Guild Wars 2

Not even going to look at the build, I’ll just say that unless they drastically increase the strength of maim, shatter condie will still remain very inferior to any clone death builds. It’s far too early to actually try and theorycraft on what was barely even a teaser.

loseridoit.2756:

most agony in the game is dodgable. if you do get hit, you can hit a panic distortion button to stop the agony.

This doesn’t work. Distortion will allow you to dodge most of the agony-applying attacks, but there’s no way to actually avoid agony damage.

Daddicus.6128:

I think you misunderstood.

Hm, ok. Lets see your explanation then.

Daddicus.6128:

I’m NOT talking about easy vs. hard.

Fair enough, I respect that opinion.

Daddicus.6128:

I AM talking about one class being easier or harder than another

/facepalm

BrunoBRS.5178:

power block is pretty nice right now (i think, i don’t really play mesmer to know). i’m pretty sure mes has a lot of other traits in need of tweaking.

Nah, power block is completely useless and never taken by anyone. That being said, turning it into blackout would be…pretty crazy.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Can I just point out that the Mimic preview states “copies all boons from enemy”, and not “steals all boons from enemy”, which people seem to be overlooking.

It’s to early to say what the case is, but it’s worth pointing out. This is a major difference for this util.

My official guess is that the reworked mimic will have a rather low cooldown. I’m thinking that the idea behind it is basically ‘your boons are my boons too’. When you’re fighting a mesmer and you’re running your lolzy might-stacking build on that d/f ele, you’re going to be forced to share the love.

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

loseridoit.2756:

Esplen.3940:

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

Noah.9654:

I’ve seen many YouTube videos where Mesmers take out entire squadrons in WvW

There’s a lot of bad players in WvW.

hey, i wouldnt call them bad players. WvWvW is pretty much dictated by build and gear combinations.

The sad part, sometimes I feel like this game is turning into spread sheet wars.

WvW is spread sheet wars? Am I missing something?

stats combinations matter a bit too much. If you ignore it, your build will suck.

That’s pretty foolish to say. Yes, if you get healing gear and you try to play it like a dps, you’re going to suck. This isn’t some sort of massive skill floor to play in WvW. It’s more of a basic intelligence test.

I am basically comparing ok to optimal. Things you have too look out for. Sigils, food buffs, correct combinations of stats. Too many variation. Very expensive to try a new build

Good news, majority of the population cannot create the correct combination properly which means it possible to faceroll the majority of the population. However, I really dont like this intelligence test because I actually want to know if I really do suck playing rather than I just suck at gearing up my char.

Number games are not that fun.

I just have to disagree entirely. The only difference between WvW and PvP is food really. Gearing up in this game is simply not complex. It’s very simple, and people that are unable to do it deserve to be steamrolled. I also disagree with the majority of the population being unable to figure it out. People aren’t actually morons on average, so the vast majority of people are able to create effective stat combinations for their builds.

As I said, it’s not a spreadsheet war or a numbers game, it’s simply a very basic intelligence test.

loseridoit.2756:

Esplen.3940:

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

Noah.9654:

I’ve seen many YouTube videos where Mesmers take out entire squadrons in WvW

There’s a lot of bad players in WvW.

hey, i wouldnt call them bad players. WvWvW is pretty much dictated by build and gear combinations.

The sad part, sometimes I feel like this game is turning into spread sheet wars.

WvW is spread sheet wars? Am I missing something?

stats combinations matter a bit too much. If you ignore it, your build will suck.

That’s pretty foolish to say. Yes, if you get healing gear and you try to play it like a dps, you’re going to suck. This isn’t some sort of massive skill floor to play in WvW. It’s more of a basic intelligence test.

Noah.9654:

So most of your argument hinges on the game being easy and full of bad players? If thats the case and Mesmers are still able to do well enough with skill, why buff them at all or fix any of their bugs? See how that isn’t a valid argument…at all?

