Guild Wars 2

As far as Mesmers go, will condition/glamour builds still be viable enough to run instead of power/glamour alternatives? Are power builds viable when building for glamour skills? What are you guys planning to do with your Mesmers?

I am of course referring to builds used for group support in WvW. Any opinions or build suggestions are extremely appreciated. Thanks.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

To clarify; I’m looking for advice on the what the future of large group Mesmer builds will be. Talking 15+ here, minimum. Clearly, shatter builds won’t work. I’m curious as to whether Glamour builds can be made to mesh well with Power setups and whether or not there will be a need to swap over from Condition/Glamour builds (since they work so well for Confusion application right now) after the Conf nerf.

For reference, most of the Mesmers in my guild/that I know run something akin to this condition build, which utilizes Rabid gear and glamour skills for Confusion application.

Obviously, Glamour skills are super important in WvW and I’d like to keep them on our Mesmers’ bars. So my question is: will Confusion be so bad after the nerf that it’d be more viable to switch to a Power/Glamour build?

I did a test recently with shatter cat. Wow. Very ineffective verses zergs. I know Osicat is awesome, but it’s really more of a solo / small roamer build. And it’ll be much weaker without good condition dam. Vs larger groups the clones die way before they have a chance to shatter on target. The burst is only effective if you got all the gear maxed out. But I’m curious to hear shatter cat / power runners talk about their effectiveness in WvW currently. The build I tried that has the most potential for former glam Mesmers is Choas Maestro. Very hard to kill. The damage output is dismal, but it allows you to essentially outlast your opponent and if you get the right runes it can buff your group significantly. But it feels like a whole new playstyle. Honestly I’m unsure of what build to go with.

I actually use a power-based build from the link below but I’ve modified my style a bit. Instead of what is listed there, I go with GS/ + S/P for WvW and it works great. When I need to roam, I’ll change over to the focus.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Seven-Mirror-WvW-Mesmer-04-26-13/first

To clarify; I’m looking for advice on the what the future of large group Mesmer builds will be. Talking 15+ here, minimum. Clearly, shatter builds won’t work. I’m curious as to whether Glamour builds can be made to mesh well with Power setups and whether or not there will be a need to swap over from Condition/Glamour builds (since they work so well for Confusion application right now) after the Conf nerf.

For reference, most of the Mesmers in my guild/that I know run something akin to this condition build, which utilizes Rabid gear and glamour skills for Confusion application.

Obviously, Glamour skills are super important in WvW and I’d like to keep them on our Mesmers’ bars. So my question is: will Confusion be so bad after the nerf that it’d be more viable to switch to a Power/Glamour build?

Glamour builds will still be good after update. I’ll continue using carrion gear for max confusion

Pretty much everybody will be running a Power build now.

After recently buying my Rabid set (using Arah tokens so I could have turned that into 120g instead), I am seriously unhappy about how little time in advance AN report these things to us. It’s kitten ridiculous.

It’s almost like they don’t want us Mesmers to be any use outside portal drones.

Encourage ppl to think less… that is what this nerf is about…

bubblyball.7591:

Encourage ppl to think less… that is what this nerf is about…

Like all art, when it gets dumbed down it gets bad. Not sure what Anet was thinking here. Hopefully the patch notes will contain some buffs that failed to get through the grape vine. If not, I’m not sure I trust Anet enough to even reroll another class. How do we know what’s next on the chopping block?

I use shatter builds quite effectively against large groups/zergs.
If you try to hit a Zerg front on, your clones won’t get far enough to shatter, due to aoe focused to the front, but hitting a Zerg from the side or back, you can devastate it.
Bare in mind, most squishy, glass cannon eles, will stay at the back.

Try using dodges, phase retreat, blink and ileap to quickly move through a group and hit the back lines.

Hi.

This is a wery good thread, it take up a important matter that we need to work on for next patch. How shall we spec/play to be effective in bigger situations than the 2-7 man roaming teams where we al know shatter mesmers shine like bright stars.

For medium teams (12~ppl) I in the past played Shatter Cat heavy and found it effective.

