Guild Wars 2

With confusion getting chopped in half its comparable to a stack of bleed.

I was thinking about changing from berserker GS/sword/focus to Staff/Scepter/focus and picking up rabid set and now im soooo glad i didnt.

It got hit so hard that stacking to like 2k condition dmg is required just to come out ahead of what i was getting(prior to update) for free from my berserker stated mesmer running almost no condition dmg.

Infact its so horrid that a mesmer might aswell focus more on getting more bleed stacks out if they still want to roll with the rabid gear. Confusion will just be “free” dmg occasionally proced through glamour fields and F2

Finally got a chance to test the patch and yes, RIP condition Mesmers.

1. Had some good duels vs a condition Engineer and I simply couldn’t keep up with the damage. Even with Arcane Thievery stealing his might stacks and giving 3 of his conditions my occasional 1 second burns + 1-6 stacks of bleeding + nerfed confusion wasn’t enough to match his burn + bleeding + poison + occasional confusion. Seemed like he changed out his bomb kit for another utility (since the 5 stacks of confusion is worthless now) to cover for the nerf, while I still had the usual staff + scepter/torch.

2. Got locked in an infinite loop vs a really bad thief defending a camp. Typical bad thief, but smart enough to not spam keys. I tried to insta-burst my confusion stacks so he kills himself in 2-3 hits but he wasn’t a full zerker and the high confusion stacks didn’t have enough burst to kill.

Both situations had moments where I knew they should’ve died for making a critical mistake, but of course Anet babysits them full crib + sucker. Versus decent players you can still win, but versus anyone who knows his profession and isn’t stupid enough to 111111111 it’s basically a battle of attrition where you rageQQ yourself to making mistakes from the lack of damaging you’re doing.

Now I can’t figure out whether I want new gear for a power build or just switch to another profession.

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

Tell me about it – I just swapped my Rabid Exotic Armour out for some Knights (rare, till I get enough bloody Gold). Went Phant build … yea, it works, but it’s not what I and others wanted to run. Even with goodly Precision and Superior Earth on Staff, my build (as straight Condition) pumps out nowhere near enough to drop fools.

Also, Sebrent – the problem with condition combos is that Staff’s hobbled by random Vuln procs. If it packed something other than that, then we’d actually not be doing that bad, atm.

(Something else I noticed: it also seems Armour and damage reduction’s kinda wonky.
Cranked to 2800 Armour last night, and was still getting slapped for mad damage.)

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

...which are so inferior to a power shatter built that it’s just laughable. It’s completely unviable in PvE and in WvW it’s even worse, we have to rely on low stacks of short random conditions where only bleeds matter at all which will be cleansed though unless you’re fighting a really bad player. "Slow build-up", yeah right, because you got time for that.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding
It’s hard to even find mesmers in the list, not to mention the number of stacks and base durations applied.

Ilthuain.5634:

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

Ok, I can play this too.

I’ve played nothing but condition Mesmers and not only is Sebrent’s argument a huge piece of theoretical BS because 1. good luck “building up” bleed stacks on any decent opponent, especially thieves that stealth and remove bleeds and burns 2. good luck getting 3 staff clones up, implying that he’s not weapon swapping, not using any phantasm skills, and not shattering for confusion pressure. In fact, go hit a lone dolyak and see how many bleed stacks you can get (you should’ve bought a lottery ticket if you can “stack” burns for over 2 seconds, too). Oh and see how LONG it takes while you’re at it.

I find both of you to be hilarious pretending to know what you’re talking about because the absolute CORE of any variation of a condition Mesmer build is Illusionary Retribution + Master of Misdirection. I’d love to see either of you run a viable condition build without these traits.

Rolled my condition mes setup today and am extremely disappointed. Certainly, you still have the condition build up we always had, but simply no burst damage at all now. In the past, I was able to hit a target for 3-4k at least twice (even against a good player) during a fight to really put them in a bind thanks to the confusion but now that simply doesn’t exist. Now they have less confusion stacks on them thanks to nerf on blinding befuddlement and those stacks do far less to even make it a very slow death if I can kill them. I have great survivability but it doesn’t do much if you can’t kill your target or it takes 10+ minutes to do so.

ExZee.8109:

Ilthuain.5634:

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

Ok, I can play this too.

