Guild Wars 2

I wanted to open up a quick discussion about Confounding Suggestions (Often referred as CS). After the patch, I’ve been working extensively with this trait to see it’s full extent and I’ve noticed some really interesting things.

• Works with Runes of the Mesmer (33% Daze duration)
• Works with Sigil of Paralyzation. (15% Daze/Stun duration)
• Augments Staff, Offhand Sword, Mantra of Distraction, Diversion [F3]

The builds I’ve practice with this trait are always Sword/Sword – Staff in builds that run 30/20/20/0/0 or 30/30/10/0/0 or 30/20/0/0/20 (Mind Crush variants) or 30/10/0/0/30 (Shatterlock).

25% Daze Duration. 50% Stun chance. Worth it?
So much yes. While the duration increases don’t seem like much, they combine to give a near 2-second daze and allows us to chain-daze very easily to keep opponents locked down in a way that our untraited dazes just can’t match up. We can outmatch any other class when it comes to chain dazing, but the technique isn’t as faceroll simple as a Warrior. Since our dazes/stuns don’t do damage most of the time, we have to combine them with our other abilities to get the full effect.
(Example: iLeap+Swap →[F3] Diversion-> Summon iDuelist -> Magic Bullet -> Summon iWarlock -> Chaos Storm -> Phase Retreat -> Daze Mantra -> iLeap+Swap ->Blurred Frenzy. //Opponent tries to heal// Daze Mantra.)

In a fight, life and death really does come down to those factions of a second between a stnubreak, dodge, and heal. Every bit of daze duration helps.

• CS w/ Staff
  It almost feels like Confounding Suggestions was made for the staff. I’ve nailed stun on all 6 hits of Chaos Storm in a tPvP match… and just burst out laughing. This stun-to-laughter scenario is actually not too uncommon, as I know I’m not the only one who’s nailed 3 or more stuns in a single C-Storm. What makes this so good is that in order to take Confounding you have to pick up Dazzling and Wastrel’s Punishment, which means that Chaos Storm is now stacking Vulnerability ontop of the many other debilitating condtions and doing even more damage (Full berzerker C-storm can already reach over 4k damage WITHOUT buffs). Which of course also means that iWarlock is hitting harder.
  Staff is already a good control weapon because of Storm & armor, but with Confounding Suggestions a traited staff makes for a devastating AoE every 28 seconds.

• CS w/Sword
  Lets just get this clear: Sword/Sword always looks awesome. Spartacus has proven this, Drizzt has proven this, and now so has the Mesmer. Unfortunately in this case I’m only taking about Offhand sword, which performs very well with the Scepter as well. Offhand sword, when traited, gives us a piercing projectile daze on a 10s cooldown. This is easily one of our best dazes for multiple reasons: Interrupting a rezz, the ridiculously short cast time, the only projectile daze we have, and one of our most reliable forms of interrupts.
  CS now makes it a potential stun, 5x Vuln on daze, and 8x Vuln on interrupt. This pretty much gives it the added utility of being able to stop enemies from running away.

• CS w/ Daze Mantra
  CS works really well with Mantra of Distraction, turning our most reliable daze/interrupt into a potential stun. It’s as simple and straightforward as it sounds, but definitely effective. Mantra of Distraction is a great skill on its own, and practically a must-have for all interrupt builds with or without CS.

• CS w/ Diversion [F3]
  Diversion is always useful, but of all our shatters it takes the most skill to utilize effectively. F3 is also another reason I prefer the Staff in lockdown builds since staff gives you the most precise control over the position of your clones making it easier to distance your clones chain a 2 to 3-clone Diversion shatter.
  Confounding offers a lot of possibilities for Diversion, since the shatter can be traited to hit in an AoE. I think that CS may be the only trait worth paring with Imbued Diversion besides Deceptive Evasion, but even then I’ve NEVER seen anyone utilize Imbued Diversion effectively enough to make it worth taking over iPersona, which also synergizes well with CS since Persona makes you become an instant interrupt vuln-stacking potential stun. (Yes, that’s a challenge.)

All in all, I’m happy with the buff and I think it’s a step in the right direction for Lockdown builds… but practically only for lockdown builds. The same way you normally won’t take Prismatic Understanding for a non-stealth build (granted, I use PU in a support build for Protection-sharing), or iPersona for a non-shatter build, you wouldn’t take CS for a non-lockdown build.

How has your experience been?

It’s hugely effective in teamfights if you spec that way, much more so than regular shatter now. Getting off a couple of dazes and a stun on a focussed target gets them downed fast. Dropping chaos storm on people trying to revive a downstate is another killer.