For bigger fights I will most likley where I in the past played glamour now will play a GS / Sword-Focus setup with 1650-1750 toughness, feedback veil and portal. I tested this in a few of our runs lately and feel im happy with the setup, not 100% sure on the exact spec yet but I tested 10-20-10-0-30 and 0-30-10-0-30.

Have no video of the gameplay but might add some later, It wont be part of the shatter cat builds thu unless I change my mind. I never added the glamour build I play in the guide eather, or my dueling build I use as a hard conuter to GS/shortbow rengen rangers (work fantastic ).

/Osicat

Christos de Soufre.3802:

As far as Mesmers go, will condition/glamour builds still be viable enough to run instead of power/glamour alternatives? Are power builds viable when building for glamour skills? What are you guys planning to do with your Mesmers?

I am of course referring to builds used for group support in WvW. Any opinions or build suggestions are extremely appreciated. Thanks.

A straight out 50% nerf would be roughly 175 damage per tick (~350 confusion damage per stack seems average) which means you’ll be tickling the enemy even at 5 stacks (875 damage. To put it in comparison, a power build Winds of Chaos does more than that per hit + pathetic condition damage). So no, I predict that you’ll make them giggle like teenage girls playing My Little Pony and either a) force us into power builds from the frustration of doing nothing or b) people who don’t pay attention to numbers won’t give a kitten as long as they get their tags for loot bags.

Im thinking of toying with a reworked glamour build going to be testing tommrow, instead of turning my blinds into confusion i will jsut focus on applying those inital blinds and then usin reflects to lock down ranged. This wil not be a damage build but it will be highly supportive in small team situations where every hit counts

I predict most will go power with a gs w/fire sigil and spam 1 a lot with the occational izerker thrown out. Focus offhand will still be useful for the reflects as well. Ignore all confusion aspects but still carry around feedback for assisting with cc.

RIP condition mesmers :_(

Aberrant.6749:

I predict most will go power with a gs w/fire sigil and spam 1 a lot with the occational izerker thrown out. Focus offhand will still be useful for the reflects as well. Ignore all confusion aspects but still carry around feedback for assisting with cc.

RIP condition mesmers :_(

All the more reason to since Retaliation is also getting a nerf so you won’t be taking upwards of 1k retal damage per GS #1 chain (times however many you happen to be hitting with the new beam feature). ezmode ftw.

‘move on’? oh, you mean go back to using a sword again.

Using Rabid I run an interesting style compared to others in a zerg v zerg situation. Since you’ve asked, I’ve come up with a simple power alternative (I use confusion).

Link and explination.
http://tinyurl.com/Buton-sZerg-PowerBomber

As a Mesmer you have the utility to approach large, organized battles differently than all other classes. We don’t have a lot of aoe, but what we do have can be very effective if used correctly. So, when your commander pushes I like to keep myself right up the front of the line. When the zergs colide, and the aoe’s/static fields drop, I blink right past them into the midst of the enemy zerg. Tag, and Tab for nearest target, dodge roll and mirror images for clones, then shatter (F1 in this build), for AoE effect. Dodge roll again, clone generation anyway you can, fire off your F2. Use Torch 4 for stealth and casualy walk out to the flank. The thing is, nobody is going to be focused on the solo mesmer who’s just appeared in the middle of their zerg. Everyone is worried about the big DPS Giant that’s in front of their zerg. That Giant is also going to drop the most loot bags. Meanwhile you tag, and add your DPS to the pile while also going to town on their mid to back lines (land confusion on the ranged, though that’s not going to matter now). For the power build I added in sword instead of my sceptre, so sometime after or during the shatters, use your blurred frenzy. The high toughness will keep you safe during all of this, unlike with shattercat. During or after stealth, load up your iMage just for the extra clone. Change to staff if you want. Drop your chaos storm on downed targets, or yourself etc. Fire off your skills, and depending on the situation either let your zerg wash back over you as they’ve just mowed the enemy down, or run back towards your zerg for safety. You still have distortion if you need it, but otherwise it’s an easy march back as, again, the enemy zerg is engaged with your friendly zerg. It’s effective, and exciting, with loads of varying factors coming into play, so you get to be very thoughtful with your various utilities while the fight’s going on.

Just one option.

Edit to add: Clones wont die if shattered immediately. Even in the above scenario.