No, my argument hinges on the fact that anecdotal evidence of ‘but I see mesmers kill people all the time’ means absolutely nothing. I could probably slaughter a zerg of 20 new uplevels in WvW by myself. Does that mean mesmers are overpowered? No. When I play tPvP, I can easily maintain my spot in the top 100/200 on the leaderboards, and I have ~80% winrate. Does that mean mesmers are overpowered? No. These are simply anecdotes that have absolutely 0 bearing on the actual state of a class. You don’t balance to any particular player, you balance to the overall average of a class. In order to gain a real look at how a class is, you need to look at the bigger picture.

Helseth is the only mesmer that still plays mesmer consistently at high level tPvP. This is the big picture, and it shows that mesmers are not truly viable.

Mesmers are no longer welcome in GvG or raid group comps if they aren’t running a veil-bot build. This means mesmers are not truly viable.

Mesmers, while still functional in PvE, have lost large amounts of their viability with the iWarden bugs and reflect nerfs. Everything in PvE is viable, but mesmers is becoming far less optimal.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Wow Pyro. Everything you said is so true its amazing.

I’ve had practice. That’s not the first time I’ve seen pretty much that exact comment…

Edit: I forgot a juicy tidbit of that post, let me go add it.

Noah.9654:

However, Mesmers can be pretty good and be even better with just a little help.

sigh this again… Alright, lets see it.

Noah.9654:

Look at Lord Helseth; he was a crucial member of this past tournament match against China. He took down what I assume to be China’s most skilled thief twice (although said thief did knock him down as well).

2 things. 1, the china team was horrid and got facerolled. 2, if Helseth was half as good at thief as he is at mesmer, he could probably singlehandedly win matches against most of the teams in the game right now. Since he plays mesmer, he’s simply known as the one single mesmer that actually still plays high level pvp.

Noah.9654:

I’ve seen many YouTube videos where Mesmers take out entire squadrons in WvW

There’s a lot of bad players in WvW.

Noah.9654:

carry teams in s/tPvP

There’s a lot of bad players in tPvP too.

Noah.9654:

and even solo dungeons.

PvE in this game is hilariously easy. Soloing isn’t even that difficult, but it’s the one thing that even retains just a little challenge.

Noah.9654:

Mesmers can be good. Trust me.

If it’s all the same, I’ll not.

Noah.9654:

As for your comments about the changes, I highly doubt ANet would purposely skew their words. If they say they are going to fix ‘multiple’ things, then they are most likely going to fix multiple things, as in more than just 2.

You know, if this was the first time they promised multiple great fixes, maybe I’d believe it. Unfortunately, we’ve walked this road already. Remember ‘oh yes, we’re fixing illusionary elasticity and we’re going to fix the IC/weapon cd trait interactions, and we’re also going to fix the warden [and pass it off as a buff]’. Need I refresh your memory on what happened after we got all those lovely promises?

Carighan.6758:

I think we should have partially linked health, this also further confuses enemies:
Our clones would show with whatever health percentage we have (they also display our debuffs and buffs, and hence ticking damage – all health is shown as the same anyhow).

If a clone gets hit, this does in turn affect us but only by ~10% of the health the clone lost. In other words if a clone (with our full HP/Toughness!) gets killed from 100%, we lost 10% health.

This would also be how enemies can find the real Mesmer in my utopian version where clones behave very player-like: One target takes more damage.

While interesting, this would absolutely ruin mesmers in zergs even more than I imagined possible.

I mean…I’m just interpreting this as you’re an average player, and therefor have average success in tournaments. This presents itself as a 50% winrate.

Me Games Ma.8426:

WoW. I just imagined this: A duel of two very good interrupt mesmers using CI…

2 guys doing a stare contest because they’re perma immob and can’t get one skill done. :>

Eh, 2 very good mesmers both using CI would rarely get interrupts, because a very good player knows how to protect their important/interruptable casts.

cuge.5398:

Nerfed but always present… which means that you could not spend 4 points in dueling and still have a good clone generation.

No, it simply means you’d be unable to spend 4 points in dueling and have good clone generation. The clone generation from DE precisely how it is is absolutely essential to allowing mesmers to work in any remotely functional form.

So what makes that 1 point in illusions worth it even remotely? This is a clone-death build. When you shatter, you lose damage. 6 stacks of confusion isn’t 1200 damage, it’s 0 damage against a good player, since your condition duration is low and it’ll only last 3 seconds.

