Guild Wars 2

Confusion is a powerful condition, though, one easily negated by attentive and intelligent players. I feel that it adds an interesting dynamic to the game. That being said, I feel that a direct 50% reduction is over the top and unnecessary. This change will most assuredly remove competitive viability of condition mesmers, and removes another build option for engineers.

What I would like to see as an alternative are one of two changes:

1) Reduce confusion damage by 33% in both SPvP and WvW
This would retain some builds viability and still reduces the condition’s power

2) Reduce confusion duration across the board by 50%
This will make confusion use a more tactical choice and prevent permanent confusion stacking. Condition duration then becomes a less potent and powerful requirement and becomes more in line with condition damage as a build choice.

number 1 i agree with however definatly not number 2.

Confusion already has a rediciously short duration and those burts are no different to other classes pure damage bursts in that they have long cooldowns and as it relies on you attacking that burst is much easier to avoid

Perhaps instead of trying to make Confusion your primary source of damage, use it as just another source of damage. Even with a 50% reduction, it won’t be weak, but it also won’t completely insta-kill most of the player base.

And it isn’t “easily negated by attentive and intelligent players”. Not in a long shot. My Engi can push confusion to 5k per skill use, and I’m nearly a bunker(3k tough, 1k Healing power). My friend pushes Condition damage and has his Engi pushing 7500 damage per skill use. No amount of attentiveness will prevent that first attack. Most players won’t be able to stop their second attack. At that point, even attempting to remove the condition will kill you. And waiting nearly 10secs is not an option.

I personally think this will only kill off builds that rely Solely on confusion damage, which isn’t a bad thing, since no “condition build” should rely on a single condition.

I’m not saying 50% isn’t overkill, but I don’t think it is ridiculous either.

McNuggetBandit.8376:

number 1 i agree with however definatly not number 2.

Confusion already has a rediciously short duration and those burts are no different to other classes pure damage bursts in that they have long cooldowns and as it relies on you attacking that burst is much easier to avoid

But if you think about it, it could be made up for by condition duration.

if you had any knowledge of the pvp system confusion was pretty obviously out of whack with everything else. Even people abusing it had to see it coming

Gisei.5749:

Perhaps instead of trying to make Confusion your primary source of damage, use it as just another source of damage. Even with a 50% reduction, it won’t be weak, but it also won’t completely insta-kill most of the player base.

And it isn’t “easily negated by attentive and intelligent players”. Not in a long shot. My Engi can push confusion to 5k per skill use, and I’m nearly a bunker(3k tough, 1k Healing power). My friend pushes Condition damage and has his Engi pushing 7500 damage per skill use. No amount of attentiveness will prevent that first attack. Most players won’t be able to stop their second attack. At that point, even attempting to remove the condition will kill you. And waiting nearly 10secs is not an option.

I personally think this will only kill off builds that rely Solely on confusion damage, which isn’t a bad thing, since no “condition build” should rely on a single condition.

I’m not saying 50% isn’t overkill, but I don’t think it is ridiculous either.

In another thread i had stated that in my opnion the confusion nerf should have been the form of a 25% damage reduction and a drop in the number of stacks that you can put on, This would still make the damage viable but not make massive stacks over kill.

And in making it the only source of damage if you want to run conditions on a mesmer its prttey much your only way to run a condition build aswell as an AoE build (due to the fact that we cant reliably stack other conditons) i agree that change was needed but this was more of a take a sleged hammer to my car and set it of fire sort of fix, instead of just reworking it so its not as punishing but still viable

CrassBippy.4619:

if you had any knowledge of the pvp system confusion was pretty obviously out of whack with everything else. Even people abusing it had to see it coming

I know the system quite well (from a WvW aspect which is where this nerf is happening) and it wasn’t very far out of wack as to get those numbers on a mesmer (i cant talk for engis here as i don’t play one) you needed to completly murder every other aspect of your build to get it to that height. The reason people did this is it has passive AoE potential which memers have almost none of what so ever, and even then its damage was no further out of sync with other classes bursts in my mind its harder to die from confusion alone that pure damage.