I’ve played nothing but condition Mesmers and not only is Sebrent’s argument a huge piece of theoretical BS because 1. good luck “building up” bleed stacks on any decent opponent, especially thieves that stealth and remove bleeds and burns 2. good luck getting 3 staff clones up, implying that he’s not weapon swapping, not using any phantasm skills, and not shattering for confusion pressure. In fact, go hit a lone dolyak and see how many bleed stacks you can get (you should’ve bought a lottery ticket if you can “stack” burns for over 2 seconds, too). Oh and see how LONG it takes while you’re at it.

I find both of you to be hilarious pretending to know what you’re talking about because the absolute CORE of any variation of a condition Mesmer build is Illusionary Retribution + Master of Misdirection. I’d love to see either of you run a viable condition build without these traits.

Amen. It’s not viable at all now on a top tier server, against players who know what they’re doing.

ExZee.8109:

Ilthuain.5634:

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

Ok, I can play this too.

I’ve played nothing but condition Mesmers and not only is Sebrent’s argument a huge piece of theoretical BS because 1. good luck “building up” bleed stacks on any decent opponent, especially thieves that stealth and remove bleeds and burns 2. good luck getting 3 staff clones up, implying that he’s not weapon swapping, not using any phantasm skills, and not shattering for confusion pressure. In fact, go hit a lone dolyak and see how many bleed stacks you can get (you should’ve bought a lottery ticket if you can “stack” burns for over 2 seconds, too). Oh and see how LONG it takes while you’re at it.

I find both of you to be hilarious pretending to know what you’re talking about because the absolute CORE of any variation of a condition Mesmer build is Illusionary Retribution + Master of Misdirection. I’d love to see either of you run a viable condition build without these traits.

Agreed. The notion that a mesmer can specialize in other conditions is ridiculous. Due to scaling, if you’ve ANY points in condition damage now for a mesmer they are WASTED points. What’s worse is that Retaliation was nerfed too. Mesmers weren’t known for ret as much as guardians, but it was a decent strategy to combine confusion with retaliation. Honestly, all we have left is clones and reflection and you could agrue that other classes have clone-like abilities so there’s little that makes us unique anymore.

ExZee.8109:

Ok, I can play this too.

Please do. I’m certain this will be an enlightening conversation.

ExZee.8109:

I’ve played nothing but condition Mesmers and not only is Sebrent’s argument a huge piece of theoretical BS because

Okay, so the issue you take with his post is that it’s theoretical, so you’re going to combat his theory with baseless assertions.

ExZee.8109:

1. good luck “building up” bleed stacks on any decent opponent, especially thieves that stealth and remove bleeds and burns

I do it all the time. Generate clones/phantasms and then focus on survival. It’s kinda the core of how the class functions.

ExZee.8109:

2. good luck getting 3 staff clones up,

???

It takes a second, dude. Mirror and staff 2.

ExZee.8109:

I find both of you to be hilarious pretending to know what you’re talking about because the absolute CORE of any variation of a condition Mesmer build is Illusionary Retribution + Master of Misdirection. I’d love to see either of you run a viable condition build without these traits.

I still use confusion, because it still does damage, but I also use bleeds, random winds conditions, etc. Primarily, I use survival to win fights, because the longer the fight drags on the more powerful I become, which is what we are saying.

Also, please keep in mind that although you find it hilarious that the two of us disagree with you, we’re not the only ones. Anet disagrees with you, with all of their professional designers and heaps of metrics they have been gathering throughout the life of the game. You have anecdotes on your side, we have anecdotes and professionals, who are informed by analytics.

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

That 100% bleed can’t be enchanted via condition duration boosters, and is thus quite weak.

Anet disagrees with you, with all of their professional designers and heaps of metrics they have been gathering throughout the life of the game.

Don’t be a fool. :P Do you really think there is some mathematican performing differential calculus on statistics in order to balance the game ? xD
Anet is just trying to please the casual players because thats where the income is. That has nothing to do with what is balanced.

I do it all the time. Generate clones/phantasms and then focus on survival. It’s kinda the core of how the class functions.

That “phantasams and run” tactic only really works against a select number of builds, depending on how much offence you have. If you are weak on offence (not gc), you will be able to score only a tie against the better players. If you are a gc, you will lose to any good thief.
Well, in any case, you would probably be best off with direct damage and forgotting conditions if you go phant spec.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Don’t be a fool. :P Do you really think there is some mathematican performing differential calculus on statistics in order to balance the game ? xD

They most certainly gather analytic data and use the data to assist in balancing. Even the smallest companies do that.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Anet is just trying to please the casual players because thats where the income is. That has nothing to do with what is balanced.

