Feedback:User/TheValeyard/Mesmer: revamped function key mechanics
Mesmer: revamped function key mechanics | |
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| User | TheValeyard |
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This is a transcription of Shriketalon's concept for a redesigned class mechanic for Mesmer. The full forum thread can be found at http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/making-more-magnificent-mesmer-t28859.html
Replace the shatter mechanic with a little thing called Paradox.
The new mesmer class mechanic gives you mirrored skills above the bar, variations of skills 2, 3, and 4 with alternate effects on the F1, F2, and F3 keys. These Paradox Skills would:
-Share a cooldown with the main skill. Use one or the other, and they both start recharging.
-Tend to have similar starting animations as the base skills, making it difficult to tell what's coming.
-Have a similar theme, but very different end effects. This can be used to deceive your opponents or expand your versatility.
For example, Leap and Illusionary Leap would be a Paradox Pair. Leap would occupy skill 2, and Illusionary Leap would be F1. The recharge time would be fairly low, and you can choose whether to leap yourself or send a clone. Each time you use Leap/I.Leap, the opponent won't know which one you're activating. It also means the sword has more room for slot 3/F2 to hold another paradox pair.
Other weapons likewise get three paradox skills to go alongside their normal bars (in the case of one handed/offhands, the one handed weapon gets F1 and F2, the offhand gets F3). The staff can use Duplicate to create a clone, or activate it's paired skill Obfuscate to swap places with the nearest clone to perform a shell game. The scepter can reflect an attack with Power Return and bathe his enemy in Confusing Images to blind and disorient the target, but he can also use Power Block to block multiple projectiles and pacify the enemy with Soothing Images for weakness and vulnerability.
Paradox preserves the concept of the shatters/clones (deception and versatility) while ensuring that each weapon is completely self-contained, designed to work with its own strategy rather than awkwardly hitched to a system that doesn't fit half the profession's arsenal. This means that the designers have the freedom to create cool and interesting weapons to their fullest potential, and the balancing tools to tweak each individual troublemaker rather than make adjustments to everything, everywhere, all at once.
I'm going to try to demonstrate how Paradox would make just about everything better by showing a redesign of every Mesmer weapon set. They won't be perfect, they won't be finely balanced, but they should help convey the way a different class mechanic can keep everything that people have enjoyed, and fix many of the things people don't like. That way, even if you like shatters the way it is, I hope you'll find a home in the new system I'm proposing. Onwards!
So, as we've established, Paradox presents two linked skills on your bar instead of one. You'll get three skills in total (2 from a one hand, 1 from the offhand, or all from the 2h), they share recharges, they tend to look alike at the beginning of their animation to throw off the foe.
Formatted like this for convenience:
.............{F1 key}{F2 key}{F3 key}
{Skill 1}{Skill 2}.{Skill 3}.{Skill 4}{Skill 5}
The Sword
.....................{I. Leap}{ Feint }.....||...{Disengage}
{Mind Slash}{ Leap } {Flourish}...||...{ Flèche } {Appel}
Mind Slash: slash. With your mind. Unchanged.
Leap: leap to your opponent, leaving a clone behind you. If you are adjacent to the foe, leap to the right, while sending a clone leaping to the left.
Illusionary Leap: send a clone leaping to your opponent. If you are adjacent to the foe, leap to the left, while sending a clone leaping to the right.
Flourish: you and all your clones assume a fancy fencing stance to counter attacks, blocking and delivering a riposte to any attack. (Yes, your clones block and riposte as well, shattering when they do so)
Feint: you and all your clones assume an identical fancy fencing stance for a second, then slam into your target for heavy damage. Damage increases with each clone shattered.
Flèche: strike your foe, then vanish. A moment later, appear behind your foe and stab him for heavy damage.
Disengage: strike your foe, then vanish. Teleport backwards and reappear far away from your target.
Appel: flick your sword and cause a brilliant burst of light, blinding your foe and making him vulnerable.
