Guild Wars 2

Glad and weird to see a red post in this thread, feels like forever, but basically what Fay said. MtD was never meta pre-patch and was now buffed to the major leagues by lowering its tier to offer more to condi only to be shot down again to mediocre level while many other condition builds have higher spikes of ticks into the five-digit range… well, doesn’t feel like it was necessary.

Ithilwen.1529:

Go away Warlord. You’ve been all over the forums advocating mega nerfs to Mesmer. It doesn’t make you “cool.” It certainly doesn’t make me think you are a skilled Mesmer. I think you are a ranger or something trolling.

We have already been insta nerfed ( again ) please just go away.

Nah, he’s a mesmer. Just part of the “Reasonably nerf us before our buffs get us uber-nerfed to the ground” faction rather than the “Shhhhhhh” faction or the “Let’s give it some time” faction of the mesmer community.

We have a history with buffs. We don’t tend to come out on top.

So, here I am again coming from the MtD thread. Sorry I’m making these, but some of these nerfs just feel like they’re too much.

To start with, I’ll explain mesmer’s trait Chaotic Dampening. Pre-nerf it gave protection on Chaos Armor application, the mesmer having two innately on staff, one being a skill and the other a combo field using Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat. Each gave the mesmer 5 seconds of Chaos armor. The secondary affect was a 5% reduction in recharge on staff skills per second the mesmer had chaos armor on. Thus, the mesmer could get 25~50% reduction on CD of staff skills. Maybe this was a bit much. So they nerfed it… to 2%.

Now think for a second and math this out. 2% over 10 seconds of chaos armor is 20% reduction in recharge. Well, that’s all fine and good because traits tend to give a recharge of 20% anyway, you say? Well, let’s put it this way: Mesmers using staff trait now have to do work to get the reduction that all other professions’ traits give innately. Also note that 20% is a theoretical and only in the ideal situation when you’re not switching weapons on the fly and thus don’t get that chaos armor on you when you wanted, thus you often get only 10% of that reduction over the course of the fight.

And we get that the 5% was a bit much. Hell, we’d settle for 3% or 4%, because we’re getting a little more from our work than an average 20% CD reduction trait would give passively. 2%, however, is a downright joke. Please adjust this nerf.

Edit: Or just get rid of the mechanic and give us the usual 20% reduction every other weapon trait has. This would also be fine.

What did they nerf for Paranoia???

Mightybird.6034:

Josh Davis.6015:

The release has been out for 4 hours. It’s a little early to tell.

+1

Let’s give it a few weeks……

However, because chronomancers somehow warped space around their core profession so that time moves differently, mesmers have been nerfed within the first day of the patch.

If PU was the problem, then sure, nerf freakin’ PU. Make it less stealth or something, I don’t care. But the thing is, ANet was planning to nerf MtD even before the patch went live. I don’t remember who, but when a streamer they gave pre-access to was showing off all the new traits on golems a dev stated in chat [these are not direct quotes] “MtD damage is a bit too much” and when someone suggested cutting the stacks down to 1 the dev said “Yeah, that’s what we were thinking.”

So this is another point of annoyance: ANet was planning to nerf MtD before the patch went live when there was no problem with it for all its time as 2 stacks. Combine this with Davis’s quote provided by Chaos earlier saying that the few hours it was out was too early to tell if things were OP broken or not while nerfing MtD within the same day as the patch and you get this feeling that mesmers have been nerfed by a knee-jerk reaction rather than thorough balancing via player feedback and investigation.

You are going to link us to another thread. Don’t. We know your patterns already and I would prefer you stop trying to fuel your threads in other forums with this method.

Ok, one way I can see this change working is the Confusion change counteracting the loss in Torment stacks so it’s pretty much the same damage pre-patch. Can someone math this out?

So, I’m here to complain about the MtD nerf that recently hit mesmer. Sure, ANet, love you guys for all the balance changes this patch, but I have to complain about this one.