Darned casuals!

Seriously though, if you cannot play through this change and still succeed, were you really that great of a player to begin with?

Seriously though, if you cannot play through this change and still succeed, were you really that great of a player to begin with?

Maybe not, but the players against who I played were and are excellent. Though I had the edge, it was never trivial to win with my confusion build against an elite sword thief. Basically I won the duel by eventually tricking him into using skills with heavy confusion stacks. Now it’s just not possible. He WILL NOT do a mistake that would get him into trouble. The damage is simply not enough for that… if he ever goes low on hp, he just resets the fight via stealth.
I can perhaps pull a draw, but I cannot win unless he does something very stupid.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Maybe not, but the players against who I played were and are excellent. Though I had the edge, it was never trivial to win with my confusion build against an elite sword thief. Basically I won the duel by eventually tricking him into using skills with heavy confusion stacks. Now it’s just not possible: he WILL NOT do a mistake that would get him into any signifigant trouble. The damage is simply not enough.

So, your opponents were excellent, yet you had the edge?

Sounds like balance is restored. You shouldn’t be beating players who are better than you.

Master of Timespace.2548:

That 100% bleed can’t be enchanted via condition duration boosters, and is thus quite weak.

This is another very good point that deserves to be quoted. Confusion, or a few skills/traits, had to be reworked. They didn’t but nerfed it by 50% instead. This should have been accompanied by a heavy buff to other conditions. They didn’t. They could at least have reimplemented scepter 1 so it causes confusion. Again - they didn’t. Maybe make conditions caused by illusions affected by condition duration as a compensation? Nope.
Well, thanks for nothing.

There is the thought of trying to work with burn/bleed/poison off a staff mesmer… but I’m skeptical that it can get enough bleed stacks to compete with a shortbow ranger.

Ilthuain.5634:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Maybe not, but the players against who I played were and are excellent. Though I had the edge, it was never trivial to win with my confusion build against an elite sword thief. Basically I won the duel by eventually tricking him into using skills with heavy confusion stacks. Now it’s just not possible: he WILL NOT do a mistake that would get him into any signifigant trouble. The damage is simply not enough.

So, your opponents were excellent, yet you had the edge?

Sounds like balance is restored. You shouldn’t be beating players who are better than you.

The thing is, even if I would play perfectly, I could not win unless he did something stupid. Winning with confusion was all about tricking your opponent into something stupid – now you must trick them into something really, really stupid.
If you have time, we can pull a duel or two in spvp right now. Maybe you can show me how to play condition mesmer.

There is the thought of trying to work with burn/bleed/poison off a staff mesmer… but I’m skeptical that it can get enough bleed stacks to compete with a shortbow ranger.

Any d/p thief will just laugh at your pathetic conditions. :P

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding
Look at the number of stacks and their durations other professions’ skills apply. Plus they’re affected by condition duration. Plus other classes have on crit chance effects too, additionally. Looks the same for burning and poison.

Ben K.6238:

There is the thought of trying to work with burn/bleed/poison off a staff mesmer… but I’m skeptical that it can get enough bleed stacks to compete with a shortbow ranger.

Shortbow ranger is not great at applying conditions in a duel.

It works for me. Keep in mind that you also have direct damage from the staff phantasm, mobility from phase retreat, and whatever phantasm you use in your swap (I use s/p).

Concerning the thief shedding the conditions and running away… eh. In sPvP you’re fighting for a point, and in WvW you’re normally fighting over an objective. Scoring a kill and forcing the target to disengage are both victory imo.

Master of Timespace.2548:

If you have time, we can pull a duel or two in spvp right now. Maybe you can show me how to play condition mesmer.

Sure, that would be fun.

Ilthuain.5634:

Please do. I’m certain this will be an enlightening conversation.

Not as much for me as it is for you.

Ilthuain.5634:

Okay, so the issue you take with his post is that it’s theoretical, so you’re going to combat his theory with baseless assertions.

They’re not assertions at all. If I remember correctly I gave easy examples that you can do for yourself, so you’re only making it an assertion by not having any personal experience.

Ilthuain.5634:

I do it all the time. Generate clones/phantasms and then focus on survival. It’s kinda the core of how the class functions.

Only you’re missing the entire point when you’re poorly attempting to safe-guard your argument by saying “clones/phantasms”. The specific argument I was countering was that you wouldn’t be using any phantasms because you’d need 3 clones to spam Winds of Chaos. I also remembering specifying that you wouldn’t be swapping weapons either, since then you wouldn’t be making staff clones anymore. So by “do it all the time” what you’re really saying is: “I make 3 clones, no phantasms, and I never swap weapons”

Ilthuain.5634:

???