Also, personally I’d do without the 10 in domination and have 20 in chaos. That’s less damage on the mind wrack, but in exchange you get 10% more boon duration (total 50%, and 70% for might), and have chaotic dampening for more staff goodness.

Looking at the confusion damage another way: even halved it will do the same damage as equal stacks of burn with 1-2 skills used. Burn is the highest damage condition by far pound for pound and is balanced by the fact it scales in duration instead of intensity.

Getting into the numbers. All damages are base damages, confusion numbers are the new sPVP numbers. Burn does 325 base damage per stack per second. Bleed does 42.5 damage per stack per second. So 7-8 bleed stacks = 1 burn tick. Confusion does 65 damage per skill activation. So 5 stacks of confusion = 1 burn tick per skill activation. Poison does 84 damage per second but lowers healing by 33%.

Furthermore the condition scaling for each as is follows.
Burn = condition damage * 0.25.
Bleed = condition damage * 0.05
Confusion = condition damage * 0.075.
Poison = condition damage * 0.1

IE someone with 1000 condition damage would gain 250 damage per second on burn, 50 damage per second per stack on bleed, 75 damage per stack on confusion, and 100 damage per stack on poison. IE the new numbers would be Burn 575 per second, Bleed 92.5 per second per stack (6 stacks = 1 second burn), 140 damage per stack pet skill on confusion (4 stacks skill use = 1 second burn), and poison 184 damage per second.

Initially burn seems the clear winner in conditions, but you’ll noticed while other require stacks and have lower bases and scaling, they actually more than double their damage while burn gains less than 50%. Furthermore burn cannot stack more than that set amount per second and bleed and confusion can stack to 25.

So we can see that damage wise confusion in a clear winner assuming you can apply 4 – 5 stacks. Even more so if you consider that vs classes with instants or fast attacks confusion can activate more than once per second. But this assumes you can apply confusion in an aoe in just as effective of a fashion. But you can. Glamour mesmers can still apply around 4 stacks to multiple people, exceeding the 5 target AOE cap as well. This is on skills with other good usage as well as a traited blind.

But we have one last caveat, condition removal. People say so much about condition removal = lol confuse worthless. This is actually less true of confusion than it is of other conditions. Confusion faces condition removal and convert condition to boons skills. All other conditions face all of that PLUS a few class counters. List of known counters: Thief: Pain Response and Slowed Pulse, Ele: Stop Drop and Roll, Ranger: Oakheart Salve and Evasive Purity, Guardian: Inner Fire.

So if you look at the numbers, the counters, and the capabilities confusion is still superior to other conditions even post nerf. Confusion is also kinda nasty in the way it sneaks up on ya. Bleeding, burning, and poison put lots of numbers above your head and you quickly counter it if you have counters. It also typically takes several seconds to get alot of bleeding, poison, or burning on someone. If someone puts confusion on you though you typically take a couple skill activations before realizing it in a hectic fight. In doing that you’ve already done the full damage the other conditions would have done. They depend on constant reapplication, confusion does all it’s damage up front.

It was nerfed because it was needed. Confusion is still the best condition even after a 50% nerf lol.

So yes condition/glamor will still be viable considering you’re applying the equivalent of 6 stacks of bleed on a zerg while providing great support. This while bursting higher on single targets and small clusters of people and using your supportive weapon abilities.

Ralathar.7236:

Looking at the confusion damage another way: even halved it will do the same damage as equal stacks of burn with 1-2 skills used. Burn is the highest damage condition by far pound for pound and is balanced by the fact it scales in duration instead of intensity.

Getting into the numbers. All damages are base damages, confusion numbers are the new sPVP numbers. Burn does 325 base damage per stack per second. Bleed does 42.5 damage per stack per second. So 7-8 bleed stacks = 1 burn tick. Confusion does 65 damage per skill activation. So 5 stacks of confusion = 1 burn tick per skill activation. Poison does 84 damage per second but lowers healing by 33%.

Furthermore the condition scaling for each as is follows.
Burn = condition damage * 0.25.
Bleed = condition damage * 0.05
Confusion = condition damage * 0.075.
Poison = condition damage * 0.1

IE someone with 1000 condition damage would gain 250 damage per second on burn, 50 damage per second per stack on bleed, 75 damage per stack on confusion, and 100 damage per stack on poison. IE the new numbers would be Burn 575 per second, Bleed 92.5 per second per stack (6 stacks = 1 second burn), 140 damage per stack pet skill on confusion (4 stacks skill use = 1 second burn), and poison 184 damage per second.

