Guild Wars 2

Was Glamour pre-nerf Overpowered?

114 times this thread has been viewed and not one of you has an opinion on Glamour builds?

I wasn’t playing then. So I really didn’t know.

didnt play back then either, but apparently it was 700-800 per tick w only 1 confusion, so ye it was strong i guess

It was overpowered before the confusion nerf. After that, not so.

Confusion damage was too strong but the glamour builds themselves were absolutely fine. The only direct glamour nerf was that of Blinding Befuddlement where they added a rather unnecessary ICD on the trait proc. I’m still expecting Anet to revert that one at some point in the non-future.

Simonoly.4352:

Confusion damage was too strong but the glamour builds themselves were absolutely fine. The only direct glamour nerf was that of Blinding Befuddlement where they added a rather unnecessary ICD on the trait proc. I’m still expecting Anet to revert that one at some point in the non-future.

So they nerfed the damage AND the internal cooldown on the trait proc?

in the non future..lol
Sure they will fix it—-AFTER they have changed our traits all around making a glamour spec completely unplayable.
Then they will pat themselves on the back.

Ah. the great WvW Confusion Debacle. A favorite rant of mine, tbh. Screwball thing is:
They could have knocked Glamour down without completely neutering it…

• First, Confusing Enchantments and it’s (lack of a) target limit was the big bad. This could have been handled by either; 1.) giving it one, or 2.)putting the Trait up to GM,
  which would have at least made it a very harsh sacrifice to possess.
• Confusion damage could have been dropped by 25-33% of what it started as in WvW.
  This would have made the damage less “OP” and more of a tactical strike. But, Mesmers don’t seem to get damage “shaves,” now do they? So, hello there, -50% damage chainsaw.
• Blinding Befuddlement gaining an ICD was, and still is, absolutely silly. It’s not as Mesmer’s packing OP amounts of Blind, for crying out loud.

The funniest parts of the Debacle’s aftermath?

• Runes of Perplexity. Sure, most of our guys used ’em too … but really? A runeset that allows for nastier Confusion stacking and duration than even Glamourbombers packed? And for any high-Interrupt profession, to boot.
• Hmmm. Considering that ANet’s done some work to add more Interrupt to Mesmers’ toolkits: How is it that the only known Confusion-on-Interrupt Trait is a Warrior Trait? Hi there, Distracting Strikes. Hell, weren’t Mesmers supposed to be the Confusion pimps?
  (To be fair, this kind of bleedover doesn’t just nail Mesmers. Necro can make similar arguments, RE: Torment. But still, it does sting.)

tetrodoxin.2134:

It was overpowered before the confusion nerf. After that, not so.

Hit the nail on the head.

It was somewhat overpowered due to its nature, damaging you on skill execute.

It needed a nerf here OR here OR there, but
it got a nerf here AND here AND there.

No, it was not. It was appropriately strong as a zergbusting build.

Note that if it were truly that overpowered, the meta of wvw Zerging would have adapted to high condition removal output like you see currently. However, you didn’t see that meta take form until significantly after the confusion nerf. If you took pre-nerf glamour builds into today’s Zerging environment, they would be far less effective due to how fast conditions are cleansed.

The glamour nerf had multiple parts, and none of them were appropriate.

The confusion nerf was the first part. 1 stack of confusion did ~450 damage per skill use back then. Usually you could get 2 stacks on people with glamours, so your end up with 900ish per skill use. That…really isn’t that strong. It’s strong enough to hurt if you spam non-stop, but it’s very comparable to the damage other classes (ele/necro) can put out at range, and far less than melee classes (warrior/guardian) can do.

The other part of the nerf was the blinding befuddlement icd. While this nerf was absolutely uncalled for, it was part of what I like to call the This Easy Game Should Be Easier change suite, the other notable changes being icd on how often shields (chaos armor) could proc. While I disagree with all of these changes, part of Anet’s vision for the game is obviously removing mechanics that punish poor play, so that won’t get changed back.

Fay.2357:

While I disagree with all of these changes, part of Anet’s vision for the game is obviously removing mechanics that punish poor play, so that won’t get changed back.

And this right here is why Anet is inherently anti-Mesmer. We’re the profession that excels on just that: punishing sloppy playing.

I guess it was ‘OP’ back then because few people understood how Confusion worked.

It was pretty nasty, in World vs. World. In other words, in one game mode. Basically you would take a small team/army of Mesmer’s with you, and they’d all throw down their Glamour fields, causing the enemy team to steamroll themselves to death. Yes, it was somewhat overpowered, and most likely still would be pretty damaging today, even with all the cleansing that’s going on.

I think the implementation of it in the first place was a terribly stupid one. Instead of working like an altered Ineptitude/Cry of Frustration/Wandering Eye/Clumsiness/etc. skill from Guild Wars, in how it would remain on target for a short duration, and deal damage once if the target uses a skill, they went with a passive DoT.. dot dot dot.. This made it practically useless in PvE, where enemies simply attack too slowly. And they should have been perfectly aware of that. They programmed it.

Was the nerf justified, sure. Was it a bit too drastic, yes. Are ArenaNet constantly making this game more and more casual, removing anything that punishes poor play and rewards skill, yes. Is this game being dumbed down further and further, mhm. Watch, they’ll start nerfing interrupts soon. Can’t have people getting interrupted from their skill spamming.

Absconditus.6804:

It was pretty nasty, in World vs. World. In other words, in one game mode. Basically you would take a small team/army of Mesmer’s with you, and they’d all throw down their Glamour fields, causing the enemy team to steamroll themselves to death. Yes, it was somewhat overpowered, and most likely still would be pretty damaging today, even with all the cleansing that’s going on.

I think the implementation of it in the first place was a terribly stupid one. Instead of working like an altered Ineptitude/Cry of Frustration/Wandering Eye/Clumsiness/etc. skill from Guild Wars, in how it would remain on target for a short duration, and deal damage once if the target uses a skill, they went with a passive DoT.. dot dot dot.. This made it practically useless in PvE, where enemies simply attack too slowly. And they should have been perfectly aware of that. They programmed it.

Was the nerf justified, sure. Was it a bit too drastic, yes. Are ArenaNet constantly making this game more and more casual, removing anything that punishes poor play and rewards skill, yes. Is this game being dumbed down further and further, mhm. Watch, they’ll start nerfing interrupts soon. Can’t have people getting interrupted from their skill spamming.

tried it, doesnt even tickle the enemys

Confusion was always split between pvp and pve numbers, but wvw was using its pve equivalent for pvp scenarios, which made confusion too strong.

All anet did was to update wvw to use the pvp’s version of the status.

Was it the best possible change? Probably not? Could they tweak the numbers? probably yes. But at the time, it was the easiest, safest and most consistent change.

To all those players that haven’t played glamour back in the days, here’s the build (or at least a variation of it).

Glamour Mesmer

Haven’t played it for a long time now. Might give it a try though, just for the (sad) lulz.

I remember thaat veil was a glamourvfield in the past…it is no more…thanks again anet.