Guild Wars 2

Daecollo.9578:

When you hit yourself for 5k when you use a skill its pretty self explanatory.

I was about to say the EXACT same thing…lol

Yeah 1 stack of Confusion isn’t all that OP. How about we just stack it in duration instead of 50% damage nerf?

Something’s gotta change when people get their 8k healing skill nullified by one condition.

Daecollo.9578:

However that lies the problem. Stealth thieves cannot turn last refuse off, its a ‘5’ point minor trait that we are forced to recieve. When it procs at 25% and we have confusion, it usually just spikes and kills us.

I did not know that never had a theif, however as the poster above me stated thats a problem with how confusion and those sort of traits work together. In reality these sort of minor perks are what make confusion very powerly (things like procing on dodges) These are the things that need to be addressed to make confusion more balanced not damage reduction

The healing while in stealth counters the damage taken from your c&d or whatever you used to get into stealth. If it’s above that then you gone and messed up and allowed the other player to put a large stack on you. That’s on you… as it should be. Even if it is a large stack the mesmer won’t be able to spike confusion on you like that for a while, so keep on using stealth combos and you should be topped off by the time they confusion spike again.

Thieves really shouldn’t be complaining about conditions. Shadow’s Embrace is a VERY strong trait. If you choose to not take it then it’s your choice to be more vulnerable to conditions.

Last refuge is a horrid trait that kills you far more often than it helps… but from the revealed debuff. I’ve literally never had it kill my thief from confusion damage. Ever.

As far as it countering a heal… all my other classes can do far more than just a 8k damage spike… which would also counter that heal. Many classes can burst harder and also apply poison on demand to mitigate the heal.

The only thing that a confusion mes really punishes are people who can’t avoid a shatter/big pink beam and then choose to keep spamming after.

The problem was with eng’s who have great condition damage which they can pick and choose when to apply at will… including confusion. They are able to maintain a 7 stack of confusion permanently with ease and keep their other great condition applications. My cond eng makes my cond mesmer look like a pathetic kitten.

The only benefit to a cond/glam mes was in zerg vs zerg because most zerglings tend to be mentally deficient and unable to stop spamming despite the obvious signs they have confusion. A decent group… they just cleanse it and keep going since the damage from a glam/confusion mesmer is horrid after the confusion is gone (done this many times vs. glam gimmick groups with zero problems).

But no worries, you won’t even need to look for confusion after the patch since the damage will be laughable… and no one will be using it…

Aberrant.6749:

As far as it countering a heal… all my other classes can do far more than just a 8k damage spike… which would also counter that heal.

You actually have to land that damage spike in order for it to work. Not sure if you noticed, but Confusion allows you to continue operating while the enemy is damaging himself.

Confusion is doing too much damage for it’s ease of use and the proof is its incoming nerf. The question is not whether or not it needs a nerf, its whether or not this is the appropriate method.

Aberrant.6749:

The only thing that confusion really punishes are people who can’t avoid a shatter/big pink beam and then choose to keep spamming after.

Shattering isn’t the only way to kill illusions and trigger confusion. Actually killing them (because they’re harmful) triggers confusion as well. I’m sure you know this though. And the rate mesmers can put out illusions is staggering. Especially when dodge rolling creates one on top of all other methods. If you can’t keep spitting out illusions as a mesmer, you’re doing something wrong.

I know Anet likes to act as if illusions are precious and mesmers can be cought without them. That is absolutely not the case…go play against someone who knows the class and they’ve always got a clone or a phantasm somewhere the entire fight.

Even if you don’t specifically target the illusions, you’ll probably end up killing them with AoEs and cleave attacks.

You actually have to land a shatter/long cast bright pink beam in order to spike confusion as well. I don’t know if you noticed, but the damage from a condition mesmer is horrid outside of confusion and you can easily just wait for the confusion spike to wear off. It relies on them eating that confusion spike AND then using skills after. That’s FAR less reliable than just str8 damage spiking on my other classes.

