Guild Wars 2

Ross Biddle.2367:

I know the trait lines, traits, weapons, utilities all by heart, so I can create a build while riding my bike delivering mail.

Theory is theory.

Fun fact, I was in my kitchen the other day, theory crafting mesmer stuff. And I was like “there is a skill category I am missing, but can’t figure out which”…

It was signets!! There are so good and useful that I forgot we had them…

But yes, like theory crafting would be like predicting the rise of bunker mesmer before BWE1

Pepsi.8907:

Silverkey.2078:

Let us be honest: phantasms are a failed mechanics. They are holding the whole class back. Think about it, they are supposed to be our “sustained damage”… ahaha.

I can think of 2 fixes:

• make all phantasms like the shield one: a skill and then a “byproduct” being a phantasm. The phantasm has to be nerfed accordingly
• change the phantasm to be balanced as a 1-time thing: it spawns, does its thing (and is unkillable) and then becomes a simple clone. This means our sustained damage will stop being computed assuming 3 phantasms up and thus instead gain some damage in weapons skills.

How would you rework greatsword 4?
Mirror blade actually works like this (the clone being a byproduct) and so does Illusionary counter (I think)

Some time ago, someone made a suggestion in the forum for how each phantasm skill could be reworked. I don’t remember who, so I can’t find the link, but someone thought about it.

I agree with you about amulets. It’s a lazy fix. The problem is the amount of sustain the traits and skills provided, especially in HoT, not the amulet. The most obvious example being revenant tanky as hell with a berserker or viper amulet…

And chaos armor… why???

Let us be honest: phantasms are a failed mechanics. They are holding the whole class back. Think about it, they are supposed to be our “sustained damage”… ahaha.

I can think of 2 fixes:

• make all phantasms like the shield one: a skill and then a “byproduct” being a phantasm. The phantasm has to be nerfed accordingly
• change the phantasm to be balanced as a 1-time thing: it spawns, does its thing (and is unkillable) and then becomes a simple clone. This means our sustained damage will stop being computed assuming 3 phantasms up and thus instead gain some damage in weapons skills.

The thing with condi is that the condi cleanse are adjusting to condi necro/condi rev level. Condi mesmer has no way to keep up to that level. And honestly, I’d rather not, because this is insane. Had a few games yesterday vs condi teams. I had bunker mesmer, which means:

• condi clear on shatter
• 5 AOE condi clear on heal
• AOE condi clear on null field
• resistance on glamour (null field + time warp + feedback on rez)
• F5 resistance

with me a soldier rune DS tempest. And yet, absolutely no way to survive the condi bombs…. and this chill….

The whole condi concept has to be redone.

I must say, I’m afraid of necro. I don’t think buffing their pressure was the best idea. In a sense, I like that they get more boon removal, since boons have gotten out of hand. But with the pressure they already have… that’s scary.

As always the question about necros is: will they manage to stay alive. Will there be an apex predator (like rev was in this meta) keeping them in check.

For condi, I haven’t played condi since the expansion. It was the build I played most before (duel-chaos-illusion), but I like playing support too much, so I switched to bunker for BWE1.

We’ll see the full list of changes. I sincerely think (optimistic?) that they were more changes to scepter, not just a mildly buffed malicious sorcery.

Sharkey.9805:

Silverkey.2078:

All unhappy at the changes to alacrity? Where did you see that?

Reducing the effect by 50% means the maximum CD reduction moves from 40% to 25%. That is less than 50% effectiveness loss in a sense then. Yes, it will also be harder to reach full alacrity because some cooldowns will be higher. But it’s really not that bad.

In the coming days (hours) I’m sure some people will estimate the alacrity uptime we can reach with that. And we will then most likely see that mesmer is still viable.

Im not sure why so many people think continue to focus on how big of an impact alacrity is going to have. It’s really not what the problem is here, and for most folks upset with the nerfs are probably just fine with alacrity’s effectiveness going down.

