Guild Wars 2

I was tooling around on my Mesmer and looking at Time Warp got me thinking: Why isn’t this skill a Glamour?

It’s ground-targeted like a Glamour.
It creates a long-lived combo field with a beneficial effect like a Glamour.
It has a lengthy cooldown commensurate with its high level of effectiveness like a Glamour.

That train of thought set me thinking further: Given the recent changes to Quickness, is making TW a Glamour an appropriate response?

Let’s consider the effects of making Time Warp a Glamour:

• It could receive a cooldown reduction from 3:30 to 2:48 via Glamour Mastery.
  A 42-second reduction in cooldown is a pretty big deal, but a just-shy-of-3-minute cooldown is still pretty much an eternity.

• It could have its duration increased some amount via Temporal Enchanter.
  This is actually pretty swell as it gives us another method by which we can adjust the ability and, in so doing, it’s effectiveness. It also enables adjusting base duration down and traited duration up. In short, this opens many opportunities to balance the ability.

• It could become a 3-second AoE Blind via Dazzling Glamours.
  …with the aforementioned 3-minute cooldown. Still, TW has a 0.25 cast time, so this means it’s an effective “oh kitten” button. But seriously… three minutes. Three minutes.

• It could apply a 5-second Confusion upon foes’ entry into/exit from the AoE via Confusing Enchantments.
  This is the most substantial effect. A focus on Glamours & Confusion is, from my limited knowledge and understanding, a pretty kitten not bad way to build a Mesmer. This turns TW into a 10-second circular Veil of Confusion. This is in addition to its already not-insubstantial base effects and the potential of those listed above.

Whew! That’s a lot to think about. Here’s a distillation of my thoughts on the effects of this change in a nutshell:

Pros:

• It’s organic.
  TW certainly has some Glamour-like qualities and there’s an existing framework for Glamours, so I’d imagine this would be among the easier solutions to implement coding-wise. And besides; it just feels right.

• It adds several ways to balance TW: (possibly adjusted) base duration vs. traited duration, (possibly adjusted) base cooldown vs. traited cooldown, a traited Blind and a traited “Veil of Confusion”.

• It makes the build I have in mind way better.
  You can’t blame a guy for trying, right?

Cons:

• Lots of possible balance implications.
  This change adds a significant amount of interplay with other mechanics to TW and that brings with it a myriad of additional balance considerations. That said, I think the balance options it adds go some way toward alleviating this.

• “OMIGOD TW IS SO OP”.
  I don’t know if this change would bring cries of OP-ness nor do I know if balance uproars dictate decisions regarding game mechanics. Hopefully this is just irrelevant. And again, any legitimate balance issues are easily enough sorted via a number of different possible changes.

TL:DR: I think Time Warp should be a Glamour in response to Quickness being reduced in effectiveness by half. What do you think?

edit: I accidentally some formatting.

But that would be waaay too powerful being a glamour, even after the haste rebalanced.

But with Mass Invisiblity could be worth trying those changes. Maybe people would use it more during combat than between combats.

hmm before i would agree with Mithran, that it would be WAY OP, but with the quickness change it might be feasible, though not 100% sure if it would be too much

Heck, I was surprised TW WASN’T a Glamour.

TW needs SOMETHING after the Quickness nerf. Quickness was so good that all of TW’s limitations were acceptable. Now that Quickness is not THAT good, there’s no reason for all of TW’s limitations.