CrassBippy.4619:

if you had any knowledge of the pvp system confusion was pretty obviously out of whack with everything else. Even people abusing it had to see it coming

I am aware of the pvp system which is why I’d rather see a more tempered approach to fixing this ability than making it ineffective.

CrassBippy.4619:

if you had any knowledge of the pvp system confusion was pretty obviously out of whack with everything else. Even people abusing it had to see it coming

Oh? And how did people abuse it? Did they hack your computer to make you spam skills? Did they somehow get 100% uptime on it because you were repeatedly running in and out of a glamour field?

If you had any knowledge of the PvP system you’d know what you said was out of whack with everything else.

Gisei.5749:

Perhaps instead of trying to make Confusion your primary source of damage, use it as just another source of damage. Even with a 50% reduction, it won’t be weak, but it also won’t completely insta-kill most of the player base.

And it isn’t “easily negated by attentive and intelligent players”. Not in a long shot. My Engi can push confusion to 5k per skill use, and I’m nearly a bunker(3k tough, 1k Healing power). My friend pushes Condition damage and has his Engi pushing 7500 damage per skill use. No amount of attentiveness will prevent that first attack. Most players won’t be able to stop their second attack. At that point, even attempting to remove the condition will kill you. And waiting nearly 10secs is not an option.

I personally think this will only kill off builds that rely Solely on confusion damage, which isn’t a bad thing, since no “condition build” should rely on a single condition.

I’m not saying 50% isn’t overkill, but I don’t think it is ridiculous either.

I noticed you don’t play a Mesmer and have no concept of the sacrifices it takes for a Mesmer to build for confusion. Engineer condition builds take this for granted as they have other means of steady condition application. Mesmers do not, Anet based our condition around confusion. The 5 sec pry bar confusion buff added to an already strong p/p hgh build. To compare a engi condition build to a Mesmer condition build is dishonest at best.

Yes, I play both. After the 30th only the engineer condition build will be viable. Make no mistake Anet has just ended the viability of a condition based Mesmer.

in spvp confusion is unplayed. i understand it will hit harder with full wvw gear and may be ok as a off spec.. but the question is will that sub spec be worth putting any time and effort into getting the gear needed to make it work. yes it will be half as good for people who play it already and some may stick with that spec since they have the gear.. people who level up a new character will not be spending time or gold on getting gear for confusion specs after the nerf. they will play the un nerfed specs.

nerf was needed. its only balanced in 1v1 situations and in any kind of group pvp it ranged from significantly loop siding a fight to complete and utter zone denial. now a 50% flat nerf to damage wasn’t a good fix, limiting stacks and/or duration would have been a better route.

McNuggetBandit.8376:

CrassBippy.4619:

if you had any knowledge of the pvp system confusion was pretty obviously out of whack with everything else. Even people abusing it had to see it coming

I know the system quite well (from a WvW aspect which is where this nerf is happening) and it wasn’t very far out of wack as to get those numbers on a mesmer (i cant talk for engis here as i don’t play one) you needed to completly murder every other aspect of your build to get it to that height. The reason people did this is it has passive AoE potential which memers have almost none of what so ever, and even then its damage was no further out of sync with other classes bursts in my mind its harder to die from confusion alone that pure damage.

thats not even what is overpowered, the fact that you think this nerf is tied to glamour specs is why you are wrong. There are builds that can abuse the kitten out of confusion along with high dmg from other sources and you cannot out cleanse by yourself, even with 2 full remove alls.

But keep on thinking that ANET and everyone else who isnt maining a mesmer/engineer dont know what they are doing, obviously

Gisei.5749:

Perhaps instead of trying to make Confusion your primary source of damage, use it as just another source of damage. Even with a 50% reduction, it won’t be weak, but it also won’t completely insta-kill most of the player base.