The problem is that our sustained damage is already horrible. It’s one of, if not THE worst of any class right now. This change will make that worse.They did not announce anything to mitigate that.

Right now, and after patch, there will be only one viable way to build a Mesmer in PvE, and that way makes it so that its inefficient to build a group with more than a single chronomancer. They’re basically nerfing chronobunker, while also shoehorning all mesmers into the build.

So yeah. We’re still viable. In exactly ONE way – a way that stagnates all compositions, because every group needs one, and exactly ONE, chronomancer to provide all of the quickness and alacrity, in raids preferably a tank for the encounters that need one so they can bring another burnzerker. So that’s exactly what we’ll keep doing. Whoopdie doo.

Our only out based on their feedback would have been a significant revamp to scepters to allow us to compete, or at least be considered, with other condition builds. And what did they give us?

A 5% attack speed increase to a trait nobody uses.

But actually I perfectly agree with you. And that is also why I am happy with the nerf. Alacrity should not be the sole answer to mesmer’s PvE problems. And the fun fact is that this sustained damage problem is also a problem in PvP, so it’s not even a problem of split balance. Reducing mesmer’s burst damage a tad (shatter) and increasing mesmer sustained damage would be really helpful in PvP. And allowing illusions to benefit from damage multipliers will not break anything in PvP, but help significantly PvE.

Only question is: why isn’t it done?

All unhappy at the changes to alacrity? Where did you see that?

Reducing the effect by 50% means the maximum CD reduction moves from 40% to 25%. That is less than 50% effectiveness loss in a sense then. Yes, it will also be harder to reach full alacrity because some cooldowns will be higher. But it’s really not that bad.

In the coming days (hours) I’m sure some people will estimate the alacrity uptime we can reach with that. And we will then most likely see that mesmer is still viable.

Xstein.2187:

Is there anyway you can post the other changes to mesmer? I just got into guild chat at the end when they were talking about the thief. What did I miss

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/No-details-yet-but/page/2#post5922150

I think you’re overestimating. As I estimated in my “napkin maths”, alacrity to 33% is still enough with quickness to make up for our low DPS.

Details incoming:

• alacrity recharge 66% → 33% ( meaning the cooldowns will be reduced by 25% max)
• precog applies aegis every pulse instead of invuln
• malicious sorcery: increase attack speed further
• chaos armor: blind replaced by weakness, swiftness increased

I actually agree that making the 5th traitline of each class an elite spec on its own could be an interesting idea. However, that would need significant trait rework, especially for mesmer. In my opinion, most of dueling and illusions traits should be swapped:

• dueling should become the condi line (we all know condis only work in small skirmishes for mesmer), therefore taking all the confusion+torment traits from “Illusions”
• illusions should be the class mechanics line, therefore taking “deceptive evasion” and probably also “Blinding Dissipation”.
• many other traits should be swapped around
  (note that this is something I already suggested long time ago since I think this swap should happen anyway
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/My-take-on-mesmer-traits/first
  )

Fay.2357:

Silverkey.2078:

I think ideally, a-net should not nerf any core trait or skills, but just bring the elite specs in line by nerfing them directly.

If “bringing them into line” means “making mesmer totally worthless again”, I’ll pass.

That was a PvP comment. Before HoT, all professions but rangers had something to bring in PvP (and even ranger was not totally hopeless). Nothing has been removed from this balanced state, all trait lines and skills are pretty much there. You just need to reduce the extreme efficiency of the new skills and traits.

For PvE, I stand by what I said. I think alacrity can be nerfed in a reasonable way to rebalance PvP and keep mesmer useful in PvE. However, I also think alacrity should not be the only solution to mesmer’s problems there.

It’s decent if like me you sometimes play condi with pistol (I prefer it to torch). It is mostly good for the skill recharge on interrupt, but it does also add some condi damage.

foxcat.4096:

The problem is you only have to give up a single trait line to take your elite .Given that this will give you access to a new weapon and skills there are very few instances when this is not worthwhile. Even on my ranger i play as a damage dealer which has the druid specialization ( arguably one of the few specializations that properly fits the different play style they where going for) it is still beneficial for me to take druid as my damage is the same and i gain more group support.