Firstly, many of us mesmers feel that you based this change on the recent stream where the guy was basically hitting golems to showcase the new skills. MtD is, potentially, very strong if you can get a consistent 8 stacks on someone, hitting with a double shatter for 16. But there are many problems with this: The mesmer and the target don’t usually stand still and whack each other, so the stream showed disproportional results of how MtD might play out in actual combat.

I’m not saying that the theory is wrong or that it isn’t OP, I’m just saying we’re not sure if it’s actually OP in context. A fully set up thief or mesmer could down practically anything in an ideal situation, does this make them OP just because some people can’t defend actively or move.

All I’m saying is, wait and see if there are actual complaints outside of theoretical ideals. Because if it is unbalanced, QQ will undoubtably arise. Can we just wait until it does and you can keep your Big-Red-Buttons-of-Nerf on hold?

MandJ.8965:

Just try it Fay, and please read, it wasnt 3 hours. I dont go into details about this, but you can be sure its well tested.

No, no, see it was 3 hours give or take, but still around the 3 hour mark. What Fay is saying is simply that we can’t yet judge things to be fantastic yet simply because we’re facing people who are both going through new changes themselves, thus not fully adjusted to their new builds, and also don’t have a clue what they’re facing or up against, AKA not Uber-Lockdown Mesmer.

While I agree Lockdown builds are now very impressive, Fay’s point stands in that saying that you’ve thoroughly tested a build within hours of the patch going live isn’t going to prove a lot until the dust has settled and the meta has adjusted.

Or at least make it 6 max per shatter, or something like that. Maybe only illusions that are shattered stack torment, never the mesmer’s IP? I’d prefer this…

Zmodd.5427:

Jon said that they’d change Maim the Disillusioned, it suddenly got “OP” because of iPersona. I said that maybe if he changed it to apply 1 stack of Torment per illusion it’d be ok and he said that’s exactly what they have in mind for now. Let’s wait and see.

Wha~???

So… four stacks instead of the previous 6 for a full shatter? I might actually be upset if this happens. We’ll see. Maybe the condi changes makes it evened out. I haven’t seen the mathematicals yet.

Not impossible with the traits we have no. Ineptitude/Blinding Dissipation for survivability via blinds and evades, Chaos Dampening for lots of protection, and Illusionary Inspiration or Mental Defense for phantasmal support. This is something that should definitely be tested.

StickerHappy.8052:

Dondagora.9645:

StickerHappy.8052:

Dondagora.9645:

Stacks are something else, but more so it gives us some capability to tag a lot of players and screw up some skill-spammers. Plus, I really want to call myself an Inept Mesmer. Just has a nice ring to it, y’know?

Yes fair points, but the thing is, how does 2 stacks punish skill spammers? You could argue we have a lot of confusion sources now but how many are aoe? Shatters (if you trait in that line) and Mistrust, Everything else is Single target (not sure how many) scepter 3 is aoe but people need to be in a line.

AoE, sure, but this is capless in potential targets. Say 2~10 Mesmers go all dodge-and-blurred on a zerg and you’ve got potentially 10 stacks across half or more of the zerg. Ideally, of course.

So..the best bang for the buck is run it with other mesmers, so what if you wanna roam?

So i guess 3 stacks will be ideal? right?

True, true. Get a small party of Inept Mesmer together, and you can probably stack up and confuse the whole zerg.

The ideal situation I imagine is stacking up right in front of your gate and evade everything for 4~5 seconds via methods. Ah, just realized Chronomancer’s Well of Precognition could also help since it’s final tick is 2s of Blur. Huh. Off topic.

So yes, the more the merrier for this, though what I’m thinking of is hitting zergs spamming at PvE targets like gates or lords, when they’re most braindead. To get the most “bang for you buck” is to maximize your stacks and targets like this, I’m thinking~

StickerHappy.8052:

MailMail.6534:

Oh definitely. I, along with yourself, are pretty known to main condition shatter. Based on the thread “How Will Your Build Change” thread, we approach condition shatter differently, but the main difference is that I’ll be using Ineptitude instead of Malicious Sorcery. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/How-Will-YOUR-Build-Change/first#post5175071

I don’t think there’s any ICD on the confusion. That’s why it’s only 1 stack for 4 seconds. I think the ICD is on the block/evasion causing blind. Blurred Frenzy, Blinding Dissipation, Sword4, Scepter2, Aegis and dodging.