And it isn’t “easily negated by attentive and intelligent players”. Not in a long shot. My Engi can push confusion to 5k per skill use, and I’m nearly a bunker(3k tough, 1k Healing power). My friend pushes Condition damage and has his Engi pushing 7500 damage per skill use. No amount of attentiveness will prevent that first attack. Most players won’t be able to stop their second attack. At that point, even attempting to remove the condition will kill you. And waiting nearly 10secs is not an option.

I personally think this will only kill off builds that rely Solely on confusion damage, which isn’t a bad thing, since no “condition build” should rely on a single condition.

I’m not saying 50% isn’t overkill, but I don’t think it is ridiculous either.

50% Is overkill and how is an engi stacking condition damage for high confusion ticks any different to a thief / warrior or whatever stacking power/crit for high burst spikes?? Surely then arena net should be nerfing backstab for example?? I mean I’m a bunker engi and I still see 7k backstab in my combat log. Why is it acceptable for a thief to do that regularly but it’s not ok for an engi to do it with confusion?? Bearing in mind, confusion can be countered by some tiny degree of thought to what your are doing and can be countered / negated. The nerf is unwarranted and will hurt engis when the real problem is might stacking and Mesmers being OP, NOT ENGIS.

I have no idea who comes up with these ‘balances’.

Played wvw last night on various toons. Biggest annoyances were stealth (stomping from stealth should NOT be allowed, at least give us the chance to hit..) and d/d eles who can wonder in and out of fights doing damage at will, and re appear 5 seconds later back at full health and with piles of boons stacked on them. At least with glamours and confusion you could slow them down a bit for others to take down- after the nerf they will be even more stupidly able to run around, be downed and run back in the towers.

If only bad players are dying by it, they will still die post patch, just 50% slower.

I like the examples people are making of bad players spamming autoattack and dying to confusion in 5 seconds. This time it’s only 10 seconds! wowzers!

If it’s anything like Blizzards cash cow which has gone through heaps and heaps of nerf bats and skill changes, skilled players will continue to pwn and play the Mesmer class well. It’s the fly by night FOTM rerolls that will suffer.

No.

Sorry but had to lol at this.How exactly is confussion the easiest to deal with with intelligent gameplay.i have a really nice scenario for you, ,actually more than one.

Warrior 2 cond removals equiped with 2 more from shout spec for a total of 5 conditions remove possibility.Activating 1 of them.Oh kitten stack of bleeding was removed.10K damage taken from confusion.Rinse and repeat, i still have 2 more skills to use for total of 3 cond. Hopefully i can remove it before poison, chill, immobilize, weakness, burning, vulnerability, crippled.Love my chancess.I also win the loterry everyday:).Meanwhile all other conditions are bringing me down fast or other players.Sit and pray or 7 to1 chance to kaboom.Both choices = DEAD

get confussion stacks.Place light field= 10 k damage taken from conf.Use whirl finisher on field to cleanse condition = other 10 k damage taken.
Easily countered with intelligent play.Yes right? You have 5 times more chances to sit afk trought 25 stacks of bleed for 20 seconds and still be able to get out alive.

Sad thing this is the main argument glamour mesmers have against the “nerf”(actuall returned to as intended state).As you can see argument does not stand unless you are a thief with heartserker on macro lvl of players or ofc “deceiving” mesmers wich is written in the class description btw

Im happy that a dev finally had a chance to blowhimself up in wvw an realize -Wtf is this kitten!I would have paid to be there tbh

CrassBippy.4619:

McNuggetBandit.8376:

CrassBippy.4619:

if you had any knowledge of the pvp system confusion was pretty obviously out of whack with everything else. Even people abusing it had to see it coming

I know the system quite well (from a WvW aspect which is where this nerf is happening) and it wasn’t very far out of wack as to get those numbers on a mesmer (i cant talk for engis here as i don’t play one) you needed to completly murder every other aspect of your build to get it to that height. The reason people did this is it has passive AoE potential which memers have almost none of what so ever, and even then its damage was no further out of sync with other classes bursts in my mind its harder to die from confusion alone that pure damage.

thats not even what is overpowered, the fact that you think this nerf is tied to glamour specs is why you are wrong. There are builds that can abuse the kitten out of confusion along with high dmg from other sources and you cannot out cleanse by yourself, even with 2 full remove alls.

