Guild Wars 2

According to Roy Conacher:
We didn’t want to leave out the last damaging condition, confusion. Confusion is quite fickle. Currently, whenever a foe afflicted with confusion attacks, they take damage. In some combat situations, this is far too effective, such as against a very rapidly attacking character. In other cases, it performs very poorly, such as on a slowly attacking boss.

To make this damaging condition more reliable, we’ve changed what it does, splitting it into two effects. It will retain the damage on attack, but at a lesser amount than its previous version. That damage has been added back in the form of a damage-over-time effect.

When confusion is placed on an enemy, it will not just slowly drain their life over time but also damage them when they attack. This allows for a more consistent result, as some foes attack quickly but others only once every few seconds, wasting potential damage. We believe we’ve found a happy middle ground where confusion retains its original design intent but will be useful in more areas of the game.

Full article here – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/

The hell. The whole point of confusion for me was to hamper fast attacking classes like ranger. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature!

Maybe one of the devs was playing a ranger and died to confusion or retaliation!

It was nerfed into nothing long ago and has not punished anyone really for a long time. It is super rare to actually “spike” anyone with confusion now. Nobody said it was a bug, what they said was that often confusion did almost nothing.

This is a great change. The only reason to cry would be if they hadn’t nerfed confusion super hard already, as in if this were back when confusion builds actually worked.

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

I feel like it’s a good change, but it can be screwed up if they don’t make the punishing damage high enough.

Dondagora.9645:

I feel like it’s a good change, but it can be screwed up if they don’t make the punishing damage high enough.

Even so, now confusion can deal more even damage. No more situational damage.

It is a great chance, I love it.

StickerHappy.8052:

Dondagora.9645:

I feel like it’s a good change, but it can be screwed up if they don’t make the punishing damage high enough.

Even so, now confusion can deal more even damage. No more situational damage.

True. I guess my statement can be applied to anything.

I have to see how they tweaked it before I form a solid opinion. My greatest fear is that they made ticking damage too weak to have a true impact or that the triggered damage is low to make up for the ticking damage.

I think it’s a good change. Against some classes that are brain dead boring, lose conditions very easily and have auto heals or a condition remove and heal confusion will do very little. Conversely against classes who have high skill usage because that’s how they’re balanced it was very punishing.

Hopefully this will see it levelled out a bit. I feel it should punish you for running around auto attacking like a mad man. However it shouldn’t lock you out of playing or defending yourself if you have 5 stacks or more like it sometimes can do.

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

I strongly believe the damage is equivalent to the old confusion. If an elementalist does 11 skills in 3 seconds they are probably punished less now. But a warrior doing 3 attacks in 3 seconds will take more damage then they did before. It just means to kill that ele we need more stacks which I think is easier now.

bhagwad.4281:

The hell. The whole point of confusion for me was to hamper fast attacking classes like ranger. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature!

Maybe one of the devs was playing a ranger and died to confusion or retaliation!

Spot on and is why I’m concerned with this change.

morrolan.9608:

bhagwad.4281:

The hell. The whole point of confusion for me was to hamper fast attacking classes like ranger. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature!

Maybe one of the devs was playing a ranger and died to confusion or retaliation!

Spot on and is why I’m concerned with this change.

Nah, this will still work just as fine (assuming they’re doing the numbers right). They might get less damage from the attacks, but they will also get the basic DoT-part of confusion. Together, the damage might end up being equal. On the other hand, slow attacking classes/players do now at least get a bit of damage too instead of just nothing happening. Not to mention PvE (even though I had it happen a few times before that confusion would suddenly burst a mob like crazy, but it’s rare haha).

apharma.3741:

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

Since the article said 700 was the rough cutoff for when conditions become noticably effective, and the celestial ammy probably won’t even get near that without 20 or more stacks of might based on how they change base stats and the stats of that amulet, that could adversely effect celestial builds a lot. Which is probably a good thing for build diversity in general.

nearlight.3064:

apharma.3741:

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

Since the article said 700 was the rough cutoff for when conditions become noticably effective, and the celestial ammy probably won’t even get near that without 20 or more stacks of might based on how they change base stats and the stats of that amulet, that could adversely effect celestial builds a lot. Which is probably a good thing for build diversity in general.