There is ICD on the confusion (10 secs). It was confirmed on the stream. So yea all those sources are only giving confusion every 10 secs

10 seconds not on you, but your target, the same way Chaos Armor works. You can confuse one foe, then you can’t confuse the same foe for another 10 seconds. BUT you can confuse another foe within that ICD of the first foe, therefore: Infinite target cap, just no rapidly-repeatable targets.

StickerHappy.8052:

Dondagora.9645:

Stacks are something else, but more so it gives us some capability to tag a lot of players and screw up some skill-spammers. Plus, I really want to call myself an Inept Mesmer. Just has a nice ring to it, y’know?

Yes fair points, but the thing is, how does 2 stacks punish skill spammers? You could argue we have a lot of confusion sources now but how many are aoe? Shatters (if you trait in that line) and Mistrust, Everything else is Single target (not sure how many) scepter 3 is aoe but people need to be in a line.

AoE, sure, but this is capless in potential targets. Say 2~10 Mesmers go all dodge-and-blurred on a zerg and you’ve got potentially 10 stacks across half or more of the zerg. Ideally, of course.

Stacks are something else, but more so it gives us some capability to tag a lot of players and screw up some skill-spammers. Plus, I really want to call myself an Inept Mesmer. Just has a nice ring to it, y’know?

So, there were a load of trait changes and additions and whatnot, but there was one that really caught my eye: Ineptitude.

If you didn’t know, this trait is an altered version of Blinding Befuddlement. Its primary effect is that it causes a couple seconds of confusion on blind. That’s cool, but the really cool part is the secondary effect: Blind foes when you evade or block their attacks. The ICD is not on the mesmer’s ability to blind, but the foe’s ability to be blinded, meaning infinite target cap~

While one can easily imagine dodging about in a WvW zerg and just blind-spamming and confusing the hell outta them, one can also see the synergy it has with traits like Blinding Dissipation. More fun, though, is the synergy with Sword #3, Blurred Frenzy, which causes you to evade everything like a 2.5s dodge.

Anyone else excited to see whether this’ll feel as good or better than Glamour Bombs in WvW?

I was imagining Chaos Archangel and Warlord of Chaos [since I just closely relate the two as players] fanfics when I saw the title~

Double bumping, because mesmer.

No, just Utility. Stated in the video that it won’t affect Elites or Heals.

DeWolfe.2174:

Worried about how this system will empower and favor Guild groups over a Worlds militia. Guild groups already have an advantage as it is. Hoping the dev’s keep this in mind while balancing.

Well, it’d only be natural for guilds to be more powerful than militias. It’s like saying skilled players > skill-spammers or that organized tactics > zerg mentality. That’s just common sense.

You don’t need the Elite specs. Keep your current build. You still get Strong Hold either way and all the new trait stuff. Sure, you won’t get Revenant, but who says how good that is anyway? Little need to quit over it, I feel, if you’re only wanting PvP stuff.

Though, again, I hope PvP’ers will be able to purchase the elite specs separately from the XPac.

I mean, we’ve been customers and players since before the XPac was even announced. Can we veteran players get a little love from you, ANet? I mean, I’m not asking you bump us up to Premium HoT Pre-Order or anything [won’t complain, of course]. Just give us something that doesn’t make us feel completely screwed over by HoT’s price. It can be something in-game, just a little bonus. An item, a skin, nothing costly.

And I don’t like whining about things or victimization, but I just feel irked by the free bonus of the core game for new players.

Some people have been thinking capes?

Any opinion on this?