Initially burn seems the clear winner in conditions, but you’ll noticed while other require stacks and have lower bases and scaling, they actually more than double their damage while burn gains less than 50%. Furthermore burn cannot stack more than that set amount per second and bleed and confusion can stack to 25.

So we can see that damage wise confusion in a clear winner assuming you can apply 4 – 5 stacks. Even more so if you consider that vs classes with instants or fast attacks confusion can activate more than once per second. But this assumes you can apply confusion in an aoe in just as effective of a fashion. But you can. Glamour mesmers can still apply around 4 stacks to multiple people, exceeding the 5 target AOE cap as well. This is on skills with other good usage as well as a traited blind.

But we have one last caveat, condition removal. People say so much about condition removal = lol confuse worthless. This is actually less true of confusion than it is of other conditions. Confusion faces condition removal and convert condition to boons skills. All other conditions face all of that PLUS a few class counters. List of known counters: Thief: Pain Response and Slowed Pulse, Ele: Stop Drop and Roll, Ranger: Oakheart Salve and Evasive Purity, Guardian: Inner Fire.

So if you look at the numbers, the counters, and the capabilities confusion is still superior to other conditions even post nerf. Confusion is also kinda nasty in the way it sneaks up on ya. Bleeding, burning, and poison put lots of numbers above your head and you quickly counter it if you have counters. It also typically takes several seconds to get alot of bleeding, poison, or burning on someone. If someone puts confusion on you though you typically take a couple skill activations before realizing it in a hectic fight. In doing that you’ve already done the full damage the other conditions would have done. They depend on constant reapplication, confusion does all it’s damage up front.

It was nerfed because it was needed. Confusion is still the best condition even after a 50% nerf lol.

So yes condition/glamor will still be viable considering you’re applying the equivalent of 6 stacks of bleed on a zerg while providing great support. This while bursting higher on single targets and small clusters of people and using your supportive weapon abilities.

All this talk talk talk.

Let me debunk your talk in one simple statement. Good players never proc confusion so therefore it is far less worse than any other cond.

I’ll tell you right now I’d rather have a Bleed shatter or poison shatter than 50% weaker confusion.

Give me a immobilice shatter, 1 s/clone and I be a happy cat, trait for aoe effect.

/Osicat

Osicat.4139:

Give me a immobilice shatter, 1 s/clone and I be a happy cat, trait for aoe effect.

/Osicat

I’d also take a weaker version of Mindwrack with 2s of poison per shatter.

How about 2 stacks of bleeding for 5 seconds per clone.

If it’s just about causing maximum area / group damage, Confusion will still be the way to go. This is largely based on being able to retreat while the damage is still dealing, causing you to be able to deal it again.

Carighan.6758:

If it’s just about causing maximum area / group damage, Confusion will still be the way to go. This is largely based on being able to retreat while the damage is still dealing, causing you to be able to deal it again.

Confusion damage does Zero damage if people refrain from button mashing.

I don’t know about Zerg vs zerg, but saying Confusion is still the way to go for aoe damage is simply false.

Even with confusion in it’s current state VS a solid Zerker shatter the zerker shatter wins. I can’t even get a mind wrack in Zerker gear to hit for less than 6k. It was very very rare that I saw number’s bigger than 3500 with confusion.

8 times out of 10 once someone procs a 3500 tick they don’t proc it again. OR I can shatter once for instant 6-8k damage.

I’ve been running Osicat’s current shatter spec or something very close and it’s damage is much more consistent and potent than confusion.

I would gladly take a Fire, Bleed or Poison shatter in Confusions place.

A poison shatter would make the mesmer incredible for aoe heal debuffing.