But keep on thinking that ANET and everyone else who isnt maining a mesmer/engineer dont know what they are doing, obviously

The only other build that can stack up confusion that will do any signifcant dmg due to +condition dmg that i know of is a engineer as without that extra damage it isn’t going to kill you, it will help for sure but not kill you. It does need some tweaking for sure in the terms of either a lower stack cap or at most a 25% reducition in damage (if you read my other posts you would have seen i stated this) but a 50% nerf is going way over board.

The reason most people are focusing on glamour builds is because this nerf will have the most effect on them, If ANET didn’t plan on people making a build to run full glamour with confusion why would they have designed all those traits to specificlly do exactly.

graverr.6473:

No.

Sorry but had to lol at this.How exactly is confussion the easiest to deal with with intelligent gameplay.i have a really nice scenario for you, ,actually more than one.

Warrior 2 cond removals equiped with 2 more from shout spec for a total of 5 conditions remove possibility.Activating 1 of them.Oh kitten stack of bleeding was removed.10K damage taken from confusion.Rinse and repeat, i still have 2 more skills to use for total of 3 cond. Hopefully i can remove it before poison, chill, immobilize, weakness, burning, vulnerability, crippled.Love my chancess.I also win the loterry everyday:).Meanwhile all other conditions are bringing me down fast or other players.Sit and pray or 7 to1 chance to kaboom.Both choices = DEAD

get confussion stacks.Place light field= 10 k damage taken from conf.Use whirl finisher on field to cleanse condition = other 10 k damage taken.
Easily countered with intelligent play.Yes right? You have 5 times more chances to sit afk trought 25 stacks of bleed for 20 seconds and still be able to get out alive.

Sad thing this is the main argument glamour mesmers have against the “nerf”(actuall returned to as intended state).As you can see argument does not stand unless you are a thief with heartserker on macro lvl of players or ofc “deceiving” mesmers wich is written in the class description btw

Im happy that a dev finally had a chance to blowhimself up in wvw an realize -Wtf is this kitten!I would have paid to be there tbh

This situation is slighty wrong for one if you got the stacks on you to get hit for 10k when you went to clenese any other classes burt would have killed you because you have atleast 15stacks on you to take that much damage.

and also if you have all those other conditions on you it means your either facing a condition engi or a group with a glam mesmers or engis so you need to change your stratgey. If its just that lone engi run from him a bit and wait for confusion to drop down the stakcs will all but be gone it 3-5seconds (thats if you dont want to risk the condition removal) get in stun drop a quick burst and move out of confusion again.

If its a group your going up against you should either 1 bne in a group yourself otherwise your prttey screwed in the first place (yes i know some builds can 3v1 etc but its not easy) If you have your own group get them to drop condition removals our move behind them and get them to defend you while those confusion stacks go down in a group confusion is much easier to deal with.

As i said above i will admit confusion needs some tweaking however its not as deadly as everyone states it has its conteres and they are some of the easier conters do deal with, i die more often to bleed burn or posion stacks cause that last alot longer and get stakced up from every other class out there almost

People still use it in sPvP. At least now the formula will put it inline with retaliation. The damage adjustment is warranted. Just because something is easy to avoid or negate doesn’t mean you make it insanely powerful to compensate for it. Look at how easy conditions are to remove and you don’t see them ticking for 10k at 25stacks.

If the damage was going to be left alone, they should have changed confusion to be consumed once you dealt damage. If not, then have it go back to the formula it was months ago and currently still is in sPvP.

I think many are missing the main point of this thread which was to offer other alternatives to a 50% reduction in damage. I’d love to hear what people think of my suggestions and what ideas other people have.

