Guild Wars 2

Removing the on demand protection to a random proc is fine to fix chaos armor combo field from being useless. However Adding the 1 sec ICD to it AND having 2/3 boons it gives be completely useless makes the change more negative then anything.

With a 5 sec duration the ICD will allow you to get off 2 boons at most. This isn’t that bad however regeneration on chaos armor is bad, it scales horribly for mesmers and is easily over written by better regen from outside sources (any other proffesion in the game) making regen on chaos armor does nothing against incoming damage. Swiftness is even worse, it might be good from running away (but everyone else has better swiftness application anyway so moot point) but overall this is useless for survival. The only boon worth it is protection but you only have a 1/3 chance to get it and with the ICD your chances are even lower.

Now the conditions are just as bad. Cripple for 3 seconds? Hardly noticeable since everyone has swiftness. Confusion? Piece of kitten. It’s 1 stack that last 3 seconds and suffers from the ICD making it worthless. Blind is the only good condition for survival but again suffers from the ICD plague.

What needs to be done is make chaos armor conditions and boons good. It’s chaos armor, it’s suppose to help with survival but it DOES NOT.

Solution? Keep the ICD but replace the boons and conditions to something that’s worth survival.

Conditions should be: Blind, Fear, and Weakness

Boons should be: Protection, Aegis, and Stability

Now that might seem OP because all of those are extremely useful but because of the ICD they get applied with high limitations but the boons are strong enough on their own that those limitations are negated into a useful chaos armor.

Well, now its almost garbage, garbage like the majority of ele auras. For boons i’d agree on what you mentioned (3sec of protection, 2sec of stability, 3-5sec of aegis). But having Fear is too much tho. Maybe a chance to pro daze? That would nice in combination of Blind and weakness. Now that chaos armor is much weaker than it was, it needs some kind of RNG CC.

Chaos Armor was buffed. The Staff was nerfed.

It never needed the ICD before because it only gave Swiftness/Regen when hit, and only caused cripple/confusion.
So, what you’re saying is… As a buff, Chaos Armor was always horrible (and worse before the patch) but acceptable on the staff because of the on-demand protection.

If you’re using the staff, it comes with at least 10 seconds of Chaos Storm, so you can definitely squeeze more than 2 boons from it.

Regeneration doesn’t scale any differently for Mesmer than it does for any other class. You get out of it what you put into it. Same thing with the rest of the boons. Swiftness works better in PvE, but Swiftness + Cripple should make a difference in combat, even if the opponent has swiftness. Blind is cool, and now our clones can cause blindness/cripple when we iLeap out of Chaos Storm.

Those suggested buffs sound awesome though. The one thing Chaos Armor doesn’t need is Regeneration and it needs more Confusion to be viable (though Torment would probably be a more appropriate condition). I’d honestly just drop Regen/Confusion altogether and leave the rest the same.. and return the protection gained back to 5 seconds.

Chaos Armor was buffed, and isn’t/never was horrible, but could be a bit better. Staff was nerfed as a result. Now Chaos Armor is better/worse depending on your build, and staff is better for teammates.

No chaos armor was buffed for combo field to actually be useful. It only gave swiftness and regen which does nothing for survival. It now gives protection like it originally was suppose to be. However with the ICD and kittenty boons and conditions it gives and the fact that it’s not a reliable source of protection anymore it’s an overall nerf.

And it doesn’t matter if you define the change as a nerf or a buff. Chaos armor is still crap in it’s current state. The only reason it was useful on staff #4 is because it gave a reliable protection. Now it’s just bad.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Chaos Armor was buffed. The Staff was nerfed.

It never needed the ICD before because it only gave Swiftness/Regen when hit, and only caused cripple/confusion.
So, what you’re saying is… As a buff, Chaos Armor was always horrible (and worse before the patch) but acceptable on the staff because of the on-demand protection.

If you’re using the staff, it comes with at least 10 seconds of Chaos Storm, so you can definitely squeeze more than 2 boons from it.

