Guild Wars 2

Xavi.6591:

Fist of Poo

Exactly what it looks like.

Deathspike.1870:

Guardian is still one of the ‘God’ classes, closely following the true god class, the Mesmer. However, the Guardian is ridiculously easy to play with an incredible power in both PvE and PvP, and has an arsenal of amazing utilities for WvW. Compare that with the somewhat stronger Mesmer, which is worse in PvE, and more difficult to play effectively, you have the winning class that is both easy and powerful. The other two ‘God’ classes, Elementalist and Thief, have been constantly on the receiving end of the nerf-bat, and whereas an Elementalist vs Guardian ends in a stalemate, the Thief has to sacrifice a lot to deal with the durability and boons the Guardian has. That again requires more skill and tada, we end up at the Guardian being easy, fun, and powerful in any situation. I imagine that once there are more counter-abilities to the Guardian, people will gradually start to move back to their favored class, after being forced to roll something else for the sake of having a chance in a fight. :-)

BwahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHA! Mesmer! Hahahahah… heh… heh… good one. After the recent patch, mesmers have fallen to the bottom of the barrel. Nerfed six ways to sunday.

This AC thing has really turned folks off from WvW. We’ve been outmanned all week and our server is usually packed with players. While playing outmanned I found the AC thing actually hindered us. Often an outmanned server will group up and try to ninja a point or two, fast. The more populated team usually had to send over their forces to stop us, or drive us off in time. Now they just send two people to sit on arrow carts and keep us from the objective. They pushed us so far back from Ogrewatch that we had to sit in the Ogre pen and build trebs. So, so boring.

Effects: my confusion Mesmer is useless, my gear is useless, my time was wasted, the arrow carts thing is absurd at 80% dam increase, ruining open field combat and encouraging turtling.. Only thing I like about the patch is being able to see retaliation damage on the screen. At least that’s what I assume that yellow bag of kitten is which keeps popping up. Really weird choice of color and design. Haven’t seen a single player sporting those ridiculous butt flags yet. Still can’t believe Mesmers got a 50% damage reduction while arrow carts got an 80% dam buff. Just what every player wants. Their power taken away and replaced by an inanimate object. Not that glam Mesmers were ever close to the power if this divine cart of the gods. I have sympathy for Ele’s and everyone else hit with the wet nerf sock. Also… Boon hate? What an awful, awful idea. So sorry for guardians. As for the new living story stuff, a new dungeon sounds cool. The rest of it is hard to find and connect to. My only experience with F&F content has been annoying fog horn thingies ruining the beautiful score. Frost and Fire sounds too much like “A Song of Fire and Ice”. That, or a cheap shade of lipstick. Should have changed it to Nerf & QQ.

I’ve been running this signet with my phantom build, but didn’t realize it’s a pulse thing. Is it still worth it, or should I free up that utility slot for something else?

Roo Stercogburn.9671:

Was it really nerfed by 50%?

Yep! They really dropped the ball on this one. I love how we lose 50% of our damage and Arrow Carts get an 80% dam increase.

Players: 0
Inanimate Objects: 1

In a RW market analogy it’s like Anet sold us a pretty pink car we paid a ton of money for, money that we scrimped and saved for months. We could have bought any car, but we settled on the pink one (confusion build). We got the car, it ran great for a month, then the engine fell out due to shoddy workmanship. In this scenero as consumers we would have recourse to get refunded for being hoodwinked out of our time and cash. In this case we get….. Nothing?

Geotherma.2395:

Weindrasi.3805:

Geotherma.2395:

Hmm?……….
15 old kittens

They look silly. There are a few wrinkles, but they still have perfect skin and the bodies of teenage models.

Google athletic 80 year olds, they are out there :P Some of them in better shape than me….

The point tho is if we want to create a classic witch or wizard character, we can’t. I want a withered sage type. It’s creepy to see the young bodies on the (slightly) old faces. Plus, just try bringing the older women into game as a light armor class. All the tarty, frilly, skippy clothes look absurd and undignified on her. I’m not saying get rid of the young fit bodies or skimpy clothes, just add in some older bodies and dignified light armor if we want to create that wizened ancient sage look.

roamzero.9486:

Oozo.7856:

It’s amazing, really. People still don’t understand that the reason confusion damage was increased in WvW in the first place was to balance it for the slower-hitting PvE MOBs. It was never intended to do that much damage against players but ANet handcuffed themselves by tying the PvE and WvW rulesets together.

Come to grips with that FACT and get over it.

