Guild Wars 2

So, as many of you know they made a new effect up to “fix” the mesmer sword 2 skill description. It used to say that the skill applied distortion. Most players thought it was a bug that this skill wasn’t effected by Masterful Reflection. What do you think was the reasoning behind this change? Is a 2s reflection every 10s (8s if you trait for reduced cooldown) too much for mesmer? It only reflects projectiles, mind you.

Did they ever comment on the reasoning behind the change? It seems like they would have, but I have been unable to find anything about it on the forums. The way I see it is, I’m fine with nerfs if they’re justified. But this seems like it was a very knee jerk move. They seemed to have taken the nerf bat to a skill that was never working properly to begin with.

So in this thread, discuss the potential balance issues that the trait effecting sword 2 might cause and any feelings you have about Anet’s response to the issue. Please keep it civil, productive and on topic.

Link to original discussion/comments?

It is already one of the best skills in the game. Great damage on top of complete vulnerability on a 10 sec cooldown is amazing. With your suggestion it would be the strongest skill in the game, hands down.

It would destroy anyone that uses projectiles. Now, I know people shouldn’t attack during BF but their reaction will always be a bit slow. You can at least expect 3 arrows to be fire back which is an extra 3k damage on top of the mind blowing burst a mesmer has already.

We’re already one of the best classes of the game, this would simply be over the top.

When specced for it, Mesmer has significantly more uptime and options for projectile reflects than any other class in the game. As stated by anet, the effect from blurred frenzy was never intended to function as a projectile reflect. Additionally, it would be an exceedingly strange incarnation of that effect. The blur from blurred frenzy is an active defense allowing you to safely chainsaw at something, not a purely defensive or utilitarian skill, and having projectile reflection piggyback onto all of the other utility that it has would be over-the-top.

With focus traited, you can already keep up a reflect field at lest 80% of the time easy and if done right 100% of the time.

So giving mez another reflect skill, is not needed and even if it is needed and can be use to cover the small gaps when rang can hit you.

Thats just make it way OP

EsLafiel.4517:

With focus traited, you can already keep up a reflect field at lest 80% of the time easy and if done right 100% of the time.

So giving mez another reflect skill, is not needed and even if it is needed and can be use to cover the small gaps when rang can hit you.

Thats just make it way OP

How do you get 100% uptime on reflection? And better yet who cares. Projectile damage is the least of mesmer concerns. It’s the melee aoe damage and aoe spells that blow our kitten up on contact. 1 swing of any npc/player and if you don’t have your illusions separated they all just died.

Hopefully they will revisit mesmer traits and weed out the useless ones or add in something that makes them useful. As it stands you’re right we get sweet f-all for distortion making a couple of traits pointless. Expect this to happen some time early next year if my timeline estimation has any accuracy.

I kind of preferred the name ‘Distortion’ for the ability over ‘Blur’. Sounds more sophisticated and in line with the mesmer professions general descriptions with it’s ‘Obfuscate. Disorient. Confuse’ and many other more interesting uses of the english language.

That’s beside the point though, I can see why they’d want to remove reflection. It’s already a very good skill without it.

The damage and scaling on sword2 is really not all that. It is mediocre, if not bad, for a melee cleave cooldown skill.

Take light armor into consideration, the distortion on sword2 is great but also necessary. Without it, melee mesmer specs would be a joke reserved for “creative” people that have never seriously played a min/max MMO.

And the reflection is only good if you know you are gonna be fighting ranged players… I would personally rather still have the MW has a higher crit chance by 10%.

The tool tip was bugged. It said blurred frenzy grants distortion, in fact it granted blur. That is why blurred frenzy never worked with masterful distortion, because it never actually granted distortion. Mouse over the effect it gives you and you’ll see that.

I think it was intentional it didn’t work. Or why have two buffs doing almost the same thing? Maybe it should be changed to work together, that’s a different question.