Guild Wars 2

Mind Rake
When you confuse your enemy, additionally bleed and poison them.
Inflicts 1 stack of bleeding for 1 second.
Inflicts poison for 1 second.

The question would be how strong this one is.
If one confusion stack gives both it would be really strong maybe even too strong for a grandmaster trait. Maybe make it random like sometimes bleeding sometimes poison as I think poison is really really really strong in PvP/WvW solely because of the healing reduction.

Other then that I think they should change the whole behaviour how confusion works in PvE. That would help condition mesmers more imo.

An interesting idea, though i think it would be better if it had a choice of ALL the conditions – minus Fear (doesnt suit us) confusion (confusion procing confusion? lol) and have it apply ONE at random.

The problem also comes with the fact that 1 second of poison and burning for example is stronger then 1 second of bleeding so to make it more balanced they would need to adjust the stacks or the duration

All the conditions would be too big of a pool, and I doubt 1s of bleeding and poison would be “too strong for a grandmaster” not to mention, we’re mesmers, this illusionists, and fear is a fairly big part of illusions so I fail to see how it “doesn’t fit us.”

@OP I think it’d make a good Grandmaster trait, because face it, there’s no way we’d be able to do -too- much damage from it because at best we could get 1s of 19 bleed (highest confusion burst I threw on someone)

Durzlla.6295:

All the conditions would be too big of a pool, and I doubt 1s of bleeding and poison would be “too strong for a grandmaster” not to mention, we’re mesmers, this illusionists, and fear is a fairly big part of illusions so I fail to see how it “doesn’t fit us.”

@OP I think it’d make a good Grandmaster trait, because face it, there’s no way we’d be able to do -too- much damage from it because at best we could get 1s of 19 bleed (highest confusion burst I threw on someone)

A missunderstanding on your part or mine I dunno but the way I meant it was this: 1 stack of confusion=1 stack of whatever the enemy would get so basicly 3 clones=3stacks of confusion=3 stacks of 1sec bleed+3sec poison.
If it was that way imagine how high the potential damage could get. Maybe he meant every time you get confusion no matter how high the stacks(like scepter’s #3 → 1 proc of the trait)…but one could time it and abuse Illusionary Retribution with tons of clones.
Both ways it would actually be quiete strong but then again other classes can keep poison up on their own. With my engineer pistol #2 alone I can stack tons of poison…although I think the way I thought it to be would kind of be OP. Mr OP care to eleborete how you meant it? Or is it maybe all skills that cause confusion trigger this? I’m confused(no pun intended).

I actually like the idea of more then just those two random conditions but I got to agree why not include fear? Warrior’s got fear…and they’re not very fearsome =)
Maybe 1sec fear, 3sec poison, 3stacks 1sec bleeding, 1sec burning, 3sec blind, 5stacks 4-5sec vuln. 1-2sec chilled/crippled…something like that.
I’d actually trait it but I still would prefer if they changed the way confusion works in pve to make condition mesmer more useful with all the confusion potential.

IMO we have to many random small conditions. This will just give more stacks to our already short tick small amounts.

Alternate: Mind corrosion – every stack of confusion has a 50% chance to apply poison. 1s

This utilizes the utility of poison, considering we have very little access to it, and arguably Mesmers need it to combat the way regen is going since its almost impossible to out burst/spike a lot of it. This also makes condi mes not only viable but fair. If you consider our confusion application 50% per application is pretty fair without being over powered or broken, and even if it was a statistical change would be the perfect way to balance it and being it in line.

We have no skills that cause fear, so i highly doubt that we ever will. we are a confusing class, not a scary/feared class. Now i actually like the:

cloudysan.4397:

: 1 stack of confusion=1 stack of whatever the enemy would get so basicly 3 clones=3stacks of confusion=3 stacks of 1sec bleed+3sec poison.
If it was that way imagine how high the potential damage could get. Maybe he meant every time you get confusion no matter how high the stacks(like scepter’s #3 -> 1 proc of the trait)…but one could time it and abuse Illusionary Retribution with tons of clones.

This would give us the condition “Burst” that other classes have. It would be VERY strong so would need tweaking but combined with 25Dueling, Perplexity Runes it could really make the Mesmer condition build something special.

Coming 5point Illusions with Retal on CoF 6-8stacks of confusion as well as 6-8 other conditions at random every >25 seconds would be GREAT and actually make the CoF shatter even better.

Though i think the conditions that should be able to proc should be: Burning, Bleed, Poison, Torment.

Fear = No, it just doesnt suit the class we have NO access to it without runes
Chill = No, same as above
Blind = No, shouldn’t have CC goes for Immobilize, Cripple, Weakness as well.