If confusion is so amazing against other players (with the 50% reduction), why are confusion builds pretty much non existent in sPvP? And even with the 50% buff in PvE, confusion builds are still non existent there also. (I’m mainly talking about Mesmers here). I do think it was OP in WvW, but there were other options they could have taken instead of gutting it, and at the very least condition-based mesmers should have been compensated somehow.

Yes. It’s carelessness on Anet’s part. We deserve to be treated with more sensitivity. I demand sensitivity! For real. And a measured response. At least fix some of the bugs.

Hexin.5603:

Thats it… anet – 400 plus whiners … if this were a betting game, and the track record I have seen thus far. My money is pvf will win again.

Let’s just all strip down to no skills, no toys, no thought and punch 1 with our pointy sticks. WOULD YOU BE HAPPY?

goodness people, this is a major change, adjust or die like a dinosaur. I would hate to see how you guys manage companies in the real world. It requires a big change in how we roll. Of course people are uncomfortable.

At least, go have fun while it lasts.

Didn’t understand anything you wrote. Gotta brush up on my Internet slang.

Plutonium.1308:

Thing is.. now you have a class that has 5 traits for making glamours better.. and glamours are now sub-par. Can you guys change the glamour line to something useful now please?

I’m not changing what i do.. the glam mesmer was the only fun mesmer build for me in wvw, but now when i get in a 1 on 1 i can’t hold my own like i used to.

I’d say a 10-25% reduction would have been more reasonable and make it more obvious when you have confusion on your character.. maybe a flashing light or siren for the zerglings… obviously the big swirly numbers and the icon on your buffbar were just not enough. While yer at it don’t nerf the damage at all and make it not trigger on cleanses or dodges or even bunker defensives… would make fighting a glam mesmer take a bit of strategy, where as now all it takes is spamming skills since confusion no longer slows you down.

Yes. This. If they are gonna nerf glam builds into extinction then they need to CHANGE those 8 glam traits to something else so we Mesmers have something to kitten work with! It basically means we’re 8 traits short of other classes now.

Iavra.8510:

Most likely “Flimp spec” (0/20/30/0/20) with Prismatic Understanding and Torch, Decoy, Mass Invis for Stealth. I’ve been running a slightly altered version for some weeks now and it’s really fun to play.

Haven’t played WvW since patch though, so i don’t know about it’s viability now.

Found it.

On my way to work, I veered across a sidewalk to pass through a line of grass that I sleepily thought was a temporal curtain. Alas, no speed boost was achieved.

Aneu.1748:

Arenanet really screwed up with this patch they are about to lose a huge amount of players.

Agreed. I can only assume that this arrow cart buff was designed to be a fix for zergs after they destroyed confusion, the main Zerg counter. They prolly figured Mesmers would be cool with their anti-zerg effectiveness taken away from them and translated into a wooden wheel-barrow. I used to love this game but I’m really starting to question my loyalty after this patch. Say what you will about Blizzard but they never tinkered this much. They knew when to leave well enough alone. And your class was always safe. No amount of forum QQ would result in big changes like this.

Personally I would love to hear an explanation from Anet about their logic behind a nerf that will probably kill the WvW glam Mesmer. They’ve been oddly silent about all this.

The fault really lies with a major miscalculation by Anet. When designing the Mesmer for GW2, they wove confusion into the core of the class. It’s a part of almost everything. But that wasn’t enough. They conceived of the glam confusion build early on, you can see it in the traits. There are 8 traits that buff confusion / glam and very directly suggest the build. Because of this, many Mesmers took it in good faith that grinding gear for condition damage was what Anet wanted / expected / would protect. Plus it’s a fun build. So we all grinded and dug in and invested time, money, gold and faith in our Mesmers. Then, with very little warning, Anet gutted confusion. And beat down blinding befuddlement. If confusion wasn’t woven so deeply into our core class design, and if WvW wasn’t so popular, and if we had different traits that reinforced the idea of confusion as a “side effect” then we wouldn’t care. But as it stands now, many Mesmers feel led astray by the developers. If I was the team that had originally designed the Mesmer I’d be super mad right now.

There was a mesmer build I recently encountered in WvW that impressed me. Maybe you guys know what it is? It seemed largely built around invisibility. The Mesmer was hella slippery. No one could touch him. Without fail, every time we thought we had him it was a clone. He was constantly disappearing then striking then disappearing. I’m not sure he did any real damage but he was impossible to catch. Never got him once. I’m assuming it was a torch build with GS, mass invis, veil, blink maybe and decoy. Would love to know his trait line. Any ideas?