I agree with the others. If confusion is going to be nerfed that hard then I prefer to have a different condition for my F2 shatter.

agreed that a 50% damage reduction to one of our profession skills (F2) is hurtful. To keep in line with the chaotic nature of this profession i feel f2 shatter should be a random condition (bleed/burn/poison(chill?)) for each clone shattered. change the vul on woc to poison (or even chill). and finally change the torch phantasm to do some other condi damage (burn?). At least a condi spec MIGHT still be viable with these (simple?) changes

Ross Biddle.2367:

The thing is, nobody is going to be focused on the solo mesmer who’s just appeared in the middle of their zerg. Everyone is worried about the big DPS Giant that’s in front of their zerg.

You have tried this?? Cos i love to go all emo suicide kamikae on zergs to make some chaos and maybe create an opening for others to attack but ppl in zergs tend to focus me a lot more than you would expect.

Tho ill have to admit it, its quite fun to be runing away with 20+ ppl chasing you while you spam all your stealths/invulnerabilitys to get them just that lil step further away from main zerg

I think my main worry is that the change will take scepter out of the game since it’s so heavily confusion dependent. This makes condition build less viable – what are you going to use behind staff?

Not sure about shatter builds in T1 WvW – the group size average is really, really large right now. Glamour build is very effective in this situation – and also allows the mesmer to remain unnoticed so long as they don’t totally spam confusing images. My little Asuran even hid in the middle of an enemy group last night to get out of a jam and they didn’t notice or attack me at all! I got clean away.

And honestly, in a pitched battle even good players tend to spam skills until they see the purple boxes going up – then the good ones stop but the bad ones keep going.

I agree. F2 should also do poison damage. Staff vulnerability should be switched to poison damage as well.

I’ve been using a build that relies on incredibly mediocre damage from:

—10 Domination, 20 Dueling, 10 Chaos, 25 Inspiration, 5 Illusions
—a Knight’s armor/weapons/accessories set
—reduced condition duration foods
—Berserker and Warden
—Reflect (focus trait, Feedback, Mimic)
—Retaliation (Cry of Frustration trait + Light Field and Leap/Swap)

…but supports allies with:

—Restorative Mantras
—Keeping Vigor up as often as possible (shatters trait)

…since the game began (beta 1) and it has worked in my favor about 80% of the time against “metagame” build after build which come and go every time something becomes so popular that it’s nerfed into the ground (which, by the way is the metric by which ArenaNet swings the ban hammer; skill usage is logged and recorded and what becomes most popular suffers first).

It’s typically a thief, but occasionally a warrior or an elementalist catches me off-guard and puts me down. In rare cases, I’ll stalemate a fellow mesmer for a few minutes, /bow, and walk off. Sometimes they chase me. I don’t understand people. ;p

…Anyway, having said that, I look forward to the nerf coming to all of the above sometime next month. /bow ArenaNet

Under Web.2497:

agreed that a 50% damage reduction to one of our profession skills (F2) is hurtful. To keep in line with the chaotic nature of this profession i feel f2 shatter should be a random condition (bleed/burn/poison(chill?)) for each clone shattered. change the vul on woc to poison (or even chill). and finally change the torch phantasm to do some other condi damage (burn?). At least a condi spec MIGHT still be viable with these (simple?) changes

I kinda think a random condi would be cool.

Chill would be fricking amazing, fire would be great, heck anything would be great.

I would love love more access to poison even if it was a 1 in 4 chance.

The more I think about it the more I like the idea of just turning “cry of frustration” into something easier to balance than confusion.

The real problem with confusion is against good players it literally does Zero damage. I’ve done tons of confusion dueling and when you fight someone good it’s very noticeable the lack of confusion procs. Without pressure damage I’ve had thieves just troll me by CD, clearing their cond’s then repeating over and over.

I just don’t see any reason to run conditions anymore considering you can hit twice as hard in zerker and knights gear.

Dess.4391:

Ross Biddle.2367:

The thing is, nobody is going to be focused on the solo mesmer who’s just appeared in the middle of their zerg. Everyone is worried about the big DPS Giant that’s in front of their zerg.

You have tried this?? Cos i love to go all emo suicide kamikae on zergs to make some chaos and maybe create an opening for others to attack but ppl in zergs tend to focus me a lot more than you would expect.

