Guild Wars 2

I was wondering if the devs ever thought of nerfing or changing the mechanic of distort simply because for a single button its really op. Giving dmg immunity to your group and yourself and spamming it with pahantasms and signet makes mechanics and any real danger tha can occur in raids fractals and any pve scenario a non factor.

have you meet Daimos?

Sigfodr.9576:

have you meet Daimos?

Wasn’t it deimos? And yes i have and it feels cheap having distort straight up not work in some scenarios while in other its the best thing ever and trivialises mechanics.

It’s overpowered when utilized properly in a group setting.

I wouldn’t call it an instant I win button as it does require setup and sacrificing your phantasms (losing alacrity). So it’s a finely tuned mechanic. If they wanted to still allow it to be strong but not ludicious they could make it so attacks don’t penetrate distortion but AoE fields on the floor do as those should be avoided not stood in. That would require a large scale overhaul though so don’t look for it to happen anytime between now and ever.

I doubt they have.. I may be a little biased. But I feel like distort is not too OP for a number of reasons.

Duration is only one second. If you’re going to be distorting something (lets say greens on Vale Guard) then you need good timing with when your distort is actually being applied since either to soon or to late can cause problems.

The internal cooldown is 5 seconds. This prevents “spamming” to keep your party immune for a longer period of time.

It’s trait dependent. Considering how Dragon hunter can just press F3 and block all damage for the party for so long is actually considered OP (My opinion tho). So if you’re not running Blurred Inscriptions (distort on sig use) you will not be able to provide that protection when you cast signets… Or if you’re not running Inspiration then there will be no distortion share at all.

Do I think some things need to be tweaked on it??… maybe, although I have not really put to much thought into distortion in a long time.

Just my views on it.

I was wondering if the devs ever thought of nerfing or changing the mechanic of healing button simply because for a single button its really op. Giving dmg restoration to you and sometimes even to your group makes mechanics and any real danger tha can occur in raids fractals and any pve scenario a non factor.

Even though distort is powerfull it relies purely on player experience to use it properly. Most chronos in pugs usually dont focus on distorting mechanics either cant or dont wanna bother. Its a nice trick if u wanna take it up a lvl on your chrono performance.

TexZero.7910:

It’s overpowered when utilized properly in a group setting.

I wouldn’t call it an instant I win button as it does require setup and sacrificing your phantasms (losing alacrity). So it’s a finely tuned mechanic. If they wanted to still allow it to be strong but not ludicious they could make it so attacks don’t penetrate distortion but AoE fields on the floor do as those should be avoided not stood in. That would require a large scale overhaul though so don’t look for it to happen anytime between now and ever.

f4 yes does that but signet and phantasm spam is basically the same thing

Rednik.3809:

I was wondering if the devs ever thought of nerfing or changing the mechanic of healing button simply because for a single button its really op. Giving dmg restoration to you and sometimes even to your group makes mechanics and any real danger tha can occur in raids fractals and any pve scenario a non factor.

haha this also

I think Distortion is fine. It’s functionally no crazier than what other classes have, requires perfect timing to utilize effectively, and the Mesmer has to give up a lot in its class’s DPS to have this kind of utility.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I think Distortion is fine. It’s functionally no crazier than what other classes have, requires perfect timing to utilize effectively, and the Mesmer has to give up a lot in its class’s DPS to have this kind of utility.

A normal chrono will run domi/ins/chrono or illu/insp/chrono or domi/illu/chrono 2 out of 3 of these builds will have the ability to spam invul by default so yeah and no the timing is not so strict since the dmg is not so instant to make it hard to use most abilities in pve have a animations and are not instant.

That with distort being isnta cast with f4 and only a small cast with phantasms or signet use in general makes it really easy. Tbh i don’t feel 1 mechanic should negate so terrifying attacks and make mechanics of any fight meaningless. It also make mesmer itself the tank class.

None of what you’ve said justifies nerfing it, though. Mesmer has abysmal DPS as a class with awful ramp-up and even worse cleave. It makes up for this by packing a lot of very potent offensive and defensive support options, including Distortion. And sure, while you can F4 or time your signets to get Distortion to allies, it has a short range and lasts 1s on allies, so it still takes skill and coordination to land it for the big hits. The number of random Mesmers I encounter who botch it constantly is quite significant.

