Guild Wars 2

Devs just announced stability will be changed to act like blind. It will stack in quantity instead of duration. If you CC someone with stab, they immediately lose 1 stack of it.

Interrupt mesmer hype?

Please clarify?

So if a Warrior has 1 stack of 3 seconds stability, and a Mesmer hits him with a Pull, that will remove the Stability even though he still had 2 seconds left on it?

And if the Warrior has 3 stacks of 3 seconds stabilty, and the Mesmer hits him with GS-Mind Stab(remove boons), then the Warrior will have NO stability?

SlimChance.6593:

Please clarify?

So if a Warrior has 1 stack of 3 seconds stability, and a Mesmer hits him with a Pull, that will remove the Stability even though he still had 2 seconds left on it?

And if the Warrior has 3 stacks of 3 seconds stabilty, and the Mesmer hits him with GS-Mind Stab(remove boons), then the Warrior will have NO stability?

Yes. At least that’s how it was explained on stream.

Certainly is confusing — will it still have timers or will it be like mantra stacks from now on? Also, this looks good for lockdown mes, but then there’s hambow warriors that will take advantage of it too.

Wow.. That’s kind of unnecessary. o_O So it’ll essentially work like Might stacks, vuln stacks, where if you cleanse one you’ll cleanse them all, but you can now also just yank it off.

But yet another indirect buff to lockdown Mesmer. Me gusta!

If so, they’ll make Engineer even stronger.

Caelus.7139:

Certainly is confusing — will it still have timers or will it be like mantra stacks from now on? Also, this looks good for lockdown mes, but then there’s hambow warriors that will take advantage of it too.

It’s not confusing. It’s just like blind except it stacks. You can use condi removal to cleanse blind, or you can miss an attack. Similarly, you can use boon removal to strip stab, or you can use cc to strip a single stack.

Actually it is a nerf on stability itself.
It is easier to take 3-4 stab stacks as waiting 10 sec for your stab to end.
A good used Diversion would immediatly remove all your stability.

thanks.

This will be a really great buff to interrupt mesmers! Mind that you’re not alone. Allies in PvP/WvW have CC too which often is less important because they don’t have traits that trigger on interrupt so if there are one or two stacks of stability on an enemy it is more likely to get removed because of your allies’ CC! This keeps us from overusing our boon removals just for a single target.

Still I can imagine that Stability will be aviable mutch more often after this rework.

The way I looked at it is like how you can strip defiant from PvE world bosses currently. One CC = one stack of stability stripped. Watching the revenant play on the stream, it also looked like it had a timer (meaning it’s not permanent until it’s stripped). Will need to read stream notes to confirm for sure.

cyyrix.6105:

Caelus.7139:

Certainly is confusing — will it still have timers or will it be like mantra stacks from now on? Also, this looks good for lockdown mes, but then there’s hambow warriors that will take advantage of it too.

It’s not confusing. It’s just like blind except it stacks. You can use condi removal to cleanse blind, or you can miss an attack. Similarly, you can use boon removal to strip stab, or you can use cc to strip a single stack.

The confusing part is will they still retain timers or will it stay until it’s consumed?

It still has timers, at least it looked that way in POI.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

It still has timers, at least it looked that way in POI.

It does: http://www.twitch.tv/m/788034

Ohh, so yea I guess it’s pretty nerfed, which I’m not complaining about, except when we see hambows all over the place again.

Gona make specs that can spam CC or strip/convert/steal boons even more powerful.

All in all a win for the mesmers, necro’s & hammer warriors.

Inb4 CS bug fixes to nerf Mesmer op.. the bug where it applies a daze and then stun and can remove two stacks of that pve thing..

Tbh this sounds like a win for guardians and warriors and thieves more than it does Mesmers to me

yea thieves gonna break stabi whenever they want… kinda silly that change. lets see how it affects pve and pvp.

Swish.2463:

Inb4 CS bug fixes to nerf Mesmer op.. the bug where it applies a daze and then stun and can remove two stacks of that pve thing..

Tbh this sounds like a win for guardians and warriors and thieves more than it does Mesmers to me

Oh, this is awesome, it can make a statement saying how Mesmers are simply better with CC and stability removal.

Swish.2463:

Inb4 CS bug fixes to nerf Mesmer op.. the bug where it applies a daze and then stun and can remove two stacks of that pve thing..