Dracatis.1908:

Meh, the only reason most of you think Mantras are weak is because you run straight zerker. If you run Knights or Clerics with Restorative Mantras and Protective Mantras you become pretty kittening annoying to down. That being said, they still needs a bit of love.

You only become difficult to kill against someone with 0 access to interrupts. Try doing that against a pistol offhand thief, you’ll just get destroyed.

Dracatis.1908:

Empowering to 5% would allow for a bit more build variety and make running zerker not as necessary.

It would be a nice damage boost for PvE for sure, but zerker(assasins) would still obviously be required.

Dracatis.1908:

Pain shouldn’t be an AoE… it’s a wonderfully powerful long range spike damage and that would require weakening it. However I totally would be willing to weaken it if it did life stealing. And you can cycle it fast to do restorative spam for yourself and/or team.

I’m not sure how you’re defining ‘wonderfully powerful’. It does maybe 4k damage in a super glassy build against a super glassy target. I don’t define that as wonderfully powerful, especially when ele’s get lava fount, a 1200 range aoe very low cooldown skill that does similar or higher damage than mantra of pain…and doesn’t require standing around for 2.75 seconds to recharge it.

Dracatis.1908:

Fay.2357:

Dracatis.1908:

Team (Max 20) portal bomber – have your team hide/buff as you run in with stealth/stability and release the chaos for an easy zerg bust.

This only works against bad players. Generally, if people even hear the portal song inside their zerg, the commander will instantly call for full aoe on the spot, and everyone coming through will just melt.

I still take down pretty high rated huge guild raids with portal bombs… however I’ll be the first to admit it takes a lot of practice and a little luck. (Also helps if your an Asura, I don’t know why but people seem to ignore the red named cute little thing suddenly in the middle of their zerg). Though Hammer/Necro spam zergs can be a bit annoying(I tend to run Null Field, Mantra of Stability and Staff to help negate some of the AoE when they figure out. You can’t do this without Voice Chat, people need to be bashing F and through the portal the instant you lay it.

Fay.2357:

Dracatis.1908:

Reflect Mesmer (Zerg or Small team) – 90% of zerglings only do range things… 90% of range is projectiles… Feedback, Warden’s Feedback, Medic’s Feedback, Masterful Reflection(Blurred Signets helps with it), Mirror(Or Signet of Ether with Blurred Signets). Basically with Staff and X/Focus you can make a zone of relative safety as you haunt the frontlines. You want high Crit but somewhat tanky gear with this to survive well. Also it might help if your a Norn or Charr (I jump around as an Asura when I have distortion/Mirror reflects going, but would probably be easier if I was just bigger).

This used to work amazingly. However, current zergs are more and more dominated by the hammertrain and ground target aoes. You’ll get some reflects here and there if you’re creative with your skills, but it’s not always effective at all.

Yea since the glamour debuffs it’s not AS good but still viable especially since signet reflect works now… if only they would fix Triumphant Distortion reflect. The key here is your only one part of the solution. Hammertrain requires people behind it doing DPS with a couple guardians spamming stability, your DPS can focus things down while you keep some of their DPS off and keep people up. There is no perfect solution… but if everyone plays their part…

Really, any good group should slaughter a portalbomb into the middle of their group. Now, if you’re using the portals for mobility to fight around a group, then that’s another thing entirely.

Reflects again are very inconsistent. Against pug zergs, it can work really well. However, try going on a reflect build into a GvG. You’ll get next to nothing. Almost all damage is hammertrain and other gtaoe.

Dracatis.1908:

Team (Max 20) portal bomber – have your team hide/buff as you run in with stealth/stability and release the chaos for an easy zerg bust.

This only works against bad players. Generally, if people even hear the portal song inside their zerg, the commander will instantly call for full aoe on the spot, and everyone coming through will just melt.

