Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: Vague Memory.2817

Vague Memory.2817

I don’t really understand what the purpose of wells are suppose to be. Are these suppose to be for PvE trains and raids only? In PvP and WvW they are awful.

Except GW they don’t really do much, their diameter is too small, and their is nothing to help stop people just walking out of them.

I would say double their radius, add more CC/boons to them and increase their damage. At the moment they are pointless especially since at most they hit for 1 tick. They are uncompetitive with any of the other useful utilities.

I know they nerfed them due to bunker but what we have now is junk.

(edited by Vague Memory.2817)

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

They are rather underwhelming in Pvp/WvW. Part of that is because each well is setup so that its last tick has a way higher effect than the first two, which everyone knows so everyone makes sure to get off before the last tick happens. If the effects of each well were spread out more evenly across each tick they would instantly be better. Still not great but at least semi useful.

As it stands now though I don’t see the point of any well except GW. WoR is great, except that you then usually have to blow a separate CD to stay on the well for the whole duration to get the entire heal and all the condi clears as any half decent player will try to pressure or CC you off it. WoC ticks for almost nothing until the final tick, and gives players plenty of time to get off it before taking any substantial damage. WoP was nerfed hard, justifiably, but now its not that useful at all. WoA is nice, except that the synergy around Slow in the chrono line is so kitten weak that no one traits for it.

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: Abelisk.4527

Abelisk.4527

Alacrity well is pretty nice

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: Dusty Moon.4382

Dusty Moon.4382

Alacrity well is pretty nice

Alacrity – which all wells have, helps to shorten skill recharge time and this includes siege. So, they are useful.

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Posted by: Windwalker.7421

Windwalker.7421

^ Barely, situationally at best. In PvE definitely, but in PvP not very useful really as again it takes too much coordination and standing in a tiny circle to get the effect. The effect was nerfed by 50% and ever since it’s been relatively underwhelming in PvP as the duration is usually too short to matter much anymore.

Nerfed into uselessness like so many other skills, traits, and utils. /cry

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Posted by: redcomyn.4651

redcomyn.4651

I think it close to useless in pve, just as well. It horribly restricts the mobility of the mesmer, and as fragile as the mesmer is, that just isn’t good at all.

No, I don’t use the wells at all, and never will unless they are drastically changed.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

Nerfed into uselessness like so many other skills, traits, and utils. /cry

Yep.

I have a feeling that the ANets devs are terrified of the concept of impactful abilities. And the worst part is, this isn’t a Mesmer problem. And even skills we players call impactful (say, Meteor Storm) aren’t actually all that strong. Not truly.

I’m used to MMORPGs where you had clipping range AE CC which lasted up to a minute (or spammable AE instant cast stun :P ), the ability to mind control elite mobs as pets, combat rezzes which worked on dead players, etc. It’s not even just “don’t compare WoW”, GW2 is the outlier here, having abilities which are by and large bland and as a result have to be spam-spam-spammable to do anything. There’s very little meaning behind using these skills.

I mean, imagine a world in which nothing was truly spammable. Something as simple as removing two conditions on a kitten CD would become fight-swinging if the DoTs you remove are on a 60s CD, much as they’d hurt you. But in turn you lose one of three utility slots, and all your abilities are this impactful.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

(edited by Carighan.6758)

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: Hot Boy.7138

Hot Boy.7138

I use well of Calamity fairly often. The cripple and weakness is very nice and goes well with my build. And if anything, dropping it on top of me offers at least some breathing room for a moment from thieves… sometimes. But it would be nice to see some changes made to make all the wells better suited for pvp. I agree with most of what’s said in this thread so far.

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Posted by: Windwalker.7421

Windwalker.7421

Calamity is OKish sometimes, mainly because of the Weakness & Cripple. The issue of course —as with all the wells-- is that the damage is heavily back-loaded and so overly well telegraphed that only newbs and AFK/unaware people get hit by it.

Even the CD is nice enough, but even that won’t buy it a spot on the utility bar of any meta build.