The other—more important—point, however, is that ANet has plenty of mechanisms at their disposal to prevent Distorting big mechanics if they want to take that route. They employed one on Deimos already. If they want to limit Distortion’s application in other encounters, they can continue doing the same thing with the encounters instead of nerfing the skill, which is the better path anyway since Distortion share’s strength is limited to these raid/fractal encounters.

Rising Dusk.2408:

None of what you’ve said justifies nerfing it, though. Mesmer has abysmal DPS as a class with awful ramp-up and even worse cleave. It makes up for this by packing a lot of very potent offensive and defensive support options, including Distortion. And sure, while you can F4 or time your signets to get Distortion to allies, it has a short range and lasts 1s on allies, so it still takes skill and coordination to land it for the big hits. The number of random Mesmers I encounter who botch it constantly is quite significant.

The other—more important—point, however, is that ANet has plenty of mechanisms at their disposal to prevent Distorting big mechanics if they want to take that route. They employed one on Deimos already. If they want to limit Distortion’s application in other encounters, they can continue doing the same thing with the encounters instead of nerfing the skill, which is the better path anyway since Distortion share’s strength is limited to these raid/fractal encounters.

The argument about mesmer having terrible isnt enough of a reason why distort is too strong of a skills. Mesmer already brings enough support and control to justify that lose in dps making distort more in like with the rest will not make him suddenly a bad pick anymore.

I also believe that if you were to get damaged or go downed by an ability simply because you couldn’t avoid it therefore bad play by your part you shouldnt be forgiven just because the mesmer was in the group and distorted that.

Also simply because an average mesmer cant pull it off doesn’t mean the ability is balanced pretty much like how ele even tho “Was hard to play” didnt make it right that when you learn it was out dpsing everything else by a landslide.

There’s nothing right about a skill or mechanic of a class being able to make mechanics non factor. If you failed a mechanic you should be punished if you were fast enough for you “oh kitten” button then you should go “uff that was close” but that “oh kitten” should be a choice you cant make regularly inside a fight.

If total dmg immunity is fine for you that’s ok im cool with increasing the cd of f4 and icnreasing the icd of inspiring distortion too.

It’s quite obvious that you have no idea how mesmer distortion (share) actually works.
The only build that can “spam” distortion is domi-inspi-chrono as you have distortion on phantasm(1s every 24s without alacrity), signet(1s every 24s without alacrity) and F4(1s per illusion every 50s without alacrity for the mesmer only. 1s total for subgroup). The illusion build only has distortion on F4, and the domi-illu build only has personal distortion.

While you can chain invuln for yourself as a mesmer(but realistically, you wont), your subgroup can only get 1s every 5s which in turn gives two possible uses:

1. As a panic button when kitten hits the fan (similar to rebound, which is more powerful) which is what most chronos will use it as.
2. As a part of strategy, VG green or Deimos slams. Requires cooldown management and good timing, and something most chronos neither will be asked to do or prepared to do.

Distortion is fine

zealex.9410:

Tbh i don’t feel 1 mechanic should negate so terrifying attacks and make mechanics of any fight meaningless.

In that case we’ll need to roll back:

• Evades (from endurance and skills)
• Blocks (from aegis and skills)
• Stability (where encounter mechanics launch you off platforms)
• Invulnerability skills
• Stealth (since it breaks aggro)

Joking aside, Mesmer distortion is fine. Each class has a way to keep them in the fight. At the two extremes you have something like Necro/Warrior that are HP sponges vs Teefs that are ping-ponging evades back-to-back……..to-back-to-back-to-back…[one eternity later]….-to-back (I’m exaggerating here, I know).

Chaining distortions on yourself is fine, but like every other class it’s not free to use your defensive mechanic; it generally costs you slotting a skill, trait, or give up up-time on something (damage/boons, primarily).