Regeneration doesn’t scale any differently for Mesmer than it does for any other class. You get out of it what you put into it. Same thing with the rest of the boons. Swiftness works better in PvE, but Swiftness + Cripple should make a difference in combat, even if the opponent has swiftness. Blind is cool, and now our clones can cause blindness/cripple when we iLeap out of Chaos Storm.

Those suggested buffs sound awesome though. The one thing Chaos Armor doesn’t need is Regeneration and it needs more Confusion to be viable (though Torment would probably be a more appropriate condition). I’d honestly just drop Regen/Confusion altogether and leave the rest the same.. and return the protection gained back to 5 seconds.

Chaos Armor was buffed, and isn’t/never was horrible, but could be a bit better. Staff was nerfed as a result. Now Chaos Armor is better/worse depending on your build, and staff is better for teammates.

Both the staff and chaos armor were nerfed. Staff because there’s no protection on demand anymore and chaos armor because it can only proc once a sec and this is very noticeable against SB rangers and especially GS mesmers spamming Spatial Surge.

Your missing the fact that it also used to never blind. Enemies cleaving through several chaos armor clones greatly increase that 33% blind proc.

Edit: Chaos armor from combo finishers also never procced protection or blind at all.

But would you have ever used a combo’d Chaos Armor against those same opponents before anyway? Swiftness/Regen wouldn’t have done much; Protection procs are definitely a buff.

As far as the Staff 4? I feel your pain, man.

People keep saying Chaos Armor was “buffed” but they conveniently ignore the new 1 second ICD. The cooldown is a nerf that limits the buffs you receive.

Before you received 4 seconds of protection. Now you might receive 5 seconds IF you are incredibly lucky with RNG.

Yes I know that other players can now get protection from chaos armor — but we are not applying chaos armor to others — someone else is with a blast finisher. Teams are not relying on chaos armor (nor will they with the change) as a reliable source of protection. The protection is just a little bit of frosting on a well timed blast finisher. Remember that they may get 5s if RNG is incredibly fortunate for them. Your entire party is definitely not getting 5s each as the odds rapidly approach impossibility.

Also consider that the ICD greatly reduces the power of Chaos Armor in a focused-fire PvP situation. This is a nerf — you can argue it as a “fix” to match other auras, but the change still makes the skill less useful.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

But would you have ever used a combo’d Chaos Armor against those same opponents before anyway? Swiftness/Regen wouldn’t have done much; Protection procs are definitely a buff.

As far as the Staff 4? I feel your pain, man.

You ignore the 1sec CD, this is a huge nerf. I was surprised almost no one playing ele ******** on forums when this was implemented to their auras because i could get up to like 15sec of annoying chill spamming GS and now like 4sec… Back when i ran condi builds often, i liked to just stand in low damaging aoe and stack tones of free confusion, now you can’t do that anymore.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Your missing the fact that it also used to never blind. Enemies cleaving through several chaos armor clones greatly increase that 33% blind proc.

Edit: Chaos armor from combo finishers also never procced protection or blind at all.

Chaos armor used to cause blind so I have no idea what you are talking about. I use to love combining chaos armor with blinding befuddlement before they nerfed both confusion and BB (now has a crap 5 second CD). It made for a powerful stack of confusion since 2/3 of chaos armor would cause a stack of it.

Nordic Natedog.4360:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Your missing the fact that it also used to never blind. Enemies cleaving through several chaos armor clones greatly increase that 33% blind proc.

Edit: Chaos armor from combo finishers also never procced protection or blind at all.

Chaos armor used to cause blind so I have no idea what you are talking about. I use to love combining chaos armor with blinding befuddlement before they nerfed both confusion and BB (now has a crap 5 second CD). It made for a powerful stack of confusion since 2/3 of chaos armor would cause a stack of it.

It wasn’t blinding like 4-5 patches ago but it does blind for months now so i dunno what Duck is talking about-.-

You misunderstand what I mean. (Not talking about the staff. I agree about the staff. I’m talking specifically about the Ethereal + Leap/Blast Combo)

Before the ICD, what did Chaos Armor give you? Swiftness and Regen. What did it do to the enemy? 1 glitched tick of Blind, and Confusion or Cripple.

