Guild Wars 2

So, first off, my main is a mesmer, although I never thought it worthwhile to even buy moa morph with my limited skill points (still only level 59). I have also not yet played any pvp (either spvp or wvwvw). That said, I do frequent these forums, and every day or two, there is the inevitable “OMG MOA IS IWIN BUTTON” or “WOW, I JUST GOT PWND BY MOA, NERF IT NAO, K THX BAI”.

As a perfect, and seemingly elegant solution, I propose the following additional move to be added to the player’s options when in moa form:
Head in Ground:
– Inflicts 1 stack of confusion for duration of time with head in ground.
– Has 1% chance of granting stealth and invulnerability until head is removed from ground, or moa form is dropped.
– Player is immobile.

Why would a chicken sticking its head in the ground give confusion?
1% is too unreliable, and not a clue why it would give invulnerability.
Immobile is logical, however.

According to myth, an ostrich would stick its head in the ground because it’s scared or is looking for water. A moa, closely resembling an ostrich, could have a skill to stick its head in the ground, but instead have it cause a water gush or give protection (as if it actually did something).

Of course, ostriches don’t actually do that, but it’s interesting if you think about it.

Or people could just stop whining about the skill because their egos took a hit.

Time Warp and Mass Invis are both about 1000 time better, but you don’t see any threads complaining about them. Face facts, the only reason people complain about it is because its an excuse for their lousy ability to play.

The thing is that neither TW nor MI show players that they made them lose the fight.
Sure, looking at the “fight” (as in, who wins the BG / Keep / Tower / whatever), both of them (and probably all of a character’s racials) have a much larger effect on combat, but players can tell themselves that they stood a more fair fighting chance than against Moa.

Moa “snipes” a single player. Meaningless on a strategic level, sometimes powerful on a tactical level, sometimes crippling on an engagement level.

IMO, it could be worse. I like how the nature of Moa makes everyone cry about it, instead of about my strong Elites. :P
It’s not something unique to Moa, Mesmers or GW2 either. Back in WoW Rogue-Stunlock was universally whined about, despite it having extremely little impact on who would win a BG. And the WoW-PvP players at least had the argument that you could get ganked while doing PvE, hence the 1v1 performance was actually meaningful.

Wanted to ask for the reasoning behind adding confusion when the person is then doing nothing. Confusion only does damage if the player is being active, so the confusion would be frivolous, since it would only last while the head was in the ground?

@drake – I thought the ostrich comparison was obvious, and although I never really thought of moa as similar to chicken, I suppose its a bit odd to presume everyone else thinks of them as ostriches like I do – they are made up birds after all. Regarding the 1% stealth/invulnerability, unreliable is quite the understatement, I think of it more like a last ditch, long shot hail mary. Basically it isn’t intended to work, but it will happen just enough so under some (very narrow) circumstances it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. The reasoning for the stealth/invuln, is again back to the ostrich, basically the same thinking as the head in the ground myth, that they did so to avoid predators, and it would be funny if once in a great while it worked. Finally, the confusion is for that “What the F” by others as to why this player would stick their kitten head in the ground – a.k.a. literal confusion translated into a very marginal ingame effect (since a single stack of confusion does very little).

drake and @jungle - I assumed my OP would be an obvious attempt at humor, and not get serious (drake) or pissy (@jungle) replies. So to clarify, it is not a serious suggestion, although I would be quite pleased (solely because it would be funny) if the moa condition did give players something like this as an obvious stupid move, birdbrain and all that.

@kylia – meant that confusion was inflicted on the opponents of the moa via AOE.

moa is only decent in wvwvw 1on1(crap when zerg vs zerg=TW+MI=op on zergs), pvp it’s not much better, n can be handy for boss fights in PvE, ive survived moa many times, only bad players think it’s OP…oh n compared to the mesmer’s i seen not using MoA, MoA looks weak, there was a guru post of mesmers just destroying other classes like there playing with there food…i dont use moa in wvwvw

Ostriches are not made up Sirgleno.

Though when I think about it, it makes it funnier to see a player using this, as it pretty much does nothing most of the time, so the Mesmer can just sit back and laugh. I suppose there were two bits of humor: one for the skill and one for the usage.

When they put cast bars on your foes so you can see exactly what they’re casting, as opposed to just noticing they’re casting “SOMETHING”, i’d agree about skill, but I could easily cast-cancel a couple other things to bait out the dodges THEN cast moa.