Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, I want to talk about confusion and how it works. I think it fits the mesmer forum the most since it’s kinda “our” condition. Or at least it was, once upon a time

I really dislike the way confusion works now. It lost it’s unique style and is just another “dot” you can ignore or cleanse. Sure there is still the damage on action, but no matter how you look at it it’s still the same as before: Some skills hurt more and others like nothing at all. Fast hitting chains are devastating and channeled skills ignore the damage nearly complete.

They tried to balance this by shifting and transform some of the “on skill cast” dmg to a dot. But I think it’s the wrong way to fix confusion damage.

So I asked myself how to get this finally right? What is it everyone does, still can prevent but balances the damage overall? Well we already have a condition that works that way: torment.

Why not change the “on skill cast” to a “while using a skill” dmg? Remove the current dot that’s always there and give it a hard hitting dot, like burn, while enemies are using skills. That way you get punished for the time you are using a skill and not for the numbers of skills you use. This also works in PvE against mobs, especially when they are channeling something or get the slow effect of the time warp.

What do you think? Better? Worse? Your opinions, pvp AND pve.

I actually really like this. This suggestion would drastically improve confusion in PvE. Additionally it would even out the effect confusion has on slow skills and fast skills.

It also opens up a very interesting type of counterplay in which someone uses short skills in between ticks of confusion to avoid the high ticks. It would be very difficult to do, but potentially rewarding if you could master it.

Agree with Pyro, I really like this idea too. It’s very unique and fits the original intent of Confusion. I also like the natural synergy with Slow.

Very cool idea!

Windwalker.7421:

Agree with Pyro, I really like this idea too. It’s very unique and fits the original intent of Confusion. I also like the natural synergy with Slow.

Very cool idea!

Ooooh yeah – that would have some great synergy with slow, I like it!

I like it. Would work in PvE and not feel like a fire and forget condition like it is now. I like things in PvE that actually require timing and skill…

Hm… I wanna disagree, just because I am in the mood to… But I find nothing wrong with this suggestion. Indeed it is an awesome idea. I am all for it.

I am actually useful? YES!!! =^._.^= meow …

beside slow i dont think any huge change will be in dmg output. maybe in pve

anet just wanted to balance confusion like torment. when not moving you get lower dmg when moving doable dmg. same as confusion. when not using skills low dmg when using higher dmg.
now turn it into while using skill
thief wont see any different
ranger only with their #2 burst

what am i missing?

Windwalker.7421:

It’s very unique and fits the original intent of Confusion. I also like the natural synergy with Slow.

Yeah, agreed. This is a pretty awesome suggestion.

We need to get Robert Gee to see this.

+1 great idea

For PVP, I can see many people being unhappy with such a change:
1. Being converted to dealing damage only once per second is actually a burst nerf, as the current mechanic allows confusion to be dealt as fast as the enemy can attack.
2. Confusion currently has a strong role in dealing with very-fast champions, such as thieves, allowing a means to mitigate their high-octane damage play. In order to maintain that role, confusion would become overpowered against everyone else. Therefore, this change would inevitably cut out Confusion’s current counter-thief role, leaving mesmers looking for an alternative. Is there one?

I like the idea selfishly, because confusion’s integration into the mesmer’s core identity is a thematic nerf to mesmers in pve. Strengthening confusion against the much-slower pacing of pve allows the developers to continue to strengthen confusion’s role in the mesmer identity, without unduly buffing our pvp play…so long as it doesn’t end up being a pvp nerf.

You can only say if its a nerf or a buff, if the damage numbers would be already defined. Is it too hard to say that a “while using a skill” dmging condition deals even MORE than burn? I mean burn always ticks and balancing this is only a matter of stacks.

I want confusion to be come dangerous again when you act, but leaving counterplay by doing nothing or rather → retreating from battle. Most conditions are exactly the same now. For example bleed and burn share EXACTLY the same purpose. And I don’t like that. Poison has another effect, torment aswell and that’s what I want to see more – different conditions, dealing damage and being used to counter something, not just being spammed for “more damageeeee”.

Interesting.

I don’t PvE, so I don’t know the impact the new confusion has on such a game mode, but I speak from experience in saying that the new confusion in PvP is in a great place. It still punishes fast attackers, but it also does moderate dmg to non/slow attackers. Confusion is typically the single thing that downs my enemies in purely a 1v1 scenario.

\O/ do it!

/15char

I’m saying it’s something of a burst nerf, as the current mechanic allows damage to tick faster than 1/second. The proposed change would bring the ability to stack up multiple ticks per second down to a single baseline: on or off, 1 tick per second. That’s not necessarily a dps nerf, but it IS a nerf to the ability to tick faster :P. An ability that I think many pvpers are fond of.

Further, while overall dps change is all in the numbers, I can pretty much guarantee that it will be a nerf against thieves specifically, because the current state punishes them so hard that if you brought the same level of dps against them with the new mechanic, you’d end up ripping through every class just as hard.

You might notice the part in there where I was very specific about what was being nerfed, and made no effort to claim that this would be a nerf in general.

Yea I agree it would probably be a nerf against thieves. But I’m rather aiming at overall balance and fairness among the classes. Thus, thief is a case for itself. Like the revenant too, they are oddly immune to chill (with the new jump-does-not-get-affected-by-it-either mechanic even more) and power block. But as I said – different stoy since the problem is rather their own mechanics.

Confusion as it is now is just weak. I’ve tried serval condition builds on different classes and confusion ALWAYS is at the bottom of the damaging conditions, regardless that it’s so rare amongst most classes and their skills either.