Yep, with luck all of the changes are going to result in a drastic nerf to the viability of celestial gear.

Now you can also CC someone with confusion applied and not be shooting your damage in the foot, so that could be worth something, perhaps.

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

apharma.3741:

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

Since the article said 700 was the rough cutoff for when conditions become noticably effective, and the celestial ammy probably won’t even get near that without 20 or more stacks of might based on how they change base stats and the stats of that amulet, that could adversely effect celestial builds a lot. Which is probably a good thing for build diversity in general.

Yep, with luck all of the changes are going to result in a drastic nerf to the viability of celestial gear.

Fingers crossed!

You could still go Carrion, of course. But that would mean sacrificing crit chance – which some classes won’t like/can’t afford – and losing some survivability. Should be a fair trade off.

Xaylin.1860:

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

apharma.3741:

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

Since the article said 700 was the rough cutoff for when conditions become noticably effective, and the celestial ammy probably won’t even get near that without 20 or more stacks of might based on how they change base stats and the stats of that amulet, that could adversely effect celestial builds a lot. Which is probably a good thing for build diversity in general.

Yep, with luck all of the changes are going to result in a drastic nerf to the viability of celestial gear.

Fingers crossed!

You could still go Carrion, of course. But that would mean sacrificing crit chance – which some classes won’t like/can’t afford – and losing some survivability. Should be a fair trade off.

Carrion doesn’t have healing power, crit chance, crit power, toughness, etc etc. Celestial has too much of everything, and so it’s a problem.

Fay.2357:

Xaylin.1860:

Fay.2357:

nearlight.3064:

apharma.3741:

They said that condi damage scaling is changing, I wonder how this is going to affect celestial builds.

Since the article said 700 was the rough cutoff for when conditions become noticably effective, and the celestial ammy probably won’t even get near that without 20 or more stacks of might based on how they change base stats and the stats of that amulet, that could adversely effect celestial builds a lot. Which is probably a good thing for build diversity in general.

Yep, with luck all of the changes are going to result in a drastic nerf to the viability of celestial gear.

Fingers crossed!

You could still go Carrion, of course. But that would mean sacrificing crit chance – which some classes won’t like/can’t afford – and losing some survivability. Should be a fair trade off.

Carrion doesn’t have healing power, crit chance, crit power, toughness, etc etc. Celestial has too much of everything, and so it’s a problem.

In PvP. In PvE it’s junk and only really worthwhile in small scale WvW on some classes…maybe.

I think they really need to do something interesting with celestial, with the number of changes to might and now this I can see celestial getting thrown to the junk pile across all game modes.

You know, like the other half a dozen stat combos.

Hard to tell before playing it, but I don’t really like how the change sounds on paper.

They are not changing the basic working of confusion and that means that it will still punish fast-attacking targets disproportionately more than slow-attacking ones.

I would rather have it work similarly to blind: a big damage (think… 1k per stack) on the next skill use and that would remove confusion.

That way, reapplying confusion would be important on fast-attacking (spamming) enemies and the condition would go back to a place where you would actually need to think if you wanted to take that damage or wait.

As usual, we’ll see how it works in game with all the other changes…

I like the change, but obviously it depends on the implementation. I hope that they leave the the damage-on-action to be significant enough to matter, which kinda worries me from the sound of that article. I think players who spam attacks should absolutely get ripped apart by Confusion. That’s what makes it different from Bleed or Torment, and due to the nature of counter-play that this “on-action-damage” has, it should be significantly more impactful to the overall damage of Confusion then Torment.

So while Torment doubles it’s tick damage on movement, I think Confusion should at least tripple it’s tick damage on activation. So taking Bleed damage as a baseline once more, it should be at least 3x of a Bleed tick per action.