I posted some changes in the mesmer forum that I think would be ideal solutions rather than the direct 50% nerf

Jedge.3619:

If they really wanted to fix confusion all they needed was to do this
– Don’t make it apply dodge roll effects
– Make a system where the first stack of confusion initially does at 5 stacks 1700dmg, but once you’ve exhausted that stack, it moves down to 4..3..2..1 and deals less dmg till it no longer exists.
– Tone it down approximately 25%
– If you’re going to nerf confusion fix scepter or staffs auto attack. iMage anyone?

Since 99% of really good confusion mesmers are using +40% condi duration food buffs, a 50% duration reduction doesn’t sound too unrealistic at all. It allows other players to experiment with food buffs outside -the 36/40% condi duration food buffs, which to me always felt like a waste of a food buff slot. Alternatively they could of removed food entirely, but since they’re intent on keeping it playing an active roll, other players should not have to feel forced into utilizing a single food buff out of all the other appealing options just to counter things like extended confusion duration.

Besides, let’s admit that confusion builds have become over-saturated in the mesmer community. At least this should force some players into a little more build variety. It does after all get awkward when more than 85% of every mesmer you fight is just a matter of stopping your attacks and waiting for condition removal to kick in. The lack of originality and available diversity in builds tends to be what people complain about the most when its present in a class anyways.

Jedge.3619:

I posted some changes in the mesmer forum that I think would be ideal solutions rather than the direct 50% nerf

Jedge.3619:

If they really wanted to fix confusion all they needed was to do this
– Don’t make it apply dodge roll effects
– Make a system where the first stack of confusion initially does at 5 stacks 1700dmg, but once you’ve exhausted that stack, it moves down to 4..3..2..1 and deals less dmg till it no longer exists.
– Tone it down approximately 25%
– If you’re going to nerf confusion fix scepter or staffs auto attack. iMage anyone?

An interesting alternative. I wonder on the math though as far as what would be more severe.

The changes to confusion are idiotic. I have no idea what the developers are thinking. If this is the way they “balance” then no telling what class they’re going to knee-cap next.

Gisei.5749:

It isn’t “easily negated by attentive and intelligent players”. Not by* a long shot. My Engi can push confusion to 5k per skill use, and I’m nearly a bunker (3k toughness, 1k healing power). My friend pushes condition damage and has his Engi pushing 7500 damage per skill use. No amount of attentiveness will prevent that first attack.

Does everyone understand why this is hilarious? 7,500 damage is one glass cannon heartseeker. A skill that can be used 4-5 times in < 3 seconds with quickness in its current state. Meanwhile, in order to reach such high damage, many stacks of confusion must be applied within 3 seconds. A condition spec set of equipment and weapons must be used. The correct traits must be used… and most importantly, there has to be a few stacks of might coming from somewhere.

Having explained how 7,500 damage confusion ticks are possible, confusion and retaliation are the best counter against thieves and warriors and the use of quickness.

PVP in any form needs counters, and in its current state (in WvW), confusion and retaliation /are/ those counters and do /not/ need to be ‘nerfed’ now matter how many thieves, warriors and a few elementalists cry about it.

…and I hear they’re planning to make thieves stronger, more mobile and give them higher survivability. What?

It needed a nerf. Its finally getting one. Find something else to cry about.

As already suggested multiple times, they should either increase confusion duration by a reasonable amount (+80-100%) or give condi mesmers at least some alternatives to deal their damage (i get about ~7-8 stacks of bleeding with 3 clones out, a necro manages double the number alone along with cripples and poison).

Find something else to cry about.

I want a 50% damage nerf for mug, backstab and heartseeker. Satified?

Sounds fair enough, but it doesn’t prevent confusion from being overpowered and recieving a much needed nerf.

Thank you, tagnut, for the reminder that I can remove a heartseeker-spamming thief by using a condition removal skill. I forgot how comparable the two were.