Dawdler.8521:

Well I’m still using a toughness build and havent noticed that much of a difference. Confusion is definetly nerfed but I respecced to ignore any confusion based traits before the patch, even though skills are still all glamours .

So all builds arent dead. Condition builds pretty much are though.

Where does your damage come from? Nuzzling your foes to death?

Saturn.6591:

Entropy.4732:

Well, it happened and it’s worse than we could ever have imagined. 50% dam nerf and blinding befuddlement gutted.

As I already said in the other thread: Aside from getting the damage of confusion halfed, Glamour builds got buffed. Glamours only blind people once anyway; thus the change doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is, that the confusion from that blind now lasts 4 times longer.

Of course that doesn’t negate the 50%-dmg nerf; but the new blinding befuddlement actually HELPS glamour builds.

You gotta read the fine print, buddy.

• Can now trigger only once every 5 seconds on any target that is blinded by the mesmer*

So before you could reapply blind & confusion with another glam immediately after the other blind wore off, then apply blind again with scepter 2, etc. all under 5 seconds. Now those stacks will only be one. Sure it’ll last a bit longer, but intensity is more important then duration .

Well, it happened and it’s worse than we could ever have imagined. 50% dam nerf and blinding befuddlement gutted. Glam build is dead. Other builds are majorly weakened. No fix / buff for scepters, no bug fixes for checkerboard shatters, no bug fix for clones not holding off hand weapons. No new altered / traits to replace the now useless glam traits . Glam confusion Mesmer is basically a pink paperweight now.

What will you do next? I’m re-rolling as a condition Necro, but I have faith that the Mesmer community can survive anything, even the incomprehensible machinations of Anet’s dev team. I love my Mesmer and want to find a new build that works (despite the months of wasted time grinding for rabid and carrion gear which is now useless). What builds besides shatter cat, which I find ineffectual in WvW against zergs, are you guys going to now? I tried Chaos Maestro which I found interesting. Dismal damage but very Tanky and good at outlasting opponents. A bit dull tho, and I’m nervous about going with a boon stacking build now that (gag) boon hate has been introduced. Mantra builds seem odd but I’m willing to try. Suggestions?

It’s dead. They killed it in the latest patch. Don’t even try to make a condition Mesmer. Grinding the gear would be a waste of time. They nerfed the dam 50% and messed up blinding befuddlement. The dream has ended. Go another build.

Wow. Just wow. Can’t believe they added that blinding befuddlement nerf on top of everything. That’s like kicking dirt in our face after we’re already on the ground. R.I.P. glam.

Sablin.8071:

While I am going to reserve final condemnation of the patch until it is fully revealed, if the patch is accurate along the lines of what has been raised then it will be a disaster; and the mess that is WvW wont be worth playing…which is sad because its the only aspect of the game I am now playing.

With regard to the class changes:

Warriors; well, they needed a buff or a tweak with regard to survivability but the planned changes dont really address that.

Ele’s needed to be brought to ground…literally – their mobility was over the top, however they were squishy enough so that they only needed minor tweaks.

Guards were OP (ditched my war ages ago for a Guard). They needed a minor nerf/tweaks specifically with regard to retaliation and prot but nothing excessive.

Rangers only needed a minor buff and the improvement to the pets may just be the ticket….but just because their trait trees arent glamorous doesnt mean the class is kitten

Mesmers needed a nerf – i can understand the confusion changes. I personally didnt die to it but it was highly debilitating and without a cleanse you were useless.

Engy’s got their buff not long ago and now they can be assessed properly in comparison to their peers.

Necros are largely fine.

Ive largely agreed with the changes so far right? However….

The thief buffs are just utterly, utterly, heroically kitten That boon steal is just insane. Expect to see a sea of thieves appear in wvw….

I agree, this patch could theoretically destroy WvW. But the confusion nerf is/will be a huge part of the disaster to come. Confusion was fine and it was one of the only counters to massive zergs balls. If they wanted a nerf it should have been 25%. At 50% decrease it eliminates glam Mesmers and you’ll see much less Mesmers in general. Which means less portals, leads speed buffs, less WvW utility. If the 50% dam nerf is accurate I’ll be re-rolling condition Necro as will a big chunk of the glam mesmer confusion build community. The remaining Mesmers will run shatter cat, which basically turns them into glorified thieves with high single target burst potential. Which leads to more ganking of new players. Which defeats the purpose of all this “Dumb WvW down so new, fickle players can play it with zero difficulty” philosophy. Oh the irony.

Axvil.2839:

Sounds like fun, though ANET would have to create some sort of algorithm to adjust the stats for any “old characters”, reducing their power, vitality, run speed, endurance etc

I’m fine with that as long as I can hobble around everywhere, hunched over and coughing occasionally.