It takes a second, dude. Mirror and staff 2.

Nothing like taking a phrase out of context. The obvious implication, as shown in the continuation of the exact same sentence that phrase was in, was already repeated for the second time in my paragraph above this one. You want me to start taking your phrases out of context too? Because that’d make things much easier.

Ilthuain.5634:

I still use confusion, because it still does damage, but I also use bleeds, random winds conditions, etc. Primarily, I use survival to win fights, because the longer the fight drags on the more powerful I become, which is what we are saying.

And so have every other “confusion Mesmer” pre-nerf. Only the smart ones knew how to utilize confusion as not just the main source of damage, but also as burst damage to surprise and end fights without having to drag it on (Another big argument being that confusion no longer offers that burst, let alone competitive damage). And no, you don’t become any more powerful because the longer you drag fights the advantage severely depends on the enemy more than you. As a quick example, you’d have an easy advantage over Warriors because they have a large health pool but poor healing so you can eventually wear them down, but a Guardian will usually have the advantage because their utility skills have much better effects at the cost of higher CDs. The best way to beat a Guardian was to utilize a well executed confusion burst before their CDs are up, but good luck trying to wear down a Guardian with a 33% upkeep on burn, maybe 6-7 stacks of bleeding, and a now near-negligent confusion damage. Being a high toughness condition Mesmer doesn’t mean you gain an advantage for dragging fights, only that you have the ability to drag fights. Learn the difference.

Ilthuain.5634:

Also, please keep in mind that although you find it hilarious that the two of us disagree with you, we’re not the only ones. Anet disagrees with you, with all of their professional designers and heaps of metrics they have been gathering throughout the life of the game. You have anecdotes on your side, we have anecdotes and professionals, who are informed by analytics.

By professional if you somehow mean “worldly acknowledged and recognized for superior skills and talents” rather than “does this as a full-time job and their level of competence is up for questioning”, ROFLMAO. The word “professional” you’re using here isn’t referring to some Korean SC2 Pro players; these are average Joes who graduate college, put some years in the field, and ultimately works to get paid where enthusiasm and passion after a certain minimum is only a bonus. You see “professional” game designers get fired all the time because they’re not competent, just as you see games designed by “professional designers” go down the drain and fail. Wake up to real life. As for my side of the argument, I’ll let the other forum viewers decide. For me it’s not as much about me being right as it’s about you two being absolutely wrong.

ExZee.8109:

So by “do it all the time” what you’re really saying is: “I make 3 clones, no phantasms, and I never swap weapons”

That’s obviously not what I said. You’re so silly.

ExZee.8109:

Nothing like taking a phrase out of context.

Lol, no kidding.

ExZee.8109:

By professional if you somehow mean “worldly acknowledged and recognized for superior skills and talents” rather than “does this as a full-time job and their level of competence is up for questioning”, ROFLMAO.

The designers at Anet know a hell of a lot more about game design than you do. They also have access to tools that you do not, such as heaps of analytic data.

ExZee.8109:

The word “professional” you’re using here isn’t referring to some Korean SC2 Pro players;

Correct, because Korean SC2 players are not game designers. Jeff Gordon is not an engineer, either, although he is a very good driver.

High level players can be very valuable in testing, but design is another thing.

ExZee.8109:

…these are average Joes who graduate college, put some years in the field, and ultimately works to get paid where enthusiasm and passion after a certain minimum is only a bonus.

How would you know what level of enthusiasm are required to work there? You’re just some dude on a forum.

Being a game designer in a AAA company is actually not the easiest gig in the world. The minimum level of passion and enthusiasm is still massive, else you would jump ship after your first 3 month crunch (and they often do).

ExZee.8109:

You see “professional” game designers get fired all the time because they’re not competent, just as you see games designed by “professional designers” go down the drain and fail.

Sure, and Anet has a great reputation in the industry for their skills in all disciplines. At GDC their line in the job fair was crazy, and it wasn’t just filled with students and other hopefuls. Being a fresh-out-of-digipen kid (although they do have some very skilled graduates nowadays) doesn’t land you a job at a prestigious company like Anet, so your (correct) statement that some designers are incompetent is not valid in the case we are discussing.

tl;dr version: I trust them more than I trust you.