This set expands upon the idea of duality, dueling, and minion bombing. Each skill pair presents a different palm trick to the enemy, slapping them in the face when they guess wrong. Like the current set, it shines at creating minions and shattering them against foes, but this set makes all the shattering occur in-house, as well as provide a way for the mesmer herself to shine while performing elaborate moves.
The offhand provides a way to offensively and defensively dominate the melee scene, preventing foes from harming you and allowing you to strike swiftly or retreat to better positioning. This should make it useful for any mainhand in the mesmer's arsenal.
.....
Oh, and should Anet happen to be listening. It's a sword, not a feather duster. Please animate the mesmer to actually fence, rather than waving the blade around like a loon. Likewise, the scepter is not a tennis racket. More flicks of the wrist, more graceful poise and elegant evisceration, more sense of style and panache, if you please. A mesmer should have flair, not flailing.
The Greatsword
.........................{Feigned Escape}{Mind Burn}{Crystal Wave}
{Spatial Surge}{.......Escape.......}{Mind Stab}{Energy Wave}{Energy Surge}
Spatial Surge: surge. Spatially. Unchanged.
Escape: ground targeting teleport. Swirl your sword around you and blink out of existence, leaving a clone behind and reappearing in the new spot.
Feigned Escape: ground targeting clonemaker. Swirl your sword around and blink out of existence, creating a clone at the new location and evading attacks for a split second before you reappear right back where you started.
Mind Stab: slam your sword into the ground, sending a phantasmal blade into your enemy. Really nicely animated, unchanged.
Mind Blast: slam your sword into the ground, shattering your clones to engulf nearby enemies in phantom flames.
Ether Wave: sweep your sword to knock back foes. Minor name change; spatial distortion should be named as such.
Crystal Wave: sweep your sword as it hums like a tuning fork. Your clones shatter into scintillating shards, bleeding and crippling nearby foes.
Energy Surge: channeled megalaser. Your sword spins on its main axis and unleashes an enormous beam. The longer you channel the blast, the more damage you deal.
Whack-a-mole is not so fun when the moles have laser guns. The greatsword warps around the map, zipping from place to place while creating clones to fake out foes. If an enemy guesses wrong and tries to whack the wrong mole, it blows up in his face. A cunning mesmer will set up his enemy by crippling or distracting him to ensure the can't escape the massive power of the beam cannon.
The Staff
.......................{Obfuscate}{Web of Disruption}{Fevered Dreams}
{Chaos Strike}{Duplicate}..{Winds of Chaos}..{Accumulated Pain}{Chaos Storm}
Chaos Strike: unchanged.
Duplicate: unchanged.
Obfuscate: swap places with your nearest clone.
Winds of Chaos: unchanged.
Web of Disruption: bounce a projectile that damages and dazes targets.
Accumulated Pain: wrack your foe with waves of painful damage. The more conditions on the target, the more damage you deal.
Fevered Dreams: spread the conditions of target foe to all other foes. Chaos Storm: unchanged.
Spread chaos. The staff retains its overall functionality as a spreader of mayhem and misfortune, with two added bonuses. First of all, it can now shuffle around with its clones to gain a little more defense. Secondly, the addition of paradox skills gives it a few options against foes that resist some or all conditions, as well as letting the mesmer manipulate those conditions to specific ends.
The Scepter
....................{Power Block}...{Soothing Images}
{Ether Bolt}{Power Return}{Confusing Images}
Ether Bolt: remove the clone, power up the confusion.
Power Return: create a barrier that catches a single attack and launches a reprisal at the enemy.
Power Block: create a barrier that absorbs multiple attacks.
Confusing Images: bathe the target in dazzling lights, causing blindness and confusion.
Soothing Images: bathe the target in pacifying sights, causing weakness and vulnerability.
Designed around negating the enemy's power, this soft shutdown set stops the opponent in his tracks. It features no clones whatsoever, allowing the mesmer to play a completely different style.