Weindrasi.3805:

I agree. The human bodies and faces creep me out… and not in a good way. They all look like plastic barbie/ken dolls who either have anorexia (females) or take steroids (males). It’s not an embodiment of beauty, because that isn’t beautiful. It’s an embodiment of our society’s messed up mentally-ill view of perfection. I would much prefer realistic humans who are full of character—the struggles of life in a conflicted world should show. And everyone being under 30 is ageist, plain and simple.

Couldn’t agree more. It’s ridiculous that human female basically means “supermodel”. Sure, create options for those that want classical beauty, but leave options for those of us who prefer imperfection.

@ Triggersad : Gah… Hate that concept. Is beauty really the goal here? I think creating interesting original characters should be the goal.

I wanted to create an old, hunched over, decrepit witch type character and was disappointed to see that all bodies in the female character creation are young and healthy. Same with faces. With men you can add a grey beard, but still. Give us wrinkles and missing teeth!

lettucemode.3789:

Thanks for the tips but I knew them already, I know how confusion works and how to avoid it. Also, kite from multiple, ranged phantasms on an open plain? Right.

And it didn’t expire after 3-5 seconds. More like 10. He had the bonus condition duration food (apple icon) on as well.

I think that confusion is fine in theory. But in practice the damage is simply too high (in WvW). In competitive games, if I have a counter (condition transfers and cleanses) to what someone is doing (confusion stacking), they should not be able to counter my counter by doing more of the original, countered thing. It basically makes the original thing the strongest tactic in the game, since you can beat all its counters by just doing more of it.

I would support reducing the nerf to maybe 30% and then take some time to see what state WvW glamour mesmers are in.

Wow. You LOST 1v1 verses a glam confusion Mesmer? That’s embarassing. We suck at 1v1. We’ve traded so much survivability and direct damage for our confusions skills that we’re very weak and easily countered by most classes. I was thinking about re-rolling as a Necro after nerfpocslyse but now I’m not so sure.

TooBz.3065:

Entropy.4732:

I think Mesmers should just be a small, pink mouse that heals and buffs the enemy team. That’ll be balenced. And our elite skill will trigger invulnerability for new players for 5 minutes. On a 10 minute cool down.

I like it, but the cooldown is too long.

Our second elite skill should put us into a downed state giving credit to the least experienced player (range 1500).

Yes! Love the second elite skill. And in the new trait line “Impotence” you should be able to add an explosion of loot bags when killed after the second elite is activated. I think there should also be a utility slot skill called “Pander” that turns you temporarily into an ad for the gem store.

I think Mesmers should just be a small, pink mouse that heals and buffs the enemy team. That’ll be balenced. And our elite skill will trigger invulnerability for new players for 5 minutes. On a 10 minute cool down.

I’d wait on creating a Mesmer until the details of this mega 50% confusion dam nerf disaster hits tommorow. It eliminates a core build and severely hampers damage for all Mesmers. See what the effect of it is before rolling. Having said that, I love this class. It has a lot of functionality and style.

One thing I AM rather curious about is after the nerfpocalypse tomorrow if confusion will simply disappear from the game except as a random proc through certain abilities. If that happens, players will REALLY have no idea what that condition is about and be caught unawares.

PopeUrban.2578:

Entropy.4732:

I’m sure Anet has many noble intentions. The problem is that their intended results will not come to pass by nerfing confusion into the ground and rendering glam mesmers extinct in WvW. The reason is that we actually SLOW DOWN the zerg clashes considerably. Confusion was never a good killer, how it worked effectively was as a pause button that would make zergs back off a bit and decrease their rate of mindless button mashing. Massive zerg balls are the problem in WvW. Confusion was one of their only counters. A recent battle NSP had with SF lasted 3 hours at our keep because we were able to prevent them from dominating through sheer force of numbers. Not solely due to confusion, but without glam mesmers they would have taken our keep immediately. Is that what Anet wants? WvW teams to win not through skill but just force of numbers? Zerg wars are fast, ugly, laggy, and not a good model for new players. Confusion served to get zergs to back up, break off into smaller, roaming groups, etc. So if their intention was to slow down the game, they just went the opposite way.

That doesn’t change the fact that it’s extremely inconsistant. Mesmers being the only solid option to slow down a big zerg is problematic because it makes WvW revolve around mesmers. Confusion can still slow things down. You didn’t get your glam spec removed any more than portals got removed when they were capped at 20 players. It’s still a very powerful and useful spec in WvW, just like GC backstab is still a powerful bust damage spec, turtle guardians are still a very powerful support spec, etc.