Pre HoT anet was stating that elite specs should just be a alternate play style not an all round better choice ,i was fairly skeptical as the opportunity cost in taking and elite instead of base class seemed really really low not to mention balancing all these new elites was gonna make early HoT a clusterkitten regardless.

I can’t really see any obvious solutions that could be easily implemented .

Well I do think that linking the new weapons to the elite specs is a bad idea. They should be available to everyone. But even without that, for shatter mesmer for example, people often play it GS-sw/torch, without any well (or sometimes gravity well). This means that they take the elite spec solely because it is a better traitline.

Fixing shatter mesmer in 1 step:

• fix power creep.

Done!

Hi all

I wanted to start a discussion about how would you balance core mesmer and chronomancer so that the core class remains relevant. I will discuss mostly in the context of PvP, but PvE discussion is also welcome.

In order to prevent power creep, I will assume that core mesmer is balanced, and thus one just wants to bring chronomancer in line.

Here is my own reflection on the subject:

For core and elite specs to be both relevant, both should have a different niche. Most elite specializations comes with a theme, which also explain there main focus. For example, reaper is all about being in a team fight as opposed to the more 1v1-centric necromancer. To this ends, they get cleaving shroud skills and GS and scaling shouts.

To a large extent, I feel like the same applies for chronomancer. Core mesmer is bad in team fights because it lacks AOE as well as defensive tools to remain in the heat of the battle. Wells fix the former problem and the shield fixes the latter. Also, alacrity provides team-wide support.

And this worked: the elite spec allowed the rise of chronobunker, which works best in team fights. However, where it failed (in my opinion) is that even shatter mesmer switched to chrono. Now shatter mesmer is not so viable anymore, but this is more because of the insane damage to sustain ratio of other class/builds (revenants or scrapper in particular).

In my opinion, shatter mesmer should remain a core-mesmer spec, or at least, shatter chrono should not be an obviously better choice. Shatter chrono don’t even use their shield nor wells, so the chronomancer line is only taken for its traits. In my opinion, the 3 main factors which make shatter chrono an obvious better choice are:

• continuum split
• Flow of Time + Improved Alacrity
• Time Marches On
  that is: the 3 minor traits.

Now I think continuum split is fine as it is. On the other hand, I don’t think “Time Marches On” fits the theme. Chronomancer is about being in the team fights, not about mobility. I think this trait would make much more sense in “dueling”.

Finally, a more controversial topic: alacrity. I think Flow of Time is too much for a minor. It reduces cooldowns as well as “Illusionist’s Celerity” and “Master of Misdirection” do in the “Illusion” lines, but actually reduces the cooldown of ALL SKILLS. Coupled to “Improved Alacrity”, this is just too good. The changes hinted by a-net show that a nerf to alacrity will most likely happen. Currently, the cooldown recharges 66% faster, meaning that if you maintain 100% alacrity uptime, your cooldowns are 40% shorter. Reducing alacrity to 50% faster recharge would mean that the cooldowns would be 33% shorter. The absolute lowest one would expect would be if a-net tries to align to the “usual” 20% cooldown reduction, which would correspond to alacrity providing 25% faster recharge. Regardless of this, I think “Flow of Time” may be too good for a minor trait, considering the chronomancer line already has good minor with “continuum split”. I would therefore move “Flow of Time” to be a major trait instead of “Improved Alacrity” which I would just remove.

How would you do things?

• there are many ways to nerf alacrity and make it still valuable (but not OP) in both PvE and PvP
• hell, there are many ways to make mesmer valuable in PvE even without alacrity (example: make phantasms affected by damage multipliers, increase slightly damage coefficients on weapons skills)
• there are many ways to make shatter mesmer a thing again and not force anyone to play bunker in PvP (actually shatter mesmer would be fine if the other elite specs get nerfed properly)

Will a-net do all of that perfectly? Unlikely. But it is too early to judge.

