Confusion only kills you if you use autoattack mainly, or if you do not notice the condition on your screen and continue to use your skills, both avoidable and entirely in your own hands…
A 50% reduction in damage is a over the top nerf in my opinion…
The reasons they give is the mechanic was having a negative impact on new players and they were not comfortable with people being unable to to use there own skills…
Just don’t use autoattack in WvW or PvP and whenever you see the confusion condition, only press condition removal or heal…so easy…
Anet announced today in a State of the Game they will be reducing the power of confusion, perhaps to 50% of what it is, like in sPvP.
The thing is, yes, people complain about it, but Confusion is NOT overpowered. It’s a way to control the fight. Confusion does NOT DO ANY damage, unless the person activates it themselves. So it needs to be cleansed, or the player needs to take a step back and stop attacking. It’s a strategic condition. And the only time confusion hits in the thousands is the result of a large setup of skills that went off perfectly. Which rarely ever happens.
A Mesmer needs to utilize about 10 skills to set up a big confusion burst, which could be cleansed in an instant. Compare that to an instant, single button press, single hit, from stealth, sometimes unavoidable, Backstab for 10k . Which needs the nerf?
And right now, Confusion is one of the very few ways to actually break up a zerg in WvW.
It honestly seems like Anet WANTS massive zergs in WvW, since they keep destroying our tactics to break them up.
That being said, I vehemently disagree with this change to confusion. People make the argument that confusion is balanced in spvp, but ignore the issue that it is in fact useless in spvp. The reason you see no confusion builds there is that confusion damage is so low that it’s completely ignorable. Now, they’ve made this the same in wvw. They completely destroyed one set of Mesmer builds, severely damaged the strength and viability of most Mesmer condition builds, and strongly decreased the possible auxiliary damage from Mesmer shatter builds (all while claiming mesmers are in a good place in the actual Mesmer portion).
I really can’t overemphasize how bad of a move this is. Confusion used to be one of the best mechanics in gw2, because it actually punished poor play. Now, it is once again irrelevant. No one needs to care about the purple swirly because the purple swirly won’t do any damage to them. This was a horrible change, and I’m monumentally disappointed in the dev team for rolling this change out.
Just goes to show how balancing on the small, vocal, and unskilled population of this game leads to poor choices.
Nope, Confusion didn’t punish poor play.
It punished playing.
That’s why it had to be nerfed.
Thrumdi, Captain of The Tarnished Coastguard
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The ultimate GW2 troll.
Well, they went back on the thief revealed debuff last patch at the last minute so there’s some hoping that confusion won’t be nerfed.
Still a 50% reduction is far too excessive.
It will be nerfed. It was in sPvP a while ago, it was only a matter of time before that change hit WvW once they announced they would be further splitting skills.
Well, they went back on the thief revealed debuff last patch at the last minute so there’s some hoping that confusion won’t be nerfed.
Still a 50% reduction is far too excessive.
Yes, 50% is very excessive. If they’re going to make big changes like this that potentially break a class they need to go slowly. First bring it down by 15% or 20%, see how it goes. Or make duration longer if it’s not as strong. Or make it stack duration instead of stacking power, with a flat number of damage based on condition damage stat, like bleeding.
OR.. fix other classes instead of nerfing the good ones. Confusion is very strong at times yes, It needs to be changed NOT OBLITERATED
Well, they went back on the thief revealed debuff last patch at the last minute so there’s some hoping that confusion won’t be nerfed.
Still a 50% reduction is far too excessive.
It will be nerfed. It was in sPvP a while ago, it was only a matter of time before that change hit WvW once they announced they would be further splitting skills.
The main issue that most had with the revealed 4s was that it didn’t fix the problem that it was supposed to (stealth chaining)… but instead made that one of the most viable ways to go. It also made the chains feel very clunky and poorly timed.
Something needs to be done to fix the stealth chaining (as stealth isn’t supposed to be long term), but they don’t seem to have figured out a good way how to do this yet.
Back to confusion though… if it IS 50% and no compensation is given to mesmer conditions (which are all otherwise very weak) then this won’t balance anything… it’ll just remove the viability of condition mesmers from the game altogether.
Eng’s will be hurt by this as well, but they weren’t reliant on confusion for their condition specs, so they will survive.
It will be nerfed. It was in sPvP a while ago, it was only a matter of time before that change hit WvW once they announced they would be further splitting skills.