As far as the timing being “too easy” for team distorts. Well, that depends on the player. Seeing how the game is geared towards more casually players a 1s window may actually be pretty tight. Yes, I realize that this is a case of #GetGud if you can’t nail the 1s team distort window but, then again, I recognize that the skill of the average gamer of GW2 will still find that window a challenge.

savacli.8172:

zealex.9410:

Tbh i don’t feel 1 mechanic should negate so terrifying attacks and make mechanics of any fight meaningless.

In that case we’ll need to roll back:

• Evades (from endurance and skills)
• Blocks (from aegis and skills)
• Stability (where encounter mechanics launch you off platforms)
• Invulnerability skills
• Stealth (since it breaks aggro)

Joking aside, Mesmer distortion is fine. Each class has a way to keep them in the fight. At the two extremes you have something like Necro/Warrior that are HP sponges vs Teefs that are ping-ponging evades back-to-back……..to-back-to-back-to-back…[one eternity later]….-to-back (I’m exaggerating here, I know).

Chaining distortions on yourself is fine, but like every other class it’s not free to use your defensive mechanic; it generally costs you slotting a skill, trait, or give up up-time on something (damage/boons, primarily).

As far as the timing being “too easy” for team distorts. Well, that depends on the player. Seeing how the game is geared towards more casually players a 1s window may actually be pretty tight. Yes, I realize that this is a case of #GetGud if you can’t nail the 1s team distort window but, then again, I recognize that the skill of the average gamer of GW2 will still find that window a challenge.

yeah but these are stuff that everyclass has more or less

That’s his point. Every class has ways to avoid mechanics and whatnot. So why is distortion a problem? Unless you also want to remove all invuln effects from the game at the same time, there isn’t any rationale behind changing distortion

Man, how the world would cry bloody murder if Aegis blocked everything for 1 second instead of getting spent in one hit. But no, pure immunity to all but 1 mechanic is fine and having a better aegis applier than Guardian is also fine.

OriOri.8724:

That’s his point. Every class has ways to avoid mechanics and whatnot. So why is distortion a problem? Unless you also want to remove all invuln effects from the game at the same time, there isn’t any rationale behind changing distortion

distortion is not a self invul only tho and most of the invul other classes have are very limited

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

That’s his point. Every class has ways to avoid mechanics and whatnot. So why is distortion a problem? Unless you also want to remove all invuln effects from the game at the same time, there isn’t any rationale behind changing distortion

distortion is not a self invul only tho and most of the invul other classes have are very limited

And distortion share is also incredibly limited if you think about it. Its 1 sec shared with an ICD of 5 seconds.

Unless you want to be limited to only sharing 1 second of distortion every 42 seconds, you are locked into 2 traitlines just to share it. Not to mention that only being allowed to share 1 second of distortion at a time means that you need really good timing to make it effective.

zealex.9410:

distortion is not a self invul only tho and most of the invul other classes have are very limited

All other classes with invuln also deal 30k+ DPS with their meta builds.

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

That’s his point. Every class has ways to avoid mechanics and whatnot. So why is distortion a problem? Unless you also want to remove all invuln effects from the game at the same time, there isn’t any rationale behind changing distortion

distortion is not a self invul only tho and most of the invul other classes have are very limited

Except that Distortion is a self invulnerability. It’s not until you take Inspiring Distortion that it becomes an AoE effect, and even then your allies only get 1s of it (regardless of how much distortion you grant yourself), and it’s on a 5s cooldown. So, if you accidentally distort (such as just running through your rotation) you can’t reliably grant distortion to your allies. On top of that Distortion doesn’t even work on downed allies like an Aegis does. So you either have to burn your Well of Precognition to save your teammate or hope he doesn’t get killshot’d.

And true while invulnerability skills are limited (Ele has 3, Guard 1, Engi 1), other classes have a lot more reliable access to damage mitigation skills and have them in much larger quantities. In other words, a Mesmer actually has to invest into skills/traits to get high quantities of distortions while other classes get their defensive mechanisms for free.

savacli.8172:

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

That’s his point. Every class has ways to avoid mechanics and whatnot. So why is distortion a problem? Unless you also want to remove all invuln effects from the game at the same time, there isn’t any rationale behind changing distortion

distortion is not a self invul only tho and most of the invul other classes have are very limited

Except that Distortion is a self invulnerability. It’s not until you take Inspiring Distortion that it becomes an AoE effect, and even then your allies only get 1s of it (regardless of how much distortion you grant yourself), and it’s on a 5s cooldown. So, if you accidentally distort (such as just running through your rotation) you can’t reliably grant distortion to your allies. On top of that Distortion doesn’t even work on downed allies like an Aegis does. So you either have to burn your Well of Precognition to save your teammate or hope he doesn’t get killshot’d.