The difference is that it’s not so good you need it to compete, and that there’s significantly more counterplay. Four or five glam mesmers are still going to slow down and break up that zerg. The difference is they’re not going to be able to rack up as many free kills on the first blast. I’ve been on the recieving end of that and it’s unlike any other AoE spike in the game. You’re in the middle of a channel, confusion bomb hits, and you’re dead well before you can cancel your own channel. Glam mesmers controlling a fight isn’t a problem. That’s what confusion is for. Glam mesmers ending fights before anyone can react is a problem, the same way the mug crit chain was a problem in 1v1. Again, GC backstab is still top tier bust damage, just as confusion is still top tier control. The difference is that it brings the time window for counterplay against the strategy to a point that’s reasonable. if four confusion mesmers can rake in more “reaction failure” kills in two seconds than four staff eles of four good hammer warriors, that’s a problem. All three specs revolve around AoE punishment. The counterplay for confusion is to stop attacking, the counterplay for AoEs is to move. That doesn’t change the fact that under similar conditions, the enemy should have a similar reaction window to avoid the spike and actually be controlled rather than just being dead.

The problem with your logic is that confusion in big zergs was already accomplishing what you’re describing without the 50% nerf. When I drop my glams (did more testing last night) this huge swath of death you’re talking about DOESN’T happen. Confusion is still not good at downing or killing a large number of players. Most of the time the massive group cleanses deal with it fast. It simply pushes people back now, before the nerf. It’s not a kill factory in any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps in some hypothetic laboratory if 6 glam mesmers all manage to drop confusion on the exact same spot and some poor fool in there has just started their channel ability, then yes. They would be dead. But 95% of the time this doesn’t happen. The majority of my experience as a mesmer is simply as a zerg slower / warder off for a time. What bugs me about this nerf is that it feels like Anet is balencing for these extreme situations where some group of 20 mesmers in T1 has been camping a cliff for days. Then the rest of us, the vast majority that players in said class get punished and drastically nerfed (50% is DRASTIC. That’s an “Oh my god the ship is about to crash into the rocks” move on anything. Cutting 50% of sugar in a cake, drastic. 25% woulda been measured.) I brought a level 14 ele into WvW yesterday and I was doing more damage than my glam mesmer in half the time. The reason people want the 50% nerf is that they don’t like the concept of confusion. They don’t like having to stop mashing their buttons and think. They want it gone from the game. This nerf is the expression of that.

bubblyball.7591:

Encourage ppl to think less… that is what this nerf is about…

Like all art, when it gets dumbed down it gets bad. Not sure what Anet was thinking here. Hopefully the patch notes will contain some buffs that failed to get through the grape vine. If not, I’m not sure I trust Anet enough to even reroll another class. How do we know what’s next on the chopping block?

Under Web.2497:

Fay.2735:

________Mesmer Changes________
Mentioned during the 26/04/13’ State of the Game:

---

• Confusion reduced to PvP level in WvW (50%?) (Link covering Con/Ret)
• Retaliation reduced to PvP levels in WvW? (Retaliation will be made more obvious)
• Signet improvements – Now add 20 base, + 2 per level (Link covering Signets)
• Clones no longer aggro enemies you haven’t already aggro’d (Link covering Clones)
• Distortion no longer allows you to hold capture point (Link for rest)
• Moa cast on the move
• Moa nr 5 skill, reduced distance
• Mantra cast reduced to 2.75 (YES!)
• Illusion of Life cast time increase

---

(I think I have all points from the SotG down that is related to Mesmers please let me know if I missed anything)

PETS: Will have more hp (This applies to illusions)
Too Disappointed to write much more. . . . Except – THANKYOU to all the all new players for making something, that has taken some people 8 months to achieve, (pretty much worthless) after may 1st. Thankyou to Devs for listening to new players more than the seasoned vets- way to go to keep your player base. As we speak i am downloading my old mmo client and eagererly looking forward to the 2013 releases.
. . .AND yes i know its only a game, but when something is nerfed at 3 days notice and it affects builds and thus equipment that has taken TIME to acquire, its sickening.

Sickening is the right word. A good MMO survives the test of time by treating it’s loyal, long term players with care and respect. Making them feel wanted and supported. If a nerf has to happen, they do it in increments, with plenty of warning, and with restraint. If Anet kitten es off the players that have been with them the longest in favor of new, fair weather players this game won’t be around long.