To be honest – confusion mesmer was overpowered. Too easy, to effective, AoE (!) ,too much damage.
But i sill hope, that now Anet will give us some simple mechanism to apply confusion (like “Empathy” or “Backfire” skill in GW1), that will be relatively spammable.

Garr.1823:

To be honest – confusion mesmer was overpowered. Too easy, to effective, AoE (!) ,too much damage.
But i sill hope, that now Anet will give us some simple mechanism to apply confusion (like “Empathy” or “Backfire” skill in GW1), that will be relatively spammable.

that is weird as i havent been killed by other glam mesmers at all since i’ve joined a guild that has a ton of glam in it.so if u say op…have u played a glam mesmer vs a coordinated group?I dont think it was op but if it needed a nerf sry but 15-25 percent is enough

Garr.1823:

To be honest – confusion mesmer was overpowered. Too easy, to effective, AoE (!) ,too much damage.
But i sill hope, that now Anet will give us some simple mechanism to apply confusion (like “Empathy” or “Backfire” skill in GW1), that will be relatively spammable.

+1 vote for Empathy. I’d love to see it return, even if it isn’t spammable, it should be brutal.

the confusion nerf was a necessary thing, confusion damage is supposed to be supplementary damage for condition mesmers. similar to retaliation guardians.

the only thing they need to do to fix condition builds for mesmers is to exchange vulnerability with either poison or the new condition on staff #1

and give the first 2 attacks on scepter #1 chain a condition on hit.

bam, condition build fixed.

In addition to those two things, I think 15 dueling (clone/phant bleed on crit) trait is an issue. When it is such a large source of your condition applications, it requires you to have a large amount of precision in addition to condition damage. This makes it much harder to to make a survivable condition build with ample toughness/vit/healing power. Condi rangers, and necros don’t rely on crits anywhere near as much . They get a few small bonus bleeds from crits, but it doesn’t feel absolutely necessary to have a high crit rate.

ExZee.8109:

Ilthuain.5634:

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

Ok, I can play this too.

I’ve played nothing but condition Mesmers and not only is Sebrent’s argument a huge piece of theoretical BS because 1. good luck “building up” bleed stacks on any decent opponent, especially thieves that stealth and remove bleeds and burns 2. good luck getting 3 staff clones up, implying that he’s not weapon swapping, not using any phantasm skills, and not shattering for confusion pressure. In fact, go hit a lone dolyak and see how many bleed stacks you can get (you should’ve bought a lottery ticket if you can “stack” burns for over 2 seconds, too). Oh and see how LONG it takes while you’re at it.

I find both of you to be hilarious pretending to know what you’re talking about because the absolute CORE of any variation of a condition Mesmer build is Illusionary Retribution + Master of Misdirection. I’d love to see either of you run a viable condition build without these traits.

Let us not forget blinding befuddlement which works (worked) extremely well with scepter/torch and staff… The worst part is the ICD on the new blinding befuddlement is bugged to where if you reapply blind after it is gone it will not reapply confusion… This is contrary to the patch notes… Golf clap for ANET? Golf clap I say.

jportell.2197:

Let us not forget blinding befuddlement which works (worked) extremely well with scepter/torch and staff… The worst part is the ICD on the new blinding befuddlement is bugged to where if you reapply blind after it is gone it will not reapply confusion… This is contrary to the patch notes… Golf clap for ANET? Golf clap I say.

I don’t run the trait so I never knew. This is why games need small, constant updates instead of big, monthly ones. They could’ve progressively made each change instead of making two drastic nerfs at once and end up breaking both. And just above some ADHD guy was saying game designers being incompetent doesn’t apply to Anet. Golf clap to him too I say.

PS: Probably not going to be fixed until the next big patch. Yay.

ExZee.8109:

jportell.2197:

Let us not forget blinding befuddlement which works (worked) extremely well with scepter/torch and staff… The worst part is the ICD on the new blinding befuddlement is bugged to where if you reapply blind after it is gone it will not reapply confusion… This is contrary to the patch notes… Golf clap for ANET? Golf clap I say.

I don’t run the trait so I never knew. This is why games need small, constant updates instead of big, monthly ones. They could’ve progressively made each change instead of making two drastic nerfs at once and end up breaking both. And just above some ADHD guy was saying game designers being incompetent doesn’t apply to Anet. Golf clap to him too I say.

PS: Probably not going to be fixed until the next big patch. Yay.