Dracatis.1908:

Reflect Mesmer (Zerg or Small team) – 90% of zerglings only do range things… 90% of range is projectiles… Feedback, Warden’s Feedback, Medic’s Feedback, Masterful Reflection(Blurred Signets helps with it), Mirror(Or Signet of Ether with Blurred Signets). Basically with Staff and X/Focus you can make a zone of relative safety as you haunt the frontlines. You want high Crit but somewhat tanky gear with this to survive well. Also it might help if your a Norn or Charr (I jump around as an Asura when I have distortion/Mirror reflects going, but would probably be easier if I was just bigger).

This used to work amazingly. However, current zergs are more and more dominated by the hammertrain and ground target aoes. You’ll get some reflects here and there if you’re creative with your skills, but it’s not always effective at all.

Esplen.3940:

And again, quote?

I don’t really feel like hunting it down now. Perhaps someone else will find it for you.

Esplen.3940:

The only debuff on transforms is for the Watchwork one which was released after the main server optimizations came through. Additionally, with the Embers and Ogre Whistles, I believe that was being abused in WvW to obtain disgusting amounts of numbers in a zerg. With the Ogre Whistles, specifically, they had no duration so you could theoretically have an army of pets following you laying siege to the land.

That’s why it was “unoptimized”.

No, you’ve been locked out of using those sort of summons in WvW for a very long time though. The quote was in reference to open world bosses such as the triple wurm and tequatl. The dev said that the massive numbers of continual pets that everyone was using was putting a massive load on the server.

Swish.2463:

Fay.2357:

Uhm….no? I don’t think having a viable trait is the definition of being god of all you survey. That title is going to have to go to the few hours of kami-mesmers.

i think the ability to bypass

Stability
and
Defiance

and put

Ressing
and
Finishers

all on CD timers with an interrupt is a bit more than a Viable trait.

Well, it never bypassed stability. Bypassing defiance was the only thing making it viable at all in PvE. Putting ressing and stomping and thief skills on CD timers with interrupts were literally the only things that made it viable in PvP. With those gone it’s not viable, and so you don’t see anyone that knows what they’re doing using it.

Swish.2463:

Sorry this was so stupid i had to log on to answer.

So.. you’re asking, what if Power Block happened?

What would I do this time around?

Not bother attempting to persuade the devs to keep it as useful as it is and just wait for the nerf while not bothering to test any new builds with it because tomorrow anything i discovered that was potentially meta changing is going to just be another sub par piece of kitten after a quick “hotfix”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Power_Block

What did you do when that happened? or did you forget about it in the last few months of carrots on sticks to distract you?

Uhm….no? I don’t think having a viable trait is the definition of being god of all you survey. That title is going to have to go to the few hours of kami-mesmers.

hannah mee.7925:

Ross Biddle.2367:

If you want to kill trash mobs and be a casual player, there are other weapons you should be taking for various reasons.

I appreciate the input but I feel like if I gear moderately well enough a staff would be just fine. I mostly intend to just get some map completion done and play the story.

Map completion and other PvE on mesmer can be irritating at the best of times. Using a staff will make that go from irritating to incredibly aggravating.

You can do it, but we all strongly advise you against it.

mikeew.8607:

Is this not supported? haven’t heard or received any invites or any word.

Sorry, normally I send out invites, but I’ve stopped playing GW2 as of 3 months or so ago. I’ll try to hop ingame soonish and send out a bunch of invites.

Apparition.1576:

@Dondagora

That is a valid argument in regards to the shatter. However, I still feel that clones should still be limited. For example, a Necro’s death shroud has an internal cooldown between uses but it also requires life force to access. This is not a limitless resource. The same logic applies to adrenaline for warriors.

What part of ‘clone summoning skills have cooldowns, and you can’t dodge endlessly’ doesn’t compute for you?

@Chaos: Now you know why I snarked. I have a good nose for obstinance.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Pyro is turning into a bitter old man that throws cats at noobs.

“Git off my lawn and L2P!” =P

Cut him some slack in his OP he admitted his ignorance to the class and unlike most he didn’t change into the forum demanding nerfs

Half my snark came from the little wordplay with the complaint about spammable stealth. The other half came from…

@Fay

My thread please don’t deviate from my question. If you have a question at least answer mine first or create your own thread.