So we can either complain in advance (I know the concept I’m french) or try to be constructive and suggest on the forum how you would balance mesmer to make it relevant but not overpowered in all game modes.

We don’t only want to make chronomancer non-OP, we ideally also want build diversity. Core mesmer should still exist, and alacrity is what makes chronomancer an almost always superior choice. I think ideally, a-net should not nerf any core trait or skills, but just bring the elite specs in line by nerfing them directly. For chrono, this is alacrity, for reaper this is chill, etc…

apharma.3741:

Just for Mr Napkin maths, if you increase everyone’s DPS by 40% in the party they don’t suddenly do 200% more DPS together, they do exactly 40% more.

Example:
5 people do 10k dps gives a party dps of 50k.

Replace 1 with a chrono and miraculously make the chrono do 10k dps.
Now you have 5 people doing 14k dps giving a party dps of 70k. Exactly 40% more. I know, quickness factors in etc but I’m just addressing how this guy got a party doing over 200% more damage because of a 40% boost.

At the topic in general, so long as alacrity isn’t nerfed too much it should be ok, still got a lot of quickness to help with long casts and extra autos. PvP looks bleak though….

I never pretended you increase your party DPS by 200%. I said that your own “effective” DPS then corresponds to 200% of the average DPS of other members.

Taking your example, you are in a team which can do 10K per person. That is 40k DPS without you. But since you increase this by 40% and do 4k DPS yourself, with you the party DPS is 60k, meaning your effective DPS is 20k, which is indeed 200% of the DPS of the other players.

These are only napkin maths, but writing my maths on a napkin just makes them approximate, not stupid.

I don’t know if this is a troll… but well

Hurry, the build may very well be dead at the end of the month.

I main mesmer and play bunker chrono since the first beta week-ends. The class is not as braindead as many make it seem, especially since precog nerf.

For positioning, generally aim to be in the big fights. The idea is to try to survive without using too much cooldowns (except the well of recall which you can use on cooldown and eternity which you can use even if your life is high since it also helps allies). If you have gravity well, use it (with F5) to set up a team burst. Try to proc chaos armor as often as possible, you have plenty of fields and 2 leap finishers (be careful to not go out of point with phase retreat if you are the only person defending). Try to not waste your shatter too much since they give stability and quickness for rez. When not focused, I try to always keep at least 2 shatters available. Oh and be careful with F4, it can save your life, but can make you (and all your team) loose the cap (since distorsion is shared with your allies).

I don’t think scepter is a bad weapon. I like #3 and #2 is decent. It just suffers from its AA. I would not mind a full rework of the AA. It should have increased power and condition damage. No weapon should be full condi. The reason for that is that condi use only 1 or 2 stats, so they cannot be as strong as power weapons. On the other hand, hybrid weapons can be balanced around viper stats.

Myrias.8732:

Silverkey.2078:

Actually not. Because the 40% increase DPS is counting quickness + alacrity, so halving only alacrity does not push the result to 20%. And even if it did, that would give us 80% (halved alacrity+quickness) + 40% (our own DPS) = 120%.

So still above average.

This calculation is assuming we can maintain 100% alacrity still.

If alacrity’s effect is halved, then the cooldowns of said skills that provide alacrity are increased. Longer CDs = reduced up time.

The question is if “bringing alacrity in-line” means literally reducing alacrity’s effect or just reducing the ways in which we apply alacrity.

This is true. To be fair, I hope they didn’t halve the effect, though I know a-net can be drastic sometimes. It was just to make a point. Their description is very vague “make it easier to balance” seem like they might have changed something fundamental on what alacrity is.

A few comments

Piercing Light (Trait). Daze removed and replaced with something else. An unblockable daze removes a lot of counterplay and makes some of the traps, some of which are instant and have low CDs as a whole, a little too rewarding.