What does Chaos Armor give you now? Protection, Swiftness, or Regen. I’d personally rather the protection chance (biased. I have boon duration and usually carry a glamour) than simply Swiftness and Protection. And blind is the best of the 3 conditions.

We can have Chaos Armor procced more often than not with a traited staff and atleast 1 glamour (Null Field or Feedback). We relied MORE on combos to get Chaos Armor in the first place, but this was largely ignored due to how great Staff 4 (which wasn’t great. The instant Protection was great) was. Which means that opponents have to gamble a lot more when hitting us. Not only because of the protection, but the cripple/blind they constantly risk applying on themselves since we so frequently have the armor on. In the past, enemies could just attack us with abandon without having to care at all of the repercussions. Now, especially for a condition build, it’s a lot more dangerous.

Now we have more protection uptime than we did before, and enemies risk more than a petty cripple when attacking us. The problem is how frickin’ unreliable it is.. thus the suggestion to remove Regeneration altogether.

People keep ignoring the new benefits of the skill to complain about what we’ve lost. Its a painful change, but only looking at the negative will make it seem a lot worse than it is. I want my on-demand protection back too.

Edit: From what I’ve seen, Chaos Armor used to be glitched to only blind ONCE upon initial activation, and then never again for it’s duration.

As others have said it’s a buff for Chaos Armour in general, but a nerf for the Mesmer Chaos Armour skill. It was a great way to punish spammy classes (similarly to confusion pre-nerf) and the great big purple ball around the Mesmer was a sort of “don’t you go touching me right now” signal for opponents. With this change it’s guaranteed that an opponent will only ever have to potentially deal with 3 condition applications no matter how spammy they are. Before, when fighting a staff Mesmer that had used Chaos Armour, I would stop using spatial surge to avoid stacking up confusion and cripple, but now I can continue to spam spatial surge safe in the knowledge that at max I will only get 3 condition procs. It’s great that the blind now works, but it’s definitely become a less interesting skill. I really think Anet are nerfing the wrong things on Mesmers.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

We can have Chaos Armor procced more often than not with a traited staff and atleast 1 glamour (Null Field or Feedback). We relied MORE on combos to get Chaos Armor in the first place, but this was largely ignored due to how great Staff 4 (which wasn’t great. The instant Protection was great) was. Which means that opponents have to gamble a lot more when hitting us. Not only because of the protection, but the cripple/blind they constantly risk applying on themselves since we so frequently have the armor on. In the past, enemies could just attack us with abandon without having to care at all of the repercussions. Now, especially for a condition build, it’s a lot more dangerous.

Now we have more protection uptime than we did before, and enemies risk more than a petty cripple when attacking us. The problem is how frickin’ unreliable it is.. thus the suggestion to remove regeneration. [/b]

This is what I was going to say. Not as well, but same altogether. I’m taking noticeably less damage from groups. Using blast from torch into ethereals to give more people chaos armor puts blind out all over the place. I can deal with the change. I feel its more of a buff personally.

Simonoly.4352:

As others have said it’s a buff for Chaos Armour in general, but a nerf for the Mesmer Chaos Armour skill. It was a great way to punish spammy classes (similarly to confusion pre-nerf) and the great big purple ball around the Mesmer was a sort of “don’t you go touching me right now” signal for opponents. With this change it’s guaranteed that an opponent will only ever have to potentially deal with 3 condition applications no matter how spammy they are. Before, when fighting a staff Mesmer that had used Chaos Armour, I would stop using spatial surge to avoid stacking up confusion and cripple, but now I can continue to spam spatial surge safe in the knowledge that at max I will only get 3 condition procs. It’s great that the blind now works, but it’s definitely become a less interesting skill. I really think Anet are nerfing the wrong things on Mesmers.