I did a test recently with shatter cat. Wow. Very ineffective verses zergs. I know Osicat is awesome, but it’s really more of a solo / small roamer build. And it’ll be much weaker without good condition dam. Vs larger groups the clones die way before they have a chance to shatter on target. The burst is only effective if you got all the gear maxed out. But I’m curious to hear shatter cat / power runners talk about their effectiveness in WvW currently. The build I tried that has the most potential for former glam Mesmers is Choas Maestro. Very hard to kill. The damage output is dismal, but it allows you to essentially outlast your opponent and if you get the right runes it can buff your group significantly. But it feels like a whole new playstyle. Honestly I’m unsure of what build to go with.

elorei.6251:

If you guys can’t think of why confusion was ridiculously overpowered in its current state, then you are not very creative with combo fiends. Here is a hint: Have your friends shoot through ethereal fields into the enemy group, watch the enemy rocket up to 25 stacks of confusion, profit.

Hogwash. Never seen 25 stacks on a foe ever. And if what you’re saying is true (combos seem to add just a few ticks), which I’ve never noticed, why didn’t they nerf etherial fields instead of taking away our personal builds? Hell, make ethereal fields cause blindness instead. I don’t care. Just leave my personal damage and build alone.

PopeUrban.2578:

Glam mesmers are to zergs what mug>CnD>backstab thieves are to 1v1s

They’re both getting nerfed this patch. Confusion is gettin the SpVp cap, mug is getting its ability to crit removed.

While we’re at it Eles RTL is getting put in check, bubbling trebs is going out the window… warriors are getting something useful to do in PvP… I’m not seeing the overall problems here. Outliers are being addressed because they are problematic. using steal for a 6k crit followed nanoseconds later by a cnd and then backstab was just as easy to mitigate as glam builds, and just as broken in terms of low reaction time counterplay. Same deal with the haste nerf. The damage was too compressed, which led to damage compression strategies dominating the meta and leaving little room for anything else.

Like it or hate it, Anet wants to stop people from being able to kill each other in less than ten seconds without a decent number of people all banging on one dude. Anet wants bunkers to be viable but have a few 1v1 weaknesses. Anet wants to remove the extremes of burst damage and survivability from the game so that the entire meta doesn’t revolve around extremes.

It’s not just your class, or my class, or that build or this. It’s what’s best for the overall game. Making sure even numbered fights don’t resolve too quickly or too slowly means a game that just more fun all around.

Getting curbstomped by a GC backstabber or glam mesmer was so fast, despite the fact both can be mitigated, that it was frustrating to defenders. Not because it couldn’t be countered, but because the counter happenned within two seconds or you are dead. Because not every class has access to these types of builds. Because it was inconsistant from a pacing standpoint.

Similarly, bunkers are being brought down a bit (either directly or indirectly through mechanics like boon hate/larcenous strike/unblockable corrupt boons) because they were similarly frustrating for the attacker. They dragged fights in to infinity not because of player skill, but because the best bunkers were mechanically unkillable by a single player with very few exceptions.

Take out those extremes and you’ve still got the ability to build for burst, still got the ability to build for bunkering, but its consistant and fun for both parties. People have a slightly more reasonable reaction time to burst, and people have a mechanical chance to actually 1v1 a bunker.

I’m sure Anet has many noble intentions. The problem is that their intended results will not come to pass by nerfing confusion into the ground and rendering glam mesmers extinct in WvW. The reason is that we actually SLOW DOWN the zerg clashes considerably. Confusion was never a good killer, how it worked effectively was as a pause button that would make zergs back off a bit and decrease their rate of mindless button mashing. Massive zerg balls are the problem in WvW. Confusion was one of their only counters. A recent battle NSP had with SF lasted 3 hours at our keep because we were able to prevent them from dominating through sheer force of numbers. Not solely due to confusion, but without glam mesmers they would have taken our keep immediately. Is that what Anet wants? WvW teams to win not through skill but just force of numbers? Zerg wars are fast, ugly, laggy, and not a good model for new players. Confusion served to get zergs to back up, break off into smaller, roaming groups, etc. So if their intention was to slow down the game, they just went the opposite way.

Tallis.5607:

Lukemia.2581:

what they are nerfing is the only build you can kill. When the nerf comes out be prepared for everyone to go back to shatter.

I agree.

The mesmer lobby won again. They accept a nerf on their least important skill, while their OP skills remain 100% intact. They can still stealth & blink away. They can still cast clones. You can’t kill these, unless they are thraited for 100+ DPS. Nothing important is changed to them, nothing.