Tho ill have to admit it, its quite fun to be runing away with 20+ ppl chasing you while you spam all your stealths/invulnerabilitys to get them just that lil step further away from main zerg

I spent three hours straight last night in Tier 1 doing this :p

You have to be mindful about their and your zerg positioning, which way their melee train is moving etc. But rarely do I ever get caught out. Last night I noticed one of my group mates down where I was behind the enemy line. I stopped to res him. After I said “That was lucky.” To which he replied “Yeah, I over extended myself.” I laughed and replied “Funny, that’s where I spend most of my time in these fights.”

Ross Biddle.2367:

Dess.4391:

Ross Biddle.2367:

The thing is, nobody is going to be focused on the solo mesmer who’s just appeared in the middle of their zerg. Everyone is worried about the big DPS Giant that’s in front of their zerg.

You have tried this?? Cos i love to go all emo suicide kamikae on zergs to make some chaos and maybe create an opening for others to attack but ppl in zergs tend to focus me a lot more than you would expect.

Tho ill have to admit it, its quite fun to be runing away with 20+ ppl chasing you while you spam all your stealths/invulnerabilitys to get them just that lil step further away from main zerg

I spent three hours straight last night in Tier 1 doing this :p

You have to be mindful about their and your zerg positioning, which way their melee train is moving etc. But rarely do I ever get caught out. Last night I noticed one of my group mates down where I was behind the enemy line. I stopped to res him. After I said “That was lucky.” To which he replied “Yeah, I over extended myself.” I laughed and replied “Funny, that’s where I spend most of my time in these fights.”

I was on my mesmer in T1 last night as well, and I agree – the enemy just doesn’t notice little mesmers, especially asurans, and particularly if you stay away from Confusing Image spam (the pink beam gives us away!).

Last night I had 49 kills and 2 deaths, one of which was to a gank thief as I was running into position. That was partly due to luck and to the fact I was running with a very good group, but honestly my guardian would have died a TON more in the same situation.

My guard is a max size norn with spiked green shiny armor and an enormous hammer, while my mesmer is a 3 foot asuran carrying a stick and who can disappear at will. Who do you think the opposition goes after? Not the asuran, that’s for sure. And if they even notice her, catching her is another matter.

Even with the nerf, glamour will still be our best zerg build for both dmg and support. We can still blind an entire zerg walking into our fields, and we will still put our 4 stacks of confusion on them.

Zerg fights are not at all like small group or 1v1 combat, a whole zerg cant afford to just stop attacking with another pushing into them.

Hazal.9560:

Even with the nerf, glamour will still be our best zerg build for both dmg and support. We can still blind an entire zerg walking into our fields, and we will still put our 4 stacks of confusion on them.

Zerg fights are not at all like small group or 1v1 combat, a whole zerg cant afford to just stop attacking with another pushing into them.

the thing is the overall damage you do now to that zerg with be very minimal, sure your gona tag em all and so it will still work there however its not going to provide much more support.

Atm you can drop that cofusion on the zerg and start ticking them for 500-1500 dmg (depending on how many fields they go through as your not gonna get much higher stacks on a full zerg) currently this damage on its own still shouldn’t kill someone. What is does those is forces players to think of their actions more which causes a slight slow down in their attacks (or they will die if they keep attacking) this allows the your zerg time to infict more damage killing the rest of that zerg that you have now weakend.

In my mind thats why glamours are strong zerg v zerg, the can hit the whole zerg and deal some okay damage to everyone (and mabye burst 1 or 2) but cause them to slow down as they have to think if they can take the damage from that confusion hit buying your zerg time to kill them

With the reduction in damage now you will just hit them for 250-750 ticks reall which is almost nothing considering it last only a few seconds because of foods or the condtion removal of a zerg. Now players will jusst fight through it and laugh as the regen that just got applied out does your confusion damage

Godmoney.2048:

All this talk talk talk.

Let me debunk your talk in one simple statement. Good players never proc confusion so therefore it is far less worse than any other cond.

I’ll tell you right now I’d rather have a Bleed shatter or poison shatter than 50% weaker confusion.

Then you are silly. If they never proc confusion then they are effectively dazed and unable to dodge for 5-10 seconds. If they use condition removal then bleeding, poison, and burn would all be in the same boat.

McNuggetBandit.8376:

The thing is the overall damage you do now to that zerg with be very minimal, sure your gona tag em all and so it will still work there however its not going to provide much more support.