I’ve tended to use Helseth’s staff-GS combo, probably I should try sword-sword with Staff for something a bit more balanced between team and 1v1.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Confounding offers a lot of possibilities for Diversion, since the shatter can be traited to hit in an AoE. I think that CS may be the only trait worth paring with Imbued Diversion besides Deceptive Evasion, but even then I’ve NEVER seen anyone utilize Imbued Diversion effectively enough to make it worth taking over iPersona, which also synergizes well with CS since Persona makes you become an instant interrupt vuln-stacking potential stun. (Yes, that’s a challenge.)

The notion that Confounding Suggestions (CS) is the only trait worth pairing with Imbued Diversion is definitely debatable. To me Chaotic Interruption (CI) + Imbued Diversion (ID) gives you more for your costly 30 trait points, if you are taking the right weapons. Take the original chillruption build (x/x/30/x/30 required) for example, which is very effective with Staff/GS but can also be run with Staff/Sw-Sw, where weapons can be fully traited with IC cool downs to boot. With CI here, all you have to do is interrupt, but with CS you have to daze to proc that RnG stun. Granted we have ample daze sources, only a couple are AoE. Our interrupt sources include those that inflict daze, plus our AoE pushes and pulls. So, it goes without saying that there are more opportunities to interrupt as a whole, making CI a viable option to take using weapons that do or don’t inflict daze, hence more build diversity available.

I’m not discounting the power of all those dazes potentially turning into stuns with CS. Stuns are typically harder to break than conditions, and with the right gear, you can spec for longer condition duration to extend that immob/chill/blind/cripple, or spec for longer daze/stun duration (para sigil/mesmer runes/CS). So I believe there is a great case for both, don’t get me wrong. How about running one of each in a team comp? Wouldn’t that be a fun experiment.

Being the statement was made with Imbued Diversion specifically in mind, let’s talk about that. This is very close.

• The CS Diversion is going to AoE daze (albeit longer) and RnG stun. CI is going to AoE daze (albeit shorter) and immob – chill/blind/cripple if it interrupts.
• In both cases, if the F3 doesn’t result in an interrupt and CS doesn’t land the RnG stun, they both aren’t any better (ok except that slightly longer daze with CS).
• Now, CS has the stun potential and that gives it an advantage, but we’re ultimately going for interrupts here, right or … ? If F3 interrupts with CS, it just interrupts and nothing else happens. If F3 interrupts with CI, it’s going to be more powerful with Imbued Diversion due to the Chaos that ensues there.

The brass tacks here are, if you can land the RnG stun, I think CS is better with Imbued Diversion. It’s that RnG that IMO makes chaotic interruption the better trait to take with Imbued Diversion due to the immense payoff you get with it if you interrupt.

Might be a good mesmerized podcast debate at some point.

Just a note on one thing you mentioned.

You said the CS is a great trait for lockdown builds…but only for lockdown builds. This is working as intended.

Grandmaster traits are supposed to be build-defining changes. If you go to grandmaster tier and take a grandmaster trait, you should be building around that, defining your build with that trait. Far too often it happens that grandmaster traits are wimpy or poorly defined (inspiration anyone?). CS, PU, IP, and even Imbued Diversion are rare examples of traits that are truly grandmaster.

@chaos,

do 2 sigils of paralyzation stack?

@scam

They should change the cripple on CI..

I don’t get the logic for it if the enemy is already immobilized. If the cripple procs after the immobilize then it will be better. But i’d rather change the cripple into a diffrent mechanic or condition.

I agree with sticker about the cripple. If the immobilize was a stun instead, then it would be a bit better since someone can stunbreak but still have cripple, but even then it’s better to have another condition.

@Pyro I would add Harmonious Mantras to that GM list as well

Yeah there’s definitely some things I would change about CI if given my druthers. One of the things I’ve said before in other threads would be to have the 2nd random condition come after the first has ended, or some form of that. I have some ideas for Imbued Diversion as well – it’s indeed powerful as a GM trait, but understand why it gets attention as somewhat of a weak GM.

Not to get too off track, I believe the topic was about Confounding Suggestions

Oh, and the para sigils used to stack, but following the 10/15 patch when Anet fixed the bloated duration bug, they ceased to do so.

I dislike that the trait will increase all of our dazes to >1sec (2sec in some cases), but then completely replace it with a 1sec stun 50% of the time.

chaos storm is bugged with confounding suggestions. the daze chance is WAY higher than it is meant to be.

Yes how CS become popular.. i think its not cuz of %25 daze duration… its about CHaos Storm that increased change of hitting daze..
@BlueFrog we cant say bug.. it became as it should be.. we can say unseen buff..