Illusion deaths causing confusion won’t kill you even with the current confusion damage unless you’re just going around and swatting at clones. The occasional 1 clone dying from your attacks where the clone happens to be next to the mesmer won’t do diddly. If you’re having problems telling which the real mesmer is… then that’s something you would need to learn.

Don’t worry though… with a 50% nerf inc… you can soon just hack and slash through confusion without a care on your toon. You’ll hardly even feel it.

Also I LOVE it when new mesmers use up their dodges to produce more clones… means they can’t dodge my attacks as much.

This nerf is very much to help out inexperienced/new players vs. mesmer confusion builds and lowers eng cond damage… but if you notice eng’s don’t even really care about a confusion nerf as it isn’t their primary condition damage (vs. mesmer where it is). This patch has little to do with actual balance.

i left it four months after launch before i went down the confusion mesmer path. (Believing that if any SIGNIFICANT changes were to be made, then they would make them within this time. . . . NOT NINE months after launch).
I know its only a game and a waste of time- but let ME waste my OWN time, i DO NOT appreciate someone else wasting my time. Anyway, thankyou, you have given me the incentive to look at other games (which i have not done in the last 9 months- you had me that hooked). Wildstar looks unusually interesting (perhaps that’s Ncsofts plan? players leaving gw2= more sales of other games). So a big thankyou for an enjoyable 9 months i did think this the ‘jewel in the crown’ but now i will just think of it as ‘something i stepped in whilst walking through a field of bulls’.
If they had allowed any dungeon gear to be reverted back to tokens and ascended back to laurels/exchanged then it wouldn’t seem such a WASTE OF TIME.

They are pretty much nerfing all the heavy burst. Too many players complain about their zerker specs getting spiked out in about 2 seconds in PvP. That’s why the thief has been hit so hard in the past few patches, mesmer is going to get hit pretty hard too along with elementalist. They are really heavily promoting the bunker playstyle, despite the early guardian nerfs.

They might as well change CoF into something else like Bleed, along with some of the traits to give at least SOME reliable condition generation.

I believe that if confusion damage would’ve been -50% of current from the start, no one would be crying it doesn’t do enough damage. In PvP atleast.

The damage is going to be dropped to sPvP levels but you can still get +60% duration in WvW that you cannot achieve in sPvP. Thats huge.

I am not saying that its not a big nerf but confusion is about intensity just like a bleed thief is much more powerful in WvW than it is in sPvP. Same with any class that stacks duration on damage conditions like bleed and confusion. 50% is alot to take away I agree but the numbers you see in sPvP wont be the numbers you see in WvW. You will see larger numbers because you can get +60% duration from 2 givers weapons and food which you cannot do in sPvP.

+100% duration on confusion is easily obtainable in WvW.

Redscope.6215:

Daecollo.9578:

When you hit yourself for 5k when you use a skill its pretty self explanatory.

I was about to say the EXACT same thing…lol

Yeah 1 stack of Confusion isn’t all that OP. How about we just stack it in duration instead of 50% damage nerf?

Something’s gotta change when people get their 8k healing skill nullified by one condition.

Like poison? Or burning? Or bleeding? Any condition that is damaging and stacked high enough can wreck someones heal. This confusion nerf in WvW is annoying because a glamour mes was one of the few zerg busters in existence… And confusion is a mesmers only reliable condition… If they reworked staff AA then maybe we would have more viable condition damage builds… The only thing I want to see accompany this confusion nerf is a reapplication of 1 Stack of 5s of confusion applied to scepters AA… all other scepter using classes get a condition applied to their AA (guards by virtue of justice) and ele’s depending on the attunement… This needs to happen to make the scepter somewhat better.

ExZee.8109:

I already said this in another post, but I honestly don’t think the devs tested any real numbers before making this balance change. All they did was copy/paste the numbers from sPvP because nobody whines about confusion there, and why bother balancing a game they don’t play.

