Guild Wars 2

Confusion did too much damage in WvW, now it doesn’t do enough. Perhaps an internal cooldown on taking damage should be put in place so the damage on confusion can be increased and still punish spam-clickers without obliterating them?

Make it a fixed amount of damage and remove one stack per skill use instead of stacking damage. See
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Confusion-1/first

Oozo.7856:

Confusion did too much damage in WvW, now it doesn’t do enough. Perhaps an internal cooldown on taking damage should be put in place so the damage on confusion can be increased and still punish spam-clickers without obliterating them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YnU-YG8Kbc

well the dude in this video clearly spammend autoattack like a 100 times while moving on the edge between 2 glamfields.if u run between several necro field u will get the exact same result. ikittenee moving in and out of glamfield the stacks go high very quickly, but they don’t last long at all.if u check the stacks i do on a boss in pve for example he doesent attack fast enough to get that high of a dmg. so if u get hit by confusion like that stop mashing buttons, slow down your attack. why do u think dolys are hard to kill for a glam mesmer?

He was using Tornado, which for some reason makes confusion go off constantly while you’re tranformed.

Snickers.9570:

He was using Tornado, which for some reason makes confusion go off constantly while you’re tranformed.

now there is a problem that should be fixed with that then i think a tornado or daggerstorm shouldnt react like this to confusion. its not the dmg there though he only takes 213 dmg per tick but with those fast ticks thats terrible. but nerfing the confusion dmg wouldnt fix that bug right there, by nerfing the dmg like that the whole class suffers and most of the time before the nerf i wouldnt get enormous ticks either unless hitting a mindless zerg.

Confusion and retaliation were intended to punish their victims for lack of awareness. They’re like Empathy and Backfire from GW1. Confusion applies to an enemy, Retaliation applies to yourself.
The issue is that too many players are incapable of developing situational awareness and end up punished by these conditions. Instead of making these players adapt, anet nerfs these skills so they don’t have to.

Problem is games where player skill is required don’t pull in money anymore. The shareholders say nerf these things and make Arrow carts overpowered and the devs listen.

lioka qiao.8734:

Confusion and retaliation were intended to punish their victims for lack of awareness. They’re like Empathy and Backfire from GW1. Confusion applies to an enemy, Retaliation applies to yourself.
The issue is that too many players are incapable of developing situational awareness and end up punished by these conditions. Instead of making these players adapt, anet nerfs these skills so they don’t have to.

Problem is games where player skill is required don’t pull in money anymore. The shareholders say nerf these things and make Arrow carts overpowered and the devs listen.

Lol, situational awereness… You had to stop attacking and dodging completely or you died instantly due to autotattack making confusion hit for 3k+ damage, per attack. Any class with a fast autottack doesn’t have time to stop attacking to avoid all that damage, nothing to do with skill. Just a free kill for the mesmer due to autoattack not stopping.

You have Auto attack turned on… there’s your first problem. Turn that off in PvP. You want all of your actions to be deliberate. Auto attack opens you up to damage from the very thing we’re complaining about here.

Clip.6845:

lioka qiao.8734:

Confusion and retaliation were intended to punish their victims for lack of awareness. They’re like Empathy and Backfire from GW1. Confusion applies to an enemy, Retaliation applies to yourself.
The issue is that too many players are incapable of developing situational awareness and end up punished by these conditions. Instead of making these players adapt, anet nerfs these skills so they don’t have to.

Problem is games where player skill is required don’t pull in money anymore. The shareholders say nerf these things and make Arrow carts overpowered and the devs listen.

Lol, situational awereness… You had to stop attacking and dodging completely or you died instantly due to autotattack making confusion hit for 3k+ damage, per attack. Any class with a fast autottack doesn’t have time to stop attacking to avoid all that damage, nothing to do with skill. Just a free kill for the mesmer due to autoattack not stopping.