Apparition.1576:

As I have already pointed out “I do know that Stealth is not spammable (at least I think)” that is why I did not respond #failure to read my entire question

I love it though. See, first you complain that spamming clones and invisibility is overpowered. Then, in an attempt to forestall the obvious reaction of people noting that you’re wrong and bad, you say that ‘yes, I know invis isn’t spammable, so please don’t say that as an argument even though it’s true and shows that my original complaint is wrong’.

Apparition.1576:

@Fay

My thread please don’t deviate from my question. If you have a question at least answer mine first or create your own thread.

Fine, I’ll answer your questions, but you won’t like my answers until you give me something to work with.

No. There is no problem with clones being spammable or mesmer having stealth skills. You just need to learn to play.

Apparition.1576:

@Rose

The problem is that there is no internal cooldown for this ability, which means they are spammable. I believe that is bad game design and wanted to get your perspective.

Yeah, see, this response doesn’t make sense, because it’s circular logic.

“I don’t like how this stuff is spammable.” …. “Why is spammable a problem?” …“It’s a probablem because it’s spammable.”

See the issue here?

Apparition.1576:

why Mesmers should be able to just spam illusions (with no internal cooldown) and invisibility in PvP?

Well, let me ask a few questions. I’ll assume that when you say ‘spam illusions’, you actually mean ‘spam clones using deceptive evasion’. When you say ‘spam invisibility’, I actually assume that you’re a bad player, but I’ll get to that later.

So, about the ‘spamming illusions’. What exactly gives you trouble about this? I mean, clones don’t really do anything on their own. Are you having trouble identifying the real mesmer? Are you getting killed by shatter combos? What about this ‘illusion spam’ seems unbalanced to you?

As for spamming stealth, the reason why this makes me assume you’re a bad player is because a good player recognizes several things about stealth. Firstly, a mesmer using every stealth skill off cooldown in PvP will never accomplish anything at all, since PvP is all capture point based. Secondly, a mesmer using every stealth skill off cooldown will end up managing about 25 seconds of stealth every 90 seconds….and have a horrible build. Is it really that hard for you to kill the mesmer in the 65 seconds they’re visible?

Kirito.9207:

spearchuka.5972:

You’re a veilbot in zergs. You’ll be the integral guy stealthing your train and then running around on the outskirts annoying staff eles.

You’re a complete monster in small group. Shatter is, bar none, the most dangerous spec in a competent small team (we’re talking 5-10 people). You can burst small groups very quickly, and there’s less pressure to kill your clones before you can get it off.

Don’t get me wrong, its still going to be frustrating as hell due to the multitudinous bugs. You’ll also need 2-3 support partners, you don’t have stab nor cleanse, and you die very quickly without protection. Both the boon and the support guards healing you.

WvW also isn’t the most welcoming environment to this type of player either. You’ll have to pick your fights and know when to bail. And you’ll bail a lot. But kitten is it satisfying to watch people melt to your and your buddies.

Yep I’ve seen small organized groups use Mesmer shatter and it’s nice. It’s just unfortunate to be useful, it has be extremely organized. Which seems to fall back on us not being very viable in most situations.

Organization isn’t a factor. You can be effective in a disorganized 5-10man group, but no matter how organized your 25 person raid is, mesmer will be useless except for veil.

manveruppd.7601:

Archaon.9524:

Meanwhile Dota2 international has 10 millions dollars prize pool…

Well to be fair that was mostly crowdfunded by the playerbase…

Exactly. Dota2 has a player/fanbase that’s large and excited about the tournament. The 150k is basically just a cash injection from Anet to generate artificial excitement about an otherwise underwhelming event.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Syprus Soulslayer.1640:

Veruah.5302:

Darkheller.6437:

PU is for noobs

I give this argument a 10/10. Well said, good sir.

Fay does bring up a good point though obviously in the hands of a skilled player PU is simply OP and you’ll survive longer. I’m secretly hoping they nerf the trait to bring it back into line with our other traits ( while buffing other areas of course )

Wait wait wait, so you want them to bring PU in line with our other, under powered, worthless, never worth bothering to take, grandmaster traits? Which is what you just said.

I can see it now…..

Prismatic Understanding

Reduces the cooldown on stealth-providing skills by 1 second. Mesmer gains a random boon when entering stealth: 3s of retaliation, 3s of regeneration, or 3s of swiftness.

