Guild Wars 2

Hi,

So now that the new traits have been released I have been thinking about new builds for the WvW guild group mesmer. Before the glamour/confusion nerf, of course I ran the glamour build and it was GLORIOUS! Too glorious. So as many others I expected a nerf. And the nerf hammer came hard, hitting glamour mesmers so the never got back up again.

After the nerf I have been playing the glamour mesmer with bad results, so I moved on, as many others, to the boon stripping shatter mesmer. That is a very different playstyle for the mesmer and a very viable build with some support. However when it comes to boonstripping other classes have better ways of doing so (yeah i’m looking at you necros!).

So when the new grandmaster traits were released I was STOKED. Finally our prayers about the WvW guild group mesmer had been heard, or at least I thought so…

• Power Block – Enemy skills that you interrupt have an increased cooldown of 10s*

• Triumphant Distortion – Gain 3s of distortion upon killing an enemy. No cooldown.*

• Bountiful Disillusionment – Gain boons each time a shatter skill is used. Mind wrack – 3s of relitation. Cry of frusturation – 3 stacks of might for 15s; Diversion – 5s of fury; Distortion – 8 seconds of regeneration*

• Disruptor’s Sustainment: Gain 1000 healing power for 5s upon interrupting a foe.*

• Maim the Disillusioned – Enemies hit by shatter skills are inflicted with torment.*

I can only see the Triumphant Distortion as a relevant trait for the WvW mesmer and even that don’t really give us a role in a guild group other than distortion. You see in order for the trait to be really powerfull you have to keep killing stuff, and what if you don’t? you run away? you die? Thats not really group play in my opinion.

So to conclude this rambling: maybe its time to remove the internal cooldown from Blinding Befudlement and make the glamour mesmer somewhat viable again? The current meta have loads of condition removal and confusion have been nerfed to 50 % damage.

Would the glamour mesmer with no cooldown on Blinding Befudlement be too OP? would three confusion stacks in stead on two make it OP? What’s your thoughts on the WvW mesmer with the new gransmaster traits?

I can see more than that useful in WvW – especially if some of the skills have small AoE affects. They haven’t said yet, but it would make Mesmers more useful in smaller groups.

I can see Powerblock useful but one can’t if one doesn’t rethink the meta game.

Chrhal.4983:

So to conclude this rambling: maybe its time to remove the internal cooldown from Blinding Befudlement and make the glamour mesmer somewhat viable again? The current meta have loads of condition removal and confusion have been nerfed to 50 % damage.

Would the glamour mesmer with no cooldown on Blinding Befudlement be too OP? would three confusion stacks in stead on two make it OP? What’s your thoughts on the WvW mesmer with the new gransmaster traits?

I love Glamours – although I never played the Glamour WvW build back then – and I would really appretiate their return because Mesmers lack viable AoE options. I don’t think that any of the new traits will help with that, though.

That being said, I do not think that Blinding Befuddlement should be the thing to look at to bring Glamours back. First, it is not even a Glamour trait although it was used in the popular build back then. Second, it does not work with Confusing Enchantments which actually is a Glamour trait. In general, I feel that Blinding Befuddlement should do something different than causing Confusion because of the conflict between those traits. If you want to bring back Glamours you should look at the trait distribution and functionality of the real Glamour traits.

Confusing Enchantments
Should this trait be in Domination or maybe moved to Illusions?
Is one stack of Confusion when crossing really enough? Even when the stacks were increased, wouldn’t Confusion pulsing within the Glamours like Wells be more reasonable?

Glamour Mastery
I think this trait is fine in general.

Temporal Enchanter
Is this trait worth giving up others like, for example, Wardens Feedback? Probably not.
The additional duration probably should be added to Glamour Mastery (see Master of Consecration). Temporal Enchanter could Cripply or Chill foes within the Glamours and grant Swiftness to allies instead. Of course, I’d prefer Chill because it is awesome when combined with Confusion.

Dazzling Glamours
Is Blind on cast enough considering the cooldown on Glamours? I personally think no.
Dazzling Glamours should pulse Blind like Wells. Maybe not every second but one Blind on cast is extremly underhwelming.