Tbh this sounds like a win for guardians and warriors and thieves more than it does Mesmers to me

If you cant daze you cant stun with CS.

Anyway, Stability should have been like this since release. I’d said so a long time ago!

What about boon remove? 4 staks are removed like 4 boons or still like 1 boon? If 4 – it’s big nerf for shatter mesmers

Anton.1769:

What about boon remove? 4 staks are removed like 4 boons or still like 1 boon? If 4 – it’s big nerf for shatter mesmers

^ This

Though following the logic in might stacks I think it’ll remove the entire stack.

Necros are going to cry a lot about this. Spinning thieves as well. They are going to be Mesmer food even more now.

Korusef.3714:

Necros are going to cry a lot about this. Spinning thieves as well. They are going to be Mesmer food even more now.

How will you know that?
Maybe Daggerstorm will grant 25 stacks of stability…
How can you say that they’re mesmer food without knowing how many stacks are going to be applied?

Also I could imagine stability to become aviable much more frequently after the rework! I guess you all saw the Revenant applying 5 Stacks with his Jalis Ironhammer skill 9 on AoE; with his dodge he also gained one stack.
I really think that the new Stability is going to have a similar amout of uptime but less duration and more frequent apply.

Because boonstrip rips a whole stack of boons from the target. Regardless of 1 or 25 stacks stability, 2 F3 illusions gonna stop that spin. It’s all about the boonstrip trait rather than the daze. Untraited it’s a different story.

Korusef.3714:

Necros are going to cry a lot about this. Spinning thieves as well. They are going to be Mesmer food even more now.

A lot of necros will love this change, as probably they’ll have more chance to corrupt stability (with this layer-system, I think it’ll be easier to apply, lower CDs with shorter “effect” ), and not like necros have a lot of stabi.. I mean most of us has stabi only on elite, with that looo~ng recharge time.
Okay, the change can make lich/plague less effective, but tbh it’s not so hard to strip that boon even now for a competent team
And you never know, maybe those elites will pulse stabi, like ~5/10 stacks every 5/10 sec?

I’m guessing many skills will be changed to account for this – for example Rampage as One will be awful without a buff after this change.

Anyway, as said it will be nice that we can remove it without needing specific boon removal, and so get more mileage from interrupts.

This, alongside with Resistance (nullify conditions effects) will change the WvW meta a lot to say the least.

Anton.1769:

What about boon remove? 4 staks are removed like 4 boons or still like 1 boon? If 4 – it’s big nerf for shatter mesmers

This is not how boon removal works. If you 4 shatter someone with 25 might stacks, you don’t just take away 4 stacks leaving him with 21. You get rid of the entire might boon and 3 others. This will be the same for stability. Now that stab works kind of like blind, this is a huge buff to any Mesmer with multiple CC skills.

However, maybe I’m over-thinking this, but won’t boon strip mesmers become even less desirable in teams? Now, long-lasting stability won’t be an issue for most groups, so the small niche we filled has become easier to fill for other classes whom only need a few CC skills to take stab completely away. So our class is buffed in a way yet watered down in comparison to other classes yet again? Hmmm!

It all depends on how they change all of the existing skills with stability. Will their duration decrease? Will they get several stacks of it? It’s hard to exactly judge right now, but I wouldn’t start praising Lyssa yet for these impending changes.

p.s. I think it’s dumb that they keep watering down boons. Instead of nerfing the boons in and of themselves, they should nerf application and availability to classes. It’s really dumb. See the might nerf. What’s next, reducing fury to 10% increase?!

Yes each current skill that grants stability will get re-worked (per the revenant stream) to assign the appropriate amount of stacks per skill. So, like balanced stance – I could see that granting like 3 stacks that need removed. I imagine power break (via MoC) would get 1, etc.

The change won’t necessarily diminish the boon removal role we currently have; remember stability is only one important boon that needs stripped. Botton line is there will be one additional way to remove stability than just boon removal skills/traits which I think is a good change. For mesmers specifically, it will make us think about whether to spend our cc to strip or wait it out. I’m guessing that waiting out stab is still going to be the norm. Team play with AoE cc from all classes is really where we’ll see some dynamic changes in big fights (yay MoD/Imbued Diversion, GS push, focus pull, etc).