Atm you can drop that cofusion on the zerg and start ticking them for 500-1500 dmg (depending on how many fields they go through as your not gonna get much higher stacks on a full zerg) currently this damage on its own still shouldn’t kill someone. What is does those is forces players to think of their actions more which causes a slight slow down in their attacks (or they will die if they keep attacking) this allows the your zerg time to infict more damage killing the rest of that zerg that you have now weakend.

In my mind thats why glamours are strong zerg v zerg, the can hit the whole zerg and deal some okay damage to everyone (and mabye burst 1 or 2) but cause them to slow down as they have to think if they can take the damage from that confusion hit buying your zerg time to kill them

With the reduction in damage now you will just hit them for 250-750 ticks reall which is almost nothing considering it last only a few seconds because of foods or the condtion removal of a zerg. Now players will jusst fight through it and laugh as the regen that just got applied out does your confusion damage

I think you forgot about the fact that you are applying massive amounts of blinds, boon stripping, reflection, and chaos fields. Plus whatever you are doing with your actual weapons.

Glamor Mesmer is not intended to be zerg wiping damage. It’s intended to be a support build that get a fair amount of damage for free. Keep in mind as well this stacks with multiple Mesmers and Necromancers are your best friend.

Also keep in mind that you may average more damage in the long run because people may not choose to blow their condition removal on your confusion anymore. 1 more activation on average brings you right back up to pre-nerf levels.

Burning, bleeding, and poison take time to stack and take time to deal their damage. Confusion deals it’s damage up front and confusion is applied in short order allowing you to do other things. In many cases confusion deals it’s damage where other conditions simply do not, though other conditions may be applied more frequently.

One last thing. Because bleeding, poison, and burning are applied frequently classes that can convert conditions to boons or send conditions to enemies can actually benefit alot more heavily from them. Great example is the popular Warrior War Horn traited. With proper War Horn support condition damage dealers are actually making the enemy zerg stronger by giving them boons.

Dealing all of your damage in one occasionally applied condition up front is actually a significant benefit against well made enemy team comps. It strikes a good balance between getting a chance to deal your damage and not empowering the enemy zerg. Not to mention the fact one of your glamor abilities is actually stripping their boons.

Biggest pain is going to be trying to tag anything with confusion gone and gs bugged.

Ralathar.7236:

Looking at the confusion damage another way:
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Thanks for taking the time to look into this in such detail and running the numbers. Very interesting, and much appreciated. :-)

Christos de Soufre.3802:

To clarify; I’m looking for advice on the what the future of large group Mesmer builds will be. Talking 15+ here, minimum.

Wait, there are other guilds out there that run 15+ mesmers in a group?

Oh you talking about a single mesmer in a group of 15+!

The great thing about the Mesmer is we can do alot, I’ve seen some great support builds that scale really well with larger groups, I’ve also seen solo style builds like the Immortal build being used really well also.

To best answer your question, we would need to know the group composition, the best mesmers are the ones that synergize with the group, or have a group that synergizes with them. For a random pick up group, glam was easy to use as it did not take much forthought in regards to synergy, if you still want something similar, I would suggest looking down one of the support builds (that we have many) because a support build is more likely to be synergetic in a larger variety of group compositions than any other build.

Ralathar.7236:

I think you forgot about the fact that you are applying massive amounts of blinds, boon stripping, reflection, and chaos fields. Plus whatever you are doing with your actual weapons.

Glamor Mesmer is not intended to be zerg wiping damage. It’s intended to be a support build that get a fair amount of damage for free. Keep in mind as well this stacks with multiple Mesmers and Necromancers are your best friend.

Also keep in mind that you may average more damage in the long run because people may not choose to blow their condition removal on your confusion anymore. 1 more activation on average brings you right back up to pre-nerf levels.

Burning, bleeding, and poison take time to stack and take time to deal their damage. Confusion deals it’s damage up front and confusion is applied in short order allowing you to do other things. In many cases confusion deals it’s damage where other conditions simply do not, though other conditions may be applied more frequently.

One last thing. Because bleeding, poison, and burning are applied frequently classes that can convert conditions to boons or send conditions to enemies can actually benefit alot more heavily from them. Great example is the popular Warrior War Horn traited. With proper War Horn support condition damage dealers are actually making the enemy zerg stronger by giving them boons.