Also, I think that ANet needs to add some base duration to several of our sources of Confusion. Since spike damage will inevitably be lower, which is IMO the key reason why our “Confusion on Shatter” durations are so pathetically low, we will need at least 1-2 seconds added to those. (And probably in a few other places as well.)

Or they could boost the new Blinding Befuddlement duration bonus to 100% and still remove the CD, or at least make the CD mechanic the same mechanics as “Sum of All Fears”, where you can AoE Confusion on blinds, but only once per target every 5s. In fact that would make for some nice possible synergy between BB & SoAF.

Thinking about Dueling AoE Blind with an F2 shatter putting 10x Confusion and 1x long Torment on people. With +100% Confusion duration, you might make BB competitive to MtD…maybe. Hard to say…I’d probably still take MtD! So BB definitely needs something! Really it needs at least a niche in order to compete with MtD or MoF.

Fay.2357:

Carrion doesn’t have healing power, crit chance, crit power, toughness, etc etc. Celestial has too much of everything, and so it’s a problem.

That might be true. But as the others said, Celestial will most likely receive a damage nerf since they change the scaling of condition damage. This will affect most established Celestial builds. Of course, the question will be if it is noticable enough. While I doubt that the longbow-is-dead-drama in the Warrior forum is justified, I’m hoping for the best for overall balance.

Regarding the Confusion changes, I’m pleased. It takes away some burst but buffs Confusion for most situations and set ups. Looking forward to it especially when considering that we can now stack Confusion on crits.

Xaylin.1860:

Looking forward to it especially when considering that we can now stack Confusion on crits.

Yeah enjoy it for the 24 hours it’s live for and then is massively nerfed into the land of so bad not even a necro goes there.

From this thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Opinions-on-new-Confusion/5133889/quote

MailMail.6534:

I’m not into all this number crunching with a lack of information. IN THEORY, I like the way the new confusion will work.

Cons:
-No punishing burst when opponent spams skills[Thus allowing skill spam to continue and possibly weakening its effect on thieves]
-Set amount of damage where current confusion has a pseudo-random damage which can be potentially higher than any other damaging condition in the same amount of time.

It will still be punishing when opponents spam skills. You say this as though dmg on tick is getting removed. Yes, they might nerf the dmg a bit to compensate for the set amount of base dmg, but I see this is an overall buff. Just like torment, stacking it will be severely punishing especially if they are using skills (or moving in the case of Torment).

morrolan.9608:

bhagwad.4281:

The hell. The whole point of confusion for me was to hamper fast attacking classes like ranger. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature!

Maybe one of the devs was playing a ranger and died to confusion or retaliation!

Spot on and is why I’m concerned with this change.

Except this is very hard to do now with our horrible confusion stacking capabilities. With the core specs revamp, we will see EASY stacks of confusion flowing from any Mesmer speccing into Dueling let alone if they’re also condi shatter… I’m actually worried that they’re going to nerf some of our confusion, because on paper, it already looks pretty strong.

They are not changing the basic working of confusion and that means that it will still punish fast-attacking targets disproportionately more than slow-attacking ones.

I don’t think they should change the basic working of confusion. The point of confusion is to damage those spamming attacks willy-nilly. I don’t think slow-attacking opponents should be punished so severely. If you wanna punish them, that’s what we have a million interrupts for. That being said, the base dmg makes up for those enemies who attack slower or not at all, which I think is a big reason why they made this change. i.e. Bosses and mobs in PvE. This also applies to enemy players.

I really like the way this change sounds, but of course, we’ll have to wait and see how the numbers look when they come out.

In addition to the dot change, why not change confusion from a flat damage per attack to a percent damage per attack? In other words, scale the damage confusion does based on the strength of the incoming attack. Wouldn’t this help even out the disparity between slow and fast attacks?

The point of confusion was to make players who suffer from it hesitate before they attack. Not to simply counter rangers that spam. At least this is the way i always looked at it. Sadly it is often weak enough to ignore.