For me the main problem is now how rewarding it is, it is how mindless it is. CC should be a decision: “I want to CC now to interrupt this”. CC should not be a side effect of a spammable skill category, especially AOE CC!

Heavy Light (trait). Removed some of the randomness of the knockback. It now causes your True Shot to knockback enemies within the range threshold. CD increased to 12s so you know the knockback happens every second True Shot. Random knockbacks with an unblockable Deflecting Shot are no longer possible.

Same: I don’t like this being random. Actually, I would have put the CC on deflecting shot, so that there is no need for ICD.

Reaper

Deathly Chill (Trait). Damage significantly reduced. Maybe make it cause vulnerability when hitting chilled foes or something to compensate and to gain better sinergy with Bitter Chill. Although I’m afraid that too much vulnerability is risky as well (even though they can still apply 25 stacks effortlessly). This condition already has incredibly potent effects, it shouldn’t do nowhere near the damage it does currently. It’s even worse than first iteration Dhuumfire right now.

This trait has a lot of problem, and as a necro, I don’t like it. There have been many suggestions on how to fix this such as instead of doing damage, every chill application also apply a stack of torment. This means it can stack (can’t be overwritten by other sources of chill), reinforces the “don’t move” effect of chill and is easier to balance (if iCD and duration are properly adjusted).

Infusing Terror (trait). Duration reduced to 5 seconds, Stability reduced to 2 seconds. Vulnerability to CCs should still be a thing for necros, more so in their shroud form where they can do increased damage while having another pseudo HP bar.

I actually disagree with that. Being vulnerable to CC is one thing, hopeless to CC is another one. The problem of necro is not its survivability (which is still bottom low) but its scary damage.

Chilling Victory (trait). Life force gain reduced to 0.5 and might stack duration reduced to 5s. Over the top life force regen and might stacking anyone?

I don’t see how this trait is over the top. Really not.

Suggestion: Daze durations from Glyph of Equiality and Lunar impact reduced to 1.5s. Now with Moment of clarity it’s 3 seconds instead of 4.

I would have gone for 1s. long duration AOE CC must stop. And no entangle on CC, that is just too much.

Gravity Well and Signet of Humility. Cast times increased to 1.5s. With so much quickness nowadays such 1s cast times might as well not be there. These CCs skills are SO strong they need harsh drawbacks.

I think they are just fine. They are strong only because you can cast them twice, and even that…

Restorative Illusions (trait). The condition removal effect from this trait now has an ICD of 5s. Base healing reduced. Mesmers/Chronos, even if they are bunker, are supposed to be weak against conditions.

Restorative illusions is not such a strong trait. There is a reason why bunkers didn’t exist before HoT (I know I tried): chaos and inspiration are not that strong. It’s really the alacrity which made bunker chrono over the top, nerfing it (which is planed) will most likely suffice in bringing chrono to a healthy level. Nerfing more may kill it.

Bountiful Disillusionment (trait). The stability is replaced with some other effect. Such a slippery profession such as Mesmer/Chrono with a pletora of escapes and active defenses should NEVER have such a high uptime of an anti CC buff. Leave that to more straight forward and more melee oriented classes such as Warrior or guardian. This trait just screams design failure all over again.

Same as previous point. This trait is almost the only source of stability we have. It’s duration can be adjusted, but stability have to remain.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Silverkey.2078:

Even if alacrity is reduced by half, a chrono would be necessary in a party.

Strictly speaking, by your napkin math halving alacrity would make taking a chrono equivalent to taking another above-average dps party member, so taking a superior dps class (e.g. ele, sinister engi) would likely outperform.
So halving alacrity either in effect or in possible uptime would push chrono out of the meta, by your math.

Actually not. Because the 40% increase DPS is counting quickness + alacrity, so halving only alacrity does not push the result to 20%. And even if it did, that would give us 80% (halved alacrity+quickness) + 40% (our own DPS) = 120%.

So still above average.

