Guild Wars 2

The Moa Transformation Elite Skill that the Mesmer profession has is a fun, interesting skill, but at the moment it is far too powerful in competitive play. The way it is right now, a Mesmer can completely dominate a teamfight (not to mention any 1v1) with a single cast. As some have said, it’s an “I-Win Button.” That’s not balanced, and the reward for using it is far too high for the amount of effort it takes to use. The main problem isn’t just that it completely takes someone out of a fight, but that it allows the other team time to completely take the polymorphed player down with no cooldowns or combinations at all. It would be one thing if it was something that allowed players to burst someone down, but that’s not even necessary.

Yes, I’m aware that you can block it with Aegis and other block abilities. However, a fight with a Mesmer completely centers around tricking the use of it. If you can negate it, it’s a fairly easy fight (unless the Mesmer is god-tier), but if you can’t it’s pretty much over. That doesn’t make for interesting play.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the ability is awesome. It’s hilarious when someone suddenly turns into a giant bird. Regardless, it needs some tweaks.

The current main issues facing the spell are the following:

1. It is not dispellable.
2. It does not break on damage.
3. It lasts 10 seconds.

Assuaging any these issues would go incredibly far towards balancing the class in competitive tournament play.

Here are my suggestions:

A. Make the ability dispellable and make it end after 5000 damage is taken in the form.

B. Keep the current mechanics, but change the duration to 5 seconds.

Alternate Suggestions:

C. Increase the toughness of those in Moa form (i.e. by 500) or increase their health regeneration by a substantial amount to make it used more for CC purposes.

If you go with the former suggestion, it still allows for the Mesmer to be incredibly dominant in 1v1 situations, and allows them an incredible amount of breathing room to heal up or do whatever they need to do. If you take the latter suggestion, it still allows the ability to be incredibly strong in teamfights (which Mesmers are more lacking in), but negates a lot of the issues surrounding the Moa in a 1v1 situation.

All criticism is welcome, but keep it constructive. Thanks for your time.

The problem with crying about moa is if your going to talk about serious spvp, Time Warp is a much stronger Elite skill for Mesmer. Nobody is going to use a 10 second daze on one guy when they could have 10 seconds of haste for several members of their team.

Also a 4 minute cooldown on a move that can be blocked, dodged, LoSed, interrupted ect makes it feel pretty balanced.

Someone tried the Moa on me in 1vs1 today and I escaped it. But seriously, the guy that thought that would be a good skill to give players must have had a brainfart or a really bad day at the office. Or he plays a Mesmer…

I have a solution, when someone is in moa form increase their toughness by a insane amount. That way its only used purely for CC.

Ergo Proxy.6219:

The problem with crying about moa is if your going to talk about serious spvp, Time Warp is a much stronger Elite skill for Mesmer. Nobody is going to use a 10 second daze on one guy when they could have 10 seconds of haste for several members of their team.

Also a 4 minute cooldown on a move that can be blocked, dodged, LoSed, interrupted ect makes it feel pretty balanced.

The cooldown and the ability to avoid it is balanced, but the problem is that they’re able to press one button and remove someone from a fight entirely OR do nothing at all.

It’s way too much of a hit or miss elite, and time warp is so much better in my opinion as well, so I agree with you there. Also, I’m not really crying about it, I just feel like it needs some retooling to be more fun.

Aza.2105:

I have a solution, when someone is in moa form increase their toughness by a insane amount. That way its only used purely for CC.

That or health regen. Good idea. I’ll toss that in the OP.

Bump for more input.

I disagree with the title, I think it’s balance for 1v1, you can still dodge in moa form. In team fights itis a little OP because it can be killed in two seconds with focus.

But it’s like how people QQ about how Mesmer are hard to gank at all… they’re not!

You just have to play a profession to know its downed skills and how they work and weaknesses etc

It is balanced, you are a bad PvP player that looks at professions instead of player skills. There is a cast time, look out for it and dodge it. The problem is YOU, not the game.

I have to point out that it overrides elite transformations like Tornado or Lich too.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

I have to point out that it overrides elite transformations like Tornado or Lich too.

You can dodge as a Lich, probably as a Tornado too… not sure.

Stop crying, this ability is balanced.

you can dodge as a tornado, or lich, or plague, if that’s what you are using, and in a 1v1 situation that is fine. In a team fight however their is generally to much going on to just stritcly focus on the mesmer casting moa form. On top of that with no target’s target system, you don’t even know if your the one in the group being targeted by the spell. In tourney play where coordination happens, it is more than likely that most mesmers, oncluding myself when i played one, use time warp. When it gets used in the 8v8 zergfest, it generally happens when there is tons of crap blowing up on the screen and aoes going off everywhere so you can’t even see the animation coming and next thing you know your a moa and getting murdered really quickly from all the aoe going on.

However on the note that this ability is op, i got turned into a moa on my thief in a 2v1 situation, and i was the one, i lived that situation. The trick to moa is to not waste your time standing around to attack with the crap channeled abilities you have, but dodge immediately after it happens so you don’t get hit with the immob that usually follows and run afterwards using your dodges to prevent cc. If you have multiple targets trying to chain cc you then yeah, moa is pretty much an I win button if it lands.

When I noticed I could dodge while Moa Morphed, I stopped complaining about it.

P.S.
Moa Morph is hugely telegraphed, very easy to see it coming.

Fun fact neither traits nor the stats from traits work in Moa! On top of top you’re not able to jump.

I was afraid of this.

People, this isn’t a thread crying that the ability is broken. It’s a thread saying that it needs mild tweaking to be more fun (for the Mesmer, as well).

The skill is broken, it should not be there. I have been Moa’ed already over 25 times today. It seems it gets spammed whenever its there, and its 10seconds of free time for the Mesmer to try kill you.

Its so idiotic.

I can’t speak for every mesmer out their. But I hardly use my Moa elite lol. The only time i will use it is if I’m in a 2v1 situation or I’m against some annoying tanky person fighting me for a point. ^ the guy above me is lieing. I highly doubt hes been moaed over 25 times in 1 day

The Moa elite is interesting on paper, but fails when it comes to implementation.
Someone obviously wanted the Moa to fight back – it has skills right!? – but it’s just too clunky to be used. I always dodge away immediately when I’m Moa’d. If I got more toughness and could attack while moving with it, then I might stick around. But I guess the mesmer wouldn’t be interesting in that, now would he?

So all in all, it’s pretty fail.

Ps. I’ve only died once in Moa form. Dodging away works fine.

I don’t understand the whining from so many, Moa Morph is 180 seconds cool down, usually used 0-3 time(s) per match if the Mesmer have the “chance” to cast it. Other than that, Warriors Hundred Blade combo that can be casted every 40 seconds hitting 5k-13k, it is over powered and no balancing. Yet we want balance on Moa Morph to be done with their defensive/offensive ability that is only up every 180 seconds!. Try looking at a Mesmer’s perspective before trying to “nerf” the skill as a whole.

My Point Of View – I’ve only used Moa Morph for defensive purposes, using for offensive is just a waste of the elite entirely because you may get killed before you can try to kill off that Moa. Mesmer’s take so much damage, they don’t usually put alot of points into toughness/vitality because of the ability Mesmers get back from the traits in return are not too beneficial.

Sure you dont understand it, you never use it. Well, almost everyone else is busy clicking it as the first thign when they meet someone in wvwvw.

I’m sorry you lost one fight and had 3:59 of pure pwnage while it was on CD. Do whatever you want to moa, just never touch our TW.