I was testing sigils and runes in the mists and I noticed that while in the mists confusion damage is cut in half on the tooltip and the damage it does. (tested actual damage on sparring npcs). I wear berserker gear in both pve world and pvp but this seemed strange to me as this does not appear to happen when you enter world vs world. Is this intentional?
Edit: I’d like to clarify why I ask this, It seems strange for a stat to work differently in one pvp scenario than in another. I have no beef with them nerfing confusion in pvp if it is too strong. I find it strange that it gets nerfed in only one kind of pvp…
How is a player attacking another player/using his abilities any different in WvW than it is in sPvP? It’s not like players magically attack twice as fast in sPvP….
SPvP has completely different rules and objectives.
For whichever reason, the Anet guys in charge of balance determined that confusion was too powerful in sPvP. The same for many other abilities, which is why there is a sPvP/non-sPvP split with many skills.
Example: the change to Portal cool down to 90 seconds is a good change to sPvP, as otherwise a Mesmer could guard two capture points. Where as the 90 Portal cool down is completely unneeded and downright stupid outside of sPvP.
Different game types, which have different objectives and rules, require different balance adjustments.
Correction. Confusion damage is not halved in sPvP: it is doubled in PvE. The split in sPvP/PvE damage was a buff, not a nerf.
The sPvP version is the original. During the Beta they doubled Confusion damage in PvE because of complaints that it is useless due to slow mob attack speeds. WvW uses PvE versions of skills because it is, after all, tied to PvE; and is not concerned with profession balance like sPvP is.
Confusion has to be powerful. It should be not like other conditions slowly ticking your hp. It must have some shutdown mechanism – either you stop casting or risk to kill yourself The mesmer is unique class and sadly Anet are kind of trying to make it more similar to other classes (phantasms summon is physical attack, confusion is blockable by ‘block’ skill etc.) I fear it will lose its flavor soon.
Edit: I’d like to clarify why I ask this, It seems strange for a stat to work differently in one pvp scenario than in another. I have no beef with them nerfing confusion in pvp if it is too strong. I find it strange that it gets nerfed in only one kind of pvp…
The reason is that WvW is more about mass-gameplay. Sure smaller battles happen, but one key rule of winning in WvW is to never try to fight a fair fight in the first place. You want to only engage when you know beforehand you’ll win, and rather distract or misguide the enemy where they would win.
In other words, a stronger Confusion isn’t as much of an impact since we cannot viably stack it very high (9 stacks in rapid succession, and even then the 9-stack only lasts ~1 second, then it’s down to 3) on large groups (shatter isn’t that big compared to WvW fight sizes).
As we lack AEs, at the very least we get a slightly more powerful F2 and Trait-based AE Confusion. This seems sort-of a compromise for AE reasons really, as in 5v5 the AEing is very rarely a key aspect, so the damage is balanced around 1v1 engagements instead. While in WvW it has to be balanced for AE damage.
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If anyone is too concerned about confusion in wvw (laughable but lets play pretend) → buy a minus 40% duration on conditions food unavailable for spvpers → profit.
There’s only one exception, but it is too niche to matter. There used to be another but ANet stealth-nerfed it.
SPvP has completely different rules and objectives.
For whichever reason, the Anet guys in charge of balance determined that confusion was too powerful in sPvP. The same for many other abilities, which is why there is a sPvP/non-sPvP split with many skills.
Example: the change to Portal cool down to 90 seconds is a good change to sPvP, as otherwise a Mesmer could guard two capture points. Where as the 90 Portal cool down is completely unneeded and downright stupid outside of sPvP.
Different game types, which have different objectives and rules, require different balance adjustments.
