Guild Wars 2

Anyone else experiencing this or am I just being blind to a mechanic that I’ve overlooked somehow?

Slow is a condition (like chill), not a control effect (like stun/daze).

Fanolian.8415:

Slow is a condition (like chill), not a control effect (like stun/daze).

I think he’s suggesting that mobs with a breakbar are not being affected by slow, not that he was expecting slow to damage the breakbar.

If he’s right though, and slow isn’t affecting breakbar mobs, then slow kinda sucks for dungeon content.
Compare to blind:
Blind is a condition, and apparently a control effect.
Blind can’t affect mobs with breakbar, but it can damage the breakbar (according to the article I read).
Slow, according to the OP, isn’t affecting mobs with breakbar…but it isn’t damaging the breakbar either? So slow is kinda useless against breakbar mobs.

Slow either needs to fully affect breakbar mobs, or it needs to damage the breakbar. No class mechanic should be totally without effect for such a significant type of content.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Fanolian.8415:

Slow is a condition (like chill), not a control effect (like stun/daze).

I think he’s suggesting that mobs with a breakbar are not being affected by slow, not that he was expecting slow to damage the breakbar.

If he’s right though, and slow isn’t affecting breakbar mobs, then slow kinda sucks for dungeon content.
Compare to blind:
Blind is a condition, and apparently a control effect.
Blind can’t affect mobs with breakbar, but it can damage the breakbar (according to the article I read).
Slow, according to the OP, isn’t affecting mobs with breakbar…but it isn’t damaging the breakbar either? So slow is kinda useless against breakbar mobs.

Slow either needs to fully affect breakbar mobs, or it needs to damage the breakbar. No class mechanic should be totally without effect for such a significant type of content.

From what I’ve screwed around with, it affects the breakbar, but not the mob itself, which is kind of sad because I really wanted to just run around around and get almost 100% slow uptime on champs.

Ah, that’s a shame. So much for my thoughts on chrono being useful in PvE…

In Dragon Nest, there’s a class that has a status effect called ‘delay’. It works basically like slow, as an action speed debuff. Raids in DN are generally structured in such a way that bosses have damage opportunity windows before the bosses roll into another attack or mechanic cycle. By applying delay to the boss, you can drastically increase the amount of time available in a given dps window, and this is a really strong and unique utility.

I was imagining that slow could potentially serve a similar role in existing and future PvE content. Looks like it’ll just be another almost unique mechanic relegated to the garbage bin in favor of more dps, courtesy of Anet.

Yobculture.5786:

From what I’ve screwed around with, it affects the breakbar, but not the mob itself, which is kind of sad because I really wanted to just run around around and get almost 100% slow uptime on champs.

Well, ok, that’s better than nothing. But I bet it’s not a huge chunk of the bar, is it?

I’m with Fay, slowbot is something potentially very useful that isn’t just MOAR DEEPS. It just requires more thought on the dev side to create content that isn’t then trivialised by the slow effect.

I guess what really bothers me the most about the breakbar is that Anet has given mesmer (and I assume other classes) a lot of traits and mechanics that boost your power in a given situation, but that situation is totally invalidated by the breakbar (and defiance) mechanics.

Slow doesn’t apply to breakbar mobs, so we pretty much never get the extra 30% crit chance from Danger Time, which makes that trait almost not worth taking in a dungeon setting.

Interrupts don’t apply to breakbar mobs, which makes Chaotic Interruption, Delayed Reactions, Illusion of Vulnerability, Furious Interruption, Power Block, Duelist’s Discipline and Mistrust (that’s 7 different traits) essentially useless in a dungeon setting.

The list does go on, but the issue is the same in all cases: they give cool mechanics based on a situation that they then invalidate, making those cool mechanics not cool anymore.

All I can do now is laugh.

This is why I hated the mesmer trait revamp. Bunch of traits we got were “on interrupt”, which don’t work on defiance/breakbar.

And NOW the traits we have with slow, and Time Warp by extension are rendered weak/useless in PvE dungeon settings.

Always without fail, just like the shield phantasm, mesmer is designed with pvp gimmicks in mind and no thought is spared for how it translates to PvE.

You just watch, they’re gonna keep nerfing this class for PvP reasons without giving us the buffs we’ve been needing for years in PvE, much like necro and ranger.