The thief lobby won too. They remain the highest burst damage (which I don’t have a problem with) but they also get better mobility now AND they can stealth every 3s again. This is supposed to be ‘balancing’?

It’s really amazing what ANet is doing with these two classes.

What in the name of the Pale Tree? We got SHAFTED. Hard. And you think we were lobbying for THIS??? Best laugh of the day. Our most important, nay our ONLY Condition sliced in half like a thanksgiving turkey? All the gear we grinded for rendered useless? Scepter, useless? Glamour mesmer build, dead? You think the mesmer community wanted this so we could all… what? And by the by, who in the kitten can’t kill a clone? They die like a new born infant tossed into a pit of alligators.

The above poster makes a great point. It’s not just that we lost a ton of gold, time, etc. It’s also that we were comfortable with our weapons. Weapons which now are unviable. Scepter is beyond useless now for Mesmers. I really don’t get the 50% nerf. As others have pointed out, a 20% or even 30% we would have accepted. Our builds still would have been workable. But 50%???? I feel like we were led into a trap by the traits which scream out for a glam / confusion build. Folks are acting like this build wasn’t designed by Anet as a core build. Glam’s cause blind, blind causes confusion etc. This build was built into the very fiber of Mesmers. A nerf this big is like saying, “Just kidding guys! We were dead wrong. Our original design was just an April fools joke.” And then all the loyal players that had faith in the developer’s intended design and worked for months and months (a year in my case) to get all that ascended gear, runes, sigils, etc are royally screwed. It’s just so unfair and coulda been handled with so much more finesse and care.

timidobserver.7925:

TonyDiMeglio.5461:

timidobserver.7925:

TonyDiMeglio.5461:

timidobserver.7925:

There is no reason that Mesmer’s should be as important to WvW as they are right now. Between portaling, confusion bubbles, and time warp, WvW completely revolves around mesmers.

I am glad that Anet is making this change.

You are an idiot. The group I run with needs every class. Guardians are GOLDEN. Staff Eles are GOLDEN. Mesmers are nice to have.

The only reason you are glad Anet is making this change is because you wish you had a mesmer.

I do have a mesmer. I didn’t finish leveling it because I don’t like the play style. Given the awesomeness of crafting, if I wanted a 80 mesmer I’d just spam craft it up to 80 in a day. If they introduce another profession in the future, the mesmer will be getting deleted to free up the character slot. At the moment, the mesmer is my mule. That said, my main is a prybar engi, so in 1v1s, the nerf hits me as well.

Anyway, yeh confusion is OP. I might have tweaked it in other ways, in a more surgical manner, but the easy 50% nerf works as well. Either way it goes, the effectiveness of confusion on large groups needed to be adjusted.

Adjusted. Not obliterated.

It wasn’t removed and therefore wasn’t obliterated. Look into increasing your condition damage.

50% is an obliteration. You can’t increase condition to fix that. Impossible. Plus most of us are already at condition cap. Glam Mesmers are a thing of the past. See any in sPvP? A build was destroyed today. Show some respect for the fallen.

It just won’t be worth it any more. Confusion is a great form of crowd control because it forces the players to back off and revaluate. At 50% dam reduction they’ll just play through the dam. Spamming attacks as usual. Also, the amount of survivability / precision you give up for glam confusion builds is so massive, that with no real return it won’t make sense.

zaxon.6819:

the majority of players dont know how to play thier characters.. so how would they know to play yours? if they dont have confusion “which most dont” they wont react to it. the majority of fights consist of “im going to do more damage to you then you do to me” and heal when you get damage. confusion forces you to change the playstyle you use vs every other situation and form another playstyle on the fly. people want a video game to be fun,, not work, dont force them to think during thier play time.

Thinking is fun. You should try it sometime.

TonyDiMeglio.5461:

Right? Glamour is NOT god mode. It takes a fair amount of time to learn how to master Glamour mesmer. Thats what drew me to it and thats whats going to drive me from the game. I just started figuring out all the nuances and almost have my fully ascended Condition gear… FOR WHAT? If i move to another build… ALL my gear has to be replaced. I would rather cut my nuts off than go through that many fractals, Guild missions ( please GOD no more guild missions where I am turn into a kittening duck or some kitten and have to avoid red circles), or dungeon farming.

This is really a big issue Anet needs to consider. By eliminating the condition Mesmer they are really screwing over people that farmed a ton for their condition gear. It’s not just a matter or repeccing. Even I didn’t have the patience or time to grind ascended gear. I really sympathize with what this guy’s going through. They should at least make ascended gear account bound so you can move it to another character.

