Guild Wars 2

As a phantasm mesmer who does mostly fractals and dungeons, I find myself constantly disappointed at how quickly phantasms die in most encounters, especially because they are such a critical component of mesmer damage.

While I generally like the traits in most mesmer lines, there are a few particularly lackluster traits in the Inspiration tree that could really use a change.
My suggested changes are as follows:

Vengeful Images:
First of all, in case anyone was not aware, this trait applies 5 seconds of Retaliation ONLY when the phantasm is first summoned. After those 5 seconds, the Retaliation is not reapplied.
Even for a minor trait, this is f***ing awful. It really doesn’t have any synergy with the other traits offered by Inspiration. It’s also just weak.

I suggest that Phantasmal Healing (the second Minor trait in Inspiration) be moved to the first Minor trait slot. Phantasmal Healing is not a bad trait by any means, but I don’t think it’s really second-tier material.
My suggestion for the new second Minor trait could have one of the following effects:

1. Phantasms are granted 3 seconds (halved in PvP) of Protection every 5 seconds.
2. Phantasms receive 25% less damage while they are under the effects of Regeneration.
3. Phantasms are healed for 25% of the damage inflicted by their Critical hits.

Persisting Images:

This trait isn’t really bad per se, but it just feels mediocre compared to other traits offered in the Inspiration line, it’s just sort of meh. For anyone who doesn’t know, this trait gives all of your Phantasms 20% more base HP. My suggestion for this one are as follows:
1. Have the bonus health scale off the Mesmer’s own HP rather than the Phantasm’s. This gives players who really want to bulk their Phantasms up the option to gear towards this goal, rather than be restricted to the Phantasm’s own base stats.
2. Have this trait increase the Phantasm’s Armor instead of their HP. Phantasms don’t inherit their owner’s Vitality, so having them boost a stat they actually inherit from their owner makes more sense.
3. Just make the trait give a straight up damage reduction. Have Phantasms receive 30% (15% in PvP) less damage from all sources when the trait is equipped.
4. Make this trait a minor trait (replacing Vengeful Images) and replace it with Major trait that’s actually interesting.

As a whole, I just feel like these particular changes would make the Inspiration line feel more impactful in the goal it’s set up to achieve: allow your phantasms to survive longer so they can deal more damage.

Here’s my suggestion for a rework:

I LOVE the idea of a channeled aoe. While more boon removal would be welcome, however, I think the new Mind Stab needs to have some sort of Daze component.

The Domination trait line’s (which is heavily focused towards Greatsword) minor traits are all focused around Dazing/Interrupting. So in order to add trait synergy to the weapon, what I suggest is:

Mind Stab
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Range: 1200
Channel Time: 2.25 seconds
Pulses: 1 pulse every .75 seconds
Upon cast, the user stabs their greatsword into the ground and begins channeling. This creates an AoE of whirling blades and purple particles at the target location.
This AoE pulses 3 times. The first two pulses deal damage (probably roughly about 120% of the damage of a GS auto-attack) and remove 1 boon each. The final pulse Dazes all enemies inside the AoE very briefly, probably for about 1/4 of a second or less.

This solution not only adds purpose to 3 rather lackluster minor traits, but also gives mesmer an interesting new tool in both pvp and pve.

The channel time would make this skill balanced in pvp, as anyone who wants to avoid the Daze can either just dodge or interrupt the decently long channel. If this is still found to be too powerful, the Daze can be reduced in PvP.

The main reasons I argue in favor of adding a Daze for completing the spell is as follows:
1. It gives the player incentive to finish the spell. If you are only rewarded with the Daze upon the final tick, players have to choose between sacrificing mobility for a slightly longer time, or getting the Daze effect for their patience.

I would only keep the boon removal portion of the skill so no Mesmers feel as though they’ve been robbed of a source of quick boon removal, as I know it sometimes (rarely) comes in handy.

The changes I have suggested are largely from a PvE point of view. Currently, mesmers don’t feel especially strong in fractals in terms of offering direct support to their team. Adding additional ways for mesmers to apply Vulnerability and interrupt foes will give them more weight in parties and make the Greatsword weapon as a whole feel more appropriately “heavy”. Currently, Mind Stab feels very flaky. The animation makes the ability -look- like it should be very powerful, but instead, it is weak and lackluster.

What do you guys think?

Every time I change characters or log off, my daily progress is erased. Additionally, my monthly progress (which appeared as 2/4 when I first logged in) has been completely erased.

Fix this please?