3k come on! confusion staks last for such a short time that the 3k mark goes down quickly to 1k. and u can also slow down your attack. sometimes i wanna run in and cast a ton of stuff,but get hit by another glammesmer so i moonwalk back a few steps and cast nullfield around me to cleanse the condition and then cast my stuff.how hard is that? u got condition removers right? use them!

lioka qiao.8734:

Confusion and retaliation were intended to punish their victims for lack of awareness. They’re like Empathy and Backfire from GW1. Confusion applies to an enemy, Retaliation applies to yourself.
The issue is that too many players are incapable of developing situational awareness and end up punished by these conditions. Instead of making these players adapt, anet nerfs these skills so they don’t have to.

Problem is games where player skill is required don’t pull in money anymore. The shareholders say nerf these things and make Arrow carts overpowered and the devs listen.

You have said it all, very good post sir.

Zen.8497:

lioka qiao.8734:

Confusion and retaliation were intended to punish their victims for lack of awareness. They’re like Empathy and Backfire from GW1. Confusion applies to an enemy, Retaliation applies to yourself.
The issue is that too many players are incapable of developing situational awareness and end up punished by these conditions. Instead of making these players adapt, anet nerfs these skills so they don’t have to.

Problem is games where player skill is required don’t pull in money anymore. The shareholders say nerf these things and make Arrow carts overpowered and the devs listen.

You have said it all, very good post sir.

In small scale combat, I agree completely. Idiots spamming skills will kill themselves. I think this change however was because of how common almost constant confusion in larger scale combat was becoming. Don’t attack isn’t a solution for confusion if it is constantly being reapplied. Confusion bombs were the issue in my opinion, not just a 1v1 kind of situation where somebody couldn’t simply wait out the couple seconds of confusion.

This reminds me of the argument they had about Backfire, Spiteful spirit, etc back in the days of GW1. The arguments were the same. You have those who have the awareness necessary to not die to backfire (and it’s obvious marks) and those who don’t and end up spamming firebolt to their deaths or worse blowing a Protective Spirit on a Diversion.

Those who couldn’t handle it came crying to the forums and very little if anything was done about it.

Now… We’re lucky to find anything that requires a shred of skill before it gets nerfed into the ground.

PS. Yes I’m of the belief that thieves were never overpowered and I had proof of it in an sPvP match. A guy rolled a thief after watching steamrolling videos on youtube faced my guardian. I smashed him into the ground while his attacks bounced off me. It got to the point where he had to ask me what he was doing wrong. I gave it to him straight… those videos were performed by skilled players who understood their class and character really well.

PPS: If you’re getting 3k ticks of confusion wait it out and shatter the mesmer doing it. There’s no way he has defenses with that kind of condition damage gear stacking. Better yet every class has at least 1 condition removal, specifically for this situation. Use it and shatter the perp.

PPPS: In large scale combat you need to carry AOE debuffers (like Null Field, Well of Power, Engineer healing turret, etc) and use them to be effective. T2 and T3 zerg clashes are all about understanding the condition damage metagame and that several classes carry tools to counter it. Use these tools to be effective at crushing an enemy zerg. Even if you’re pugging in a zerg carry some kind of aoe utility like this. It will come in handy and even mean the difference between a victory and defeat.

D W.5179:

Zen.8497:

lioka qiao.8734:

Confusion and retaliation were intended to punish their victims for lack of awareness. They’re like Empathy and Backfire from GW1. Confusion applies to an enemy, Retaliation applies to yourself.
The issue is that too many players are incapable of developing situational awareness and end up punished by these conditions. Instead of making these players adapt, anet nerfs these skills so they don’t have to.

Problem is games where player skill is required don’t pull in money anymore. The shareholders say nerf these things and make Arrow carts overpowered and the devs listen.

You have said it all, very good post sir.

In small scale combat, I agree completely. Idiots spamming skills will kill themselves. I think this change however was because of how common almost constant confusion in larger scale combat was becoming. Don’t attack isn’t a solution for confusion if it is constantly being reapplied. Confusion bombs were the issue in my opinion, not just a 1v1 kind of situation where somebody couldn’t simply wait out the couple seconds of confusion.