MSFone.3026:

Fay.2357:

Replacing furious interruption:

Disruptors Alacrity

On interrupt, decrease the cooldown of the interrupting skill by 10(15?) seconds. This has no internal cooldown and can proc multiple times for aoe skills.

Alternatively:

On interrupt, decrease all cooldowns by 5 seconds. No internal cooldown.

What either of these traits would do is allow a skilled interrupt Mesmer to actually capitalize on interrupts by either applying higher pressure through overall skill usage, or by gaining the ability to churn out more interrupts rapidly. Particularly, these would allow interrupt mesmers to have a real role in group fights of any scale, as the aoe potential of things such as iWave and Chaos Storm could produce instant recharges in big fights, allowing for significant boost in strength.

Sweet idea. How would the this work with MoD, decrease the mantra recharge time or???

Depending on charges left, it would either remove the cooldown between uses or decrease the cooldown on the whole mantra.

Read my post again. I’m saying that you’re mistaken. Quickness works just fine on mantra of recovery.

Quickness does affect channeling cast time. Look again.

Replacing furious interruption:

Disruptors Alacrity

On interrupt, decrease the cooldown of the interrupting skill by 10(15?) seconds. This has no internal cooldown and can proc multiple times for aoe skills.

Alternatively:

On interrupt, decrease all cooldowns by 5 seconds. No internal cooldown.

What either of these traits would do is allow a skilled interrupt Mesmer to actually capitalize on interrupts by either applying higher pressure through overall skill usage, or by gaining the ability to churn out more interrupts rapidly. Particularly, these would allow interrupt mesmers to have a real role in group fights of any scale, as the aoe potential of things such as iWave and Chaos Storm could produce instant recharges in big fights, allowing for significant boost in strength.

@MoR and purity: Misleading tooltip. It only procs on activation of the actual healing portion of the skill (and no, mantra healing trait doesn’t count).

@celerity: wat

Veruah.5302:

Darkheller.6437:

PU is for noobs

I give this argument a 10/10. Well said, good sir.

The eloquence of it astounds me.

Eleivo.2761:

@Cntrl
It’s a hard choice. The extra range on blink makes it easier to port to places like the top of the clocktower, and the cliffs surrounding graveyard. It’s saved my life so many times I hesitate to drop it for the added damage. I’ll see whether I can live without it. Thanks for the recommendation!

1200 range blink is essential for a lot of blink spots in PvP. Don’t ditch it.

Strength runes are always a good choice. You could also experiment with things like pack runes or scholar runes.

Penarddun.6827:

Fay.2357:

…yes. Yes it will make a difference in how a condition damage build performs if you don’t have condition damage gear.

Ok, let me rephrase that. I have rabid gear I can test it out on too. Would the dire gear specified in the Napalm Cat build still be the best choice, in comparison to the rabid? I’m just curious as to why dire was used in the build.

Rabid gear will actually give you higher offense due to the precision providing sharper images crits. Dire is more of a pure defensive spec. I’d actually favor running with mostly rabid over dire.

Hitman.5829:

I mean you go and kill a stupid clone thinking it is the Mezmer and you get 3 conditions, really?

Think of it this way. Getting 3 conditions after killing a clone because you think it’s the mesmer is punishment for being horrible at pvp.

Ok, a few things.

Firstly, I did see that you addressed a comment regarding condition removal. Null field is not an adequate personal condition removal in any way. It fills the role of a team support condition removal. If that’s your goal, then that’s fine. However, if you want to be able to survive some condie pressure, you need something more effective: Mantra of resolve or pDisenchanter.

Something that was also mentioned but that you didn’t address is that you’re using traveler runes. There’s absolutely no reason to use traveler runes outside of WvW roaming. They’re horrid except for the 6 bonus, and that has no use in PvP. Pick a runeset that isn’t useless, there’s plenty of options.

You’re using force sigils on both weapons. A better choice would be battle sigils. The 3 stacks of might on swap provide 105 power, which is about 5% damage boost. However, without any additional might duration, you can get 6 permanent stacks from swapping, providing a damage boost of 10%.