Guild Halls, anyone?

waSte.8640:

Link or it didn’t happen.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3a414l/e3_guild_hall_livestream_notes/

So, Rending Shatter is the Domination Adept trait which puts a stack of Vulnerability on each hit of a shatter, meaning 4 stacks at most on Mind Whack, CoF, and Distortion and a possible 24 stacks on a full Diversion [due to Dazzling] without interruption.

While it seems weak at first, with Diversion this can nearly get a full stack of Diversion and this can really count in our standard Shatter combo, especially with our Minor, Fragility, making vulnerability 50% more effective [assumedly only for direct damage], meaning 25 stacks [Easily gained with full Diversion then CoF combo] is giving us a 37.5% damage modifier.

Thoughts? Is Rending Shatter good enough to warrant wanting with this?

StickerHappy.8052:

Dondagora.9645:

Excited for Paranoia. Might be going Focus for it given AoE rupt + iWarden’s crits. May be fun~

What is paranoia?

Title of the condi spec Chaos made.

Excited for Paranoia. Might be going Focus for it given AoE rupt + iWarden’s crits. May be fun~

Dulfy links are screwed up, I thinks. Am I wrong?

EremiteAngel.9765:

Allying makes you collectively strong, but when scattered, makes you weaker than you were before.

- unknown

Unless Rambo

-Rambo

• DUELING: Desperate Decoy / Blinding Dissipation / Deceptive Evasion
• CHAOS: Illusionary Defence / Chaotic Transference OR Chaotic Dampening / Prismatic Understanding
• ILLUSIONS: The Pledge / Maim the Disillusioned / Malicious Sorcery

This’ll probably be my initial go-to for straight Condi Shatter, shifting from Domination to Chaos for that stealth and extra condi power. We’ll see~

I’ll probably also check out Condi Phantasm as well.

sevianvanzephon.1578:

Dastion.3106:

sevianvanzephon.1578:

So the illusions trait line is now about confusion upkeep…where’d all the shatter play move to? Glad there’s another option for Control instead of PU now though. That Ineptitude trait is going to hurt a lot more on dual swords…we might see a lot more swordplay now.

Shatter play is all over the trees. Though Illusions still has a shatter option in each tier. They literally squished 4 shatter traits into a Grandmaster and made an old Grandmaster base line :P

IMO illusions is currently the go to trait line for shattering…but now that it’s about conditions and control (and IP is baseline) there seems to be less rewards for shattering as opposed to playing an interupt or PU build. Shatter seems less like a playstyle and more like a fanciful mechanic…or maybe this is a hint towards future development of shatter in other forms??

Nah, straight up Power Shatter is definitely still a thing:

Domination: Rending Shatters/???, Shattered Concentration, Mental Anguish
Dueling: Desperate Decoy[?], Blinding Dissipation/Fencer’s Finesse, Deceptive Evasion
Illusion: Compounding Power, Shattered Strength, Master of Fragmentations

Simply made for max damage, you’ve still got clone production for max shatters, 15~30% increase in Whack’s damage, 10% increase in Whack’s Critical chance, some Cripple and Blind for new survivability, Vulnerability becoming 50% more effective for physical damage for us. All in all, strong choices for shatter here, no doubt it’ll stick around.

Penguin.5197:

Exile.8160:

Penguin.5197:

Exile.8160:

Penguin.5197:

Not engie.

We lost speedy kits. :/

Oh no they took your perma swiftness… Im suprise it even lasted this long. Also you guys got so many good thing from the patch you cant even complain.

Can and will!
Apart from that, no more ssrb and nades took a hit. I mean we got some nice stuff but with the hits there’s no way engie “won” the balance changes.

your angry because you cant spam nades from 1200 range? lol again im suprised it lasted that long. Dude engis have been anet fav class for a long time with nothing but buff all the time and you complain cuz some few OP stuff got put in place? and im also suprise tool kit or Slick shoes didn’t get touch either. you engis have it made tbh.

Not angry just felt like using an exclamation point :P
But anyways wow good thing your not a dev, if it was up to you engies would end up as punching bags

Not listing all the great stuff you got, but you took some hits and got some compensation and then some~ And you were already in an ok place before![<Unnecessary exclamation, not angry] Thus, while you can complain, be grateful as you got more than you gave.

