Guild Wars 2

80 Warrior here. Healing Signet is bananas; it’s a crutch and it leads me to play counterintuitively. When things are going poorly, I just switch my focus to survival/being a kitey-girly-man for a bit and I’m right back in it. Notwithstanding in many of the cases where I’m reducing your DPS, I’m dealing damage. With Healing Signet my active heal is essentially turtling. Not exactly warrior-like behavior if you’re going for more of a bloodthirsty marauder kinda thing.

Instead, howzabout something like Vengeance where my continued survival depends on my ability to murder things? Here (wear a ring and gain hitpoints) are (use when you negate it’s secondary effect to gain lots of hitpoints) our (get glowy eyes, drop some conditions and gain hitpoints) heals (bend over and take it to gain hitpoints IFF your opponents are dumb). Where’s the “channel Patrick Bateman a la a berseker to gain hitpoints” option?

Just do an offensive version of Defiant Stance as the active. Some sort of flat mitigation for 3-5 seconds at the end of which the warrior is healed for some proportion of the damage dealt by the warrior during that time. This solution gives warriors the option of being a wussy nerd and hiding behind their shields while their magic ring does all the work or it lets them draw strength from the sight of one of their opponent’s viscera adorning his newly armless compatriot and the anticipation of the gurgling ragged screams soon to follow.

I think the choice is clear.

I was tooling around on my Mesmer and looking at Time Warp got me thinking: Why isn’t this skill a Glamour?

It’s ground-targeted like a Glamour.
It creates a long-lived combo field with a beneficial effect like a Glamour.
It has a lengthy cooldown commensurate with its high level of effectiveness like a Glamour.

That train of thought set me thinking further: Given the recent changes to Quickness, is making TW a Glamour an appropriate response?

Let’s consider the effects of making Time Warp a Glamour:

• It could receive a cooldown reduction from 3:30 to 2:48 via Glamour Mastery.
  A 42-second reduction in cooldown is a pretty big deal, but a just-shy-of-3-minute cooldown is still pretty much an eternity.

• It could have its duration increased some amount via Temporal Enchanter.
  This is actually pretty swell as it gives us another method by which we can adjust the ability and, in so doing, it’s effectiveness. It also enables adjusting base duration down and traited duration up. In short, this opens many opportunities to balance the ability.

• It could become a 3-second AoE Blind via Dazzling Glamours.
  …with the aforementioned 3-minute cooldown. Still, TW has a 0.25 cast time, so this means it’s an effective “oh kitten” button. But seriously… three minutes. Three minutes.

• It could apply a 5-second Confusion upon foes’ entry into/exit from the AoE via Confusing Enchantments.
  This is the most substantial effect. A focus on Glamours & Confusion is, from my limited knowledge and understanding, a pretty kitten not bad way to build a Mesmer. This turns TW into a 10-second circular Veil of Confusion. This is in addition to its already not-insubstantial base effects and the potential of those listed above.

Whew! That’s a lot to think about. Here’s a distillation of my thoughts on the effects of this change in a nutshell:

Pros:

• It’s organic.
  TW certainly has some Glamour-like qualities and there’s an existing framework for Glamours, so I’d imagine this would be among the easier solutions to implement coding-wise. And besides; it just feels right.

• It adds several ways to balance TW: (possibly adjusted) base duration vs. traited duration, (possibly adjusted) base cooldown vs. traited cooldown, a traited Blind and a traited “Veil of Confusion”.

• It makes the build I have in mind way better.
  You can’t blame a guy for trying, right?

Cons:

• Lots of possible balance implications.
  This change adds a significant amount of interplay with other mechanics to TW and that brings with it a myriad of additional balance considerations. That said, I think the balance options it adds go some way toward alleviating this.

• “OMIGOD TW IS SO OP”.
  I don’t know if this change would bring cries of OP-ness nor do I know if balance uproars dictate decisions regarding game mechanics. Hopefully this is just irrelevant. And again, any legitimate balance issues are easily enough sorted via a number of different possible changes.

TL:DR: I think Time Warp should be a Glamour in response to Quickness being reduced in effectiveness by half. What do you think?

edit: I accidentally some formatting.

I was tooling around on my Mesmer and looking at Time Warp got me thinking: Why isn’t this skill a Glamour?

It’s ground-targeted like a Glamour.
It creates a long-lived combo field with a beneficial effect like a Glamour.
It has a lengthy cooldown commensurate with its high level of effectiveness like a Glamour.

That train of thought set me thinking further: Given the recent changes to Quickness, is making TW a Glamour an appropriate response?

Let’s consider the effects of making Time Warp a Glamour:

• It could receive a cooldown reduction from 3:30 to 2:48 via Glamour Mastery.
  A 42-second reduction in cooldown is a pretty big deal, but a just-shy-of-3-minute cooldown is still pretty much an eternity. Also, we have to take into consideration the 50% reduction in effectiveness that Quickness took; more on this later.
• It could have its duration increased some amount via http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temporal_Enchanter.
  This is actually pretty swell as it gives us another method by which we can adjust the ability and, in so doing, it’s effectiveness. It also enables adjusting base duration down and traited duration up. In short, this opens many opportunities to balance the ability.
• It could become a 3-second AoE Blind via Dazzling Glamours.
  …with the aforementioned 3-minute cooldown. Still, TW has a 0.25 cast time, so this does mean it’s an effective “oh kitten” button. But seriously… three minutes. Three. Minutes.
• It could apply a 5-second Confusion upon foes’ entry into/exit from the AoE via Confusing Enchantments.
  This is the most substantial effect. A focus on Glamours & Confusion is, from my limited knowledge and understanding, a pretty kitten not bad way to build a Mesmer. This turns TW into a 10-second circular Veil of Confusion. This is in addition to its already not-insubstantial base effects and the potential of those listed above.

Whew! That’s a lot to think about. Here’s a distillation of my thoughts on the effects of this change in a nutshell:

Pros:

• It’s organic. TW certainly has some Glamour-like qualities and there’s an existing framework for Glamours, so I’d imagine this would be among the easier solutions to implement coding-wise. And besides; it just feels right.
• It adds several ways to balance TW: (possibly adjusted) base duration vs. traited duration, (possibly adjusted) base cooldown vs. traited cooldown, a traited Blind and a traited “Veil of Confusion”.
• It makes the build I have in mind way better. You can’t blame a guy for trying, right?

Cons:

• Lots of possible balance implications. This change adds a significant amount of interplay with other mechanics to TW and that brings with it a myriad of additional balance considerations. That said, I think the balance options it adds go some way toward alleviating this.
• “OMIGOD TW IS SO OP”. I don’t know if this change would bring cries of OP-ness nor do I know if balance uproars dictate decisions regarding game mechanics. Hopefully this is just irrelevant. And again, any legitimate balance issues are easily enough sorted via a number of different possible changes.

TL:DR: I think Time Warp should be a Glamour in response to Quickness being reduced in effectiveness by half. What do you think?