And true while invulnerability skills are limited (Ele has 3, Guard 1, Engi 1), other classes have a lot more reliable access to damage mitigation skills and have them in much larger quantities. In other words, a Mesmer actually has to invest into skills/traits to get high quantities of distortions while other classes get their defensive mechanisms for free.

inspiring distortion is a forced pick tho :/ for its respective traitline

zealex.9410:

inspiring distortion is a forced pick tho :/ for its respective traitline

Yes…..and? It’s not like that Spec is forced upon every Mesmer. Sure I get that it’s meta and players are gonna copy-pasta it, but otherwise my point still stands that Distortion is a self invulnerability until the Inspiring Distortion modifies the base behavior.

while i’m not against distort, just tought over some numbers. rev can get 100% dmg reduction. yea, u need retri trait, prot boon, venge hammers and rite to be active at the same time, and it takes 56 energy to have it for 1sec(no more energy) only for urself.
on the other hand distort: 1s distort every 5s for a party. so effectively u provide 20% dmg red. in the 80% (4s without distort) prot boon it brings it down to 53,6%. so basicly only u ( if u can provide the prot too) provide an effective 46,4% dmg reduction to a whole party in a way where the healer dont has only the easier task to overheal a reduced dmg, but the 20% of the time is a dmgless window to catch a breath. its a huge upperhand vs other tanks to convergate with the healer ( for example: with aura mancer that 53,6% goes even lower from shared frost aura to 45,6% wich is 54,4% reduction effectively). no other class can provide such sinergy.
so if u think about it, distort is op. not cuz it is op on its own, but cuz its op in a team comp
oh, and cuz u can protect urself with distort in more than the 20% of the time, u lowers the weight on the healers shoulders, so it can focus on the group more effectively

You’re assuming that the chrono can maintain the ability to pop a distort every 5 seconds. That would require a bar full of signets to even hope to achieve, along with a very strict rotation. So you’d lose out on alacrity and quickness sharing for the group entirely, and you still wouldn’t be able to maintain distortion share every 5 seconds for very long, certainly not an entire fight.

I find that telling Mesmers they are ridiculously OP in PvE is a futile attempt. Yes you don’t have insane damage like every other class, but congratulations on being a required 2 spots in a raid. All DPS classes wish they could be required over other classes so they could more easily get groups. The only class more ridiculous are Rangers.

I have friends who, every time they play their Mesmer, find something new that is completely OP for what they have and they admit it. They are also not Mesmer mains, I have yet to meet someone who mains Mesmer admit that they have some pretty BS abilities (my favorite is still how OP well of precognition is compared to what Guardian, the aegis class, has for aegis granting).

Edit: I still remember when “Feel my Wrath” was added to the game and Mesmers complained constantly on these very forums how it invalidated them because Time Warp was outclassed by it. Now look at the upkeep of Quickness… not to mention FmW got a 15s cooldown increase because of PvP quickness ressing but when quickness was removed from effecting ressing the cooldown was never changed back.

Elbritil.3817:

while i’m not against distort, just tought over some numbers. rev can get 100% dmg reduction.

You cant hit 100% Damage Reduction. It’s multiplicative not additive.

Azoqu.8917:

I find that telling Mesmers they are ridiculously OP in PvE is a futile attempt. Yes you don’t have insane damage like every other class, but congratulations on being a required 2 spots in a raid. All DPS classes wish they could be required over other classes so they could more easily get groups. The only class more ridiculous are Rangers.

