Guild Wars 2

thread fix.

/15 char

Love the changes, especially as someone who likes to run a hybrid condition builds on mesmer. Two critiques, though:

1. Why no love for the confusion duration on the Dueling Grandmaster Minor- Confusing Combatants? This minor is practically useless with confusions current mechanics, should be around 5 seconds.

2. Dropping Superior Sigil of Battle down to 2 stacks is a huge nerf… I completely agree that might stacking is extremely powerful and needed to be toned down, but I think it would have been much more effective to leave battle alone and reduce the effects of might even further instead… like 25 power/cond per stack.

Ok, since nobody cares about PvE I’ll give you guys a breakdown of these buffs.

Deception: Whatever, might save you from an aoe after mob death. No use.

Phantasmal Mage: Slightly better against Mordem Husks (Tough skin) when playing SW condimesmer

Confusing Images: Better against Mordem Husks (Tough skin) when playing SW condimesmer.

Time Warp: Potentially huge buff for dungeons. 1 more Timewarp than pre-patch for 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 and 18 minutes runs.

Illusion of Life: Whatever, better trolling in openworld? No use.

Phantasmal Defender: More Defenders in Fractals, great.

Confusion damage +33%: Semi-Good, you stack some confusion with Feedback procs in dungeons + On clone death Minor. Great for Mordem Husk-hunter condimesmer.

Out of 7 changes, in PvE :

• 2 are useless
• 3 are situational (SW)
• 2 are great changes

(in PvP : 1 great, 1 good, 4 useless and 1 not affecting PvP). It’s not so bad !

Id give all this up for them to fix the bugs, the swap bug for example – when you switch weapons and immeditaly use a skill like iberserker— the skill just goes onto cooldown without actually doing what its suppose to do.

Instead we get buff to a trolling utility ( you have 15s to kill something but the only thing around is a world boss at 95% hp —- how badly to you want to keep on living?), 5 sec less recharge on a utilty that will continue to stilll be largely unused, something to torch 5 well see how it turns out— then again its been used as cannon fodder for shatters anyways, confusing images —-- awesome lets buff the passive side even further- thatll yawn make for yawn some*yawn* intesne battles yawn, timewarp well see if it can make its way back on the bar , deception – lol its something though 90% of the time well just endup 1 cm to the left anyways

ARE YOU NOT SATISFIED?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

echo.2053:

Id give all this up for them to fix the bugs, the swap bug for example – when you switch weapons and immeditaly use a skill like iberserker— the skill just goes onto cooldown without actually doing what its suppose to do.

Instead we get buff to a trolling utility ( you have 15s to kill something but the only thing around is a world boss at 95% hp —- how badly to you want to keep on living?), 5 sec less recharge on a utilty that will continue to stilll be largely unused, something to torch 5 well see how it turns out— then again its been used as cannon fodder for shatters anyways, confusing images —-- awesome lets buff the passive side even further- thatll yawn make for yawn some*yawn* intesne battles yawn, timewarp well see if it can make its way back on the bar , deception – lol its something though 90% of the time well just endup 1 cm to the left anyways

ARE YOU NOT SATISFIED?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I feel like there are some good ironic puns here. Like,

These balance changes are only fit to “distract” Mesmer players.

Don’t let these changes “interrupt” your day.

At least the Devs provided explanations this time, that way you can’t be “confused” about any of their reasons.

What, you were expecting bug fixes, don’t “hit yourself over the head”.

Deception good or bad? It doesn’t matter because you can “target” your feelings toward the Devs here on the forums whether they appear or not.

Oh man, I “slay” like Santa. #bonusleftoverchristmaspuns

By the way, post-patch makes Full Zerk w/ Scholar do 1,62% more damage than Assassin w/ Ranger due to Might being nerfed to 30 power per stack (currently 1,46%). Feel the nerf ~

sounds like PvE condition mesmer has a nice buff, and the time warp CD change will be relevant if there are previous dungeon records where the cooldown wasn’t up in time.

Ross Biddle.2367:

echo.2053:

Id give all this up for them to fix the bugs, the swap bug for example – when you switch weapons and immeditaly use a skill like iberserker— the skill just goes onto cooldown without actually doing what its suppose to do.

Instead we get buff to a trolling utility ( you have 15s to kill something but the only thing around is a world boss at 95% hp —- how badly to you want to keep on living?), 5 sec less recharge on a utilty that will continue to stilll be largely unused, something to torch 5 well see how it turns out— then again its been used as cannon fodder for shatters anyways, confusing images —-- awesome lets buff the passive side even further- thatll yawn make for yawn some*yawn* intesne battles yawn, timewarp well see if it can make its way back on the bar , deception – lol its something though 90% of the time well just endup 1 cm to the left anyways

ARE YOU NOT SATISFIED?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I feel like there are some good ironic puns here. Like,

These balance changes are only fit to “distract” Mesmer players.

Don’t let these changes “interrupt” your day.

At least the Devs provided explanations this time, that way you can’t be “confused” about any of their reasons.

What, you were expecting bug fixes, don’t “hit yourself over the head”.

Deception good or bad? It doesn’t matter because you can “target” your feelings toward the Devs here on the forums whether they appear or not.