After reading this, it seems you are really saying it’s a ‘nerf’. Opponents were scared of attacking when you had chaos armor pre-patch — and now post-patch they can simply ignore it as it’s only three condition applications (and similarly only 3 boons for the player with chaos armor).

juno.1840:

Simonoly.4352:

As others have said it’s a buff for Chaos Armour in general, but a nerf for the Mesmer Chaos Armour skill. It was a great way to punish spammy classes (similarly to confusion pre-nerf) and the great big purple ball around the Mesmer was a sort of “don’t you go touching me right now” signal for opponents. With this change it’s guaranteed that an opponent will only ever have to potentially deal with 3 condition applications no matter how spammy they are. Before, when fighting a staff Mesmer that had used Chaos Armour, I would stop using spatial surge to avoid stacking up confusion and cripple, but now I can continue to spam spatial surge safe in the knowledge that at max I will only get 3 condition procs. It’s great that the blind now works, but it’s definitely become a less interesting skill. I really think Anet are nerfing the wrong things on Mesmers.

After reading this, it seems you are really saying it’s a ‘nerf’. Opponents were scared of attacking when you had chaos armor pre-patch — and now post-patch they can simply ignore it as it’s only three condition applications (and similarly only 3 boons for the player with chaos armor).

Pretty much yeh. The ICD is most definitely a nerf and the protection procs on hit are at best a pseudo-buff. But overall, the use of Chaos Amour and how its use could effect opponent activity has been well and truly nerfed.

Simonoly.4352:

juno.1840:

Simonoly.4352:

As others have said it’s a buff for Chaos Armour in general, but a nerf for the Mesmer Chaos Armour skill. It was a great way to punish spammy classes (similarly to confusion pre-nerf) and the great big purple ball around the Mesmer was a sort of “don’t you go touching me right now” signal for opponents. With this change it’s guaranteed that an opponent will only ever have to potentially deal with 3 condition applications no matter how spammy they are. Before, when fighting a staff Mesmer that had used Chaos Armour, I would stop using spatial surge to avoid stacking up confusion and cripple, but now I can continue to spam spatial surge safe in the knowledge that at max I will only get 3 condition procs. It’s great that the blind now works, but it’s definitely become a less interesting skill. I really think Anet are nerfing the wrong things on Mesmers.

After reading this, it seems you are really saying it’s a ‘nerf’. Opponents were scared of attacking when you had chaos armor pre-patch — and now post-patch they can simply ignore it as it’s only three condition applications (and similarly only 3 boons for the player with chaos armor).

Pretty much yeh. The ICD is most definitely a nerf and the protection procs on hit are at best a pseudo-buff. But overall, the use of Chaos Amour and how its use could effect opponent activity has been well and truly nerfed.

The protection on combo field armor is not a buff period. It’s a bug fix. It originally proc protection but Anet transferred the protection to an on use effect for staff #4 however they did not make staff’s chaos armor distinct meaning they did not separate it from the combo field version unintentionally nerfing it in the process.

It was a bug fix and now with the ICD its a nerf, and with the horrible conditions and boons it applys it’s overall complete crap.

can’t polish this kitten ……..the staff skill stinks, and the combo effect is only potentially useful with a boon duration build.

Anet: either make the boon/condition changes suggested above by OP, or lower the cooldown significantly……orjust replace it with something else.

as it stands, its a completely wasted skill slot.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Your missing the fact that it also used to never blind. Enemies cleaving through several chaos armor clones greatly increase that 33% blind proc.

Edit: Chaos armor from combo finishers also never procced protection or blind at all.

Yeah, have you guys actually played with this HORRIBLE new chaos armor? I was complaining too, until I tried it.

feliscatus.1430:

Yeah, have you guys actually played with this HORRIBLE new chaos armor? I was complaining too, until I tried it.

No kidding, I was coming here to say the same thing. I’m always baffled by how much people resist change for the pure sake of it being different then before, without actually giving things a shot first.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate when patches destroy builds as this one certainly did, but the fact is that despite eating some heavy nerfs, there were some rather meaningful buffs as well.

Look at some of boosts and try some new builds, you might find out that the improvements were better then most people on here gave them credit for:

- Scepter is finally viable, although it still needs a bit of work. (Most of all #3 needs to “tick” faster IMO, and the auto-attack clones could use a boost of some sort.)
- Torch ditto…well with the improved PU anyway. Certainly needs work to iMage, but overall it fits a tanky condie-build very well!
- Overall condition builds have gotten far more viable
- Chaos armor is overall improved, even if Staff took a slight nerf with it. Staff is still one of our strongest options so I don’t see this is a huge issue.