With blinding befuddlement+sig of midnight I could stack up to 15-17 stacks within 5 seconds…. Now… Its 12 or so. Which with the ineffectiveness of confusion currently every stack helps.

the lead of thier balance team knew less about the game then the people interviewing him and obviously swings the nerf bat with force in response to whiners on the forums. i think the only hope for our profession is to get some mesmers out all over the place and whine your face off. maybe we will get some stuff fixxed.

zaxon.6819:

the lead of thier balance team knew less about the game then the people interviewing him and obviously swings the nerf bat with force in response to whiners on the forums. i think the only hope for our profession is to get some mesmers out all over the place and whine your face off. maybe we will get some stuff fixxed.

In most companies, leads don’t make those decisions, nor do they comb over forums for community suggestions.

I cannot agree that confusion is suppose to supplement mesmer damage. We have 4 weapons abilities that cause confusion. Our second shatter causes confusion. We have 5 traits that deal with confusion. Our down state’s auto attack also causes confusion. There may be more but these are the ones that are directly affected. That’s 12 aspects of our class that have been nerfed just by the 50% reduction alone. For perspective, the second closest affected is the Engineer with a total of 4 aspects. Even if you ignore that huge disparity, I can’t see how anyone can honestly say it’s “complimentary damage” when it was possible to create an entire build specializing in it. No other class can do that.

And that’s only half of the reason why I have lost faith in the profession devs. They did this to help newbies which is flat our WRONG! You help new players learn the rules of the game. You do NOT balance anything according the skill level of new players! Doing so is just dumbing it down, which only hurts the game in the long run.

Take a look at any popular e-sport and you’ll see one thing they all have in common; they are simple to play but hard to master. I’ll even take it one step farther and say the more plausible strategies available, the more entertaining they are.

If they truly believed confusion was overpowered, they should have started by reducing it by 10 to 15% and then give it to some common enemies in pve so new players could get use to seeing it and what it does. What they did instead is make it even harder for newbies to spot as the numbers are low enough to be part of the “background noise” in wvw, which was the only place it was still being heavily used. If they don’t die from it, they are less likely to ask about it and therefore less likely to understand it.

I’m going to end this post here because all this is doing is frustrating me.

omg i used my confusion build toady and i really wanna cry right now..my friend even wanna delete their mesmers now!anet u gonna fix this we are up right now if we are not using gs s/focus and playn power builds. u destroued actually not only 80 percent of mesmers builds u destroed 95 percent

“leads dont make these decisions” “they arent combing forums” ..

if you watched either sotg almost every changed was based on forums, videos and screen shots. they even stated that in the talk. and about leads?? i guess you were there to see what kaligon did to ultima online durring age of shadows(before he moved to wow to help screw things up) or what ghost crawler does on a daily basis. what are you even basing that comment on.

just replace confusion with any other condition and bring it back to 100%.

zaxon.6819:

what are you even basing that comment on.

Uhh, the definition of the position? Lead designers don’t read game forums and make their balance decisions based on the density of complaints. Metrics speak louder than caps lock.

Leads actually lead. They’re managers. The lead doesn’t walk into the office and say, “Hey guys, I think you should hit dat skill with the nerf bat because I read some QQs on the forums and I hate mesmers so yo, make them suck and I will roll with my warrior and do MAD SICK DAMAGE.”

Every profession forum is filled with nonstop complaints. Elementalists are now TRASH TIER because of the RtL mega-nerf, rangers have always sucked, warriors are out DPSd by guardians so that’s lame, necros are useless in PvE, etc. etc. etc… If you based your balance decisions based off the feedback in an MMO forum, you would assume that every class, race, and build is the absolute worst thing ever done in the history of gaming. It’s all noise, no signal.

you brought 0 facts to the conversation. gg. “because of the definition of lead?” “they are managers” then you tell me what they do and do not do when they walk into an office ( sounding like an ignorant kid yo to make your point based on nothing seem stronger)

in the interview for sotg they said the choices they were making were based on videos and forum posts. do you think they nerfed ride the lightning because their numbers came up saying it was op. how do they do numbers on ride the lighting. if they are so fact based why did they say they were going to nerf stealth to give reveal every time you come out of stealth then revert it adding an extra second… how do those 2 nerfs even equate to eachother and how would they be tested with metrics.

you really think they checked thier metrics and it added up to nerfing confusion 50%.. really. tell me more about balance teams from your inside knowledge of how they work and your past mmo experiences.

Ilthuain.5634:

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

Please show us a video of your many ways to kill with a condition mesmer. Even without condition removal a simple food buff of -40% duration will ruin it entirely.