I have friends who, every time they play their Mesmer, find something new that is completely OP for what they have and they admit it. They are also not Mesmer mains, I have yet to meet someone who mains Mesmer admit that they have some pretty BS abilities (my favorite is still how OP well of precognition is compared to what Guardian, the aegis class, has for aegis granting).

Edit: I still remember when “Feel my Wrath” was added to the game and Mesmers complained constantly on these very forums how it invalidated them because Time Warp was outclassed by it. Now look at the upkeep of Quickness… not to mention FmW got a 15s cooldown increase because of PvP quickness ressing but when quickness was removed from effecting ressing the cooldown was never changed back.

precog well actually makes chaos island boss fight a target dummy that you dodge once every 20% hp lul and just melee the boss to death.

OriOri.8724:

You’re assuming that the chrono can maintain the ability to pop a distort every 5 seconds. That would require a bar full of signets to even hope to achieve, along with a very strict rotation. So you’d lose out on alacrity and quickness sharing for the group entirely, and you still wouldn’t be able to maintain distortion share every 5 seconds for very long, certainly not an entire fight.

i never assumed someone whould build to spam ivul and idk how you came to that conclusion i assumed that whether theres an dangerous attack would have the biggest chance to cause a wipe a single memser can negate that.

Well I wasn’t replying to you, go read the comment above mine. They say distortion share can negate 20% of the damage over an entire fight (which again doesn’t mean anything as it assumes all damage is evenly spread out over 5 second increments….)

savacli.8172:

zealex.9410:

Tbh i don’t feel 1 mechanic should negate so terrifying attacks and make mechanics of any fight meaningless.

In that case we’ll need to roll back:

• Evades (from endurance and skills)
• Blocks (from aegis and skills)
• Stability (where encounter mechanics launch you off platforms)
• Invulnerability skills
• Stealth (since it breaks aggro)

Joking aside, Mesmer distortion is fine. Each class has a way to keep them in the fight. At the two extremes you have something like Necro/Warrior that are HP sponges vs Teefs that are ping-ponging evades back-to-back……..to-back-to-back-to-back…[one eternity later]….-to-back (I’m exaggerating here, I know).

Chaining distortions on yourself is fine, but like every other class it’s not free to use your defensive mechanic; it generally costs you slotting a skill, trait, or give up up-time on something (damage/boons, primarily).

As far as the timing being “too easy” for team distorts. Well, that depends on the player. Seeing how the game is geared towards more casually players a 1s window may actually be pretty tight. Yes, I realize that this is a case of #GetGud if you can’t nail the 1s team distort window but, then again, I recognize that the skill of the average gamer of GW2 will still find that window a challenge.

so your saying warrior ranger ele thief engineer etc all have a way to make 5 people immune to almost all boss attacks like vale guardians green circle burst? im honestly curious how thats done.

sophiewhite.3149:

so your saying warrior ranger ele thief engineer etc all have a way to make 5 people immune to almost all boss attacks like vale guardians green circle burst? im honestly curious how thats done.

While not as clean:

Warrior and Ranger can both use Endure Pain and Stone Signet respectively and then follow up with an elite skill to resurrect up to 5 downed allies. Ranger can stack “Guard” with Protection boon for high damage reduction.

Ele (Tempest) can Rebound to counter death.

Engi (Scrapper) can use Bulwark Gyro on top of stacking Protection for huge damage mitigation. That, or core Engi can combo AED with Toss Elixir R similar to how Warrior and Ranger do.

Thief…umm…Resilience of Shadows? Yeah, I got nothing for that class.

Sure, all of the above don’t achieve the same effect as distortion, but they would achieve the goal of being able to withstand boss attacks other than true killshot attacks that not even distorts works on. Granted I don’t have to stack signets nor invest in certain traitlines (well, Tempest I guess is technically a traitline to get Rebound).

savacli.8172:

sophiewhite.3149:

so your saying warrior ranger ele thief engineer etc all have a way to make 5 people immune to almost all boss attacks like vale guardians green circle burst? im honestly curious how thats done.

While not as clean:

Warrior and Ranger can both use Endure Pain and Stone Signet respectively and then follow up with an elite skill to resurrect up to 5 downed allies. Ranger can stack “Guard” with Protection boon for high damage reduction.