Items and effects that give off light sometimes will not work properly with shaders turned to “low”.

Ex. Cobalt and Torches don’t illuminate darkness in some cases with low shaders.

Phantasmal Warden currently behaves as if it has a 900 attack range, so it will follow a target if they move outside of 900 range. Problem is, Warden has 130 range.

Fix please <3

The Winged Headpiece light helm causes Asura eyes to change to weird colors.

My asura’s eyes are Green and Black, but with the headpiece on, the black turns orange.

(imgur link because of single-file attachment restriction) http://imgur.com/a/q7Swi

The Elementalist Dagger skill Vapor Blade displays an “Immune” message if it passed through another ally player.

None of the races have a voiceover for the shout “Hold the Line!”. I don’t know why. But it’s not an Asura only issue.

While the counter argument to this idea is usually “Walls can’t bleed”, neither can golems or half of the other non-organic things we fight.

It’s unfair to make certain tasks (like destroying the gate in CoF) nearly impossible to players who use condition damage as their main source of DPS.

This would obviously require balancing because 25 stacks of Vulnerability on a WvW gate would lead to some pretty ridiculous things. Maybe Walls and other structures can just be damaged by conditions, but aren’t affected by non-damaging conditions? Just an idea.

Not having #1 cast automatically makes running and attacking extremely difficult…

StinVec.3621:

This effect is controlled by adjusting your “Character Model Quality” slider in your Options > Graphics tab. Lower quality removes animated “ghost” effects from models, higher quality displays these appearances but is more graphic and memory intensive than the low quality non-ghosty effects.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/ascalonian-ghost-glow-doesnt-show/2684033

I tried this and relogged, phantasms were still missing the ghost appearance. So no, that’s not what’s causing it.

Phantasms are just appearing as normal clones. Anyone else havin’ this?

When I summon my Phantasms, they appear as if they were normal clones, but still have the Phantasmal weaponry…

Anyone else having this issue?

Amethyst Lure.5624:

What’s more major to me is:

1. Leap just has to change. I agree with A-Net that skills like this are never truly fixable in a mmo with latency and terrain etc, -so change it-.

2. Warden should really follow the target. If you cannot follow the warden for the projectile reflect, then how can you dodge the enemy’s abilities? It just requires a little awareness, given how its FX is very obvious. In fact I think it would be easier to use its reflect if it moved with the enemy, since you wouldn’t have to make judgement calls on stopping to follow as needed.

3. Speed is frustrating but not sure how to fix. Focus seems too good compared to the other offhands because of it, despite that I feel we have overall good offhand skills.

I agree completely.

TooBz.3065:

Leap could be fixed by having the clone appear next to the target (like the scepter clones). But this may make the time between clone generation and the swap too quick.

I was considering that, too. My personal favorite solution is to have I. Leap function in the same way as the Guardian’s Sword #2 skill, but this might be a little bit too quick for PvP situations.

Another solution would be this: Make I. Leap ACT like a projectile without BEING a projectile.

On cast, an unreflectable “projectile” would launch at the target at roughly the same speed as the Clone from I. Leap already travels. Upon touching its target, it summons a clone, which can then be swapped as normal. This might be a slightly more complicated but more balance solution.

Would make TW have a shorter CD in some builds, and Elites are elites, no shorter CD. Therefore no Glamour skill.

False. Warriors have an Elite signet, Rangers have an Elite Survival skill, Thieves have an Elite Venom, Elementalists have an Elite Glyph, Necromancers have an Elite Minion.
All of those can be affected by Traits that lower cooldown or cause additional effects. In fact, Mesmer is one of the only classes without an Elite that can be modified by Traits.

Regardless – The 900 range isn’t doing anything especially useful. I believe I’m in the majority when I say I’d like the Warden to move into melee range between attacks, in the same fashion the Berserker does.

I disagree. The Warden is – as all Phantasms are- an offensive tool. To have it stand idly there with its mouth agape while the foe runs the opposite direction is simply bad design. And it’s certainly not doing this intentionally – the range issue is listed as a known glitch in the sticky at the top of the forum.

Mesmers have a lot of glitchy or sub-par skills that desperately need fixing or improvement. I’m making this thread in the hopes that Anet will see it and maybe fix the worst ones, which I’ve listed below:

#1: Illusionary Leap: This skill is so unpredictably buggy, it’s barely usable. I believe it should be changed to be similar to the Guardian’s #2 sword skill. The reworked skill would function as follows:

Upon cast, the Mesmer would instantly shadowstep/blink behind their target in melee range, applying Immobilize and Vulnerability to their target. At the same time, a clone would be summoned at the location they teleported from, solving the extremely crippling issue of the clone’s pathing, which only works about 30% of the time.