Just one more argument in this thread that shows how stupid this nerf is.

a) people do whine about confusion in sPvP – just search that subforum. The complaints are usually about it doing too MUCH damage (even at 50% of PvE value).

b) they have been testing this number since they released the game in sPvP, where it is better balanced. They decided to move that into all PvP areas of the game, including WvW.

c) i think the ideal is if they could do an NPC / Player split where it would do PvE damage to NPCs and sPvP damage to players.

For now, I think this change is very reasonable

Kavia.8249:

ExZee.8109:

I already said this in another post, but I honestly don’t think the devs tested any real numbers before making this balance change. All they did was copy/paste the numbers from sPvP because nobody whines about confusion there, and why bother balancing a game they don’t play.

Just one more argument in this thread that shows how stupid this nerf is.

a) people do whine about confusion in sPvP – just search that subforum. The complaints are usually about it doing too MUCH damage (even at 50% of PvE value).

People whine everywhere. If you hadn’t noticed, there’s no shortage of spvp players who’ve noted how bad confusion is in spvp. Or, more recently in the last two days, how confusion users and non confusion using classes alike have expressed their utter confusion, or downright disgust at such a massive nerf to confusion. So if it’s sheer complaints we’re going off, I’d say yours is in the vast, distant minority.

How is 7 stacks of confusion a stun. Even when I setup my confusion build, thats less than 3k damage per skill use. Thieves do that amount of damage in your sleep and we’re expected to cut that in half simply because you want to use your skills that do 4k+ several times in a short span without any negative effects? On top of this, you have to really use your skills quickly for it to have a drastic effect on your foe since it doesn’t last too long.

CoF is the only reliable way to get a good stack of confusion. Now factor in that I’m seeing more and more guys at least run lemongrass soup (-40% duration) and tons of guys using melandru runes (-25%). This means that even with me traiting for confusion duration and having +40% duration, most of my confusion stacks only last for a little more than 2 seconds at most. Cry of frustion 3 sec + 33% + 40% = 5.2sec – 65% = 2.33 sec. So you are saying that in those 2.33 seconds you can’t simply stop doing a chain, kite, cleanse, lay down, or any other number of things? Nope, you must spam your skills and therefore confusion is OP.

Glamour builds are the issue that needed any changes as the OP and their not reliable for getting good stacks unless you have several glamour memsers who happened to be well coordinated.

And I usually get a kick out of watching a thief drop shadow refuge when I’m fighting them. I just stand around waiting for the body to appear. How about learning to do something other than stealth as your way out of trouble? A simple cleanse skill than the refuge would make you live. Outside of a the occasional nice stack of confusion (which takes a good deal of work to do), a condition mesmer has no other way to really burst you.

Aveneo.2068:

Iruwen.3164:

Considering the new flavor of the month is portals, I’m optimistic it’ll be hit by the nerf bat next.

You do know that Portals were nerfed twice already?

1. Increased cooldown from 60s to 90s
2. Reduced number of ‘charges’ from unlimited to 20

Wasn’t the sarcasm in my post quite obvious? ANet nerfs what people cry about, and now they’re crying about portals. Next will be mind wrack burst, then the rate at which clones are created, then stealth and distortion. Until mesmers are finally worthless and warriors are the only viable class.

Is there a source for this claim that confusion is getting a 50% nerf. The only thing I heard them say in the state of the game is that changes to the way it stacks were being implemented. “Will be changes to the confusion stacks in PvE and PvP”

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1d67nf/gw2guru_sotg/

Can someone provide a source?

http://de.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/396007412?t=002m24s

So I was one of the people advocating that confusion is fine and that it didn’t need to be changed. Then I started running into a few confusion mesmers in WvW. And while confusion as a condition is fine, I’m not sure how you can justify the damage it did. The nerf was warranted.

