Guild Wars 2

These changes just went in.

Let’s all face it, we knew it was high (I sure noticed fighting against other PB mesmers). Not too happy about the CD change.

Mesmer

• Chaotic Dampening: Reduced the recharge reduction percent of staff skills per pulse of chaos armor from 5% to 2%.
• Power Block: Reduced the damage on interrupt by 17%.

Lmao I hope you guys who wanted your nerfs are happy. Idiots.

Let me guess, this was another balance change that only effected Mesmers or did we see nerfs elsewhere this time?

Zera.8907:

Lmao I hope you guys who wanted your nerfs are happy. Idiots.

You say this as if these are the nerfs we wanted or that they weren’t going to nerf us already with or without “our approval”…

MailMail.6534:

Let me guess, this was another balance change that only effected Mesmers or did we see nerfs elsewhere this time?

Mortar Shot took a damage hit. Everything else was bug fixes, basically.

Make sure the outliers stay OP and nerf everything else that starts to look viable. Super cool balance strategy, bros.

The durations numbers in my head are a little fuzzy but 2 chaos armours (staff 2 through chaos storm and then staff 4) only lasts a combined 8 seconds so will only gives us 16% reduction. Mesmer high skill play giving worse results then other classes passive play again.

And another hit to condi Mesmers while no other condie build is touched.

MailMail.6534:

Let me guess, this was another balance change that only effected Mesmers or did we see nerfs elsewhere this time?

Do you really need to ask?

One nerf for engineer, but except for that, all other professions got bug fixes

17% isn’t going to make me stop running doduch. But I don’t see the reasoning behind the dampening of the damp. It felt like it wasn’t enough before.

Great, now Chaotic Dampening is just another gimmicky and useless weapon trait along with The Pledge and Duelist’s Discipline.

Yeah, with that nerf to chaotic dampening, it’s now worse in almost all situations than the original flat 20% cooldown. At 2%, we need it to tick for 10 seconds to reach 20%, and that won’t just gets reached with phase retreat through chaos storm and then activating chaos armor.

So basically, we’re going from flat 20% in all situations to a conditional 20% IFF we combo our skills exactly properly, and that’s only going to be 20% on chaos storm. Chaos armor itself won’t get the 20% reduction, it’ll only get 10.

I’d like to say that I’m surprised by these changes, but I’m not. The dev team taking a massive dump on mesmer is only to be expected at this point. I’m particularly loving how all the other classes got massive numbers of bug fixes, but despite many of our new traits having bugs that completely ruin them, we got nothing but 2 very significant nerfs.

Levetty.1279:

The durations numbers in my head are a little fuzzy but 2 chaos armours (staff 2 through chaos storm and then staff 4) only lasts a combined 8 seconds so will only gives us 16% reduction. Mesmer high skill play giving worse results then other classes passive play again.

And another hit to condi Mesmers while no other condie build is touched.

MailMail.6534:

Let me guess, this was another balance change that only effected Mesmers or did we see nerfs elsewhere this time?

Do you really need to ask?

The tooltip for Chaos Armor says 5 seconds. It looks like 5 seconds when I test. So wouldn’t that be 20% reduction?

I guess this makes Mirror of Anguish more competitive. lol

But seriously, why the drastic nerf from 5% to 2%? It did seem like my skills on Staff were recharging quite a bit, but if pyro can do some quick math to show how ineffective 2% is, why can’t the devs?!

eta – 3% seems like a better number to me. Even though it doesn’t give a flat 20%, it rewards skillful comboing to get chaos armor. Keep in mind we also get a reduction on Phase Retreat from going into Illusions.

You guys know that pre patch power block dmg to post patch power block dmg has been buffed by 25%? Now it’s just a “reverse”. It’s ok, since power block is still fine, aslong no further nerfs are inc.

The staff thing is sad, but let’s be honest. 5% cdr per second was indeed a bit too hard. But 2% seems oddly low again too :/ hm

The same reason we have received nothing but nerfs no quality of life fixes. Only they know.

MailMail.6534:

I guess this makes Mirror of Anguish more competitive. lol

But seriously, why the drastic nerf from 5% to 2%? It did seem like my skills on Staff were recharging quite a bit, but if pyro can do some quick math to show how ineffective 2% is, why can’t the devs?!

Simple answer. Math requires thought.

nanker.3085:

Levetty.1279:

The durations numbers in my head are a little fuzzy but 2 chaos armours (staff 2 through chaos storm and then staff 4) only lasts a combined 8 seconds so will only gives us 16% reduction. Mesmer high skill play giving worse results then other classes passive play again.

And another hit to condi Mesmers while no other condie build is touched.

MailMail.6534:

Let me guess, this was another balance change that only effected Mesmers or did we see nerfs elsewhere this time?

Do you really need to ask?

The tooltip for Chaos Armor says 5 seconds. It looks like 5 seconds when I test. So wouldn’t that be 20% reduction?

If thats true then what pyro says is still right. Blowing cooldowns (and maybe throwing yourself out of chaos storm if you don’t get the angle right) to get a 20% cooldown on Chaos storm and 10% cooldown on chaos armour. We’d be better off with a flat 20% reduction.

Clownmug.8357:

Great, now Chaotic Dampening is just another gimmicky and useless weapon trait along with The Pledge and Duelist’s Discipline.

and Duelist’s Discipline not even working properly

I can’t quite believe that Anet have ruined 2 Mesmer traits so quickly. Don’t mind the Power Block one quite so much.

Main the Disillusioned and Chaotic Dampening are both write-offs.

What an absolute shame that Anet are actively destroying Mesmer build diversity within a couple of days of the patch going live.

At least we still have on demand protection with CD. Sigh.

Also – may want to re-think the confounding suggestions fix as a result of this news. I want a balanced game as much as the next person but don’t want to give the devs any more ideas.

tobascodagama.2961:

Make sure the outliers stay OP and nerf everything else that starts to look viable. Super cool balance strategy, bros.

The problem is more that the devs care about one thing only: sPvP.

Why they do is completely beyond me. But they care only about that, and even then only about the team comps and their relative balance at the very top end.

This strategy works in:

• eSports
• Top-end player skill centric games such as MOBA or RTS where any lower player can improve mechanically much more than via balance changes.
• eSports games

GW2 is neither of those. It’s especially not an eSport. Yes I understand the devs wanted to push that but please, please, please accept reality.

First, GW2 isn’t an eSport.

Second, sPvP is a minority game mode for a reason. 5v5 PvP gameplay is provided better by a whole genre specialized in it.

Third, while it’s probably not entirely impossible, lots of evidence suggests that chasing smallscale balance in a class-based MMO is futile.