#2: Phantasmal Warden: Currently, this skill is glitched so that the Warden follows targets at 900 range. Seeing as the Warden’s attack range is 130, it needs to follow targets at 130 range. The current follow distance drastically reduces the phantasm’s usability. Please, for the love of all things holy, fix this.

#3: Mind Stab: While a recent patch improved this ability by reducing the aftercast, the spell is still rather weak, and extremely small for an AoE. This can be improved in one of two ways:

1. Improve the radius to 180.

2. Lower the base damage but increase its damage against targets with no boons, much like the Sword’s third swing ability.

#4: Mantras: I personally don’t use Mantras and know very few people who do. By itself, that fact is a testament to their viability: The spells are just too slow and easy to interrupt. Because I don’t have any real experience using them, I can’t offer a concrete suggestion, but I believe the general consensus is that the cast time is too long. Perhaps this could be shortened, or made un-interruptable?

#5: Time Warp: A while back, many classes got improvements to their Quickness abilities. While this is nothing major, I would like to see one or both of the following things happen to Time Warp:

1. Add a combo field (either Ethereal or Light) to Time Warp.

2. Make Time Warp a Glamour. It’s already quite similar to all other Glamours, and I don’t think adding the Glamour fact to it would be horribly game-breaking.

Those are just my suggestions. If you guys have any more, please comment with something you’d like fixed! Let’s make Anet hear our voices! We Mesmers want a higher quality of life, and we want it now!

Can we please make Anet change Siphoning abilities to scale with Healing Power…? It’s not like the siphoning is that powerful currently. A tiny Healing Power ratio would improve their viability without making them overpowered…

I would like to see this implemented…or something. It’s shameful that Anet still won’t fix this.

Well, not everyone HAS to use it. But I would love the option to be available.

My idea is quite simple, really.

I would like there to be an option in the menu to automatically center any AoE spells you cast around your current target, so the center of the AoE would be directly on top of your targeted mob when you cast the spell. This would make it much easier to attack on the move with a class like a Grenade engineer or a Scepter necro, and I feel as though it would be a general quality-of-life improvement for classes that rely heavily on such AoEs, for either support or offensive purposes.

My main issue is that Mesmers already have various time and space warping abilities – Arenanet is generally good about separating the various schools of magic to be unique to a certain class. Chronomancer is just too similar to Mesmer to be the kind of unique class Arenanet likes to aim for.

I’m starting to doubt that Anet will ever fix this…but I’m holding onto hope. For now.

I just wish there was some BALANCE with it. Out of 5 party members, I almost ALWAYS have aggro when I’m on my Necromancer. I wear the gear I do because it gives Necro a bit of extra survival, because they lack consistent Vigor-granting. I just don’t want to be punished for wanting some survivability.

Here’s hoping they fix this in the patch tomorrow!

In its current state, Toughness supposedly makes enemies more likely to choose you to attack out of a group. While this would make sense for someone wanting to be a “Tank” or just hold the attention of the boss, it had led to nothing but frustration for me, personally.

I play a Condition necromancer and use the popular Rabid gear type, which is Condition Damage Precision and Toughness. However, I find that when playing my necro, I draw more aggro than anyone else in my party. Especially when compared to my Mesmer and Ranger, my Necromancer almost always has the boss’s focus, even when I’m standing as far away as I can while still attacking.

I propose we change how this works a bit.
Here are my possible solutions:

1. Make Armor Class factor into the aggro calculation. For example, a character with 2000 Armor who is wearing Light armor will not draw as much aggro as a character with Medium or Heavy armor with the same amount of Armor. I obviously don’t know enough specifics to make an exact calculation, but I’d like Armor type to factor in more heavily, particularly since Warriors and Guardians are the most common “Tanks” in the game.

2. Increase the amount of Aggro having a Shield equipped generates. Shield is obviously a defensive weapon, so I’d like to see it draw a bit more attention.

3. Change the way range affects Aggro. Increase the aggro generated by players who are within 600 range (especially those with high Armor). Additionally, fix range-based Aggro generation for players outside of 600 range to be the same, regardless of distance. It’s not fair to ranged classes whose main weapon has 900 range (such as Scepter) to be more heavily targeted than classes whose main weapon has 1200 range or greater.

Thanks, and I hope you consider implementing some, if not all, of these fixes.