Also, being nerfed in some places and buffed in others is called “balancing”, it isn’t all buffing so you should always expect to take some hits if certain things are a bit too good, AKA grenades being able to lay out AoE damage and condition barrages from 1200 range. Now you have to be in reasonable range to lay down that damage, or just take Mortar and barrage from 1500 range instead. Really, give and take, as I said.

Laraley.7695:

StickerHappy.8052:

Darksteel.8412:

StickerHappy.8052:

Does anyone notice warriors are more ultra braindead now?

no since wh wont convert condis to boons anymore and cele amu gets nerved? aka less powerfull shoutbows…zerker warri (bottomtier spec atm) becomes viable…braindead? I think you’re new to pvp…

Lol. me new?
you guys still have HS? Spiked armor? so… thats not braindead?

Tbh every class is getting more braindead since they’re handing out passive stuff.

Well, there’s less passivity, meaning more active traits. For instance, using Mesmer as my example since I’m most familiar with it, Mirror of Anguish is very passive as it just procs without anything the mesmer does. Chaotic Interruption, however, is more active as far as traits go, proccing as a consequence of the mesmer’s own actions and reactions rather than as an automatic reaction.

This is what I believe Stickers means by active vs passive[AKA braindead, as he puts it].

Sadrien.3470:

jportell.2197:

SlimChance.6593:

I think a better question would be: “Is having IP baseline enough to live without DE?”

I’m kinda thinking that maybe illusions will be less necessary for shatter builds. I know it sounds weird. But really I think chronomancer can run a shatter build w/o the illusions tree.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense, no one has been planning to run illusions with power shatter since they anounced the changes and illusions offers no clone generation.

I’d say Illusions, Dueling, and Domination would be the clearest choice, actually.
Compounding Power + Shattered Strength + Master of Fragmentation would give the most offensive strength out of the choice of Illusions, Inspiration, or Chaos[assuming Domination and Dueling are a given for DE and Mental Anguish].

Based on the new changes in our traits, I’d like to throw out Ineptitude Mesmers as a possibility, or possibly a hybrid of Inept Chronomancers… Ah, that doesn’t sound so cool. Inept Mesmers… naming can do with some work.

But my thoughts are thus: Ineptitude has no hard target cap, it has an ICD per foe, so one mesmer can throw a couple seconds of confusion on to an entire zerg with dodges, blocks[not that we have many], and Blurred Frenzy. Could be potentially strong addition to break zergs without solid stability and cleansing via hard and soft lockdown, mimicking Glamour Bombing in its potential usage. Plus, lots of blind for overall survivability of the squad.

StickerHappy.8052:

Dondagora.9645:

StickerHappy.8052:

BB (ineptitude) is whack, competes with Malicious sorcery and incidentally scepter also has the block that will serve nice with BB.

Imagine: Going into the middle of a zerg fight and using Blurred Frenzy + Dodges. Basically 50~100% the zerg gets blinded + confused because the ICD is bound to specific foes, AKA no max target limit. Hells yes~

Yeap I agree, but it competes the spot with Malicious Sorcery! 15% attack speed would be nice with sigil of rage!

In PvP, I’ll probably be going MS too. But for WvW, we’ll be able to mimic our former glory of Glamour Bombing via Ineptitude is what I’m saying. Lots of tagging, lots of spam punishment. Thus condi mesmers in WvW zergs could be a cool thing along with Chronomancers now~

yhvh.8703:

Scepter speed trait + iDefender on evade + Deceptive Evasion

Not thinking very much, but this combo means that the clone factory builds are even crazier?

I was too hyped with engi changes, but seeing the Mesmer, wow, so many good things.

I’m not a theorycrafter, but what is the general consensus on a supportive mesmer according to these changes?

Note that iDefender trait is basically on a 16-20 second ICD due to the traits which use skills inheriting the CD of that skill as well, since it’s basically casting a shadow version of it.