The worst part is, again shared by many Wells, that not even that final tick is nearly punishing enough considering the slow well-telegraphed build up.

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

That’s cause everyone knows mesmer isn’t allowed any fun damage options. We either have to go condi cancer, go full on power shatter and hope to burst someone down before they look in our direction, or we can deal so little damage so as to be 100% inconsequential. The best update wells could get is to have their effects spread out more evenly with each pulse. Maybe 25% on the first 2 pulses, and 50% on the third. Its still backloaded, because kitten mesmer getting any non telegraphed damage option that isn’t shatter spam, but at least you might get a tiny bit of effect in before someone just walks off the well.

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: Fay.2357

Fay.2357

I’d be less annoyed by calamity if the last pulse was actually powerful enough to justify the 3 second delay. The last pulse should hit harder, be unblockable, and apply 1.5 seconds of immob.

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Posted by: Rangerdeity.5847

Rangerdeity.5847

-edited because this is mesmer not necros and mesmer wells are indeed kitten tier and i was in the wrong forum-

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Posted by: NICENIKESHOE.7128

NICENIKESHOE.7128

Funny thing is, I got a feeling they introduce wells so that mesmer can perform outside of veilbot in WvW. But in the end we had boonshare bloom that was never directly supported by chronomancer traits or skills (except knowing CS combo).

We used to have plenty of people testing out mistrust/interrupt traits with Tides of Time/Gravity Well, but resistance/stability become so abundant that they never shines. As for well of calamity……you might argue that people recognise it as a tagging tool or whatnot, but not many people have high hopes about its damage in WvW since the start lol

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Posted by: Rangerdeity.5847

Rangerdeity.5847

Funny thing is, I got a feeling they introduce wells so that mesmer can perform outside of veilbot in WvW. But in the end we had boonshare bloom that was never directly supported by chronomancer traits or skills (except knowing CS combo).

We used to have plenty of people testing out mistrust/interrupt traits with Tides of Time/Gravity Well, but resistance/stability become so abundant that they never shines. As for well of calamity……you might argue that people recognise it as a tagging tool or whatnot, but not many people have high hopes about its damage in WvW since the start lol

honestly if they wanted mesmers to be a solid WvW class they should have looked at providing team mates reflect bubbles or aoe retaliation protection combos. or if they wanted the mesmer to get explosive wells of torment+might and confusion+evasion condi wells or placing reflect bubbles on allies would allow mesmer to become a very aggressive wellomancer. but you know a lesser version of their glamours is also a good downgrade.

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Posted by: Windwalker.7421

Windwalker.7421

Also I was playing around with Wells again yesterday and noticed that Well of Action is bugged. It is the only damaging well that skips the 3rd tick, so that you only apply (pathetic) damage on the first 2 ticks, and that as your “grand finale” tick you get 3s of Quickness without any damage. Yawn

I hope that is a bug, not that it makes much of a difference, that well needs a lot more to be Viable then just one more tick of tickle damage.

It’s too bad really that Anet always over nerfs stuff to the point of uselessness and then just leaves it that way instead of at least slowly making micro-adjustments to every underused abilities values with every patch. There should be a laundry list of 10% adjustments for every single class with every single patch. We’re talking flunky-work here that takes minutes to change some values in a database table, it’s not hard work and would go a long long way to helping balance this game incrementally.

Funny thing is, I bet the dev team uses modern iterative agile development methodologies, but doesn’t see that they need apply this concept to game balance as well. Iterate often! Optimal would be short sprints (every ~2 weeks) that only look at underused abilities and bugs and ever so slightly boost the values/CDs behind them! You will not harm your precious E-sports with micro-adjustments to abilities that virtually NO ONE uses right now!

You cycle through 5-10 abilities per class, never touching the same ability two cycles in a row. Let each change sit for at least 2 cycles, and then evaluate how many people use them after the change. The object is not to make any of them the most popular FoTM “meta” abilities, mind you, but just notice when a decent amount of people start to use the ability and then stop adjusting it for a while.