This is just a brief list of the various improvements I think Flamethrower could use. Note, I don’t think ALL of these need to or should be implemented, but these are just suggestions for various things that COULD be done. These changes are listed in order of importance.

1: Up the Flamethrower autoattack’s range to 600. The range of the visual effect is already 600 so it just makes good sense to make the actual range match.

2: Fix the “Miss While Moving” glitch. Often times, while moving about, the flamethrower autoattack will miss repeatedly. This desperately needs a fix.

3: Add a Blast Finisher to the Flame Blast detonation. We have a combo field that’s just begging for a finisher.

4: Air Blast and Smoke Vent improvements. Air Blast is a decent control ability, but the damage is pitiful, and more often than not, the knockback pushes the target out of range. Smoke Vent is just…boring. The blind is pitiful for the cooldown. Add something more useful, like a burn or something else. Also, increase the radius a bit.

5: General damage improvements. Nothing overly drastic here. Maybe just a bit longer burn durations and a bit higher coefficients for Flame Jet and Flame Blast.

My ebil (cute evil) Asura Necromancer, Cretzen!

http://imgur.com/a/dEXN2

Before cry babies get Necro nerfed into the ground because of conditions:

Necros have almost NO viable stun breakers. They are arguably one of the most control-vulnerable classes in the game.

Necros only have 900 range with a Scepter. Use a 1200 range weapon and they can only attack with Staff, which is significantly slower at applying conditions.

Strafe. Most Necro attacks are targeted AoEs. Keep strafing and changing directions and most Necros won’t be able to get a bead on you.

Thanks.

I’m aware this is a hot button issue, but I think I have a relatively fair solution to the problem. Here are my possible solutions:

1. Restore the Stun Breaker to Cleansing Fire. Hell, remove the burn if you really want to, so long as the stun break comes back.

2. Restore Stun Breaker to Lightning Flash and/or Cleansing Fire in PVE only.

3. Remove Stun Breaker from Signet of Air and restore Stun Breaker to Lightning Flash.

Esplen.3940:

iWarden will move if he loses LoS. This includes little bumps and hills. Use this knowledge to your advantage.

Also, if he does lose LoS, he won’t start attacking until he gets LoS AND is melee range of his targeted opponent.

I appreciate the tip, but it’s unfortunately nothing close to the kind of fix we need.

The warden should just automatically move towards the targeted enemy when summoned, cast his ability when in range, then continue to follow the enemy during his ability’s cooldown. Sort of like Berserker, but staying in melee range between ability activations.

So, as many of us know, the Phantasmal Warden will stay in place where it is summoned and only chase foes up to 900 range.

The clone is melee ranged, so obviously this needs to be fixed. I suggest the Warden function the same way as the Berserker:

1. When summoned, it won’t begin its attack until a target is in range.

2. Before starting its attack, it will move back into melee range.

I just wanted to raise awareness for this issue. Still hoping it gets patched very very soon.

Let’s face it, bleeds need to be fixed.

Not gonna drag this out: simple solution, best one I’ve seen suggested:

Any Bleed stack applied after 25 stacks “detonates” the first stack applied, instantly dealing any damage it had remaining (still follows condition damage rules, though: no crits, ignores Toughness etc) . It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it would solve the problem in a practical way. It would make condition damage viable in situations with multiple condition appliers, because applying conditions quickly would constantly “detonate” bleeds, letting all of the condition appliers benefit.

Cristobal.8640:

The summon jagged on mark trait can be made to affect all marks and simply have an internal cooldown :P

Disagree about the first one tho, we already have blood mark on dodge wich allows us to maintain perma regeneration kindda.

I personally think the Horror on Mark thing would be wonderful. As far as the dodge goes, you have to normally take a Major trait to get the mark-on-dodge. Maybe some sort of Vigor-on-crit or something would be useful, seeing as Necros don’t get one.

My personal least favorites are both minor traits, but still irredeemably bad.

1. (5 point Spite trait) Parasitic Bond: Gain life whenever you kill something. 5 second cooldown.
The heal itself isn’t exactly awful, but it’s next to useless in anything but PvP or MAYBE dungeon trash. A small heal on a kill is sort of nice, but most of the time you can just regen your health automatically after killing something, so this trait feels a little pointless.

I would personally replace it with something along these lines:

Toxic Tumble: Leave a poison trail that poisons foes for 3 seconds at the end of a dodge roll.
Necros don’t get the same “Vigor on Crit” abilities a lot of classes do, nor do they get any of the fancy “effect on dodge” abilities some classes get (EDIT: from minor traits. I am aware of the Mark on Dodge ability, though that’s a Major). I think this would help make melee necros get a tiny bit of utility for their dodges, as well as reward ranged necros for kiting effectively.