The main issue that most had with the revealed 4s was that it didn’t fix the problem that it was supposed to (stealth chaining)… but instead made that one of the most viable ways to go. It also made the chains feel very clunky and poorly timed.
Something needs to be done to fix the stealth chaining (as stealth isn’t supposed to be long term), but they don’t seem to have figured out a good way how to do this yet.
Back to confusion though… if it IS 50% and no compensation is given to mesmer conditions (which are all otherwise very weak) then this won’t balance anything… it’ll just remove the viability of condition mesmers from the game altogether.
Eng’s will be hurt by this as well, but they weren’t reliant on confusion for their condition specs, so they will survive.
There were talks about having the revealed buff for coming out of stealth even if it wasn’t from attacking but it wasn’t actually included in the previous patch. Not even sure if it’s still on the table.
I highly doubt they did any testing for this. They read the forum thread with hundreds of whiners that complained about confusion, sat in their square table going “ok, let’s just make it the same as sPvP nobody whines about confusion there” and as any kitten developer does, makes drastic changes in multiple aspects in one huge patch that is going to break the game even more.
Condition Engineers are going to be more or less what they always were with their burning/bleeding/poison/weakness/immobilize/cripple. They didn’t necessarily need the confusion as much as a condition Mesmer. How condition Mesmers are expected to kill anything now I seriously would like to know, especially since against enemies with Lemongrass our burning does zero damage so all we have are 2~3 second bleeds. Confusion was already pointless against Lemongrass users to begin with.
The more I think about it the more I’m certain Karl doesn’t actually play this game.
I don’t have a problem with confusion doing high amounts of damage and punishing poor play. My problem with confusion is that it triggers on way too many combat related activities.
I swap attunements, I take confusion damage.
I dodge roll and trigger Arcane 11, I take confusion damage
I reach 50% health and armor of earth passively triggers, I take confusion damage.
My weapon procs, I take confusion damage.
My food procs, I take confusion damage.
There are times when I get confusion bombed by multiple mesmers and I go from full health to downed without using a skill, that’s ridiculous.
It is currently kind of OP in zerg on zerg scenarios though. If the front line of mesmers pops confusion, the other team is effectively dazed and this, from what I understand, dominated a lot of the meta. Either die attacking or die doig nothing as the other zerg plows into you.
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It is currently kind of OP in zerg on zerg scenarios though. If the front line of mesmers pops confusion, the other team is effectively dazed and this, from what I understand, dominated a lot of the meta. Either die attacking or die doig nothing as the other zerg plows into you.
My tier doesn’t have a bunch of glamour Mesmers that can actually force an entire zerg to not attack (since at least in my tier all the zergs know how to area cleanse) but my tier does have groups of full-tank hammer Guardians that basically draw all the fire and offer tons of CC while the rest of the zerg pewpewpew away from behind. Does this mean hammer Guardians need a nerf in their CC?
Let’s say there are servers that are running groups of glamour Mesmers that spam blind+confusion glamour fields so much that a zerg can’t out-cleanse it AND getting enough stacks to do significant damage (Already highly unlikely). Ok, they need to be balanced. Logically, the first things to look at would be the skills and traits of this particular build. Glamour Mesmers have to run three traits to make their build work, by the way, and it wouldn’t be hard to balance any one of those traits. Why shouldn’t we just nerf confusion like our whiners and Anet did? Because confusion is a condition that affects multiple builds. The problem you mention is limited to a particular build. As of now, you “balanced” glamour Mesmers (which I would still argue against), destroyed confusion Mesmers, and nerfed condition Engineers. But all is well because one problem is fixed, right?
I loved my confusion tank mesmer so much I made her a shiny new scepter. Boy do I feel stupid now. My favourite build and a load of time & effort down the drain because new players can’t cleanse or stop auto-attacking for a few seconds. Thanks Anet!
I loved my confusion tank mesmer so much I made her a shiny new scepter. Boy do I feel stupid now. My favourite build and a load of time & effort down the drain because new players can’t cleanse or stop auto-attacking for a few seconds. Thanks Anet!
Stick with her, that looks super nice. You never know if they’ll revert the changes, or boost Confusion in another way later on. No reason to feel stupid, and I am sure you can make use of the Scepter in other situations, either now or in the future (I do understand it makes it very unattractive for WvW, though, which isn’t good.)
It is currently kind of OP in zerg on zerg scenarios though. If the front line of mesmers pops confusion, the other team is effectively dazed and this, from what I understand, dominated a lot of the meta. Either die attacking or die doig nothing as the other zerg plows into you.