Oh man, I “slay” like Santa. #bonusleftoverchristmaspuns

Holy kitten this is soo good, I haven’t bursted out in howls of laughter in the last 5 minutes XD

I don’t think I’m ever going to be able handle mesmer balance previews again after reading this

Fay.2357:

Mesmer:Phantasmal Mage: The illusionary mage summoned by this skill now applies 4 stacks of confusion instead of 3 with their attack. The duration of the confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. The illusionary mage’s rate of fire has been reduced by 1 second.

Baseline compare :
(New) Every 6.75 seconds-4 Stacks vs (Old) Every 7.75s-3 Stacks
If we disregard the bugs that it has, we’re looking at 59.26% vs 38.71% Uptime on Confusion.

Or if you want that in perspective in terms of DPS:
308+0.356*CD vs 151+0.174*CD
Which is off course half that in PvP(because confusion damage in pvp is reduced by 50%)
510 vs 250 DPS at 2000 Condition Damage
1356 vs 499 DPS in PvE.

What we need is not buffs but bug fixes.
No point in buffing on nerfing something that doesn’t work properly or as intended at minimum of 95% cases.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Umm guys?

iMage, 3 stacks, 4 stacks, 50 stacks, 500 stacks? It doesn’t matter how many stacks if mechanically the iMage is flawed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKHY6gJRhXM

Yes this, exactly this, i die a little inside every day because of stuff like this.
Like i said in previously, we don’t need buffs or nerfs, and its not logical to do them when “stuff” does not work properly and does not behave as intended in majority of cases.
What we need first and foremost is bug fixes and functionality improvements, only then we can talk about buffs and nerfs.

what about the torment sigil aoe
do they want to make the condi mesmer more effective in pvp?

Ross Biddle.2367:

Just some new documentation on the true problem with iMage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT0LXhcZ5ek

• 1. iMage cast within range can potentially hit a target walking away slowly. No speed buffs. (opening seconds)
• 2. iMage cannot hit a target at max range walking away slowly (10s)
• 3. iMage well within range is very likely to miss moving targets within range. This includes mid range attacks, and even point blank range. (1:04, 1:38)
• 4. iMage can be “dodged” simply by jumping while moving. (1:00)

Test subject (thanks Tealot) was able to do all this without even realizing what the test was. In other words he wasn’t even trying to avoid the incoming attacks. He was jumping at random.

iMage confusion stacks and duration do need improvement. But no amount of stacks or duration is going to matter if the application is ineffective. iMage needs his buff, but he also needs a redesign to do with it.

Possible solution: iMage uses his own version of Confusing Images. Traited iMage removed condition on pulse within beam. ICD to match current attack/bounce time?

That right there would be a good fix, IMO.

Deception is good, I like that.

Confusing images could still have the channel duration reduced, but I’m glad at least the confusion duration is increased.

Nice to see time warp brought down – might be more attractive then.

IoL and iDefender changes seem negligable, and iMage doesn’t seem like enough buff.

messiah.1908:

what about the torment sigil aoe
do they want to make the condi mesmer more effective in pvp?

Please add shatter condi ,PU doesn’t stealth as much as people think…. but kitten yeah they are but don’t worry at some point zerker/rabid shatter will become celestial with Staff and might on shatter it’s bound to happen they tend to not create proper counters cough..boon hate..cough…cough…

Curunen.8729:

Deception is good, I like that.

Confusing images could still have the channel duration reduced, but I’m glad at least the confusion duration is increased.

Nice to see time warp brought down – might be more attractive then.

IoL and iDefender changes seem negligable, and iMage doesn’t seem like enough buff.

Don’t underestimate the power of 3, even 2 iMages. Especially with improved confusion duration + attack rate.

However iMage still needs fixing.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Curunen.8729:

Deception is good, I like that.

Confusing images could still have the channel duration reduced, but I’m glad at least the confusion duration is increased.

Nice to see time warp brought down – might be more attractive then.

IoL and iDefender changes seem negligable, and iMage doesn’t seem like enough buff.

Don’t underestimate the power of 3, even 2 iMages. Especially with improved confusion duration + attack rate.

However iMage still needs fixing.

3 iMages at once is kind of rare, but I see your point that 2 of them can pack a punch with the increased duration and reduced attack cooldown.

Just reading the notes however is… underwhelming – I was hoping for an iMage overhaul rather than a straightforward numbers tweak.

Would have been cool if they gave the iMage attack the ability to proc Revealed for a short duration. Would have been a creative addition since they claimed long long ago that they wanted to give iMage an interesting role.

Signet of illusions needs a strait 1/4 cast time (reduced from 1 1/4) and a 60 second c/d. (reduced from 90)

Although I’m not that pleased with the might nerfs (after patch 9 might mirror blade is going to be worth like 7.5 right now) at least might stacking builds will not hit as hard.

iMage still needs more to justify it’s c/d imo. I like the idea of reveal maybe in a 360 – 500 radius whatever number between that, that would be balanced and not useless. (even then you still have a long c/d and a phant that doesn’t apply much pressure even after the change)

Also utility phantasms need like 1s castimes at most… 1 1/2 is a bit to long to use in combat without the cover of stealth imo.

These changes are hardly worth talking about for PvP/WvW. Wake me up when they get serious about balancing.