Esp against those with high HP like necros, warriors, and rangers who can tank a few stacks and let it run out in duration. There’s no way your staff attacks are stacking the bleeds fast enough. Also, low hp fighters like thieves guardians and eles remove conditions like its nothing. And without confusion, thieves esp remove burn poison and bleed with their normal heal skill, forget traiting it or using steal and simply backstab then CnD… rinse and repeat.

Ilthuain.5634:

Anet disagrees with you, with all of their professional designers and heaps of metrics they have been gathering throughout the life of the game. You have anecdotes on your side, we have anecdotes and professionals, who are informed by analytics.

LOL really? Are you saying ANet does not make mistakes, and change things for the worse at times? Oh boy…I’d love to challenge your condition mesmer. Trying to make it sound like you’re ZOMG l33t isn’t helping your cause. Please post a video (of anyone) with this new patch, running a condition build against a competent player. Upscales, and brand new level 80s don’t count – and that will be obvious in the gameplay.

You ppl come out here and claim how your Condition Mesmer is still very good when its core mechanic is now broken. That’s like nerfing shatters to 50% of their effectiveness and saying “yes my shatter mesmer is still epic… i get off 50% of the dmg I used to.. and because it takes me longer to kill someone, I either have to avoid my zerker build (which means even less than 50% dmg is coming out) or I risk getting wiped with my 1900 armor in less than 10s – But! There’s still many ways to kill someone with a shatter spec”

So, bottom line. If you’re really that pro – just drop a quick video… shouldn’t be a problem for those with

anecdotes and professionals, who are informed by analytics.

ps. do you honestly believe there was NO other alternative outside a 50% cut? Something as simple as prioritized condition removal would’ve quelled a lot of anger people had toward it. No matter how you try and justify it – it was the lazy way. There isn’t a single sensible top tier player in sPvP who runs condition mesmer ever since they nerfed that to 50% – that has to say something.

WTF is so bad about confusion? IT ONLY KILLS IDIOTS! Smart people will use the thing idiot heartseeker spammers will never dream of: CONDITION REMOVAL, a PAUSE of spamming heartseeker and DODGE ROLLING instead.
Not OP, its just idiot spammers killed themselves with their own overpowered (for some reason, NOT NERFED: heartseeker and cloak and daggor, or hammer warriors).

Rest in Peace tactical overpowered-skill-backfiring techniques, as they are useless as of heartseeker spammers will spam their heartseeker 5 times to down you while they have 50% health left due to 1-1.5k confusion hits.

Ive played phantasm, shatter and condition. Even though I can still win with the confusion nerf, its just isnt as good as a shatter build anymore.

So if Arenet dont bring confusion back to 75%, or do something else to help conditions I expect shatter build to be nerfed quite a bit to bring it on par with condition build.

The only positive from this is now there will be less mesmers about because most players cant play it.

Confusion mes is plain gone.

Condition mes (which 90% of times is the confusion mes…) has never really been too good, cause we don’t have any weapon that allows us to build and keep up bleed/dots stacks with autoattack.

Oh wait, we do!
Trident.

That’s the issue: only way to apply stacks of dot is Sharper images, which is very bad at keeping them up (given that you use warden or duelist. and that they survive enough to fire full attck. and that your enemy stays there and eats it all. veeeery reliable…).
Staff is slow. and proc vuln. it becomes almost decent with 3x clones up, but seriously, how many times is this going to happen?

This is why 90% of condition mes are actually confusion mes.. which means that they’re gone too.

Anet, just rework scepter and torch as dot/condition dmg weapon (like sword/sword war. P/P engi. S/D nec. kitten even guards do it better cause they can keep up burning endlessy!): you give condition dmg a purpose, you bring up 2 useless weapons to good/decent level, you create more builds.

It’s a Win-Win.

Anet, you shattered my heart and my spec! (pun intended!) No more!

“You have anecdotes on your side, we have anecdotes and professionals, who are informed by analytics.”

This quote from a Anet dev professional regarding guardian scepter poor performance tracking,

“I have tested the guardian scepter versus the necro staff for damage analysis. I agree the guardian scepter needs to be fixed. I don’t know when it will get fixed, but I’ll do it myself in the end if I have to. The guardian scepter 1 auto attack is currently the most powerful auto attack in the game. It needs to be balanced.”

So your professional team is being made aware of a problem by the community, not by their analysis of the game. Your professional agrees there is a problem, but doesn’t know when it will get fixed.