My tier doesn’t have a bunch of glamour Mesmers that can actually force an entire zerg to not attack (since at least in my tier all the zergs know how to area cleanse) but my tier does have groups of full-tank hammer Guardians that basically draw all the fire and offer tons of CC while the rest of the zerg pewpewpew away from behind. Does this mean hammer Guardians need a nerf in their CC?
Let’s say there are servers that are running groups of glamour Mesmers that spam blind+confusion glamour fields so much that a zerg can’t out-cleanse it AND getting enough stacks to do significant damage (Already highly unlikely). Ok, they need to be balanced. Logically, the first things to look at would be the skills and traits of this particular build. Glamour Mesmers have to run three traits to make their build work, by the way, and it wouldn’t be hard to balance any one of those traits. Why shouldn’t we just nerf confusion like our whiners and Anet did? Because confusion is a condition that affects multiple builds. The problem you mention is limited to a particular build. As of now, you “balanced” glamour Mesmers (which I would still argue against), destroyed confusion Mesmers, and nerfed condition Engineers. But all is well because one problem is fixed, right?
I’m not sure about all that, I was just reporting / summarizing complaints I’ve read. In fact, my gut reaction was a lot like yours…and I play ranger! We’ll have to see what happens in the meta, I suppose.
Tin Foil Hat Hearer »—> Ranger Extraordinaire »—> “Be like water…”
Confusion have been nerfed in sPvP for so long, I wonder what make you think it’d remain the same forever in WvW. The problem with Confusion is that players proc it much much faster than monsters. Hence the nerf in PvP. Now that WvW is getting specific rules, it can receive the same treatment than in sPvP.
The arguement that it shouldn’t be nerfed because if the player doesn’t attack he doesn’t receive damage is weak.
So what okay you stack confusion on him he cant attack without killing himself. So instead of attacking he turns to run while being gunned down instead lol.
The arguement that it shouldn’t be nerfed because if the player doesn’t attack he doesn’t receive damage is weak.
So what okay you stack confusion on him he cant attack without killing himself. So instead of attacking he turns to run while being gunned down instead lol.
Fail logic imo.
This I agree, Im starting to think some Mesmer players don’t want to be knocked off their pedestal.
Confusion have been nerfed in sPvP for so long, I wonder what make you think it’d remain the same forever in WvW. The problem with Confusion is that players proc it much much faster than monsters. Hence the nerf in PvP. Now that WvW is getting specific rules, it can receive the same treatment than in sPvP.
It should be obvious that PvP and WvW are very different, that’s why they’ve been separated from the beginning. You can focus a lot more in PvP, applying higher stacks of confusion, you can also easily play for area denial locking down capture points, also in WvW you can retreat behind frontlines and fortifications and you’re constantly cleansed. If they want to take that route, they should give everybody the same equipment in WvW for free as well, because many people will have to re-equip completely now.
It’s not that they are toning down confusion by half out of nowhere. It’s that they have buffed confusion for twice of its power against pve monsters, and because wvw has been using pve balance until now, players had the opportunity to use pve’s confusion in wvw’s pvp combat.
Confusion is a good game mechanic when there’s a cost/benefit trade-off to using skills through it. You should have to think twice before attacking through confusion.
The problem with confusion at the current numbers is that there isn’t a cost/benefit trade-off to using skills while confused. The only skill you ever want to cast through it is one that removes the confusion; any other skill usage through a confusion stack is a mistake. It is not acting as a deterrent with good gameplay, it is acting as a long duration silence that kills you if you do not catch it quickly enough.
The new numbers will be healthier for the game. If confusion applying skills are too weak after this change, the solution is to increase their duration, not confusion damage; long duration confuses are acceptable when attacking through them isn’t necessarily a bad play.
Confusion is a good game mechanic when there’s a cost/benefit trade-off to using skills through it. You should have to think twice before attacking through confusion.
The problem with confusion at the current numbers is that there isn’t a cost/benefit trade-off to using skills while confused. The only skill you ever want to cast through it is one that removes the confusion; any other skill usage through a confusion stack is a mistake. It is not acting as a deterrent with good gameplay, it is acting as a long duration silence that kills you if you do not catch it quickly enough.
The new numbers will be healthier for the game. If confusion applying skills are too weak after this change, the solution is to increase their duration, not confusion damage; long duration confuses are acceptable when attacking through them isn’t necessarily a bad play.