I have been using my lockdown build as a wvw commander atm, and it is working really well. It incorporates cs into it and as a result dropping a chaos storm onto a large zerg can cause havoc throughout it. Fun to watch and play with, cs is just a great trait especially with the new patch just been.
Most of all it fits into most area’s of the game, pvp and wvw (however lacking somewhat in pve) which makes it a good and interesting trait

I hope its a buff rather than a bug but if a bug why post it here for ppl to exploit and not the bug report forums? -_-

Not sure I agree chance for stun is higher with chaos storm. I’ve seen people claim it, but not experienced it myself. Bears proper testing if anyone has time.

@sendmark: I think it might be a bit higher, but the daze isn’t guaranteed to proc at all.

@Pyro: Exactly, that’s why I made the comparison to PU for stealth and IP for shatter. You bring up an interesting point though, I think it’d be good for the guide to have a list of grandmaster-worthy traits and builds/skills to make around them.

@skcamow: That’s true, I had actually forgotten about CI. I would definitely place CI in the small list of traits that synergize really well with Imbued Diversion. As for the argument of which is preferable.. I’d still give it to Confounding. With or without the stun you’re getting something for your trait investment, and Confounding still allows for longer strings of chain-dazes even if the stun never procs (hell, ESPECIALLY if the stun doesn’t proc) whereas if I didn’t take Confounding and went into Chaotic instead then I’d only sometimes be getting a payoff for the trait investment. Yes, Chaotic is more predictable, AND works with nearly all our weapons, AND arguably more reliable for group fights… but would require a different sort of lockdown build. Confounding is more geared to shutting down skills, Chaotic more towards halting opponent’s momentum.

It’s interesting that you brought up using both CI and Imbued Diversion in a build because I was planing to test it this weekend. I just can’t decide where to put the last 10 points, obviously it would be 0/0/30/0/30. I’d imagine it would be best used as a shatter build so it would make sense to get the 20% Mind Wrack damage I suppose. I need to play with it.

Skcamow’s Chillruption goes 10/0/30/0/30 and he’s written an in-dept guide on it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-ChillRuption/first#post2497944

Personally, I’d think putting the points in Dueling may be the best bet because Vigor-on-crit is glorious.

I forgot about that vigor. I take it for granted until it’s gone

Actually lately I’ve been spending those 10 in inspiration for mender’s purity. Really hard to pass that one up, especially in PvP. There are certainly some solid choices. When I run the build Sw-Sw/Staff (which is a lot of fun), I’ll take blade training, etc.

Running 30/20/0/0/20 with Staff/GS and I’d go as far as to say that it’s even more cheese than PU builds because of the possibility of perma stunning someone

@ Bearlin
That makes sense, but I think the great (or cheese) thing about PU is the immense amount of survival…ness it offers, which allows you to juggle a couple people and escape if things get really bad, whereas 30/20/0/0/20 seems more 1V1 oriented and has less chances of escaping.

There is definitely a bug, and this is how it seems to work: the game calculates the 50% CS probability at every CStorm tick, so one of each two ticks stuns the enemy on average. The code behind the trait “thinks” that the CStorm applies a daze at each tick, so it calculates the 50% probability and applies a stun on the enemy if the result is true.

There is a behaviour you can easily verify that definitely proves the existence of a bug: When you drop a CStorm on an enemy, different things can happen on a tick:
-> A condition(poison, chill, weakness) is applied to your enemy and no cc – normal behaviour
-> A daze is applied to your enemy along with 5 vuln stacks – normal behaviour
-> A stun is applied to your enemy along with 5 vuln stacks – normal behaviour; this means that the CStorm procced its daze and CS turned it into a stun
-> A stun is applied to your enemy along with a condition (poison…) – this is not a normal behaviour. This means that the CStorm procced a condition, not a daze, but still the trait worked as if ithe CStorm had applied a daze and so calculated it’s 50% probability and applied a stun.

Personally i see this bug as a sad one because it’s biasing our idea of how viable lockdown builds became with the CS buff. It makes them feel stronger than they should be because we can have a great impact on any kind of fight by simply stunlocking people with a CStorm and bursting them down.

Imo this bug makes CStorm very OP: if you can press a button and stunlock an enemy for 5 sec there is clearly a problem. So this bug has to and will be fixed.

If i don’t post this in the bug report section it’s because I have a poor english and i know i made a ton of mistakes in this post =b so I would prefer somebody else to write a clear post in the appropriate subforum for the devs.

Obviously I like this bug =b it was fun but now it has to disappear so we can properly play lockdown builds and correctly measure their viability.