Just yesterday I ran into such a mesmer. I’m a condition necromancer, so I have two different condition transfers and a cleanse on my heal. He had 25 stacks of his condition damage sigil and the food (but with the wrench icon) that increases your condition damage. We get to fighting.

A few seconds in, I get 8 stacks of confusion on me. I transfer them to him, but take 6k damage. The hell?

A bit later, 6 more stacks. Transfer again (which he dodged). 4k damage.

Switch to DS to tank a bit. Get loaded up again, go to heal. Take another 4k damage from confusion. -.-

Eventually I lost the fight. I was not spamming spells. I was not frantically clicking and trying to get huge numbers, as a necromancer I don’t have that luxury. I was not ignoring what conditions I had on me, as a condition necro it’s very important that I pay attention to that kind of thing. What I was doing was using my abilities smartly and at the correct times, and I still lost because of the ridiculous confusion damage (also he was a good player).

This is only one example of something that happened several times over.

This change does not break glamour builds – they are still strong in sPvP, and you can already get more condition damage in WvW than you can in sPvP. Just because something has been nerfed from god-tier doesn’t mean it falls down to useless-tier.

lettucemode.3789:

So I was one of the people advocating that confusion is fine and that it didn’t need to be changed. Then I started running into a few confusion mesmers in WvW. And while confusion as a condition is fine, I’m not sure how you can justify the damage it did. The nerf was warranted.

Just yesterday I ran into such a mesmer. I’m a condition necromancer, so I have two different condition transfers and a cleanse on my heal. He had 25 stacks of his condition damage sigil and the food (but with the wrench icon) that increases your condition damage. We get to fighting.

A few seconds in, I get 8 stacks of confusion on me. I transfer them to him, but take 6k damage. The hell?

A bit later, 6 more stacks. Transfer again (which he dodged). 4k damage.

Switch to DS to tank a bit. Get loaded up again, go to heal. Take another 4k damage from confusion. -.-

Eventually I lost the fight. I was not spamming spells. I was not frantically clicking and trying to get huge numbers, as a necromancer I don’t have that luxury. I was not ignoring what conditions I had on me, as a condition necro it’s very important that I pay attention to that kind of thing. What I was doing was using my abilities smartly and at the correct times, and I still lost because of the ridiculous confusion damage (also he was a good player).

This is only one example of something that happened several times over.

This change does not break glamour builds – they are still strong in sPvP, and you can already get more condition damage in WvW than you can in sPvP. Just because something has been nerfed from god-tier doesn’t mean it falls down to useless-tier.

You should have waited 3-5 seconds for it to expire. Confusion ticks when you act and doesn’t last long. It also telegraphs like crazy (what other condition results in a purple “halo” around your characters head). In WvW if I get hit with confusion I just walk backwards into my zerg until it’s gone.

In a 1 on 1 battle, kite for a few seconds.

Thanks for the tips but I knew them already, I know how confusion works and how to avoid it. Also, kite from multiple, ranged phantasms on an open plain? Right.

And it didn’t expire after 3-5 seconds. More like 10. He had the bonus condition duration food (apple icon) on as well.

I think that confusion is fine in theory. But in practice the damage is simply too high (in WvW). In competitive games, if I have a counter (condition transfers and cleanses) to what someone is doing (confusion stacking), they should not be able to counter my counter by doing more of the original, countered thing. It basically makes the original thing the strongest tactic in the game, since you can beat all its counters by just doing more of it.

I would support reducing the nerf to maybe 30% and then take some time to see what state WvW glamour mesmers are in.

Confusion damage should never have been nerfed directly. I would have just made it so it doesn’t proc on dodge traits. Even with the 50% nerf in WvW as long as you got like plenty of mesmers spamming it, its still going to wreck face, just not as fast.

Too many people talking as if the ONLY thing were are contending with at the moment is a Condition Mesmer’s Stacks….