There are a few issues I have with this mindset:
1. It takes many stacks of confusion to do significant damage right now.
2. It takes simple condition removal to kill careful planning of confusion builds
3. They are not discussing decreasing cooldowns of confusion skills
Longer durations won’t do anything against condition removal (which almost everyone has). I would have thought they would reduce the CD on confusion infliction, but instead they cut its damage DRASTICALLY.
Very puzzling, indeed. I want to know where they are getting their numbers from.
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The arguement that it shouldn’t be nerfed because if the player doesn’t attack he doesn’t receive damage is weak.
So what okay you stack confusion on him he cant attack without killing himself. So instead of attacking he turns to run while being gunned down instead lol.
Fail logic imo.
This I agree, Im starting to think some Mesmer players don’t want to be knocked off their pedestal.
Here’s the thing: If a Mesmer’s confusion hurts, it means that he can’t “gun you down” in those few seconds that the confusion actually lasts.
The funny thing is, that Engineers on the other hand are much better at applying conditons other than confusion than Mesmers. They even are better at keeping confusion on you in a 1vs1 fight. Yet, I’ve never seen anyone complaining about Engineer confusion. How comes? Oh wait; Engineers are not Mesmers. If it’s a Mesmer doing it, it’s OP; even though other professions do it much better than Mesmers. Fail logic? I agree; but it’s you guys having a fail logic here.
As for confusion in general, I myself never died due to being confused. Also, the highest confusion-tick I’ve seen so far was around 2k… most are between 300 and 1000. That’s actually less than most powerbuilds do with their autoattacks; not even mentioning their other attacks which also have a much shorter cooldown than Mesmer’s confusion and can’t be avoided by just dodging (have fun trying to dodge autoattacks constantly XD) and/or stop smashing buttons like a madman for a few seconds and/or just use a condition removal.
As far as the nerf goes; I really hope that they give us something to compensate. Like, increase the duration and/or reduce the cooldown of our confusion-skills. Or give us the ability to stack other conditions better and faster than we can do it now. The best solution would have been to just decrease the cap for confusion-stacks to 15 or even 10 and leave the damage unaffected.
and/or stop smashing buttons like a madman for a few seconds and/or just use a condition removal.
From a properly built confusion spec you are looking at around 2100 damage from a 5 stack of confusion for 9+ seconds from a use of Pry Bar / Confusing Images. There are very few skills that selectively remove confusion or remove all conditions, and accompanied by another condition or two removing it can be very unreliable. Otherwise this is a CC with a huge duration, on a 15s recharge.
That is not remotely balanced, and is getting hit appropriately.
Yeah, it was unbalanced. But instead of fixing these skills or confusion in general, they decided to break in in every aspect. It’ll now be unviable in 99% of PvE (like before), WvW and PvP. They could have done this instead, but that would have actually required some thinking and tweaking instead of just changing a single number, so they took the primrose path as usual.
I wouldn’t even mind if it was just a random condition. But it was the condition for mesmers, just look at what access other classes have to different conditions. We pretty much have confusion and that’s it. My rabid gear will be worthless after the patch hit if they didn’t implement a huge buff to mesmer condition builds.
Plus, confusion affects many traits and skills as it’s one of our core mechanics.
The funny thing is, that Engineers on the other hand are much better at applying conditons other than confusion than Mesmers. They even are better at keeping confusion on you in a 1vs1 fight. Yet, I’ve never seen anyone complaining about Engineer confusion. How comes? Oh wait; Engineers are not Mesmers. If it’s a Mesmer doing it, it’s OP; even though other professions do it much better than Mesmers. Fail logic? I agree; but it’s you guys having a fail logic here.
I think the issue is somewhere entirely else.
How often do you see an engineer using confusion builds instead of grenades in w3? Or better: How often do you see an engineer in w3?
People can only complain about things they know.
I believe most people dont even know that engineers have 2 skills on low cooldown that give 5 stacks of confusion each. And if they use condition duration runes their confusion will last up to 10 seconds.
And of course they also have their pistol to apply 2-4 cute little stacks of confusion.
And he still has all the other conditions and maybe a few stacks might.
I partially see why confusion is getting nerfed but I think 50% are way too drastic!
You never know if they’ll revert the changes, or boost Confusion in another way later on. No reason to feel stupid, and I am sure you can make use of the Scepter in other situations, either now or in the future (I do understand it makes it very unattractive for WvW, though, which isn’t good.)