I can agree with you post. But read it carefully.

Confusion bombs were the issue.

Not confusion.

They should have nerfed the application, non the condition. Cap glam confusion application to 5 ppl. Cap confusion to 5 -10 stacks. Nerf one trait (they did so btw).

Not obliterate confusion altoghether.

Exactly. Confusing enchantments was the worst (in terms of balancing) trait, but a little bit of work would have completely sorted out the confusion problems. Well, now it took them five minutes instead of an hour to nerf confusion instead of fixing it. Just like their failed attempts to balance portals. They just screw up constantly, don’t know if they’re lazy or incompetent.

Oozo.7856:

Confusion did too much damage in WvW, now it doesn’t do enough. Perhaps an internal cooldown on taking damage should be put in place so the damage on confusion can be increased and still punish spam-clickers without obliterating them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YnU-YG8Kbc

The problems I always had with confusion were that:

1. Even though the damage scaled linearly, the potential threat posed by low stacks was pathetic and near totally inconsequential while the potential threat of higher stacks was insane.
2. It triggered on weird stuff that nobody would expect given its description: dodge roll traits anyone? Totally unintuitive. This should be fixed regardless of anything else imo.
3. The shatter delivery system is just stupid. Especially since a single minor trait more than doubled a mesmers potential confusion output. I don’t pretend to know enough about engis to know if they have something similar, but any attempt to bring confusion out of it’s current hole almost HAS to adjust this mesmer trait in some fashion. Personally I think It would be cool if it only added confusion to Mind Wrack and added burning to Cry of Frustration, because it would limit how much confusion a single mesmer could potentially stack while also lessening how dependent condition mesmers are on confusion for their damage.

All the nerfing has really done is moved the threat bar. Now minimal stacks are even more of a joke than they were, the moderate amount of stacks that a single personal could reasonably put out are a slightly less funny joke and can even be a moderate threat when the stars align, while maxed stacks are still a fairly significant threat even though they won’t take off half your HP in one tic. It seems exceptionally lazy and has turned several viable specs into largely useless ones over night. Which is something I tend to oppose on principal.

So there are a few ways I can imagine to muck with confusion, while still retaining it’s nature as a punishment mechanic:

• Proc late limitations. Which would help reduce the significant threat posed by higher stacks while further neutering the already minimal threat posed by smaller stacks.
• Lower stack cap point. Single enough, limiting the maximum amount of confusion stacks to say, 10, instead of 25 would do a lot to limit the higher potential damage of confusion without negatively impacting the the threat of lower stacks (however impotent they may be).
• Non-linear intensity stacking. The previous value of 1 tic of 1 stack of confusion was equal to about 1 tic of 3 stacks of bleeding; post-nerf it’s sitting at pretty much half that. But what if the value of confusion stacks started off high and then tailed off in intensity? What if, for example, the first stack was the equivalent of burning (currently worth a tic of ~6 stacks of bleeds or 4 stacks of current confusion), stacks 2-6 were equivalent to the old confusion, stacks 7-11 were worth the current amount, and the rest of the stacks up to 25 were equal to 1 stack of bleeding? That would vastly increase the worth of lower stacks while mitigating the extreme threat posed by larger stacks.

I think it’s obvious, given how much text was devoted to it, that I prefer the latter. I don’t know if their system can even support such a thing and the numbers are obviously totally up in the air. But it seems to me to be a far more elegant solution to the issue than the hamfisted nerf they implemented. Which ruined builds and rendered all the effort sunk into building gear around those builds naught but wasted time. Now mesmers can join warriors, guardians, and elementalists in not having a condition spec worth spit; doesn’t seem like progress to me.

Iruwen.3164:

They just screw up constantly, don’t know if they’re lazy or incompetent.

This is what i ask myself since months, everytime i look at monthly balancing.