The Pistol
..........................{Splinter Shot}{Power Flux}.....||...{Magebane Shot}
{Needling Shot}..{Triple Shot}.{Power Spike}...||.........{Trickshot}.....{Mantra of Flame}
Yes, that's a mainhand pistol suggestion. If there's one thing the current mesmer doesn't do from the past, it's the "trigger finger" style of GW1 mesmer play, interrupts at the edge of your seat that rely on pure timing and awesome reflexes. Considering the High Noon Showdown context, the pistol fits it perfectly, occupying a unique Gunmage theme. Thus, the skills...
Needling Shot: peppers the target with phantom bullets. No special effect, just plain damage.
Triple Shot: three phantom bullets inflict bleeding on the target.
Splinter Shot: three phantom bullets explode inside the target's armor, inflicting vulnerability.
Power Spike: shoot a lightspeed bullet that dazes the target for a split second. If a skill was interrupted, deals massive damage.
Power Flux: shoot a lightspeed bullet that dazes the target for a split second. If a skill was interrupted, stuns the target.
Trickshot: unchanged
Magebane Shot: fires an arcane bullet that breaks boons on the enemy, shattering them into damage.
Mantra of Flame: charge the mantra by twirling the gun and firing in random directions, with each bullet vanishing into thin air. Release the mantra and they reappear, slamming into the target for heavy damage.
Emphasizing speed and reflex timing, the pistol set gives the mesmer an offensively oriented punishment build. What it lacks in defense, it makes up for in the power to pierce its target with heavy damage, boon breaking, and interruption spikes.
The Torch
{Anonymity}
{Prestige}{Blackout}
Prestige: unchanged, albeit the name. More on that in the phantasm section.
Anonymity: vanish in a puff of blinding smoke. Create two clones while stealthed that move randomly, then reappear.
Blackout: channeled blindness. Create a flock of phantasmal ravens which swirl about your target, continuously blinding him.
The Torch is designed as a rather defensive offhand, utilizing two different variants of stealth to attack your foes or provide further evasion. Meanwhile, Blackout allows an ultimate shutdown at the cost of preventing you from doing anything else.
Focus
{Veil of Thorns}
{Temporal Curtain}{Mirrored Feedback}
Temporal Curtain: unchanged.
Veil of Thorns: create an illusionary wall of flowering vines that removes conditions from allies and poisons enemies who cross it.
Mirrored Feedback: as the utility skill, create a dome that reflects projectiles.
The focus is more team oriented, with several different fields to support your comrades in arms.
The Phantasms
As you may have noticed, phantasms were removed from the weapons. Sorry about that, but there's a reason.
The current design makes them rather redundant. The low cooldowns and weak effects meant that most of them were little better than semi-solid clones, and didn't particularly justify what they were doing on the bar. In the case of damage dealers (duelist, swordsman, warlock), rather than having a summon deal damage, it would be far better to let the player deal damage, feeling powerful and awesome and cool, rather than watching his only source of proper DPS act like an imbecile and get killed. Likewise, some effects like the Warden are best left to player placement, so that the AI doesn't go Leroy and pull your precious barrier out of position.
Phantasms can shine at certain things, and that's exactly why they should be utilities. By creating powerful effects with long recharges, each phantasm can be worth its weight in gold, complete with a nasty effect that forces people to sit up and pay attention. Likewise, as utilities completely divorced from any shatter nonsense, they can provide themselves with unique sequence skills that add further tactical depth.
That doesn't mean that phantasms can't be on a weapon or two, by the way. I just wanted to demonstrate sets that didn't have any.
Each phantasm is given its own unique animation, with a twist. Rather than the current setup (which is a boring copy of clones with a lighter hue, making it not show up against snowy terrain), each phantasm uses the master's race, gender, and hair/facial features, but in a unique costume. Each outfit is a deep, mystical-ish purple hue (contrasting with the ethereal, light pink skin/hair) and styled to look like their archetype.
Speaking of archetype, each phantasm is given a thespian nomenclature in Tarot format, ie "The Duelist" instead of Illusionary Duelist. It just looks more artistic, less gabby.
The Duelist:
Clad in slim leather and sporting a dusty, wide brimmed hat, this desperado unleashes the fury of twin pistols that inflict vulnerability and damage on the target. The longer he sustains his fire, the more the vulnerability will stack, and the more punishment the target will endure. Sequence Skill: Blazing Finale: The Duelist unleashes one final blast for a heavy damage spike.