Your professional then disparately says they’ll even fix it them self if they have to.

The player responds that they tested the guardian in HoTM with no traits or mods on all golem dummies. On every dummy the great sword out damaged the scepter. They ask for evidence that indeed scepter 1 is the most powerful auto attack in game. The dev never responded.

I am not saying Anet is terrible. I understand they have a priority list no doubt. I understand some dynamics in the game that need tweaking may go unnoticed at times. So let’s not use them as a “Ace card to any argument.” They are people, like any working person there will be a tonne of stuff they need to do and just not enough time in one day to get it all done. I am not even sure how many assigned developers and/or coders ncsoft keeps for guild wars 2. For all I know it maybe 2-3, not a studio that everyone expects. I very doubt they have one person assigned to a non sub game to read data flow charts all day..which is what you are suggesting.

ExZee.8109:

Ilthuain.5634:

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

Ok, I can play this too.

I’ve played nothing but condition Mesmers and not only is Sebrent’s argument a huge piece of theoretical BS because 1. good luck “building up” bleed stacks on any decent opponent, especially thieves that stealth and remove bleeds and burns 2. good luck getting 3 staff clones up, implying that he’s not weapon swapping, not using any phantasm skills, and not shattering for confusion pressure. In fact, go hit a lone dolyak and see how many bleed stacks you can get (you should’ve bought a lottery ticket if you can “stack” burns for over 2 seconds, too). Oh and see how LONG it takes while you’re at it.

I find both of you to be hilarious pretending to know what you’re talking about because the absolute CORE of any variation of a condition Mesmer build is Illusionary Retribution + Master of Misdirection. I’d love to see either of you run a viable condition build without these traits.

Quoted for truth.

Velimere.7685:

ExZee.8109:

Ilthuain.5634:

ExZee.8109:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not the “condition mesmer” that’s dead … it’s the really easy “confusion mesmer” that is dead. Combine conditions.

The actual condition mesmer is a slow build-up but powerful once built up. As such, it is forced to be survivable. Staff, our best condition weapon, is slow … but x4 it is quite quick on condition per second. Add in 100% bleed per crit on 3 of those hits and you have something.

Think about it.

If you’d actually played a condition Mesmer you wouldn’t be telling others to think about it because you’d actually know.

But you don’t.

I play a condition mesmer and I have since beta weekend 1.

I agree with Sebrent. This nerf reduces the efficiency of a specific playstyle of the condition mesmer build, but there are still many ways to kill with a condition mesmer.

Ok, I can play this too.

I’ve played nothing but condition Mesmers and not only is Sebrent’s argument a huge piece of theoretical BS because 1. good luck “building up” bleed stacks on any decent opponent, especially thieves that stealth and remove bleeds and burns 2. good luck getting 3 staff clones up, implying that he’s not weapon swapping, not using any phantasm skills, and not shattering for confusion pressure. In fact, go hit a lone dolyak and see how many bleed stacks you can get (you should’ve bought a lottery ticket if you can “stack” burns for over 2 seconds, too). Oh and see how LONG it takes while you’re at it.

I find both of you to be hilarious pretending to know what you’re talking about because the absolute CORE of any variation of a condition Mesmer build is Illusionary Retribution + Master of Misdirection. I’d love to see either of you run a viable condition build without these traits.

Quoted for truth.

I play a 0/20/20/0/30 shatter “tank” Mesmer for tournaments right now… I take illusionary elasticity and chaotic dampening. Between these two I can keep staff clones up for the entirety of a fight especially on a side point against any number of specs… The most bleeds I have maxed out were about 10… I didn’t scroll over to see how long the burning was lasting but suffice to say that it was up there more often than not. When good and ready I throw down an shatter and cast iWarlock immediately for a good 5k damage… The only downside to iWarlock is like the guardian scepter once the projectile flies all they have to do is kinda sidestep and they don’t get hit… Is this intended? idk… Maybe.

I am a Shatter/condition damage mesmer with staff/sword/torch and this nerf directly effected me. I wvw almost exclusively and I can’t kill with my current build. Ive gotten so used to the play style to change it would be too painful. My mesmer is the only class I have that I play almost exclusively. I really dont mean to sound like 1 of those people but Im quitting. Tried a burst build with great sword but i found it to be boring compared to my old build. SO SO SO lame
And for the record if mesmers were in fact so op there would be a ton more of them and there’s really not that many i come across