Some people in this thread seem to forget that this game has TWO modes. The old way may have worked fine for PvP, but it was useless in PvE where enemies attacked very slowly. This change should hopefully make confusion a little more viable in PvE.

CrimsonDX.4821:

Some people in this thread seem to forget that this game has TWO modes. The old way may have worked fine for PvP, but it was useless in PvE where enemies attacked very slowly. This change should hopefully make confusion a little more viable in PvE.

+1

Except confusion doesn’t [consistently] work fine for PvP, making these doubters seem even more short-sighted imo. We’ll see. The proof will be in the purple pudding.

Anyone else play WvW and had to deal with perplexity mesmers keeping up 3-11 confusion on you a lot of the time? All I can say is it’s not fun, especially with all the torment added in too.

Feels like you can’t fight at all most of the time as if you move you take loads of damage, if you try to defend you need to hope you have enough cleanses to get most of it. More often than not running is the best option, unless thief where you can avoid a lot of it by stealth.

As others have said, may be balanced in PvP but PvE it’s pretty bad and in WvW some builds that stack a lot of confusion are just not fun for the recipient. Especially when you add perplexity and the trait for longer confusion.

for now it sound like they split the confusion into bleeding which does constant dmg and confusion which proc dmg when using attack skill. while lowering both dmg.
thus ending in nerfing more confusion dmg

confusion must punish for using skill and the punishment must be higher for 8 stack and above and must be longer. as for now the average duration is 4-6 seconds
i take confusion as defensing tool to give me space between enemy attacks. but if thief or ele can ignore it thus the confusion dmg for now is very low.

you want play pve – fine dont take confusion with you . you can proc 20 bleed stack and torment.

i like the concept of torment and confusion. to move or not to move, to attack or not attack. so if confusion will become like more bleed stacks what the point unless they make the punishing for using skill deadlier then now

messiah.1908:

for now it sound like they split the confusion into bleeding which does constant dmg and confusion which proc dmg when using attack skill. while lowering both dmg.
thus ending in nerfing more confusion dmg

This is also my only concern with the change. I agree it was weak in PvE and mostly weak in PvP, but why then is it (from the looks of it anyway) getting a change that results in overall parity at best!? They should simply tack the DoT onto the current Confusion without nerfing the on-action part, because that part was already too weak and durations on Confusion are generally too short to be compared to the other DoT Conditions.

Look everyone now already complains that Condie builds are useless due to all the passive & AoE cleanses out there, and adding yet another DoT is not exactly helping things. Confusion now gets cleared incidentally, and will just the same after the patch, however at least now it’ll tick 1-2 decent spike damage ticks while very likely under the new system you may also only get 1-2 DoT ticks and drastically reduced on-action tick(s).

I just hope the net result was carefully calculated there, and not just balanced via “shooting from the hip.” Confusion is barely viable at the moment, mostly unviable in fact, so the net result should be a significant boost. I don’t see another DoT that gets cleared LONG before it ever ticks out as a boost. Confusion is the only real burst Condition that can compete with DD burst, and after the patch from the looks of Dragon Hunters (chuckle) it’ll be stacked Burns that will provide the biggest burst.

Too bad for us since our ability to stack Burn is very limited.

apharma.3741:

Anyone else play WvW and had to deal with perplexity mesmers keeping up 3-11 confusion on you a lot of the time? All I can say is it’s not fun, especially with all the torment added in too.

Feels like you can’t fight at all most of the time as if you move you take loads of damage, if you try to defend you need to hope you have enough cleanses to get most of it. More often than not running is the best option, unless thief where you can avoid a lot of it by stealth.

As others have said, may be balanced in PvP but PvE it’s pretty bad and in WvW some builds that stack a lot of confusion are just not fun for the recipient. Especially when you add perplexity and the trait for longer confusion.