Overall, I’m not sure your rational for choosing scepter makes a lot of sense. In my ‘Overpowered’ build, I choose scepter for a lot of similar reasons, particularly the block. However, these reasons only make sense because I already have mainhand sword on my other set. While the block is nice, it’s outclassed by blurred frenzy if you’re looking at it as a purely defensive tool. Blurred frenzy will also do more damage, provided melee range. Additionally, without leap/swap it can be quite difficult to land shatters effectively.

In staff/greatsword builds, this difficulty in landing shatters is offset by the superior mobility and defense staff provides. Scepter provides neither superior mobility, defense, or damage over mainhand sword, and so it doesn’t make a ton of sense as a replacement choice.

Sethren.8472:

Fay.2357:

The only difference was autoattack on scepter, but it really doesn’t matter how many stacks you maintained. You could keep 10 permanent stacks on a mob and still outdamage it by afking in a zerker build.

True. Very true. And they broke it even more when they removed the confusion application that the scepter had on AA. At least it was reliable.

I’m not sure you’re understanding what I’m saying. You can’t break something ‘even more’ if it’s already completely worthless. Nothing they ever did to confusion changed how it functioned in PvE. It has always been worthless due to how mobs attack.

Sethren.8472:

Fay.2357:

No it wasn’t. I played in beta. It was horrid. As a matter of fact, it was twice as bad in betas, because it did what is now pvp/wvw damage in pve as well. It was doubled to the current values on release.

In terms of applying the debuff, it was sort of okay (and I emphasize “sort of”). Yeah, the damage was horrid though.

The only difference was autoattack on scepter, but it really doesn’t matter how many stacks you maintained. You could keep 10 permanent stacks on a mob and still outdamage it by afking in a zerker build.

Sethren.8472:

Fay.2357:

Uh yeah. Nothing that anet has ever done to confusion ever made it more or less viable in PvE. Confusion has always been absolutely worthless in PvE, and that’s never changed.

In beta, it was sort of okay, but it was broken by the time launch came around. It still needed work in beta, certainly, but it was destroyed before launch due to the ramifications of the debuff in PvP (at least that was ANet’s justification at the time).

No it wasn’t. I played in beta. It was horrid. As a matter of fact, it was twice as bad in betas, because it did what is now pvp/wvw damage in pve as well. It was doubled to the current values on release.

Uh yeah. Nothing that anet has ever done to confusion ever made it more or less viable in PvE. Confusion has always been absolutely worthless in PvE, and that’s never changed.

Penarddun.6827:

I have some old beserker gear that has balthazar’s runes on it that I could test it out with a bit. Thanks for the link. Do you think it will make much of a difference if I’m not using dire gear? I do have rabid weapons.

…yes. Yes it will make a difference in how a condition damage build performs if you don’t have condition damage gear.

mompen.7952:

The thief I am playing with is using D/P, 0/6/6/2 setup, with valk armor and valk weapons. Maybe I should encourage him to go even glassier?

D/P shadow arts? Haven’t seen that in a while. I’d encourage him to either go with a glassier D/P build or with a S/D acrobatics type (still glassy).

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Fay.2357:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Fay.2357:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Also do you really want to be known beating me with a PU build lol)

I wouldn’t mind much :p

Pyro go back to dragon nest, I really don’t wanna fight a PU phant build >.<. Ill fall asleep dueling that.

Phant build

PU power sucks, you know I only play PU condie. That or full zerker phantasm if I’m dueling. Though, since mesmer condie removal is what it is unless you build totally for it, I’d probably go for condie.

If anything you could use your immortal Mesmer build instead. Ill fight that over PU condi anyday

Heh, if only it still existed, I’d gladly use it.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Fay.2357:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Also do you really want to be known beating me with a PU build lol)

I wouldn’t mind much :p

Pyro go back to dragon nest, I really don’t wanna fight a PU phant build >.<. Ill fall asleep dueling that.

Phant build

PU power sucks, you know I only play PU condie. That or full zerker phantasm if I’m dueling. Though, since mesmer condie removal is what it is unless you build totally for it, I’d probably go for condie.