2. (5 point Death Magic trait) Reanimator: Summon a jagged horror whenever you kill a foe. 30 second cooldown.
This trait suffers from a lot of the same problems the first one does. It’s situational at best, and the minions are rather likely to die before they manage to do anything worthwhile. I know it’s a minion-based tree, but these minions are hardly worthwhile or even alive for the next fight in most cases.

I would personally replace it with something along these lines:
Morbid Mark: When a Putrid Mark you placed is triggered, it summons a Jagged Horror.
I’m not positive what the potential for abuse this has, but I don’t personally feel like it’s particularly outlandikitten would help give Staff a tiny bit more punch (which it could certainly use) while also helping to increase the Death Magic tree’s utility. Putrid Mark can’t have a cooldown of less than 20 seconds, so I think the spam potential is relatively small.

Post your opinions or your own suggestions below!

Ryuujin.8236:

Otter.6348:

You’re missing my point. Look at a Warrior – does he do less damage because he doesn’t run toughness or a specific trait?

Not sure a warrior is a fair comparison; what about rangers? – A large portion of their damage is handled through their class mechanic in the form of a pet, and their pet also suffers many of the problems that our phantasms suffer (Worse in fact, if a ranger’s pet dies it’s out the fight for a full minute. A clone can be replaced in seconds)

You also don’t have to rely heavily on your pet for damage. I would say pet damage is maybe 10-15% of a ranger’s damage. Shatters easily deal at least 30% of a shatter mesmer’s damage, if not more.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Run more chaos, run more toughness, run compounding celerity. You don’t need the third, but good toughness means illusions make it to their target before they die. If you want to be a hard hitting glass cannon, you’ve got to live with the downsides.

You’re missing my point. Look at a Warrior – does he do less damage because he doesn’t run toughness or a specific trait? No. Shatters are a class mechanic and a large part of a shatter mesmer’s damage. It’s simply unfair that other classes get to do the same amount of damage if not more without having the same downsides and restrictions. If a mechanic is vital to a class’s damage output, it needs to be on the same level as everyone else’s. A Warrior’s burst skill doesn’t fail because of bad luck, so Mesmers shouldn’t have to have their shatters fail due to bad luck. It’s just that simple.

I know this is beating a dead horse, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Condition damage is just flat-out inferior to direct damage in a large group setting. Having one or two condition-damagers in a dungeon works just fine, but having three makes a single person nearly worthless to the team. In world events, most condition damagers aren’t even applying their damage due to the poorly-implemented caps.

My suggestions for possible fixes are as follows:

Bleeds:

(PvE Only) Make bleed damage individualized. Reduce the cap to 20 and improve the scaling to make the damage the same, but allow each player to apply their own bleeds. In the end, this won’t really affect balance all that much and it will allow multiple condition-damagers to work together without stepping on eachother’s toes.

Poison and Burn:

Make burns and poisons stack. The cap is ultimately up to anet, but it wouldn’t be too complicated to just scale the healing reduction of poison to be around 50% at max stacks and 33% at about 2/3 stacks. Burning should just work in a similar manner to bleeds because I don’t see the point in it stacking duration only.

McNuggetBandit.8376:

Honestly i think all clones that are on their way to shatter should be invulnerable in PvE and PvP. They should still be blockable, stunable, crippled just not outright killed. Almost every other classes damage skills (apart from rangers and necro minions but they are a seprate boat) can’t be “killed” unless you kill the character.

I agree for the most part, but unkillable shatter clones in PvP might get a bit out of hand. As far as PvE goes, I really don’t see the purpose of gimping shatter damage for no good reason.

As a Shatter build mesmer who primarily runs dungeons and PvE content, I have run into two major problems that are just completely obnoxious. My two complaints are as follows:

1. Clones being killed in transit before they can shatter. My shatters are a MASSIVE part of my damage and it’s very annoying for my clones to be killed before they can shatter. Obviously they need to be kill-able during a shatter for PvP for the sake of balance, but do they really need to in PvE? I’d like to see at least a damage reduction for clones who are currently on their way to perform a shatter. It’s just unfair to deny me such a large part of my damage just because a boss has a pulsing AoE when no other class (outside MAYBE rangers or necros) have to deal with this. It’s no fault of my own that my clone happened to be standing right where the boss was about to stomp before the clone shattered – why should I be punished for it?