Maybe you’re right. I just think this is an unfortunate nerf to stability in general. The classic bunker [guardian] role continues to be pushed out of play entirely it seems. Now, the way to “bunker” is by taking a bruiser instead like cele ele/war/engi.

But yes, I do fully acknowledge that this is a buff to boon strip mesmers as we can use our CC to take away stability instead of using the boon strip if we so choose. Now, we have the ability to “kitten away” at the stable fortress! haha

Xyonon.3987:

Because boonstrip rips a whole stack of boons from the target. Regardless of 1 or 25 stacks stability, 2 F3 illusions gonna stop that spin. It’s all about the boonstrip trait rather than the daze. Untraited it’s a different story.

How is this any different than it is now? Stability isn’t changing how it reacts to boon strip, it’s only changing how it reacts to direct hard cc.

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

Because boonstrip rips a whole stack of boons from the target. Regardless of 1 or 25 stacks stability, 2 F3 illusions gonna stop that spin. It’s all about the boonstrip trait rather than the daze. Untraited it’s a different story.

How is this any different than it is now? Stability isn’t changing how it reacts to boon strip, it’s only changing how it reacts to direct hard cc.

I guess he meant to say that it will be affected the same way by boonstrip and only differently to “untraited”(without shattered concentration) to F3 which dazes the stability down stack per stack. (Which is exactly what you said in different words)

So this is probably old news but stability change won’t have major impact in PvP setting.
http://dulfy.net/2015/02/27/gw2-clarification-on-stability-changes/

With the amount of stacks in just self-sustaining skills (Dolyak signet: 10 stacks for 8s) it’ll probably be better to wait it out/boon strip it than trying to wear it down with interruptions (even the best interruption mesmers will have trouble overcoming that amount by themselves). This change seems to be more of an band-aid for WvW than PvP. Though I can’t deny the potential for interruption mesmers in WvW, I’m still a bit disappointed at this change.

One thing to note though, will it stack up to 25 like might?

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

So this is probably old news but stability change won’t have major impact in PvP setting.
http://dulfy.net/2015/02/27/gw2-clarification-on-stability-changes/

With the amount of stacks in just self-sustaining skills (Dolyak signet: 10 stacks for 8s) it’ll probably be better to wait it out/boon strip it than trying to wear it down with interruptions (even the best interruption mesmers will have trouble overcoming that amount by themselves). This change seems to be more of an band-aid for WvW than PvP. Though I can’t deny the potential for interruption mesmers in WvW, I’m still a bit disappointed at this change.

It does look that way. I still want to see what the stack counts are for each skill.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

So this is probably old news but stability change won’t have major impact in PvP setting.
http://dulfy.net/2015/02/27/gw2-clarification-on-stability-changes/

With the amount of stacks in just self-sustaining skills (Dolyak signet: 10 stacks for 8s) it’ll probably be better to wait it out/boon strip it than trying to wear it down with interruptions (even the best interruption mesmers will have trouble overcoming that amount by themselves). This change seems to be more of an band-aid for WvW than PvP. Though I can’t deny the potential for interruption mesmers in WvW, I’m still a bit disappointed at this change.

You don’t need to be a good “interrupt” Mesmer to remove a stack of stability. You simply need to hit a stack with hard cc. 10 stacks isnt really worth hacking at with all your cd’s though. Still, at least cc skills accidentally spent might go toward a purpose. A big might vs dolyak signet :p

As for WvW, without boon removal these changes look meaningless. Unless the Meta changes to heavy AoE CC. But I don’t know how many Staff Ele’s you’re gonna need to make the difference :p

Actually, Nicenikeshoe, I think it sounds quite reasonable what they’re doing.

“Dolyak Signet (whose primary function is self-stability) will gain 10 stacks of stability for 8 seconds, while Toss Elixir B (which is an area of effect ability for the engineer) will grant 3 stacks to 5 allies for 5 seconds.”

So yeah, brute-force stripping Stab off a Warrior is not looking very effective, and shouldn’t be easy as it’s a core design of the Warrior class to be Stable, but in turn stripping it off the Engies Tossed Elixir B looks very viable and does a lot to better balance this and (probably) many other similar instances of Stab in the game.

Sounds like they may get it right, and it’ll be a minor but not insignificant boost to control-focused Mesmers.