I was very frustrated the first few days after this patch too, but I’ve come to settle on a build that I have to admit has refreshed my interest in the Mesmer entirely! I don’t hit hard anymore, but people melt away from a combination of Torment, bleeds, retaliation, confusion, etc. It all adds up quickly and overwhelms them in the end. I know it has to be utterly frustrating to fight me…and that’s what the profession is all about IMO.

Say what you will, but with condi builds being more viable now, I do see a greater build diversity among Mesmers in sPvP! I still see plenty of glass cannon shatter and phantasm Mesmers out there, and both of them still hurt a ton! And for the first time since release, I’m seeing all weapons being used regularly. (Not just “that one guy once used a Scepter and did fine!” but regularly.)

Lastly, and to get back to the OP, I’ll say that the new Chaos Armor is also more Mesmer-like then before! Sure it’s neat to have on-demand Protection, but there isn’t much anything chaotic or Mesmer-like about that, now is there? The new CA is MUCH more frustrating for our opponents! As much as we can’t rely on getting Protection off of our CA, our opponents can’t rely on their big-hitting attacks when facing a CA’d Mesmer either.

Simonoly.4352:

As others have said it’s a buff for Chaos Armour in general, but a nerf for the Mesmer Chaos Armour skill. It was a great way to punish spammy classes (similarly to confusion pre-nerf) and the great big purple ball around the Mesmer was a sort of “don’t you go touching me right now” signal for opponents. With this change it’s guaranteed that an opponent will only ever have to potentially deal with 3 condition applications no matter how spammy they are. Before, when fighting a staff Mesmer that had used Chaos Armour, I would stop using spatial surge to avoid stacking up confusion and cripple, but now I can continue to spam spatial surge safe in the knowledge that at max I will only get 3 condition procs. It’s great that the blind now works, but it’s definitely become a less interesting skill. I really think Anet are nerfing the wrong things on Mesmers.

That’s interesting. I think that’s a good point, the ICD should only be for the boons, not the conditions.

Also, I think the problem is with auras in general. When you have this big globe-barrier around you, you wanna feel safe; not potentially safe. Chaos Armor would be fine if it gave say a flat 10-15% damage reduction ontop of the boons/condi.

Or to punish spam attack, give us interrupt on hit to CA from staff #4.

EDIT: I am sure somebody had to mention this earlier, but making staff #4 blast finisher would create great synergy with the rest of the staff.

feliscatus.1430:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Your missing the fact that it also used to never blind. Enemies cleaving through several chaos armor clones greatly increase that 33% blind proc.

Edit: Chaos armor from combo finishers also never procced protection or blind at all.

Yeah, have you guys actually played with this HORRIBLE new chaos armor? I was complaining too, until I tried it.

Yes I have — it’s very ineffective in WvW compared to what it use to be. It no longer punishes rapid attack classes like thieves and such.

All it does now is a little tickle. It doesn’t make anyone stop and say “woah chaos armor, I better not attack for 3 seconds…”.

PvE doesn’t matter for this nerf — that’s already easy mode.

You have to be quite new player if you think that the current chaos armor is useful. Few random boons and some random weak conditions on your enemy on 30 second cool down with the price of having to let them hit you is just… How can you think this is useful?

Before I was careful not to rapidly attack opposing mesmer player who had chaos armor on. Now I just ignore it completly.

Master of Timespace.2548:

You have to be quite new player if you think that the current chaos armor is useful. Few random boons and some random weak conditions on your enemy on 30 second cool down with the price of having to let them hit you is just… How can you think this is useful?

Before I was careful not to rapidly attack opposing mesmer player who had chaos armor on. Now I just ignore it completly.

Totally. Swiftness? Protection? Regen? Pfft. Who needs that? Blind? Weaksause.