We are illusions we manipulate the mind, we could totally cause fear, we actually could via Chaos Storm in beta but it was replaced with Daze because people would get feared out of the storm.

And Cloudy I was thinking the same thing, the reason I don’t think that’s be OP is that other profs can guarantee a 25 stack of bleed for a LONGER duration, EX: warriors with swords can maintain 25 bleed easy, rangers and thieves can both burst it up there for 5s, and then I know Necros can burst the bleed up there too as well as maintain it on large stacks.

I kinda like it…the bleed is not important but on-demand poison really helps against high-healing classes/builds.

Iavra.8510:

I kinda like it…the bleed is not important but on-demand poison really helps against high-healing classes/builds.

The bleed is to add that little extra punch.

But those bleeds won’t add a little extra punch. Like 2 clones and a traited p.duelist through an ethereal field would actually lower your bleed damage by replacing the high duration bleeds with 1 second bleeds. So I would not approve of this.

However, it’s given me an idea. Recently some mesmers have been really pushing condition build buffs for mesmers with really bad/unbalanced ideas. I think this comes down to a condition weapon auto attack always has to have that x4 factor and sharper images x3 in mind for balance. Also, confusion is our thing but it kinda sucks right now but anet still has to balance with it in mind. So I don’t think mesmers can ever have a true condition weapon set/auto attack that is balanced.

Your trait idea actually got me thinking about Illusionary Retribution (confusion per illusion shattered). I always see this as minor bonus damage on my zerker shatter mesmer but what if it was changed? F1 could do 2-4 stacks of bleed per illusion shattered. F2 would still be double confusion. F3 could poison for a few seconds per illusion? F4 for an aoe chill, weakness, or torment? May or may not stack with IP.

This would replace a crappy “mesmer condition” on our class mechanic and give all mesmers, regardless of weapon set, a way to apply conditions. This would also put us more in control of when our conditions were spiked and would be easier to balance. The exact #s and conditions can be debated but do people like this idea? The trait might need to become a major trait.

Thoughts?

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Your trait idea actually got me thinking about Illusionary Retribution (confusion per illusion shattered). I always see this as minor bonus damage on my zerker shatter mesmer but what if it was changed? F1 could do 2-4 stacks of bleed per illusion shattered. F2 would still be double confusion. F3 could poison for a few seconds per illusion? F4 for an aoe chill, weakness, or torment? May or may not stack with IP.

I like IR as it is, what we need (imo) is a condition that we have no/little access to to proc from Confusion application. How about a 1second/1 Tick Burn as well as a 2second Poison? Currently without taking Sigils the only way to get it is a random Proc from Chaos Storm.

I defiently think that Torch and Scepter could (and should!) be improved for Condition builds, i mean it doesnt quite make sense its like Anet dont quite know what they want the Scepter to be. Power builds have Sword, Condition builds should have Scepter.

Look at the Necro auto attack chain, 2 stacks of bleeding as well as Poison AND it is faster. we get no conditions, a slow chain and a Clone. That is terrible. They wouldnt even need to create/change traits if just these weapons were fixed 9imo)

As a shatter mesmers I can easily proc 12 stacks of confusion in 1-2 seconds with just F1 and F2. So you want to be able to proc 12 seconds of burning AND 24 seconds of poison AND 12 stacks of confusion in an AOE? and call that totally balanced? Then toss in a p.duelist through ethereals or scepter 3.

There are many problems with the 1 second of something per confusion:
1) confusion is really easy to apply for us.
2) Having 12-20 procs of 1 second burning or poison in rapid and sustained succession is OP. It just keeps happening and happening in an AOE. No counter play because no one can remove 3 conditions every second.
3) We are balanced without those conditions in mind. If we get so much of it, something has to give/get nerfed.

The necro scepter auto attack: 5 sec bleed x 2 then 4 sec poison or basically 10 bleed ticks and 5 poison ticks. So lets see what happens when a mesmer gets something similar:

2x 1 sec bleeds then 1x 1 sec poison. Same attack speed as necros.
Results: 8 bleed ticks and 4 poison ticks. Very close to necro scepter. However, just using anti condi food/runes turns our 1 second bleeds into no damage. However, they are still stacking up very quickly (8 per auto attack volley). All this will accomplish is nerfing our damage hard because those 8 stacks that are doing no damage are still rapidly removing our bleeds from sharper images/allies. GG condi weapon idea #1.

So we need to have at least 2 second bleeds so melandru runes don’t obliterate the build. Half the attack speed to compensate. Furthermore, 50% bleed duration now significantly boosts this build since it will actually give us 3 seconds total without sacrificing much condition damage. Melandru alone becomes a weaker counter at this point (0-33% dmg reduction instead of 100%). Sounds fair. Let’s look at the base numbers.

