Make Inspiration Magic A Primary Me Attribute

I dont want to go into alot of detail here because I think anyone who has played the game since release will understand what Im talking about so Im goinng to keep this short and simple.

There are probably no line of skills in this game that have been nerfed more than that of mesmer inspiration magic, and most of the skills from that line were nerfed because of abuses or exploitation by other classes.

My proposal, make inspiration magic the primary mesmer attribute. Reduce the benefits of Fast Casting by 50-75% to avoid FC abuse by other classes. Right now it pointless for a mesmer to have more than 7-9 in fast casting because you pretty much maximal benefit with 7-9 ranks in the attribute.

There is only 1 thing I want to point out here because I can already see this argument coming, What about other classes putting attribute into FC.

FC only speeds up spells by so much, and most powerful ele spells would still be easily interruptable even with 12 in FC.

most 0.25 cast time spells cant be int anyway.

could be a problem for spells that cast in .5 or .75 sec and attribute in FC might make some of these spells impossible to interrupt. So thats why I say reduce the effects of FC. Like I pointed out earlier, the way FC is now, its really pretty pointless for any mesmer to have more than 9 attribute ranks dedicated to it.

I know that its probably too late for this and doubtful that they will change this in GW, but lets hope for something like this in GW2.

Communing was hit far more than inspiration ever was.

Tactics.

Smiting over and over.

The people that have played the game since release are very few and far between now, so you should probably elaborate more.

Moving fast casting is a terrible idea. Only primary attributes give any type of passive bonus, it needs to stay this way. Also as someone that has played since release, make fast casting only affect mesmer skills.

primary attributes are usually always related to some sort of inherent effect, and some hardly have skills (fast casting, soul reaping, energy storage). There is no inherent effect to inspiration. Mesmer primary inspiration just so they can have better e-management? And i dont think inspiration gets abused too much, rly cant think of any good examples of that. This idea would basically through the whole game off by giving classes the ability to get another inherent effect attribute. Actually, this would weeken mesmers, as they would be the only class that doesnt have access to two inherent effect attributes.. PLus inspiration as a concept doesnt much apply to mesmer primary. Im not sure what your particular beef is, but im sure there is a better solution

yes, i need to clarify.

No line of skills have been nerfed more due to abuse by other primary classes than inspiration magic. Most of the nerfs to inspiration magic were because of abuse by primary classes other than mesmers using the skill.

Actually you make a good point though. They should just move the fast casting inherent effect to inspiration magic and come up with another set of skills for the mesmer. There are only 9 FC skills.

They should just make inspiration the primary, move the whole 9 FC skills and the inherent FC effect to inspiration magic, and give mesmers some para like chants in another line of skills to replace FC.

Doesnt that seem kind of pointless though? Thats basically just switching the names of FC and inspiration around...

Aside from Mantra, I'm curious of what "OP" skills are still left in the inspiration line.

Making FC a secondary means giving MoRecov. and Archane langor to other profs., which should never happen. Keeping the inherent effects of FC would also lead to many casters to dump their spare points into it to ward off rangers. persistant would also become the new MoR

/not signed

I would disagree with this, have you ever considered how mesmers have effected other proffesions just by the abuse of fast casting? The old MoI water mesmers says hi by the way, along with many other fire and water base fc nukers. Mesmers haven't gotten hit as hard as other proffesions, every other professions than the core ones says hi. Take a look at paras, sins, dervs, sins, and rits, they were hit so hard with the nerf stick in pvp that they really are only a shell of thier release states.

Also one of the main inspiration skills I can really think off of my head that other skills would use would be channeling which requires you charging into a mob to benifit from the enchantment spell, power drain which has a decent recharge, and mantras... other than that not many skills from that attribute line are really used.

I dont understand...I have never thought or knew of any skills in Inspiration that were overpowered by any standard (barring 1 or 2)...nor have I seen a lot of inspiration mesmers running around. Inspiration magic is chock full of energy management, mantras (with mantra of resolve and such being the only good ones), and a little bit of e-denial that isn't very good. Lyssa's Aura and Tease are the only viable elites even, and they're not incredibly godly either.

So...definitely /notsigned.

Well... this is... interesting. But, even if you reduce the effectiveness of fast casting, it will still be abused by other classes. No we will have fast cast E/Me (instead of Me/E) who do more damage because they have runes so more attribute points in fire/water/etc as well as more energy (e-storage).

Heck, with glyph of lesser energy with zero points in e-storage still being better e-management in the entire inspiration line, its abuse is minimal.

Certainly an inventive solution, but not sure this will work.

Played since release of Prophecies. I understand. The problem really arises from the whole idea of secondaries; dubious game design. Although ...

Well, I've also played WoW since its release. No secondaries there. But balancing for the PvP high end left their characters at one point in about as bad a state as here. But Blizz has more money than ANet and has been able to do complete character makeovers, new talents, rework of existing skills.