The fact that Chaos Armor from Staff 4 is only one of our, what, six ways to get Chaos Armor? And that we only need two ethereal fields to keep it up nearly all the time? Yeah, that 30 second cooldown is atrocious.

Seriously, that statement is just too broad. It depends on the build, but in mine Chaos Armor still has plenty of uses. I find myself with Protection a lot more often, and for longer duration (5-20 secs. 4+ sec duration each proc)

The only major difference now is that it takes more specialization to get more of a benefit from our boons. If you want reliable protection, you’re gonna need to invest in some boon duration.

But I do agree the ICD for conditions needs to go.

Master of Timespace.2548:

You have to be quite new player if you think that the current chaos armor is useful. Few random boons and some random weak conditions on your enemy on 30 second cool down with the price of having to let them hit you is just… How can you think this is useful?

Before I was careful not to rapidly attack opposing mesmer player who had chaos armor on. Now I just ignore it completly.

On 35sec CD which is even more laughable

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Simonoly.4352:

As others have said it’s a buff for Chaos Armour in general, but a nerf for the Mesmer Chaos Armour skill. It was a great way to punish spammy classes (similarly to confusion pre-nerf) and the great big purple ball around the Mesmer was a sort of “don’t you go touching me right now” signal for opponents. With this change it’s guaranteed that an opponent will only ever have to potentially deal with 3 condition applications no matter how spammy they are. Before, when fighting a staff Mesmer that had used Chaos Armour, I would stop using spatial surge to avoid stacking up confusion and cripple, but now I can continue to spam spatial surge safe in the knowledge that at max I will only get 3 condition procs. It’s great that the blind now works, but it’s definitely become a less interesting skill. I really think Anet are nerfing the wrong things on Mesmers.

That’s interesting. I think that’s a good point, the ICD should only be for the boons, not the conditions.

Also, I think the problem is with auras in general. When you have this big globe-barrier around you, you wanna feel safe; not potentially safe. Chaos Armor would be fine if it gave say a flat 10-15% damage reduction ontop of the boons/condi.

Precisely. I’ve never felt entirely safe with Chaos Armour as it reduces my ability to integrate with my clones, but the trade-off before was the punishment it could inflict on less vigilant players. Now I never use Chaos Armour with my Staff/Scepter+torch build as that trade-off just isn’t worth it anymore. I agree, if anything the ICD should be for boon generation and not conditions.

Now the only time it is worth it to use Chaos Armour is when you have a staff out, and only because the cast time is instant. Sure it is absolutely terrible, but it is a couple maybe-seconds of protection more than simply not using it. Using it as a combo field is now such a bad idea that everytime I see it pop up I cringe because the etherial field was the field that combo-ed off that finisher, not any other field. Yes I am aware that Chaos Armour from combos was still the old beta verion (no auto protection), but at least it didn’t have an internal cool down which strips it of its only use.

Let’s look at it carefully:
Protection: Hellish strong.
Swiftness: Rather bad.
Regen: Mediocre but okay-ish.

Blind: Hellish strong.
Cripple: Mediocre but okay-ish.
Confusion: Garbage.

I’d say, replace the Confusion with Weakness and maybe the Swiftness with Vigor and everyone should be happy.

Aegis should proc off it.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Master of Timespace.2548:

You have to be quite new player if you think that the current chaos armor is useful. Few random boons and some random weak conditions on your enemy on 30 second cool down with the price of having to let them hit you is just… How can you think this is useful?

Before I was careful not to rapidly attack opposing mesmer player who had chaos armor on. Now I just ignore it completly.

Totally. Swiftness? Protection? Regen? Pfft. Who needs that? Blind? Weaksause.

Random 3 seconds swiftness, regen that heals for about 400. Nope, I don’t need those. Protection that triggers when I have already eaten X hits, yay! Oh wait, just X hits wont do. Have to be 1 hit, then let second pass, then hit again, and then let second pass, now if you get hit, you might get protection!

The conditions could stand some improvement, but it you have invested in making Chaos Armor a strong tool, then it is still quite good. It just isn’t a freebie anymore.