As a fan of the way ArenaNet handled Guild Wars 1, confusion being nerfed before a few very overpowered (and spammable) skills because people cry about having to place condition removal skills among their utilities or traits is depressing.

Gisei.5749:

Perhaps instead of trying to make Confusion your primary source of damage, use it as just another source of damage. Even with a 50% reduction, it won’t be weak, but it also won’t completely insta-kill most of the player base.

And it isn’t “easily negated by attentive and intelligent players”. Not in a long shot. My Engi can push confusion to 5k per skill use, and I’m nearly a bunker(3k tough, 1k Healing power). My friend pushes Condition damage and has his Engi pushing 7500 damage per skill use. No amount of attentiveness will prevent that first attack. Most players won’t be able to stop their second attack. At that point, even attempting to remove the condition will kill you. And waiting nearly 10secs is not an option.

I personally think this will only kill off builds that rely Solely on confusion damage, which isn’t a bad thing, since no “condition build” should rely on a single condition.

I’m not saying 50% isn’t overkill, but I don’t think it is ridiculous either.

Mesmers don’t have another primary source.. our bleeds dont stack like necros and thieves and burn is once in a blue moon. The staff is the only real source of conditions if confusion goes out and i can tell you that no mesmer will be seen running a condition build because the staff doesnt proc them fast enough to kill an enemy..ever try to kill someone running away with a staff? even at 1600 CD it takes very, very long and they aren’t even fighting back. everyone is going to QQ about 99% of the mesmers running shatter builds cuz we wouldn’t have any other option.

Yet another thread about confusion damage… Hey why not just apply toughness to condition damage?

Detharos.3157:

Since 99% of really good confusion mesmers are using +40% condi duration food buffs, a 50% duration reduction doesn’t sound too unrealistic at all. It allows other players to experiment with food buffs outside -the 36/40% condi duration food buffs, which to me always felt like a waste of a food buff slot. Alternatively they could of removed food entirely, but since they’re intent on keeping it playing an active roll, other players should not have to feel forced into utilizing a single food buff out of all the other appealing options just to counter things like extended confusion duration.

Besides, let’s admit that confusion builds have become over-saturated in the mesmer community. At least this should force some players into a little more build variety. It does after all get awkward when more than 85% of every mesmer you fight is just a matter of stopping your attacks and waiting for condition removal to kick in. The lack of originality and available diversity in builds tends to be what people complain about the most when its present in a class anyways.

No, a glamour Mesmer that has the cover of the zerg can use Rare Veggie Pizzas, but a solo/roaming condition Mesmer build is more or less limited to Lemongrass. Most people like you are clueless to the fact that the condition Mesmer’s greatest weakness is conditions and considering how a single food covers up so much of the Mesmer’s weakness, if 99% of the average player knew this they would actually be using Lemongrass instead of saying it was a “waste” of a food slot. If Anet had to nerf anything immediately by 50% it would be Lemongrass, not confusion.

And of course the solution to limited build variety is to limit it further more so that players are forced into underpowered and unpopular builds, rather than buffing weaker builds to compete with the overpowered and popular builds to promote new diversity. But some people just can’t seem to think in a forward direction.

Detharos.3157:

Besides, let’s admit that confusion builds have become over-saturated in the mesmer community. At least this should force some players into a little more build variety.

Take it from someone who has played 1000 hours as a condition-based mesmer- Mesmers have no other conditions they can reliably apply. Staff clones and Sharper Image illusions require time to get them all up, AND they have to survive… not to mention that staff clones (and the staff #1) have a 33% chance of applying vulnerability, which adds about 15 damage or so to your attacks because you can’t build into power/crit.

If I can get 3 clones/phantasms up, and somehow they miraculously survive, I can sustain about 6 stacks of bleeds and not even perma burning. A bunker can nearly outheal my dps with a single regen boon. I would hurt more if I could wield a wet noodle.

And you think this will allow for build diversity? You are strongly mistaken.

Another change favor blobbing and zerg fights