The nerf on blinding befuddlement was ridiculous in the first place in light of the confusion damage nerf. Even if they hadn’t added the ICD, the trait still would have been weak. Currently it’s fodder.

Yes they should remove the ICD and should have a long time ago. Maybe some trait re-work on this one is an additional change we’ll see with the new patch. One can hope.

I’d vote no to having glamour mesmers return. Glamours are 3 skills with short up times and long cool downs. It was always a super frustrating build to play. 15 seconds of awesomeness then 30 seconds of impotence.

I like the niche they filled (mass confusion, mass blind) and would love to see those folded in to some weapon skills or shatters, for sure.

Xaylin.1860:

Dazzling Glamours
Is Blind on cast enough considering the cooldown on Glamours? I personally think no.
Dazzling Glamours should pulse Blind like Wells. Maybe not every second but one Blind on cast is extremly underhwelming.

While I completely agree with your assessment here, that initial AOE blind at the right time (right when zergs first clash, for example) can turn the tide of a zerg fight. When that initial hammer train all misses their hammerstuns and then looks dumbfounded… it’s a nice feeling. xD

yes, we would need them back. back thennoone used condi cleanses or specced for it, so yeah condis hit hard and killed zergs like that. but then again thats the only thing that was very mesmer like and the only way to apply aoe dmg. all this is gone now and we are left with no viable wvw raid builds. bb didnt need such a nerf, confusion dmg is a joke atm. perplexity is a slap in the face for a mesmer as this was our core mechanic.

we keep getting shatter traits, but shatter barely work if u are not specced with ip
ip is the only thing that makes shatter work in wvw as no illusions are viable in a zerg. so if u wanna use shatter u have to put 30 into Illusions. this limits the whole build options for many of us.

so yeah glamour really was the only option for wvw raids…but well anet gives us random mostly useless gm traits and bug fixes with the next patch…..no real work was put into mesmer at all, it seems. every other class gets stuff where i think, man i wish i had just 1 of them…

Yes glamors need to be re-instituted. However your biggest hurdle is overcoming the devs bias against Mesmers in which they see anything regarding “Purple Cheese”.

You’re fighting an uphill battle on something that’s a rainy day bookshelf consideration for a balance dev.

Never the less, I run confusion on enter/exit, and a single feedback when zerging. At least I can tag well enough to get some bags in WvW.

Bring them back in all their awesomeness and allow Mesmers to finally contribute meaningfully again to the zerg.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Yes glamors need to be re-instituted. However your biggest hurdle is overcoming the devs bias against Mesmers in which they see anything regarding “Purple Cheese”.

You’re fighting an uphill battle on something that’s a rainy day bookshelf consideration for a balance dev.

Never the less, I run confusion on enter/exit, and a single feedback when zerging. At least I can tag well enough to get some bags in WvW.

Your cheese looks delicious! I’ll have it with some wine and butterflies!

The question is: Do you get more bags from Confusion or might it actually come from the Feedback itself? Even in the cases the Confusion helps tagging it still is pretty pathetic. It won’t make any meaningful difference in any fight.

Glamour confusion will never be as it was. If it has been nerfed for a year, and after tons of patches, why would they make it as it was in a near future?

I also don’t find glamour build that much enjoyable. You pop 3 skills every 32s and the rest of the time you just need to survive. Sorry, but this is not good performance nowadays. And even if it viable, people will just take more condi cleansing to counter it.

Shatter builds may be not the limbo, but they promote a much skilled playstyle that grants you months of improvement. They also have way more damage than just some confusion stacks. I’ve been able to deal more than 35k of damage (counting all targets) in just 6s in a GvG…

Removal of that ridiculous ICD on Blinding Befuddlement would be a good start. And then some duration or stack increases would be somewhat sufficient. Mesmers that dump longish CD utilities to utilise interesting secondary effects should be rewarded more than they currently are.

I was kind of hoping that Anet were going to add a +33% Confusion damage trait as a new Grandmaster for Mesmers and then confusion Mesmer would actually be feared once again. But Anet decided it would be best to give Thieves confusion instead. Yeaa….