This bugs me

A possibility to make it less on or off would be to have it ‘check’ 2 times per second instead of one time per second. This would allow you to partition the ticks better, and provide finer control over the amount of damage it caused. It would also make it less susceptible to completely missing shorter cast skills.

Why not shift it more towards how Empathy in Guild Wars 1 worked?

For 5…13…15 seconds, whenever target foe attacks, that foe takes 10…46…55 damage and deals 1…12…15 less damage.

Make it work like a reversed Retribution — whenever the victim deals damage, they deal X damage to themselves. That way, they can increase its damage capacity in PvE, and they can tweak the numbers down in PvP so that its still balanced like it was before this last content pack (Confusion did 50% less damage in sPvP and 33% less in WvW).

However, the thing that really needs to happen for mesmers, is that Confusion needs a rather massive Duration overhaul across the entire class. Currently, a Thief or a Warrior using runes is able to maintain longer, and more stacks of Confusion with ease, especially in PvE where interrupts are soft on Defiant mobs (IE you don’t stop the cast but the game thinks you did and applies the effects).

But I’m also of the belief that most cases of Condi Application in PvE need longer base durations.

Xyonon.3987:

Yea I agree it would probably be a nerf against thieves. But I’m rather aiming at overall balance and fairness among the classes. Thus, thief is a case for itself. Like the revenant too, they are oddly immune to chill (with the new jump-does-not-get-affected-by-it-either mechanic even more) and power block. But as I said – different stoy since the problem is rather their own mechanics.

Confusion as it is now is just weak. I’ve tried serval condition builds on different classes and confusion ALWAYS is at the bottom of the damaging conditions, regardless that it’s so rare amongst most classes and their skills either.

This bugs me

i dont knwo which condi build you are trying but my confusion can proc 4k dmg and on average 1.5k dmg

I really like this idea. As long as Anet doesn’t nerf that damage into the ground this should be a nice idea.

messiah.1908:

Xyonon.3987:

Yea I agree it would probably be a nerf against thieves. But I’m rather aiming at overall balance and fairness among the classes. Thus, thief is a case for itself. Like the revenant too, they are oddly immune to chill (with the new jump-does-not-get-affected-by-it-either mechanic even more) and power block. But as I said – different stoy since the problem is rather their own mechanics.

Confusion as it is now is just weak. I’ve tried serval condition builds on different classes and confusion ALWAYS is at the bottom of the damaging conditions, regardless that it’s so rare amongst most classes and their skills either.

This bugs me

i dont knwo which condi build you are trying but my confusion can proc 4k dmg and on average 1.5k dmg

My average ticking is 500-1k dmg. With the now several sources of confusion being able to consistently keep stacks on, I’m not seeing where people aren’t doing more overall dps. I’m stacking confusion like dollar pancakes.

MailMail.6534:

messiah.1908:

Xyonon.3987:

Yea I agree it would probably be a nerf against thieves. But I’m rather aiming at overall balance and fairness among the classes. Thus, thief is a case for itself. Like the revenant too, they are oddly immune to chill (with the new jump-does-not-get-affected-by-it-either mechanic even more) and power block. But as I said – different stoy since the problem is rather their own mechanics.

Confusion as it is now is just weak. I’ve tried serval condition builds on different classes and confusion ALWAYS is at the bottom of the damaging conditions, regardless that it’s so rare amongst most classes and their skills either.

This bugs me

i dont knwo which condi build you are trying but my confusion can proc 4k dmg and on average 1.5k dmg

My average ticking is 500-1k dmg. With the now several sources of confusion being able to consistently keep stacks on, I’m not seeing where people aren’t doing more overall dps. I’m stacking confusion like dollar pancakes.

the dmg from skills used is 2-4k on fast using skills like ele/thief/warrior. the dot is about 500 . but the average skill used dmg is around 1.5k which is around 10 stac of confusion which are easy to achieve

I really like this idea. Another +1.

Incidentally this is how I thought the new Confusion would work, in a way. I thought it was a weak DoT baseline and going to 4x or 5x the strength while a cast-bar is on the screen. A lot like how Torment works in regards to movement, simply ticking for more damage while moving. But I like your idea more, flat out setting the DoT to 0 damage outside of casting.

And as said, this would largely resolve the issues in PvE because while mobs rarely use skills ,most of them have very very lengthy animations.

but what about wvw and pvp where skills are being used

isnt the sulotion is to buff dmg in pve only so the result will be the same?

messiah.1908:

but what about wvw and pvp where skills are being used

And presumably these skills will have cast times, activating confusion procs as you use them. The difference is that ele channeling meteor shower will now take 3 hits of confusion instead of just 1.

Fay.2357:

messiah.1908:

but what about wvw and pvp where skills are being used

And presumably these skills will have cast times, activating confusion procs as you use them. The difference is that ele channeling meteor shower will now take 3 hits of confusion instead of just 1.

it seems great solution for pve
but pvp – almsot any profossion gor 1-2 channle skills of 1.5 sec (in average)
it will make confusion decission procing more harder as you want to save it for the channle skills

unless they buff the dmg *3 which wont happend

feels like a hex from gw 1 more than a condition

I like this idea too, confusion should be another control mechanism and should punish skill use.

Maybe have it always proc on the initial skill use and then proc every 0.5s or 1s for channels. Until the end of the channel or a new skill is started.

Make it even easier to kill necro’s… yay ;_;