Can’t say I’ve ever had this experience at all. That could be because I recognize that conditions are dangerous, and I bring ample condition removal to deal with them. If I die to conditions, it’s generally an engie or necro that blindsided me with mashing their face across grenades or a signet of spite, respectively.

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases ( sometimes a lot more) and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

Sadrien.3470:

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under d Dr a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

There are literally 3 bosses in the entire game that this works on, and one is a bug. You can do it on that one inquest guy in an SE path, this is a bug. You can do it on subject alpha, and you can do it on the high priest of grenth…which is open world anyway. There is no conceivable excuse to actually run condition gear in anything but these situations if you’re in a party…and these situations would really just be having some gimmicky fun, since they die just as fast in a standard zerker setup.

Windwalker.7421:

messiah.1908:

for now it sound like they split the confusion into bleeding which does constant dmg and confusion which proc dmg when using attack skill. while lowering both dmg.
thus ending in nerfing more confusion dmg

This is also my only concern with the change. I agree it was weak in PvE and mostly weak in PvP, but why then is it (from the looks of it anyway) getting a change that results in overall parity at best!? They should simply tack the DoT onto the current Confusion without nerfing the on-action part, because that part was already too weak and durations on Confusion are generally too short to be compared to the other DoT Conditions.

Look everyone now already complains that Condie builds are useless due to all the passive & AoE cleanses out there, and adding yet another DoT is not exactly helping things. Confusion now gets cleared incidentally, and will just the same after the patch, however at least now it’ll tick 1-2 decent spike damage ticks while very likely under the new system you may also only get 1-2 DoT ticks and drastically reduced on-action tick(s).

I just hope the net result was carefully calculated there, and not just balanced via “shooting from the hip.” Confusion is barely viable at the moment, mostly unviable in fact, so the net result should be a significant boost. I don’t see another DoT that gets cleared LONG before it ever ticks out as a boost. Confusion is the only real burst Condition that can compete with DD burst, and after the patch from the looks of Dragon Hunters (chuckle) it’ll be stacked Burns that will provide the biggest burst.

Too bad for us since our ability to stack Burn is very limited.

They don’t want confusion stacking mesmers blowing up bosses in fractals Right now it’s a good idea to keep some sinister gear with you for bosses with high attack rates as an engi, mesmer because there are bosses that can be blown up in mere seconds by well timed confusion stacks. And anet want to make it passive and useless, just like applying cripple to a leaping target, or skillfully timing swiftness leaps with rocket boots for tricks in certain areas. These 2 changes kill it for me. All the other changes are good.

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under d Dr a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

There are literally 3 bosses in the entire game that this works on, and one is a bug. You can do it on that one inquest guy in an SE path, this is a bug. You can do it on subject alpha, and you can do it on the high priest of grenth…which is open world anyway. There is no conceivable excuse to actually run condition gear in anything but these situations if you’re in a party…and these situations would really just be having some gimmicky fun, since they die just as fast in a standard zerker setup.

Actually there are more than that ( a couple), and though they are few, using these tactics against them is rewarding and skillful compared to raw dps icebow / spamming.
And pls. Mesmer dps is low already in pretty much all content with any AoEs because our phantasms die after the first attack and you can’t always reflect bosses attacks. I’m not saying you should run condi gear the entire time but there are scenarios it is legitimately better to swap to condi gear by a long ways ( I keep both sets in my inventory for this reason, when I do pve). I run with pugs, so the dps on Zerker is never optimal anyways and the confusion burst does get way higher. I’m pretty sure anet considers all of these bosses a bug…

Sadrien.3470:

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under d Dr a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

There are literally 3 bosses in the entire game that this works on, and one is a bug. You can do it on that one inquest guy in an SE path, this is a bug. You can do it on subject alpha, and you can do it on the high priest of grenth…which is open world anyway. There is no conceivable excuse to actually run condition gear in anything but these situations if you’re in a party…and these situations would really just be having some gimmicky fun, since they die just as fast in a standard zerker setup.