I sense a lot of (annoying) negativity in this thread.
First, let’s wait for an actual list of changes before we complain.

Second, to all those “PvE is killed by whiners in PvP”, this is not true. PvP gets killed by PvE at least as much. The elite specs have destroyed PvP, mostly because of excessive CC. This excessive CC was added to the game to make sure everyone could destroy breakbars in PvE. Yes, devs actually take into account both modes in their balance, and this often hurts both modes.

For the case of mesmer, alacrity was too strong, this is a fact. And the best way to see it is PvE. With the amount of quickness and alacrity a chrono could provide to the group, he could be valuable even if he had strictly 0 DPS. Actually, he could be valuable even with negative DPS. Some napkins math show that a chrono boosts the DPS of each party member by about 40%. That means that a chrono with 0 DPS still provides about 160% of the DPS of other group members. The chrono DPS itself is not 0, let’s say (pessimistic) 40% of the DPS of the other classes, we now get that the chrono provides 200% of the DPS other classes provide.

Even if alacrity is reduced by half, a chrono would be necessary in a party.

Finally, I want to say that alacrity should NOT be the sole solution to chrono PvE viability. All classes should be able to have a DPS role, and not be forced into an exclusive support role. As people mentioned, our damage in PvE is too low, but guess what, in PvP too. A good balance would not only reduce our alacrity efficiency, but also increase our sustained damage. One easy way to do this in PvE would be to allow damage multipliers to affect phantasm DPS too. This would not break PvP where phantasms die in the first AOE anyway.

There are many ways to have good PvE and PvP balance without splitting the 2. A-net just needs to figure it out.

I forgot an important part of the announcement, of direct concern to mesmers/chrono

while resurrecting allies or stomping enemies, the effects of quickness and slow will no longer have an effect

Else, I personally think alacrity+quickness are strong enough in PvE that a reasonable nerf to alacrity won’t make the mesmer useless in a party.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/profession-balance-goals-for-the-winter-2016-update/

Mesmer
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns has seen many a chronomancer survive a killing blow and seize victory. Alacrity has improved the mesmer’s party support game-wide, but we’ll be bringing alacrity a bit more in line and making it easier to balance while keeping it a staple of the chronomancer elite specialization. Additionally, we’ll be improving upon the scepter, which will be receiving updates through skills, functionality, and traits.

So alacrity nerf, and scepter buff. What do you think?

edit: forgot to add that part which is a general change, but of special relevance to us:

while resurrecting allies or stomping enemies, the effects of quickness and slow will no longer have an effect

Different ideas:

• devs designed the elite specs with in mind the status of the current game. This means the new specialization often fix a problem of the class linked to its (bad) original design.
• they listened to people during the BWE. So there is much less crap in the new skills and traits than in the others (what class does not have some entire skill categories/trait lines that cannot be used because they are weak?) and they also applied the (sometimes excessive) buffs asked by the players.
• they overturned a bit to ensure good selling.

Nova Stiker.8396:

WRONG.
What is the most powerful class right now? Revenants. They practically have little to no weaknesses. So if you nerf Diamond Skin, REAPERS will absolutely dominate the game. It doesn’t matter if Reapers are not the most powerful class, they have all the tools they need to crush every other class.

I’m sure people will disagree but Reapers will never be a problem. Simply because if you focus them they die. Even if you focus a revenant or a scrapper they don’t die (or at least not without wasting you a lot of time). Yes, reapers are painful, but I don’t see how they can become apex predator in the gw2 meta.

In general, the problem is a general problem of conditions and condition counters. To counter direct damage, you mostly mitigate it, using protection, weakness, frost aura and what not. To counter conditions, you cleanse them or use resistance or DS, all of them completely negating instead of mitigating. That is very bad design.

Since conditions can have 2 components (damage and debuff), the only proper way to mitigate conditions would be to have resistance or DS offer a reduced condition duration. DS could also maybe just mitigate the damaging part (for example, -50% damage from conditions when above 70% health).