Ele (Tempest) can Rebound to counter death.

Engi (Scrapper) can use Bulwark Gyro on top of stacking Protection for huge damage mitigation. That, or core Engi can combo AED with Toss Elixir R similar to how Warrior and Ranger do.

Thief…umm…Resilience of Shadows? Yeah, I got nothing for that class.

Sure, all of the above don’t achieve the same effect as distortion, but they would achieve the goal of being able to withstand boss attacks other than true killshot attacks that not even distorts works on. Granted I don’t have to stack signets nor invest in certain traitlines (well, Tempest I guess is technically a traitline to get Rebound).

are you sure endure pain and signet of stone work on the vale gaurdians green circle burst? if so then id say its kinda balanced. otherwise it is pretty broken. honestly im against being able to skip mechanics like this entirely. if you have good chronos bosses become even bigger jokes. just look at mighty teapots stream kills. its getting a bit out of hand imo. id rather change all of those mechanics that are like that than let 1 go free because all of them can do it also.

Endure Pain, AED, Stone Signet, and Infuse Light all work against VG’s Green circle because that attack just does massive amounts of damage rather than insta-kill. Oddly enough those 4 skills work against things like Deimos’s Mind Crush or MAMA’s/Ensolyss’s Nightmare Devastation since they work the same way as in just dealing massive amounts of damage rather than outright killing you.

i mean all these ( im refering to the abilities that affect allies) are dmg reduction, the way it should be none of these completely negates the dmg.

zealex.9410:

i mean all these ( im refering to the abilities that affect allies) are dmg reduction, the way it should be none of these completely negates the dmg.

Gasp! Guys!! We totally missed the patch notes about how Aegis no longer negates damage it just works like Protection now. Blinding also only inflicts weakness instead of making the next attack miss! Also, Shield of Courage just creates a Light field instead of providing a continuous block. And Apparently, all projectiles are now unblockable and can’t be absorbed nor reflected!

savacli.8172:

And Apparently, all projectiles are now unblockable and can’t be absorbed nor reflected!

Hey don’t joke about that one. That basically happened for a while with lots of new encounters all having un-reflectable projectiles because Anet didn’t know what to do with Wall of Reflection and Feedback.

Azoqu.8917:

savacli.8172:

And Apparently, all projectiles are now unblockable and can’t be absorbed nor reflected!

Hey don’t joke about that one. That basically happened for a while with lots of new encounters all having un-reflectable projectiles because Anet didn’t know what to do with Wall of Reflection and Feedback.

ehh they could keep the refects but make it so boss takes 20% of the projectiles total dmg

Azoqu.8917:

savacli.8172:

And Apparently, all projectiles are now unblockable and can’t be absorbed nor reflected!

Hey don’t joke about that one. That basically happened for a while with lots of new encounters all having un-reflectable projectiles because Anet didn’t know what to do with Wall of Reflection and Feedback.

I cheated on that one. I remember a list of Fractal instabilities in the making involved one where all projectiles had the unblockable descriptor.

Oh man, I just remembered concerning reflects: Cairn gives no kittens and if you try to reflect him it destroys everyone in melee range.

Though back on topic, I think Mesmers do way to much at the moment. They only give up damage in order to: buff the group beyond belief, provide heals (it’s totally passive and not to much, but still there when minstrel), able to tank better than any other class, can invuln the group so they can ignore certain mechanics, and provide awesome break bar damage in emergencies (ya last one is a stretch but no less true). I still feel sorry for Mesmers in the future when they are all stuck in the buffing roll and never allowed to play their new spec unless huge changes occur.

savacli.8172:

Azoqu.8917:

savacli.8172:

And Apparently, all projectiles are now unblockable and can’t be absorbed nor reflected!

Hey don’t joke about that one. That basically happened for a while with lots of new encounters all having un-reflectable projectiles because Anet didn’t know what to do with Wall of Reflection and Feedback.

I cheated on that one. I remember a list of Fractal instabilities in the making involved one where all projectiles had the unblockable descriptor.

reflecting the balls back on the second boss in nightmare fractal and doing both of his phases instantly with 7% hp left was so much fun.