Actually there are more than that ( a couple), and though they are few, using these tactics against them is rewarding and skillful compared to raw dps icebow / spamming.
And pls. Mesmer dps is low already in pretty much all content with any AoEs because our phantasms die after the first attack and you can’t always reflect bosses attacks. I’m not saying you should run condi gear the entire time but there are scenarios it is legitimately better to swap to condi gear by a long ways.

Not really. In a good party, you’re moving rapidly. The time it takes you to swap to condie gear from normal gear and respec into a condie build from a normal build will very likely be almost as long as it takes to kill the entire boss, longer in a very good party.

Subject alpha dies in literally 10 seconds tops in a good dps party. That inquest guy in something similar.

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Fay.2357:

Sadrien.3470:

Kelthien.8593:

Totally on board with the change. Seems like it reserves the flavor of the condition while reducing the damage variance we experience with different target types.

It’s very similar to Torment now.

I’d rather have something be always damaging with the potential for bigger damage on certain targets instead of very damaging only on certain targets and no damage on others.

This completely eliminates the only reason I run condi gear in dungeons, to explode bosses with confusion stacks. You can take out 10s of thousands of hp in under d Dr a second against bosses that spam AoEs in certain phases and it encourages skillful play. Now that this is gone all the condis are passive, and this remove s counter play too, from a pvp perspective.

There are literally 3 bosses in the entire game that this works on, and one is a bug. You can do it on that one inquest guy in an SE path, this is a bug. You can do it on subject alpha, and you can do it on the high priest of grenth…which is open world anyway. There is no conceivable excuse to actually run condition gear in anything but these situations if you’re in a party…and these situations would really just be having some gimmicky fun, since they die just as fast in a standard zerker setup.

Actually there are more than that ( a couple), and though they are few, using these tactics against them is rewarding and skillful compared to raw dps icebow / spamming.
And pls. Mesmer dps is low already in pretty much all content with any AoEs because our phantasms die after the first attack and you can’t always reflect bosses attacks. I’m not saying you should run condi gear the entire time but there are scenarios it is legitimately better to swap to condi gear by a long ways.

Not really. In a good party, you’re moving rapidly. The time it takes you to swap to condie gear from normal gear and respec into a condie build from a normal build will very likely be almost as long as it takes to kill the entire boss, longer in a very good party.

Subject alpha dies in literally 10 seconds tops in a good dps party. That inquest guy in something similar.

I can swap as we approach the boss / eliminating the time your factoring in almost completely if not so. Regardless in pug fractals / dungeons the dps is never that high (unless you get really lucky). I have to remind warriors to run banners…………………………………….
Since your sinister there are very few build changes you take for most swaps, you trait dps for the most part. Mesmer is a little hard but the changes aren’t too much, just swap in a scepter and take Illusions line adding 3 traits. If anet ever decides to add a build book this will become instant.

You also tend to site subject Alpha and this asuran as if they are the only people in the world this can work on ( not true, maybe I shall compile a list).

I had a reply that disappeared into the mists because apparently Anet servers were inaccessible -.-

What this change does is change how much the low and high end of confusion differs by. At 1200 condition damage you’re going to get a guaranteed amount, whatever the target does. It also means that at low to moderate (1-5 stacks) it doesn’t completely shut you out of doing anything but running or cleansing (so long as you have one and it removes the confusion instead of the other 4 you probably have on you).

This would then allow for perplexity runes to bein PvP and possibly for confusion to become more commonly used. At the moment there’s only engineers and mesmers that I often see using confusion…oh and those P/D annoying thieves.

Oh kitten i just remembered how annoying prybar will be..

Yes, and Confusion was kind of balanced around that fact that it’s fairly rare and very short duration. I realize that on paper they will likely keep the potential damage output of Confusion on par with what it is now, at least that’s about what it looks like they’re attempted to do.