That explains why I didn’t have the feeling how overpowered my mesmer was underwater as much in spvp as in wvw. (weird sentence… too tired to write it well)
And for the portal: it was also abused in WvW to move alpha golems across the map at high speed. There was no need to nerf it for jump puzzles and other stuff in open world though >.>
Edit: I’d like to clarify why I ask this, It seems strange for a stat to work differently in one pvp scenario than in another. I have no beef with them nerfing confusion in pvp if it is too strong. I find it strange that it gets nerfed in only one kind of pvp…
This is simple, they have flat out said WvW is -NOT- what they’re going to balance around, it is the unbalanced PvP scenario where you can steam roll over people and blah blah blah, it uses PvE stats, armor, etc etc, where as in sPvP is what they want to be an Esport and as such it needs to be very balanced which is why all the pvp balances affect there, and not WvW (if they nerf it in WvW they’d have to nerf it in PvE as well, which could render Confusion useless due to the whole mobs attack half as much).
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the reason why i don’t spvp and will never do until i care about another class or ANET completely over nerf mes. How they come out with this decision is above me… If confusion (which is far from being OP) is halved then why not half stealth on thief, remove half the amount of minions necros can have or another stupidity? glass cannony builds are already much better for pvp AND pve but they still make it worst, lol anet sometimes.
Fact: every Thief tells you to “l2p” when the subject is to nerf stealth.
they have flat out said WvW is -NOT- what they’re going to balance around
Source on this?
My issue with this statement is that the DAoC devs said the same thing, and just as everyone told them back then, they had to admit later on that that’s not how their own game works (you can’t base it off RvR gameplay and then not make it the focal point of class balance). You’d think a company taking over the concept would then already take that in at launch.
the reason why i don’t spvp and will never do until i care about another class or ANET completely over nerf mes. How they come out with this decision is above me… If confusion (which is far from being OP) is halved then why not half stealth on thief, remove half the amount of minions necros can have or another stupidity? glass cannony builds are already much better for pvp AND pve but they still make it worst, lol anet sometimes.
Because – to get back to the same point – it’s “just sPvP”.
You throw a nerf bone whenever the whining about X gets too much, the rest is ripple effects from large-scale balancing or class design changes.
Despite what many players like to believe, this was the base design for PvP balance in WoW, too. Only it happened much faster there (meaning 10+ iterations of Arena balance for every design balance change, a result of a much more matured game). You don’t balance based on smallscale or even largescale PvP, you balance around the class design.
If you don’t, you end up with a too-constrained game, a result of the balance problems of smallscale PvP in RPGs.
(edit)
As negative as the above sounds, ripples from class design implementations + spot nerfing is genuinely all you need for sPvP balancing, or any smallscale balance in RPGs. It’s exactly how you want to do it, simply because it works.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
the reason why i don’t spvp and will never do until i care about another class or ANET completely over nerf mes. How they come out with this decision is above me… If confusion (which is far from being OP) is halved then why not half stealth on thief, remove half the amount of minions necros can have or another stupidity? glass cannony builds are already much better for pvp AND pve but they still make it worst, lol anet sometimes.
Confusion damage was never halved, it was doubled. sPvP Confusion damage is the original, PvE Confusion damage was a later addition: Confusion used to do the same damage in PvE as it did in sPvP, they then buffed the PvE damage.
Confusion is super effective in PVP. On a CoR shatter with shatter build your 8 stack confusion will basically kill a player on its own if they don’t pay attention and don’t turn off auto attack. Not to mention just the normal MR combo critting for 10kish + the 4 stacks of free confusion which punishes them for doing anything after you unload a huge burst attack on them.
Of all the things to complain about that is like the worst.
Confusion is broken in wvw. It’s not uncommon to get 4k+ ticks from confusion stacks. If a thief attacks with that on them they instantly die for the most part. Granted stats don’t get quite as high in spvp, but I still think it’s balanced there. Besides wvw isn’t supposed to be balanced (supposedly). They’ll change their mind on that later I imagine since it seems like far more people play wvw than spvp atm.
To be fair, we also lack in the AE department, and Confusion at least helps a little bit with that (F2), so just flat out sPvP-nerfing the damage would be overkill.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.
I do wish people will stop saying they nerfed the sPvP damage when in fact Confusion has never ever received a nerf: the split in Confusion damage occurred as a buff to PvE and WvW damage, sPvP damage was never touched.