The Champion:
Armored from head to toe, this mighty warrior locks himself in mortal combat with the enemy. This phantasm wields sword and shield, is tough as nails, and inflicts crippling upon his foe to mimic Crippling Anguish. Sequence Skill: Symbolic Strike: The Champion deals one final, mighty blow to knock down the target before shattering.
The Prodigy:
Donning his robe and wizard hat, The Prodigy unleashes a mastery of arcane mastery upon the enemy. He uses the Illusionary Mage's skillset, adding Retaliation to allies and Confusion to foes to mimic Backfire. Sequence Skill: Auspicious Incantation: The Prodigy infuses you with his power, granting boons.
The Mountebank:
A dark figure in a shadowy hood, this thief covets all the enemy possesses. He skirmishes around the battlefield with ducks, dives, and dodges, slipping in to steal enemy boons with a mugging strike. Sequence Skill: Arcane Thievery: dismiss the scoundrel and transfer all stolen boons to the mesmer.
The Minstrel:
Wielding the most fearsome weapon of all, the Annoying Lute, The Minstrel plays a tune which sounds nice and pleasant to allies, but shrieking and irritating to foes (no, I'm serious. Make the PvP players hear a different tune). The song heals allies in the area. Sequence Skill: Purifying Finale: finish the song to remove conditions from allies.
To make room for the phantasms (aiming at ~20 utility skills), Mirrored Feedback is transferred onto the focus, and Mirrored Images can be folded into Signet of Illusions (so SoI has the effect "gives more health to your illusions, activate to summon two clones".)
Elite Skill: Ether Lord
Kill Mass Invisibility with fire.
It's a cop-out, meant to push something out the door early. You know it, I know it, Anet knows it. The mesmer deserves something better than five seconds of stealth completely eclipsed by Veil of Invisibility. Most professions get cool things like skillbar transformations or summons......so why can't the mesmer?
And since I'd rather not pick one or the other, I present....
Embracing the sheer power of magic, the mesmer lets arcane power infuse her very being. Visually, the skill surrounds the mesmer with a swirling opera cape made of raw ether, constantly billowing fading in and out of reality while her eyes glow with unfathomable mystical might. The mesmer makes few motions in this state, but power swirls about her and causes enormous effects at the slightest gesture. All that "look at me, I'm pimpin'" stuff.
Mechanically, Ether Lord swaps out your weapon set with an ultimate shatter build. For the duration of the effect, you have no limit to the number of clones you can have in play.
..................{Conjure Phantasm} {Expel Hexes}{Cry of Frustration}
{Overload}{Conjure Nightmare}{Energy Drain}....{Channeling}....{Shatterstorm}
Overload: twist the fabric of reality with a pinky finger, snapping it back to cause an explosion
Conjure Nightmare: summon three clones (these clones are animated using only the opera cape and a mask, no body) that attack in melee.
Conjure Phantasm: summon a phantom to strike at your target from range (once again, cape+mask animation).
Energy Drain: ground targeting cone. Snap your fingers to siphon your enemy's strength, inflicting weakness and gaining a stack of might for each affliction.
Expel Hexes: flick your wrist to purge all conditions from yourself and allies in the area.
Mind Wrack: point a finger at a foe and unleash etheric fury onto his mind to damage and immobilize him with horrible pain.
Channeling: beckon the ether with a finger, and cause an enormous eruption of power at your target, dealing AoE damage.
Shatterstorm: detonate your clones and phantasms in an enormous explosion.
If it sounds overpowered as hell, that's good. Every elite should start out by shooting for the moon, then bring itself back down to earth in order to fit the game. The mesmer deserves elite skills that make people go "Holy #%^&#@%!!!", and starting out from a place of awesomeness is the right way to begin.
Hopefully, a setup like that would allow everyone to enjoy the new Mesmer, regardless of whether it's your old favorite from GW1 or something about the new class caught your eye.