Lol, stability, dodge, portal anyone? It’s not op. The chance that 5 stuns occur in 1 chaos storm is so small. Sure 3x stun is pretty much possible, but if you get 1 daze it will overwrite the stun and you can dodge out the chaos storm.

Imo, putting 30 points to make chaos storm like it is now seems perfectly fine with me. Mesmer needed a buff in aoe lockdown, well here you got one for 30 points.

Ty teogeos for looking into the bug. I agree that while awesome, it should be fixed immediately.

I also agree with BlackDevil, that this bug significantly boosted the viability of lockdown Mesmer by giving us a reliable form of AoE lockdown. I hope ArenaNet isn’t just throwing this on the “To-be-patched” list and are seriously studying how profound the effects are versus how OP it is. I’ve been running with CS for months now, and I personally feel like it needed some extra oomph to be grandmaster-worthy and this bug is really close to what the trait truly needs. I still feel like the 25% daze duration increase should’ve been nerfed to 20% and replaced Wastrel’s Punishment instead of being tacked onto Confounding. Maybe something like this would’ve been better:

“Confounding Suggestions now has a 25% chance to proc a 1s stun after the initial daze”

Might be OP, might not, can’t say for sure.

There definitely is a bug, and it’s starting to become more well known from what I’ve seen in sPvP. The mesmers drop a null then a chaos storm and when that’s in the middle of a team fight there’s no chance at winning. It works exactly how teogeos says, it’s proccing stuns and condis together and it’s definitely the biggest lockdown in the game at the moment. I do think this is a great trait, and it did need a buff, but this bug is giving it a bad name fast.

I would rather see the trait switched to something that would make the daze mantra aoe daze instead of this and then go with 30 points in chaos to immobilize on interrupt or something. Either your damage or your survivability would be kitten with that build most likely and it gives a pretty good buff for mesmers to actually aoe lockdown.

But hey, doubt that would get into the game ever.

Since there hasn’t been any official statement about whether or not it’s a bug, I’m not going to make any assumptions about it and just critique it as it is. IMO, from having used 30/20/0/0/20 in tpvp and wvw, it really isn’t as OP as people think it is. There are so many counters to this (dodge, stability, balanced stance, etc.) that people who are experienced enough to know that it’s not good to stay standing in a noisy red circle can easily dodge out of it.

In TPVP, many high level teams have a guardian/warrior or maybe both in their party. Those two classes, from my experience, are the most difficult ones to stun using CS because of stability and whatnot.
In WvW, one has to spend time and effort to strip the enemy group of stability first before casting Chaos Storm. A group that is experienced enough can either avoid the red circle or provide stability for their light armor classes when needed.

The only time I would consider CS being overpowered is if I were to use it in hotjoins and blindly spam Chaos Storm in the midst of an unorganized group.

I honestly think chaos storm really does need to be fixed. While having constantly 7 stuns from this ability is hilarious, it kinda is overpowered. The first time that happened to chaos he raged. But anyway, I do like the idea of the stun after the daze. If chaotic interuppt was applied the same way I would be happy.

I would actully like more control over the confounding suggestions trait..
like: if you interrupt an enemy it stuns them instead of dazeing
or something like that.
I think it should reward actully interrupting in some way rather than being a RNG trait(need less RNG)

A quick question. Would Chaotic Interruption be redundant if used with CS in a, for example, 30/x/30/x/x ?

trooper.2650:

A quick question. Would Chaotic Interruption be redundant if used with CS in a, for example, 30/x/30/x/x ?

You would still get the benefit of the interrupts resulting from pushes/pulls, but any chaotic interruption procs from daze interrupts (of which we have many) are going to potentially be nullified by confounding suggestions.

If you don’t have much dazing going on in your build then yeah, but on the other hand, one primary strength of taking confounding suggestions is to increase daze duration, so it’s in large part a waste in a build like that.

tl;dr: Don’t take CS and CI together.

pistol also provides a ranged daze on its bounce.. sword is not alone

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I honestly think chaos storm really does need to be fixed. While having constantly 7 stuns from this ability is hilarious, it kinda is overpowered. The first time that happened to chaos he raged. But anyway, I do like the idea of the stun after the daze. If chaotic interuppt was applied the same way I would be happy.

FYI to all, from a thread in the PvP forum:

Josh Davis.6015:

We should have a fix for this included in the next update, barring any complications.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• Works with Sigil of Paralyzation. (15% Daze/Stun duration)

I think we’ve established that nothing a mesmer has other than magic bullet & signet of domination work with sigil of paralyzation. You may not want to encourage people to use this as it’s gimping their builds.

Also very curious how viable mesmer will be once CfS & CS interaction gets fixed/nerfed.