There’s more going on to attribute to the necessity of acting other than just walking away and waiting out the ticks. Not in a 1v1 per say but in larger groups Yes.
A mesmer’s confusion just makes getting out of anything hairy near impossible without killing yourself.

Daecollo.9578:

When you hit yourself for 5k when you use a skill its pretty self explanatory.

When you are stupid enough to hit yourself for 5k you deserve it.

Archer.1658:

Confusion damage should never have been nerfed directly. I would have just made it so it doesn’t proc on dodge traits. Even with the 50% nerf in WvW as long as you got like plenty of mesmers spamming it, its still going to wreck face, just not as fast.

I agree, anything that is traited should not activate confusion, IMO only your direct 1-5 and Healing,Utility and Elite skills should activate it. A dodge activating a trait should have no cause to activate Confusion damage.

lettucemode.3789:

Thanks for the tips but I knew them already, I know how confusion works and how to avoid it. Also, kite from multiple, ranged phantasms on an open plain? Right.

And it didn’t expire after 3-5 seconds. More like 10. He had the bonus condition duration food (apple icon) on as well.

I think that confusion is fine in theory. But in practice the damage is simply too high (in WvW). In competitive games, if I have a counter (condition transfers and cleanses) to what someone is doing (confusion stacking), they should not be able to counter my counter by doing more of the original, countered thing. It basically makes the original thing the strongest tactic in the game, since you can beat all its counters by just doing more of it.

I would support reducing the nerf to maybe 30% and then take some time to see what state WvW glamour mesmers are in.

I’ve been running a glamour mesmer in WvW and I have very rarely seen numbers above 2000K for a tick, usually it’s in the 350ish range. I’m running full exotic rabid / carrior armor / trinkets and exotic rabid weapons.

I’m sure it’s because I suck as a mesmer, but I just don’t understand how people were getting these 4k numbers.

Edit: I do agree that cleansing should occur before any damage is taken.

lettucemode.3789:

Thanks for the tips but I knew them already, I know how confusion works and how to avoid it. Also, kite from multiple, ranged phantasms on an open plain? Right.

And it didn’t expire after 3-5 seconds. More like 10. He had the bonus condition duration food (apple icon) on as well.

I think that confusion is fine in theory. But in practice the damage is simply too high (in WvW). In competitive games, if I have a counter (condition transfers and cleanses) to what someone is doing (confusion stacking), they should not be able to counter my counter by doing more of the original, countered thing. It basically makes the original thing the strongest tactic in the game, since you can beat all its counters by just doing more of it.

I would support reducing the nerf to maybe 30% and then take some time to see what state WvW glamour mesmers are in.

Wow. You LOST 1v1 verses a glam confusion Mesmer? That’s embarassing. We suck at 1v1. We’ve traded so much survivability and direct damage for our confusions skills that we’re very weak and easily countered by most classes. I was thinking about re-rolling as a Necro after nerfpocslyse but now I’m not so sure.

Issue is simple:
-ppl is too lazy to get better. There are tons of ways to counter or mitigate/negate confusion. Stop spamming skills, cleanse it, wait for it to run off, don’t run into enemy glamour fields, kill the mesmer…just to name a few.
-anet didn’t want to come up with a more clever solution. They could have capped the stacks to 5 or 8… capping to 5 ppl the confusion application of a single glamour field. Making cleansing skills removing confusion not being affected by it. Making multiple confusion sources (aka: multiple mesmers) not being able to stack confusion but over writing each others. And those are just the tip of the iceberg of possible ways to balance out confusion w/o butchering it.
Yet they went for the lazy way of halving dmg.

(wvw perspective)

In PvE Confusion needs a split anyway in it’s functionality, right now it’s utterly useless and it’s the only condition mesmer can apply (decently and reliably. Sharper images and staff are just bad when comes down to dotting stuff).

Waiting 30th to know which will be next Mesmer skill/trait qqers will ask to nerf.

/popcorn

^^ well there will be more shatter power builds so expect a xx% shatter damage nerf for june.