Illusionary Membrane + Chaos Armor = 66% chance to proc Protection when hit. I’ll take that. Yeah, the ICD on membrane kinda sucks, but still, you can pull quite a bit of protection out of Chaos Armor.

If the ICD stays on Chaos Armor then the durations of the Swiftness, Regen, Confusion and Cripple need a significant increase IMO. A 10s swiftness would be extremely useful for a Mesmer that is starved of swiftness sources, 5s Regen would probably be more reasonable, Confusion needs a big boost to something more like 7s duration since its damage is crappola after having been nerfed to death, and a 6 or 7s Cripple would be a lot more useful (or just leave the duration and make it Chill instead).

Putting Weakness and Protection on one effect that can’t really be countered is too much. One lucky proc would mean 58% reduction to incoming damage. That is just silly. Same thing with Stability/Fear Proc’s. That is just way too over the top. Keeping the applications to Protection, Regen, Swiftness and Blind, Confusion, Cripple (Chill would be ok I think) keeps the skill in a decent spot balance wise.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Chaos Armor was buffed. The Staff was nerfed.

It never needed the ICD before because it only gave Swiftness/Regen when hit, and only caused cripple/confusion.
So, what you’re saying is… As a buff, Chaos Armor was always horrible (and worse before the patch) but acceptable on the staff because of the on-demand protection.

If you’re using the staff, it comes with at least 10 seconds of Chaos Storm, so you can definitely squeeze more than 2 boons from it.

Regeneration doesn’t scale any differently for Mesmer than it does for any other class. You get out of it what you put into it. Same thing with the rest of the boons. Swiftness works better in PvE, but Swiftness + Cripple should make a difference in combat, even if the opponent has swiftness. Blind is cool, and now our clones can cause blindness/cripple when we iLeap out of Chaos Storm.

Those suggested buffs sound awesome though. The one thing Chaos Armor doesn’t need is Regeneration and it needs more Confusion to be viable (though Torment would probably be a more appropriate condition). I’d honestly just drop Regen/Confusion altogether and leave the rest the same.. and return the protection gained back to 5 seconds.

Chaos Armor was buffed, and isn’t/never was horrible, but could be a bit better. Staff was nerfed as a result. Now Chaos Armor is better/worse depending on your build, and staff is better for teammates.

Both the staff and chaos armor were nerfed. Staff because there’s no protection on demand anymore and chaos armor because it can only proc once a sec and this is very noticeable against SB rangers and especially GS mesmers spamming Spatial Surge.

You were never supposed to get protection on demand anyways. Perhaps you should read into something and understand that it actually has a equal chance of giving you boons at random like it was intended, rather than protection. Which means it was a BUG FIX. “this next paragraph is literally copied and pasted from the official patch notes from July 9th, 2013”.

Mesmer:
Chaos Armor: This skill no longer automatically applies protection when activated. This buff now provides an equal chance to trigger regeneration, swiftness, or protection on hit with a 1-second internal recharge. The random condition applied now has a 1-second internal recharge per target. These changes apply to the Chaos Armor provided through combo finishers as well.

Perhaps you should read more?

Countless

I think we should get longer boons and conditions. Quick ticks work for storm and winds (although I think storm should last longer lol) but I kind of feel like unless you get protection it’s kind of lame.

Trigr.6481:

You were never supposed to get protection on demand anyways. Perhaps you should read into something and understand that it actually has a equal chance of giving you boons at random like it was intended, rather than protection. Which means it was a BUG FIX. “this next paragraph is literally copied and pasted from the official patch notes from July 9th, 2013”.

Mesmer:
Chaos Armor: This skill no longer automatically applies protection when activated. This buff now provides an equal chance to trigger regeneration, swiftness, or protection on hit with a 1-second internal recharge. The random condition applied now has a 1-second internal recharge per target. These changes apply to the Chaos Armor provided through combo finishers as well.

Perhaps you should read more?

Countless

Well, nothing here say it is a bug fix. No “bugfix” tag, no “now correctly do XXX”, no “as initially intended”, just a statement of modification. For those who played beta, there were a lot of people asking for on demand protection, and it really did look like ANet put that on purpose in the first place at release. What makes you think it is otherwise ?