I think that:
1. the new weapons and skills should be accessible without the line. Many of them fill a gap in the class and it would be restrictive for core specs or even future elite specs not to have access to them

2. the elite specs traitline (including updated class mechanics) should be changed (i.e. mostly nerfed) so that they represent a sidegrade.

Many elite specs have a clear “theme” to them and thus should only be an upgrade within that niche:

• Reaper is cleaving and scaling with the number of enemy, so it should feel weaker in 1v1 but stronger in team fights.
• Chronomancer allows mesmers to be useful in team fights, but should not feel like an upgrade for power shatter also (which it is currently thanks to alacrity mostly).
• DH should be a more selfish specialization, so for example their virtue should be stronger but selfish (e.g. Wings of Resolve is an upgrade as it gives mobility and strong heal but then it should not heal allies; Shield of Courage should only block attacks for yourself). DH should be one of the best medi-guards, but not one of the best bunker guard.

3. the many unused (because unusable) core traits and skills should be improved.

One of the reasons the elite specs are usually better is because the devs actually listened to our feedbacks carefully, points by points. This means many (not all but many) of the new traits and skills are good or at least usable. If the devs did the same kind of work with the forum for the core traits and skills, that will make the core specs more attractive.

So a big nerf to elite specs and the power creep, and a big buff/rework of the least viable parts of the core specs.

I still dream of the day where each class could be played in each role (roamer, bunker, bruiser, etc…) as efficiently as any other class but still in their own very unique way (like how bunker mesmer or bunker guard both are bunkers but still very different in playstyle and in the support they provide).

Crinn.7864:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

This formula is a nice black box model. It basically says, I don’t care what is inside, but I want the values at the ports. Typical Electrical engineering analysis.
While it may not include everything, it is a nice basis of what is going on in a fight.
Regardless of the TTK model, if HPS > DPS we can follow trends.

But I’m not sure that it’s even remotely correct. I can’t for the life of me understand what this index mean. I can understand from his description what he was trying to do, but I don’t think his formulas actually accomplish his goal.

If all you want is a basis, the simplest (yet accurate) method would be to just come up with a arbitrary ballpark estimate of DPS in a teamfight with a ballpark estimate of the ratio of condi to power, and simply use that in a standard TTK equation.

I am no expert in computing stuff for video games, so I do not know the TTK equations. So I do not pretend my suggestion is better, it is just the only suggestion I had in mind to do this. Yes mine are based on an “infinite fight” idea, and do not take into account the number of HP, but I still think they are very intuitive.

The sustain index 1 is simply how much damage (assuming constant damage per second and after taking into account armor/mitigation for power damage or condition cleanse/resistance for condi damage) you need to deal to equate the healing of the build.

Out of this x damage, only a small percent will actually hit, for example only 42% if you fight a chronomancer. So the actual damage received per second is on average 0.42*x. When this damage equals the healing, you have
0.42x = HPS = 815 for chrono => x = 815/0.42 = 1941 (which comes to 1923 without the rounding errors).

So this is literally the minimum amount of damage you need to inflict before the enemy starts loosing HP “on average” (since obviously his life will be going up and down).

The second index is not as clear, but it is trying to also take into account damage mitigation and armor, so it represents the weapon strength*coefficient/second you need to deal assuming you have 2200 power and no crits. It is a less intuitive measure but still works well to compare different builds.

I don’t think these simple maths are enough to discuss nerfs and balance, but they do give an idea. Then, we have also played games using those builds or against them, and I don’t think those results are really surprising for anyone.

I did not include tempest because the class is more rotation based so here, I would need to actually do rotations. I did not include scrapper because I never played the class so I have no clue of what does what (only class I haven’t played yet).

For the nerf to alacrity, I think the strength of the class in PvE is mostly linked to its outgoing alacrity/quickness more than its personal alacrity/quickness. The personal alacrity of course helps rotating faster and thus increase the outgoing one, but from the calculations I and other people in the mesmer forum did, the chronomancer contribution is currently very high and a nerf to personal alacrity will most likely not put the class in uselessness.

