have issues, because while it may be the case that they're designed to die a good chunk of the time before doing anything, the skill descriptions for many Mesmer abilities indicates otherwise.
Every single Profession Mechanic (F1-F4) requires that your illusions are alive long enough to track to and detonate on the target. Are the F1-F4 abilities designed to mostly to only work in non-AE, maybe 1-on-1 situations? Perhaps, but that doesn't seem to be the intent to me. When I read descriptions like "Destroy all your clones and phantasms, damaging nearby foes" and it's an ability on a cooldown (some of them substantial), I assume the game designers are intending for this to happen at least fairly often.
I know Illusions are not designed to be pets or to tank anything. I know that, as an illusion, they'll disappear in a puff of smoke if someone targets them. But in the case of an individual targeting them and attacking an illusion instead of you, the Illusion has served a purpose by distracting or confusing (in the literal sense, not the condition). However, fights involving more than a couple actors by nature have a lot of AE and there's nothing you can do to either keep them alive long enough to utilize them as offensive or defensive tools. They pop as soon as they materialize as a byproduct of the ongoing battle, not enemies specifically trying to clear them out or shut the mesmer down. Keep in mind that GW2 controls different than a typical Tab-Target based EQ derivative - there's a lot more AE, not just in terms of spells but also swinging weapons hits everything in front of you without the need to designate a target.
Admittedly, you can still perform skills as a mesmer without those illusions, but every single Profession Mechanic relies on them as well as several traits/abilities. If that's all working as intended it seems really odd, because it's the illusions that define the mesmer class, thematically and mechanically. From my noob perspective, Mesmers feel really cool and unique in small 1-on-1 situations where the illusions can be used as tools in interesting ways, but every encounter I had with more than a few enemies just didn't feel right.
Last edited by KevinC; 05-14-2012 at 06:11 AM.
Also, stress today at 11:00AM PDT! Not that I imagine it will be much fun with the servers being crushed, but I still have yet to try the Elementalist and Guardian, so maybe I can take them for a spin a little bit at lunch.
I would classify that as "pretty laggy".
/hugs Guild Wars 2
Have had absolutely zero problems with the stress test thus far, besides the server being packed and frequent trips to the overflow server.
Got a chance to play a mesmer for an hour or so and I don't think it's the class for me. I can really see how fun it can be creating clones everywhere and confusing the hell out of everyone, but the class plays a bit too chaotically for my tastes.
Going to give the warrior a try next. :D
God, I love the Warrior. Let me know how you like the Rifle with that class. It's... well, it's not exactly tricky or has much in the way of finesse, but the sheer amount of baddie-puncturing pwnage (single-target, that is) just won me over.
Well, this was fun.
Made a human Guardian this time and it went a lot better than in the BWE. Not sure if it's because on the BWE i rolled a charr but today i actually enjoyed the class.
Still not convinced by the Mesmer or Necro :s Maybe next time.
Managed to dabble a bit as an Engineer during this stress test. Fun class, but really doesn't begin to shine until you start getting your utilities unlocked.
I split my time experimenting with the Elementalist (got all the weapon skills unlocked and left it there) and then went back to the Mesmer, which was the first class I played in BWE1.
When utilizing range weapons like the Scepter or Staff, I find illusions work better. The problem I'm having with them with Swords is the way melee attacks work in this game, how they hit AE in a cone in front of them. I'll conjure an illusion and instantly it will be popped, because mob(s) are already in the process of attacking me... which I don't really see how I can avoid that, since I'm in melee range! I was testing this out at the Ranch in the human area where bandits periodically attack, so this wasn't even a boss encounter. I found illusions to be of extremely limited use the entire time I tried swords.
After switching back to scepter/staff, I started having a lot more luck with them. Being at range, they don't instantly die the second they appear (unless I had a mob do a range AE right then). This allowed the illusion to perform it's attack (like Unload) as well as giving me a chance to shred them.
While I find the Sword mesmer pretty fun, it's just not working as currently designed, IMO. I shouldn't say not working, but it's not working up to par with the ranged weapons or any of the other melee classes I've tried (including the dual-dagger Elementalist - now that was fun!). I can chalk a hefty dose of that up to me being a noob, but I'm pretty convinced the mechanics as currently implemented need to be worked on. I don't know if the answer is to make illusions immune for the first couple seconds or to give them a great deal of AE resistance, but something needs to change.
Kept playing my Rifle/Greatsword Warrior.
Mmmm, so much fun.
He's an absolute beast in PvP, because he has the best kind of peeling capability: "Get off my ally before I get there or take fifteen thousand damage to the face".
Also, the last event I did was to take down the tunnels in Moleistan. Tee hee.
I only got a few hours but much better than the BWE, in which I got no play time. Man, this was a great time. A few issues here and there but all in all, with High pops on all of the American servers, I had no lag issues and only a few bugs crop up. Played a Ranger to 8; Next time out I want to try out a caster. This is going to steal a lot of MMO mindshare this summer.
Missed the stress test tonight--didn't realize the short window it was on for.
Hammer Warrior feels like it might just split the continent in half.
I love the animations of the Hammer, not sure if it was Norn specific but it really felt great. Need to try with other races.
Greatsword Guardian. Whirlwind FTW!
Yeah, I expected to not like the Guardian but Greatsword or mainhand Sword are superb choices for outright face-smashing mobile fun.
Even though Arenanet isn't confirming or denying it, what's with the end date on pre-ordering the Collector's Edition?
/wants to believe
That and amazon nor best buy have the CE for pre order.
They said they wanted the CE to be Extremely limited and they were only going to do one production run.
Actually there was a tweet from the company stating that any dates posted were not official and pure speculation anyway.
It's pretty obvious in my opinion that this is just a load of BS.
1. ANet has given zero indication of a release this soon.
2. It's a random ass date (Released on a Thursday?... giving early access folks a head start of Monday??)
3. I'd expect "Access to all betas" to be more than ONE. I think we'll probably see two more betas before release... probably looking at a September-ish release.
Information on reserving your character name in Guild Wars 2 has just been released.
Basically, you have until around launch day to login to your Guild Wars 1 account and any names that are active until then will be reserved for you.
Posting Permissions