2. Clones not shattering on the correct target. Recently, my clones often choose a random trash mob to detonate on as opposed to the champion I’m actually fighting. I’m not sure if there is a reason for this or if it’s just glitchy, but it’s an issue that needs fixing.

Long story short: It isn’t very good.

What I’d like to see:

Make it a targeted splash AoE again and remove the self-root, give it a short cast time if you have to. Remove the Boon Removal aspect since it’s nearly useless. Make it Daze instead, since that would synergize better with the Greatsword traits anyway.

Do that and everything will be hunky-dory.

Now I’m sure at least one person is going to comment here raging about how the temples are fine as they are, I’m just bad, etc.

The fact of the matter is that the temples are an unnecessarily frustrating experience that just doesn’t feel rewarding enough to warrant opening them. This creates a two-fold problem, as I’ll show below.

Problem #1: The events are hardly ever run. This is just a mark of poor design. The events are too time consuming, and for many, too difficult for the rewards they give.

Problem #2: There are many extremely important Karma gear pieces that can ONLY be found at these temples when they’re open. For a player who needs to get one of these pieces, it’s nearly impossible to find an unlocked temple to buy from.

Potential solutions:

Solution #1: Add Karma Vendors who sell the temple karma pieces in either Lion’s Arch or an uncontested zone of Orr. The fact of the matter is that the current state of the temples punishes players for wanting certain types of gear. It’s not fair that some players can just waltz up to one of the dungeon vendors in LA and buy all their armor when others have to trek out to Orr with a party of 10 and waste half an hour to get a single piece of exotic gear.

Solution #2: Increase the reward. Players will actually complete the events if the reward felt worthwhile.

I am aware that Confusion is meant more for PvP, but I don’t see why it can’t be for both PvE and PvP. To combat this problem, I have come up with a suggestion to improve the viability of Confusion builds in PvE.

While I do not fully understand how difficult it would be to implement this, I believe this could be a fair solution to the problem.

NOTE THESE CHANGES WOULD AFFECT ONLY PVE, NOT PVP.

My suggestion is that Confusion applied to non-player creatures should “tick” every second for a portion of its damage as a DoT if it isn’t detonated by an attack. I think this should be roughly 20% of the Confusion’s potential damage per “tick”. In order to preserve balance, if a Confusion has already “ticked” before being detonated, the detonation damage will be reduced by an amount equivalent to the total damage dealt by those “ticks”.

To answer the question “what about stacks of Confusion”, let’s just assume the damage per “tick” would be a percentage of the “potential damage” of those stacks combined.

In case that didn’t make any sense, I’ll demonstrate two examples (Note: For the examples, we’ll assume that the “tick” damage is equal to 20% of the Confusion’s “potential damage” ):

I apply a single stack of Confusion that would deal 500 damage on skill use and lasts 4 seconds. The enemy doesn’t attack within those 4 seconds. Every second the confusion remains on the enemy, they receive 20% of the Confusion’s damage (100 damage). The confusion ticks 4 times, dealing 400 damage.

I apply 3 stacks of Confusion that each deal 250 damage (making a total “potential damage” of 750) and lasts 6 seconds. The Confusion “ticks” 4 times before the enemy attacks. Each of those “ticks” deals 20% of the total “potential damage”, causing 150 points of damage each, for a total of 600. The enemy attacks after the 3rd tick, causing themselves to receive the rest of the potential damage (150 points).

Essentially, the Confusion’s damage remains the same. However, I have also taken into account Confusions that last longer than 5 seconds. Theoretically, if the monster had not attacked at all within 6 seconds, the Confusion would have ticked for 120% of its potential damage.

To clarify, this would technically void my previous concept of the detonation damage being equal to the “potential damage” that wasn’t spent on the “ticks”. If a Confusion had already dealt 120% of its potential damage, the detonation would simply not deal damage. Kind of lame, but it’s a solution.

I can’t say with certainty whether the additional damage dealt by Confusions lasting longer than 5 seconds (normally 5 ticks of 20% “potential damage” would be equivalent to if the enemy had immediately attacked, taking the full 100% of the “potential damage”.) would cause a balance issue. If a Confusion lasted 8 seconds, it would theoretically deal 160% of its “potential” damage if it was allowed to continue to tick, which may make the damage dealt too much.

This is all theoretical, but I hope people will read this and share their opinions. My goal is simply to provide Mesmers with a condition damage build that is equally attractive to the condition damage builds other professions have access to.

Thank you!