However, in actual PvP play this could easily result in a significant nerf due to the prevalence of especially passive & AoE condie clears. If an Ele or Engy have a big stack of Confusion now, they often don’t notice it before activating it at least 2-3 times due to how they spam keys. In the current system that’s pretty significant burst damage coming from a condi build, but under the new system they will notice it just as soon, if not sooner due to the ticks, and remove it sooner….possibly taking much much less damage then now.

This is all I’m saying. I hope this was adequately factored into the numbers, because quite frankly I don’t see any reason why the on-activation damage needs any toning down considering how weak and underused Confusion is.

Also, with a “normalizing” of Confusion damage, they need to take a look at durations. Confusion was definitely kept to short durations on Mesmers, due to the potential damage of a newb spamming skills for 10s straight and QQing about dying to Confusion. ;-)

Our 3s Cry of Frustration and Illusionary Retribution should definitely be doubled in duration, if the burst potential of Confusion has been lowered. (And the new BB GM should have it’s CD removed and duration increased as there is no longer the possibility of the old OPd Glamour builds.)

Of course all of this depends on the actual damage values when it goes live. I just hope they make Confusion both viable and unique.

Not sure what I feel about this.
I kinda like the dot effect it gets. (Now it’s a condition comparable to torment.)
But I don’t like the reduced damage on skill use. Confusion already is harder to apply than torment in PvP (and shorter duration)

What they did is make it a tiny bit less useless in PvE while making it worse for Anything else.

Keep the original confusion damage. Just add the dot effect. Don’t worry it won’t break the game like this. lol

As a Mesmer main i’ve always loved the confusion condition. And I really want condition to be viable for mesmer in PvP & WvW. (missing the good old glamour builds.)

I just don’t think this change will make confusion any better.

Well. Let’s be [relatively] honest, here. Fact is, Confusion was previously a PvP/WvW situation. Nuking zerglings, blasting skill-spammers in the brainpan. Then we had the crapton of nerfs to its damage potential [and Mesmer application effiency>_<]. Not to mention original Perplexity runes, which pulled glamour-nuker level Confusion out for any class with good ’rupts.

With that said, I personally don’t dislike the idea of splitting the damage of the condition. As others have mentioned, this would make it [arguably] workable in PvE. I simply hope that the Devs also keep enough of the “punishment” aspect in, for player-on-player scenarios. This, plus added application via on-crit and on-rupt options … could be plenty effing fun.

one solution for the split dmg regarding pve versus wvw and pvp would be to give a 3% more dmg for each stack of confusion you put

this way a confusion mesmer could do around 8-10 in combo shatter which bring the on skill use dmg with 30% more dmg and while on low stack like 3 the dmg will be the same for the dot perspective

messiah.1908:

one solution for the split dmg regarding pve versus wvw and pvp would be to give a 3% more dmg for each stack of confusion you put

this way a confusion mesmer could do around 8-10 in combo shatter which bring the on skill use dmg with 30% more dmg and while on low stack like 3 the dmg will be the same for the dot perspective

I don’t see that. With confusion on crit, combos, the new vulnerability… i doubt it. If you increment 3% for each stack of the new confusion condition, you increase the “DOT” for each stack too.

Perhaps they could use something similar but with a linear increase in the DOT stacking and a small percentage added to the base of the “on skill use” part for each stack . Although if the base of “on skill use” is enough high, it would not be necessary.

In any case, that should be tested in WvW too, with zergs , guilds, etc. The last thing we want is another debacle with the confusion. Probably confusion is the worst condition to balance.

i didnt see any problem in wvw . the problem is noobs players who zerg and spam 111111

if this is the case let them die fast from confusion.

also group learn how to cleanse so now you hardly see any conditions in wvw zerging

I’m agree, but I still remember what happened. Much noise and fuss came from WvW and spam, as usual, in that case from glamours+BB+confusion damage. And finally they won, so confusion damage and BB were nerfed to the ground. When, probably, the adjustment of the BB was more than enough. An example of overreaction.

For that reason they should keep an eye on traits and skills related to confusion, plus the rune of perplexity for not repeat the history and improve confusion maintaining it’s essence.