Dealing all of your damage in one occasionally applied condition up front is actually a significant benefit against well made enemy team comps. It strikes a good balance between getting a chance to deal your damage and not empowering the enemy zerg. Not to mention the fact one of your glamor abilities is actually stripping their boons.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

As I read this thread, I was wondering when people were going to mention the fact that we’re reflecting, blinding, and stripping boons!

When I first heard about the Confusion nerf, I was a bit upset as well, but then I remembered, I only used Glamor Confusion to begin with because I like the Glamor skills, and the rest was added bonus. I wasn’t even expecting adding one or two stacks of Confusion to do much anyway.

All I keep seeing in these threads is “mesmer should not be able to kill anything. It has phantasms and clones.”

funny thing is.. thief’s reveal is going down from 4s to 3s and even better, they’re getting buffed with MORE base dmg on normal attacks + the sword can now steal boons. hahahah this is just ridiculous

Alchemist.3692:

funny thing is.. thief’s reveal is going down from 4s to 3s and even better, they’re getting buffed with MORE base dmg on normal attacks + the sword can now steal boons. hahahah this is just ridiculous

Maybe a Thief died in PvP, so an alarm went off in the office?

Wvw stay the same no change there. The utility of null field,veil, signet of inspiration is second to none. So while roaming builds may and surely will change wvw is not gonna change! portal is very situational. For all the cry confusion is very good,yeah but now nerfed,but you still remove conditions on allies give conditions to enemies,give invisibility ect. So this nerf dont change anything.

ammayhem.5962:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

As I read this thread, I was wondering when people were going to mention the fact that we’re reflecting, blinding, and stripping boons!

When I first heard about the Confusion nerf, I was a bit upset as well, but then I remembered, I only used Glamor Confusion to begin with because I like the Glamor skills, and the rest was added bonus. I wasn’t even expecting adding one or two stacks of Confusion to do much anyway.

Blinding and boon stripping do not tag enemies. Neither does shatter if you use it at range as they die before they get to the target. Gs is bugged. Confusion was our best tagging tool by far.

fadeaway.2807:

ammayhem.5962:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

As I read this thread, I was wondering when people were going to mention the fact that we’re reflecting, blinding, and stripping boons!

When I first heard about the Confusion nerf, I was a bit upset as well, but then I remembered, I only used Glamor Confusion to begin with because I like the Glamor skills, and the rest was added bonus. I wasn’t even expecting adding one or two stacks of Confusion to do much anyway.

Blinding and boon stripping do not tag enemies. Neither does shatter if you use it at range as they die before they get to the target. Gs is bugged. Confusion was our best tagging tool by far.

Silly me, you’re right. I should be more concerned about getting loot than helping win the fight…

As far as roaming/small team fights is concerned, shatter is best option.

For zerg/bigger teams scenarios, i think that glamour wil stay the meta.
Feedback, Veil, Null field, occasional portal are the most powerful set of utility tools of any profession.
A single Veil, allowing your zerg to do a devasting inc before enemy can react, it’s a game changer. Projetcile reflection always rocks in wvw. Mass boon and condition stripping? Yes please. Portal, no need to explain here.

Surely, something will change. You can
a) keep rolling the 20 0 0 20 30 confusion build, and deal with halved dmg
b) change up the trait distribution. 20 in insipiration for glam CD + warden’s fedback will stay imo. 10 pts in illusion aswell. Will be interesting to see how move other 40 trait points.

Thorson.9218:

Ralathar.7236:

Looking at the confusion damage another way:
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Thanks for taking the time to look into this in such detail and running the numbers. Very interesting, and much appreciated. :-)

No problem. MMORPG’s and their balance is kind of a passion of mine so when I get interested in something I tend to get pretty deep into the guts and context of it.

ammayhem.5962:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

As I read this thread, I was wondering when people were going to mention the fact that we’re reflecting, blinding, and stripping boons!

When I first heard about the Confusion nerf, I was a bit upset as well, but then I remembered, I only used Glamor Confusion to begin with because I like the Glamor skills, and the rest was added bonus. I wasn’t even expecting adding one or two stacks of Confusion to do much anyway.

Same as above.