Even if you end up over-adjusting, you could just as easily tone it back down a minor notch at a time on the next cycle. This should be an ongoing process that isn’t even debated with players (as if the big changes ever are! lol!) and should also be used to tone down over performing abilities in small increments with each cycle until you feel it is well balanced.

Seem plain common sense to me….

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

That’s cause everyone knows mesmer isn’t allowed any fun damage options. We either have to go condi cancer, go full on power shatter and hope to burst someone down before they look in our direction, or we can deal so little damage so as to be 100% inconsequential.

Meh.

1. At some point someone has to explain to me what’s so bad about condi. Everyone always says it’s “condi spam”, but I see power specs use just as many abilities, just of a different damage type.
2. If the ANet devs could ever be bothered to actually do balance patches (the little things they do barely qualify as hotfixes, and should happen every 2-4 weeks if anything), and could be bothered to embrace actual MMO gameplay balance, we’d have conditions as a class identity. As in, Necros are a condi class. (for example). And it’d be balanced. Because the devs in other MMOs care.
3. Mesmer could be a cool low-damage-high-XYZ option. Or tanks via dodging/evasion. Or even full support. Again though, this assumes the devs are even interesting in balancing or designing the classes, which given the lack of patches to that effort over the past four years is doubtful.

The best update wells could get is to have their effects spread out more evenly with each pulse. Maybe 25% on the first 2 pulses, and 50% on the third. Its still backloaded, because kitten mesmer getting any non telegraphed damage option that isn’t shatter spam, but at least you might get a tiny bit of effect in before someone just walks off the well.

Meh. That’s actually exactly the wrong thing to do, IMO. That’s trying to staple a bandaid to an effect too weak to even care about.

If anything, wells should be strong. So that combining them with disabling effects in a group settings is really really rewarding.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

Wells are useless in PvP/WvW except GW

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

I agree that wells should be strong, especially considering the absolutely massive delay that comes before the real effect from half of them. I made that comment under the assumption that well’s effects won’t be buffed though, considering HoT has been out for 16 months and the only changes they’ve seen so far are nerfs.

As to why I call condi chrono cancerous….. It has massive output to both confusion and torment, 2 conditions that are extremely annoying due to their nature. Both of them hurt you for using game mechanics, which is pure cancer in the amount of stacks that condi chrono can output with almost no effort. Condi spam is also different from power damage spam. Power damage is all at once, if you survive it then you can finish the fight quick and heal at your leisure more or less. A condi bomb can deal substantial up front damage and then also do pretty large ticks over time, which means you can’t just finish the fight at hand and be good, the ticks can still kill you, even after the other person is dead, due to your cleanses and/or heal being on CD. I don’t find condi and power bursts all that comparable because of that.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

Ah, yeah that’s a base underlying balance problem with GW2 wanting everyone to be able to “play as you want”. Instead of say, having Warriors be a direct damage class only.

Because of this we get this hybrid damage wherever we go. DoTs in general are short in duration comparing other MMOs, and the skills applying then also generally cause some direct damage. As a result, you got a real burst potential, something DoTs would usually specifically not have, that’s more or less the key part of their design vs DDs.

That is to say, DoTs are suppose to trade burst or (in extreme cases) on-demand damage for superior throughput.

But I feel somewhere in the early design someone decreed from high above that there must not be any shoehorning into specific “roles”, and for whatever reason gameplay design elements were this restrictive/bad thing to them instead of something the designers actually do for a living.

And so we ended up with the combat system mess GW2 nowadays has, which really underpins so many of its woes. Be it in regards to balance, design or even role.

I mean they tried to backpedal on it, see Druids and to a lesser degree Elementalists and Revenants. But either the manpower just isn’t there so the initial design goal of adding healers cannot be followed up by 4-6 months of frequent balance patches until it’s where they want it to be, or someone again exploded in a manager meeting and the relevant designers have all been let go.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.