This late in this game, all we can do is wait for GW2.

i've never seen such a problem in the nerfs of inspiration magic skills. some of them were touched many times but never smiter's booned or anything. before the heavy usage of vor and mantra together got popular, even mantra was one of the few age-old balanced skills.

swapping inspi and fc would probably hurt the game more than just buffing certain skills in their lines.

There are secondary skills with inherent effects though, most notably Death Magic, which governs the maximum number of minions you can control, less notably but oft overlooked is that all weapon skills provide a bonus to critical hit rate.

I've pondered the same as the OP. Usually primary attributes provide energy management, but Mesmer's energy management line is a secondary skill open to non mesmers too, fast casting has nearly no correlation to atypical mesmer's energy management (unless they have a skill bar entirely made of very-fast cycling spells and an e-management ability like channeling that fires per-cast)

Inspiration used to be the line that other primaries (especially Monks) tapped into for their energy management. Because it was too powerful on Monks in PvP, it got the heck nerfed out of it, and now it's the Mesmers that are often tapping into other professions for their energy management (typically Elementalist for GOLE or Assassin for AP).

I don't think making Inspiration a primary attribute is the answer (especially if this means making Fast Casting a non-primary). A better solution, however, may be to make some Inspiration skills - especially those related to energy management - work better with Fast Casting in the same way that some Elementalist energy management skills work better with Energy Storage.

I'm amazed someone actually posted this. To think Anet would revamp the ATTRIBUTES after 4+ years of the game. Skills get changed all the time, but to change something as basic as the attributes is a major issue. And it certainly isn't needed, not by a long stretch. At least they make the weapons that drop with a Primary Spell Casting Attribute requirement use Inspiration instead of Fast Casting for Mesmers. Most builds will use 9 Inspiration for energy management, so a weapon with that req isn't going to be hard to use. Then mods like the Half Casting Speed or +1 Attribute will have some use, while few skills from Fast Casting get used reqularly for those to benefit a build.

Find something that needs to be changed, then suggest a change for it. Inspiration, Fast Casting and Mesmer don't need anything changed.... except a few skills maybe.

are you playing a pve mesmer, not on a gimmick build like AP?
if not, that's why've you never seen such a problem.

mesmers are fun, really. and there are people playing primairy mesmers in pve, heck, even pure mesmers, cause they like the idea. and call them idiots if you like. and i completely agree with the OP - nerfing mesmer skills becuase other classes abuse them is not the best way to go.
and as far as i don't see the complete changing of attributes even possible - although it's a pretty good idea, but would need lots of changes, tests and i have no clue what would we get in the end - the nerfs should certainly be more like 'change this skill into fc' than 'let's make it useless'.

The oldest character I have is a PvE mesmer, which I've played for a little over 3 years. Looking back it would never occur to me that Inspiration Magic has overall been unfairly nerfed in that time.

Back in the day, Ether Feast had maybe around half of what its power is today. Energy Tap + Drain were balanced for energy denial in PvP, and served virtually no point in PvE until the skill split update. And for a long time, several Inspiration elites had near-useless functionality: Lyssa's Aura originally served as an inferior Power Leech in enchantment form, and Extend Conditions generally had no benefit over simply reusing whatever you used to cause conditions in the first place.

So if anything, I actually think the Inspiration attribute has come pretty far from what it used to be. If you're really looking to fix an over-nerfed attribute, try Tactics.

I can sort of see where you're coming from, but it isn't going to happen, frankly. Mesmers have always been a PvP-heavy class, so of course they are going to be less then perfect to play in PvE. As far as inspiration magic is concerned, this is the first time I've heard anyone raise this issue. I may not be the best to judge, but like Nuclfus said, I think Inspiration has come pretty far, frankly. It's the best energy gaining attribute in the game, arguably.

I don't think they'd likely "Fix" this in GW2, because we don't even know what the class/skill system is even like.

Even ignoring Soul Reaping, Glyph of Lesser Energy with zero ranks in Energy Storage says hi.

Elementalist secondaries for non-AP mesmers to bring GOLE has been common practise for some time, and when the class who "arguably" has the best energy gaining attribute is tapping into skills from another profession's primary attribute for energy management, I think I know which side of the argument I would support.

Inspiration's biggest problem is that it's not just an e-management line.
If Inspiration provided you just with unlimited energy, that wouldn't be an inssue. The problem is that it also provides you with skills you can use that energy on and that turns it into a very potent mix of offence and defence.
I guess it might be better to dump some of the more offensive skills into FC and then work on the e-management aspect of Inspiration.

i think we should dump all the mesmer skills into fast casting.... /me is Just toooo .....powerful

Are you actually suggesting turning Fast Casting into a secondary attribute anyone can use?
Please don't post joke threads on Sardelac.

You know, the solution for Secondary abuse has been already invented. It has been used a few times, probably because they don't want to use it much, but it WORKS.

All you have to do is partially link the effects of a skill to the primary attribute. You put the minimum usage into the original attribute, and any additional boost you want to give to the primary into the primary attribute.
Examples? The elementalist glowing skills, some PvE skills like Critical Agility or Seed of Life.

What you suggest is simply... let's say "absurd".