StickerHappy.8052:

BB (ineptitude) is whack, competes with Malicious sorcery and incidentally scepter also has the block that will serve nice with BB.

Imagine: Going into the middle of a zerg fight and using Blurred Frenzy + Dodges. Basically 50~100% the zerg gets blinded + confused because the ICD is bound to specific foes, AKA no max target limit. Hells yes~

Exciton.8942:

Illusionary Leap: Increased the delay before the clone is summoned by about 0.25 seconds to allow players to start casting this skill while moving within range and not have it fail. Speed up attack of illusion by about 0.35 seconds to allow better tracking against moving targets.

This does look like a slight nerf to me that our most used combo burst will be 0.25 slower.

Meh, worth it given all the rest we got. Won’t be too bad.

Jana.6831:

AikijinX.6258:

I Hope the CnD change is not affected in WvW. Cloak An Dagger: This ability has been un-split and its damage normalized. Damage of this ability has decreased by ~17% in PvE and increased by 25% in PvP.

What does unsplit mean in that context?

It means before the skill was doing more damage in PvE than it was PvP. Now they do the same, finding some middle ground between the PvE and PvP damage.

Ah, also, I just remembered: That Trait which summons iDefender will have iDefender’s CD on it as well, so we’ll just be getting two Captain Americas and 1 iDefender. Works out.

Mesmers~
-We’re all happy about mostly everything
-Significantly strengthened our supportiveness via Inspiration changes
-Survivability buffs for glass mesmers via Cripple accessibility and some good blind
-Condition buffs through both Dueling changes and Illusion changes including the changing of trait placement, specifically moving MtD down to Master tier to open up our options for GM

tobascodagama.2961:

Kelthien.8593:

2 phantasms from the shield and Deja Vu, another Defender on-demand from the block, plus a 15% faster attack speed on the auto… all with heavy Alacrity up-time and reduced cooldowns from Illusions…

Only problem with using Shield 4 and the iDefender trait is that the Defender will overwrite one of your iCaptainAmericas.

Possibly, but that depends on the order. If it goes iD>iC then the iD will be overwritten. If iC>iD, then the iC will be overwritten. This’ll need to be clarified later on, though we’re far far away from getting Elite Specs for now.

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

Nerf phantasmal mage ? now inflict 1 burning and 1 fury on allies? or continues to inflict retaliation and confusion with burn and rage? please clarify doubts ¡¡

Burning and Fury only~

Unsure of the stacks, but if it’s only one burning that’d be a shame[since we had 4 Confusion stacks before]. Though might be fine since Burning is quite powerful. Fury might also be useful for our condi builds for condi-on-crit minors in Dueling.

Probably merged it with Bountiful Disillusionment, which now gives Vigor on Cry of Frustration.

Or with the Reapers:
Chill+Slow+Lockdown=Nearly perma-rupted enemies all the time
Quickness+Reaper’s wind-up attacks+CI/CS/Cripples=Very powerful and moderately fast strikes at opponents unable to run away

We’re meant for each other.

We’ve got new support-y stuff in Inspiration that’s really cool, like a Distortionist build[Distortionshare? Team Distortioning? Maybe Invulnshare? Nothing catchy comes to mind] where we can combine our signets, shatters, and phantasms to give allies distortion every 5 seconds and good regen. I can also see some possible good use for Mental Defense in a sword build so that I can get up-close and personal with an iDefender or two in tow to help tank that damage with some possible easy condi cleansing and heal from Restorative Illusions. All around, great support options.

What really got me was Time Warp. It’ll be Slowing and Quickening without any extra traits! Hell, we can trait for Super Speed and the enemy will be practically standing still in comparison. How fun!

And, while many trait shifting between lines and tiers were surprising, the one I’m Auber-excited for is MtD! They made it freakin’ Master tier! This’ll open up some options for condi mesmers looking into Illusion’s GM’s, which have all been redone in one way or another to all look very appealing.

Can’t wait to be trying these out~