4 x auto attacks at half the necro attack speed and 2 sec duration. Mesmers gets 16 ticks of bleeds and 8 ticks of poison. Necro gets two auto attacks rounds so 20 ticks of bleeds and 10 ticks of pison. Remember, that each attack is going to be 1 second for the mesmer. Boring =/. It’s also the minimum duration that would not suck immensely vs melandru runes. Overall it’s comparable… but wait:

Necros have only ~40% (66% chance on crits with 60% to crit) to bleed for 2 seconds on attacks. We have a 3x 60% chance to bleed for 5 seconds. Even when we attack every 1 second instead of 1/2 a second, we are better off than the “master of conditions.”

So how do you propose this fix? Your pistol idea is basically the idea I just hashed over. It’s bad. Like I said before, I don’t think mesmers can ever have a true condition weapon auto attack that is balanced. The conditions are going to have to come from other sources like shatters or phantasms.

Except they dont need the trait for Bleeding, as it (along with Poison) is part of the Scepter AUTO attack. Did i say i wanted the same thing? No, just showing how AWFUL our Auto attack is.

If you are going from a fresh fight to get the on clone death traits would take (using Scepter only) would be 2seconds x 4 = 8 seconds. Meanwhile you are getting 2×1 Bleeding 4seconds as well as 4 seconds of Poison every 1.5 seconds.

So in that 8 seconds the Necro ONLY using Auto attack on Scepter is going to give you ALOT more conditions/damage.

Again, i am NOT saying we should get the EXACT same skills but rather have the Scepter and Torch fixed. We don’t really need that many traits changed tweaked yes but not really requiring major changes its actually the weapons and the skills that need to be adjusted.

They could add a Burn and Poison to the chain, we dont have any traits or any skills on the Scepter that would interfere with it. They could even change the Burning to Confusion for 1second, on a chain that takes 2+seconds to complete means we wouldnt be stacking from Auto alone

Something like:

Auto 1.1 = Damage
Auto 1.2 = Damage + Poison
Auto 1.3 = Damage, Confusion/burn + Clone

Make it so that the whole chain takes 2 seconds to complete give the conditions 1.5second duration so that the chain cant spam them (unlike the Necro Auto) and i think it would be okay

As a shatter mesmers I can easily proc 12 stacks of confusion in 1-2 seconds with just F1 and F2.

The main problem is that our confusion (or conditions in general) duration is really REALLY short. Just looking at runes of perplexity with this huge 10s confusion stacks makes me sob..

They should nerf the runes (hard) and give these effects to mesmers since we are the ones that are supposed to utilize confusion after all.

Iavra.8510:

They should nerf the runes (hard) and give these effects to mesmers since we are the ones that are supposed to utilize confusion after all.

Even engineers can stack confusion better than us. I find this aggravating.

As a shatter mesmers I can easily proc 12 stacks of confusion in 1-2 seconds with just F1 and F2.

The stacks isnt the problem, its the pathetically slow duration, Unless they are on top of you when they are shattered how many of them 12 stacks will still be on the target when they get to you?

Thats the biggest problem with Confusion on Mesmer, all the REALLY low durations. Then we get Perplexity with 10-15second durations :/

Even at 100% Confusion duration only ONE skill will get to 10seconds and that Confusing Images which is VERY easy to dodge.

Wanted to give this thread a bump. I think this is a very clever trait that shores up the Mesmer’s rather lackluster condition applying capabilities- very good idea from the OP. It also makes confusion much more worthwhile (albeit in an indirect way), another bonus.

I still stubbornly use a condition damage build and confusion, while “nice”, certainly isn’t the focus of my condition damage. It simply doesn’t do enough.

While I think I’d still rather have confusion rebalanced to make it more useful as a stand alone, I would gladly take this a substitute/compromise.

Well done!

Eh, Condition builds are on a steep rise, Peacemaker. After the ease of +duration availability with the new runes, the duration of Confusion has become acceptable enough that it can be run, especially if your illusions also cause Bleeding.

As always, the issue is IMO the +40% duration food. Remove it entirely, and increase all conditions by 25%-33% in base duration.

Carighan.6758:

As always, the issue is IMO the +40% duration food. Remove it entirely, and increase all conditions by 25%-33% in base duration.

…and don’t forget splitting that only for pve and wvw.

Fair point, sPvP is already condition-driven I take it?

Well I’ve got myself into one of those nice little games with 1 guardian and 4 necros so yeah. It’s rolling conditions. What a fascinating situation we got, really. DD conditions are useless in pve and dominate in pvp. Perhaps because players aren’t ten-million-bloats-of-hp.