Aneu.1748:

I don’t agree with you Entropy, its quite simple that Arenanet is doing this because of the learn to play issue so many experience with confusion. That their metrics are probably reporting so many people taking damage from confusion but they arent thinking its because those people arent very good and don’t monitor their conditions and have their 1 on loop.

Confusion should not be getting nerfed.

Im a guardian before people start calling me on being a mesmer.

You’re right. And I agree, confusion shouldn’t have been nerfed, period. It was fine. I’m just saying if they were going to nerf it, they could have done it in a more reasonable way without destroying a core element of the Mesmer class. Maybe Anet will read this thread and make a few changes to the patch.

@ Caed that forum warriors thing was a joke / Star Wars reference. Sense of humor much? “Many Bothans died to bring us this information”. What kind of nerd are you?

A few points. First off, stop saying glam confusion build was a “one-trick pony”. To be truly good at it, the build takes a ton of timing, balancing, calculation, and a knowledge of the WvW landscape. You need to use shatters as well in order to keep your stacks up, you have to know exactly when to cleanse your group, where to strategically place your glams. Sure, anyone can get pink numbers, but to really use it well takes a lot of practice and tradecraft. Now that’s all over. Plus, the class was DESIGNED to have glam as an option. There are over 5 traits that are used in the build. Developers wanted a glam build and worked it very purposefully into the class in a very clear way. A nerf like this is a betrayal of their own intended design. It’s not some “Oh check out this weird glitch we can do” build. It’s a core build.

Second, there goes Scepter. Scepter was already a broken weapon with odd abilities, but some of us dug it. It has good synergy with condition builds and some of the scepter skins are awesome. I had assumed that if the rumors of a confusion nerf were true they would surely buff or change scepter in some way to make it a viable weapon. No such luck. That scepter I grinded for and paid a ton of gold for the right sigil is gonna be gathering dust for ever. Woe to those poor kittens who got the Legendary scepter.

Third, WvW IS end game content for more and more of the player base. I think Anet thought by leaving confusion as is for PvE us mesmers wouldn’t care about the 50% dam nerf. So, so wrong. Anet needs to realize that for more and more players, WvW is the real end game content folks are building for. So this nerf hurts us where we live. And yes, as others have pointed out, this nerf affects ALL mesmer builds, not just ours.

Fourth, if a nerf was absolutely necessary, why go so hard? A flat 50% dam cut ruins about 5 traits in the trait line, period. If you’re gonna do that, I want new traits because no one will be using them anymore. A more reasonable solution would have been a slight dam reduction (15%) combined with no confusion dam for dodge traits and a buff for some of the classes who were QQing the loudest. Some kind of cleanse ability that activates with heart-seeker for example. We mesmers took the TimeWarp quickness nerf with stoic acceptance, but this is just way too much. It really gimps our class.

Honestly, I love this game, but I fear this nerf is a sign of it heading in the wrong direction. Leveling a character to 80 and grinding a ton of gear only to discover that all your work was done under a false assumption, namely that the build you were grinding for would EXIST in the future, is endlessly frustrating. And it weakens my loyalty to the game. When another MMO comes along, I’m gonna be tempted to leave now. Big time.

selan.8354:

one question to anet though:

I have all rabid gear and even worked very very hard to get the ascended gear for my build. now my build is not vial at all anymore, so im being punished now and have to spend over 60g to get new sigils,runes, exotic armor and i have to start grinding for ascended gear all over again?oh and not to forget i worked had for the abyssal scepter too.

This. I grinded a hell of long time for my rabid and carrion armor (and paid a lot for the sigils and runes), but even I couldn’t stomach the insane grind of dailies / fractals / monthies necessary to get ascended rabid gear. You poor, poor kitten. I can only imagine how long that took. Anet should at least give us the oppertunity to un-soulbind some of this now useless gear so we can re-sell it and get some of our money back.

Johje Holan.4607:

I’ll be out there tonight spreading the pink death. More powerful than Superman, stronger than the Hulk, faster than Flash, its Confusor, muhwahhhaaa…

Then I’ll switch to my Guardian and Engi that I’ve been leveling up. Or my Ranger. Maybe it’ll be nice to roll with something else for awhile.

Yes! YESSSSSS my pink butterfly brother! Let Confusor run wild and free like a drunk skritt who misplaced his pants….

Isaac.6041:

Well, since confusion and retaliation punishes others for taking action. You can expect to see more action or more willingness to take action. I think the change will be fine. I just hope mesmers and engineers have other skills buffed to compensate.

Very slight cool down reduction for mantras. A slight uptick for sigils I think. Hardly buffs.