Elidath.5679:

Trigr.6481:

You were never supposed to get protection on demand anyways. Perhaps you should read into something and understand that it actually has a equal chance of giving you boons at random like it was intended, rather than protection. Which means it was a BUG FIX. “this next paragraph is literally copied and pasted from the official patch notes from July 9th, 2013”.

Mesmer:
Chaos Armor: This skill no longer automatically applies protection when activated. This buff now provides an equal chance to trigger regeneration, swiftness, or protection on hit with a 1-second internal recharge. The random condition applied now has a 1-second internal recharge per target. These changes apply to the Chaos Armor provided through combo finishers as well.

Perhaps you should read more?

Countless

Well, nothing here say it is a bug fix. No “bugfix” tag, no “now correctly do XXX”, no “as initially intended”, just a statement of modification. For those who played beta, there were a lot of people asking for on demand protection, and it really did look like ANet put that on purpose in the first place at release. What makes you think it is otherwise ?

Well it did not perform as the tooltip suggest, nothing in chaos armor itself says that protection is the first thing to proc. Therefore it is not working as intended, thus bug fix. What happened is people got used to the un-intended mechanic of the ability, simple as that.

There are two changes that need to be considered: first, the change for protection to occur as a random proc instead of on-demand and second, the addition of an internal cooldown.

I actually like the first change quite a bit. At 30% boon duration, the protection procs are about 4s long, and statistically, if someone is attacking me quickly, I should get one or two procs over the course of Chaos Armor. On top of that, I will get about 4s of protection from regeneration due to Illusionary Membrane. Furthermore, the opponent will have one or two attacks neutralized due to blindness from one chaos armor. Ultimately, that is still very strong defensively, even though the protection is no longer immediately available. However, chaos armor from combo fields now procs protection, which it didn’t do previously. This means a higher overall uptime on protection due to chaos armor since I have two leap finishers with sword and staff. It also means by allies can get protection now.

Now for the second change. This was necessary to prevent us from getting massive protection uptime. Imagine fighting a pistol thief or a shortbow ranger. They can attack very rapidly and it would be likely that we could stack nearly permanent protection while fighting them with very little effort. However, the fact that the cooldown also applies to conditions applied is a let-down. Players SHOULD be punished for attacking someone with a big glowing shield bubble. I would have preferred that only the boon application have a cooldown.

Finally, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe during development of the game, this is how Chaos Armor functioned (or at least similarly). However, player feedback was that the armor didn’t feel like it offered much protection, and so the 33% chance of protection was changed to on-demand protection with the proc removed. Now it seems we’ve reverted to the original design of Chaos Armor, or at least that’s what seems to be the case. However, I could be totally making this up and remembering things wrong.

I think a lot of people seem to be thinking incorrectly. The new (actually old cause they simply reverted it back to the old version but added an ICD) isn’t bad. It is actually much much better. What is bad, is that because we have so many ways to apply chaos armor through finishers the Staff #4 move is what sucks. It is simply not strong enough to shine anymore because of how many other ways we can apply the armor. I would like a removal of the ICD but that simply wont happen. What I really want is a rework of Staff#4 now. If they did that I would be a happy purple butterfly factory.

Trigr.6481:

Well it did not perform as the tooltip suggest, nothing in chaos armor itself says that protection is the first thing to proc. Therefore it is not working as intended, thus bug fix. What happened is people got used to the un-intended mechanic of the ability, simple as that.

Did you read Mimic and the glamours tooltips? Those are as wrong as a politician talking about computers (meaning: very, very wrong). They can’t be taken as a proof of what the skill is supposed to do. Patchnotes are full of tooltip fixes.
CA behaviour being unintended is you assumption, not a fact. ANet never acknowledged it was a bug, and the change of CA after beta was following some popular demands on the forums, it didn’t come out of the blue. If anything the patchnote prove the tooltip was wrong: every bug fix state it is so, and here is not the case.
We just got the old behaviour back (which is good imho) with an added ICD (which is bad, but in line with other armor skills). Nothing point to a bugfix.