Under Web.2497:

^^ well there will be more shatter power builds so expect a xx% shatter damage nerf for june.

Honestly, as wicked damage as I’ve seen from shatter builds, people are going to miss confusion builds. lol At least confusion can be waited out, but I’ve seen videos of shatterer specialists taking out 5 people in seconds. It’s just insane. I wish I was so good as mesmer, I wouldn’t play my elementalist so much. lol

If Anet continues to pander to new players who do not want to learn how to deal with other classes and the unique conditions they can apply, this game will quickly become uninteresting. Nerfing is never the answer, why instead of saying nerf confusion didn’t some of you people say, “Make us stronger” instead to deal with it? Now you’ll have gotten your wish and next month they’ll nerf some other class and it could be yours and then you’ll understand how frustrating it is to make a build, shell out time, money, and energy, and get a 50% nerf. 50%. That’s insane.

Also: the video with the necro vs. the guardian… linking that is silly. That’s why you’re supposed to be watching for retaliation before you use that skill. That was ridiculously bad playing.

Daecollo.9578:

When you hit yourself for 5k when you use a skill its pretty self explanatory.

I don’t know anyone stupid enough to get hit for 5k per skill use.. that’s over 20 stacks of confusion. At 1600 dmg with 15 stacks i did 3k dmg and that was on a guild claimer.. never have I seen a human player have more than 8 stacks.

It’s clowns like you that give the wrong idea about confusion.

Actually, it’s ~10 stacks fully buffed (unless you’re talking about PvP). Not that hard to reach for an engi or in a group. It had to be fixed - but not broken. This would have been a good chance to fix confusion so it’s not op in WvW and not useless in PvE. Too bad ANet wasn’t willing to spend an hour on thinking about how to fix a major mesmer class mechanic. So switch to a gs power build and melt faces with mind wrack as long as it lasts before it’s hit by the mindless nerf hammer. But I guess portals will be next, at least that’s what people now start crying about the most and as we know, ANet listens to the whiners. Better just roll a warrior.

shimmerless.4560:

The part that frustrates me is that there shouldn’t be any difference between direct damage and confusion damage. Oh, wait, there is one… you can counter confusion by just not mashing skills; direct damage is going to hit you regardless.

When someone gets hit by a five-digit Eviscerate, it’s no biggie. For some reason when they die to confusion (and frankly, if you’re not in a lengthy, protracted duel you have to really be trying to get killed by it alone) the condition itself gets the blame. Why? What makes direct damage legit but confusion “overpowered”?

This is exactly what I don’t understand, how is speccing for direct damage any different to speccing for confusion damage? Even though I’m stacking toughness I still get walloped with 7k backstab, 4k heartseeker, but it’s not ok for the to take a bit of confusion damage which they can avoid by not being bad. I just don’t get the logic, it’s just buffing bad players and pandering to lazy players who would rather complain than simply… Get better at the game…

All my armor is PTV with PPT upgrades, so lots of toughness. I’m still seeing 9k bs and 4k hs, and a thief can do that faster and more often than a mesmer can stack confusion…and more reliably.

I can see if A-net’s argument was “confusion damage is high, nothing should hit that hard”, but when bs is up to 9k (highest I’ve seen) and can be done every 3 secs (yes I know about dodging and moving around) and warrior rifle burst is 12k (highest I’ve seen on me at least), that can’t be the reason.

I’m sorry, the best we can do now is get 5 stacks that last a good amount of time and an occasional boost of 8-10 stacks. So with all the traiting and work to build up to that, we know can do a whole 3k and that would be lucky to proc more than 1 time before the majority of the stacks drop off. Way to kill a whole set of viable builds. RIP condition mesmers. Even glamour mes are basically point less unless you get 5+ of them together to drop their glamours in the same area.

The only place condition mesmers were even viable in the first place was WvW. Lets put it another way, bleeding now does far more damage than confusion. Simply sad.