Finally, for the revenants, it is clear to me that the shield offers too much healing, and also that the revenant heals tends to be a tad too strong considering that there is 2 of them. Also, Riposting Shadows should not give a full dodge worth of endurance. I definitely think a-net should go slowly with nerfs, and that’s why I don’t like their idea of just one big patch and then 3 months or more of waiting.

Hi all

I did have some fun trying to compute a value of the sustain for a few new meta builds:

• chronobunker (before and after the last patch) (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Alacrity_Bunker)
• condi rev (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Herald_-_Condition_Mallyx)

and for comparison, old meta builds:

• power warrior (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_GS/Hammer)
• bunker guardian (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Bunker)

The sustain index 1 that I am computing is supposed to represent the amount of sustained damage the enemy team has to put up to overcome the sustained healing of the build. The sustained index 2 is trying to take into account armor and protection+damage reduction, so it represents the amount of power damage you need (while index 1 is valid for condition damage). I excluded all skills which would prevent point capping (therefore mimicking the build trying to fight on point). I also assume that the enemy has not unblockable/unavoidable skills. This is a very gross estimate, based on value/cooldown and not on a rotation, but it does give an idea.
Formula:
sustain index 1 = healing per second / (1 – evade/block uptime)
sustain index 2 = sustain index 1 * damage mitigation * armor/2200

Chrono before patch (using sentinel amulet)
I computed with and without perma-alacrity. While perma-alacrity is not easy to maintain, it is not too hard to have close to perma.

• healing per second: 543 without alacrity, 815 with alacrity
• evade/block uptime (includes dodges): 55% without alacrity, 77% with alacrity
• sustain index 1: 1200 without alacrity, 3564 with alacrity
• sustain index 2: 2461 without, 7311 with

Chrono after patch

• evade/block uptime (includes dodges): 43% without alacrity, 58% with alacrity
• sustain index 1: 947 without alacrity, 1923 with alacrity
• sustain index 2: 1944 without, 3947 with

I used sentinel amulet since this is the most often used one. However, this is not the one maximizing sustain. For the sake of comparison, chrono after patch with clerics has a sustain index 2 of 5474 with alacrity.

What we can notice immediately is how much alacrity adds to the sustain, by increasing the healing but mostly by increasing the invulnerability uptime. That is why I think the only thing left to nerf for chronobunker is their personal alacrity (either by tweaking the alacrity on shatter or the trait “improved alacrity”).

Condi rev

• healing per second: 764 (assuming no conditions when healing with mallyx heal)
• evade/block uptime (includes dodges): 71%
• sustain index 1: 2887
• sustain index 2: 4642

Now you immediately notice something interesting: condi rev has a higher sustain than bunker mesmer. And those condi rev values are without alacrity (since my scenario was defending a point solo). Also, condi rev cannot maintain his own perma-protection or perma-regen. This means that a condi rev supported by a mesmer will have an absolutely insane sustain, much higher than the mesmer himself. And it does this on a glass-cannon amulet.

For comparison, here are old meta builds:

Power warrior

• healing per second: 479 (optimistic, I assumed always 2 adrenaline bars)
• evade/block uptime (includes dodges): 28%
• sustain index 1: 668
• sustain index 2: 694

this is how you would expect offensive builds to work: they do high damage but die fast. Not a surprise that this build is not meta anymore. You would get higher values with the axe-shield variant, but probably not amazingly different.

Bunker guard

• healing per second: 1566 (this was really tough to compute since there are many sources of healing, I would not be surprised if I did a few mistakes)
• evade/block uptime (includes dodges): 24%
• sustain index 1: 2068
• sustain index 2: 3415

What should be the reference of bunker builds. As you see, chronobunker is still a bit above, mostly because of alacrity. Note however, that before asking for chronobunker to be nerfed, the overall power creep should be reduced too, since even bunker guard could not keep up with it.

So in conclusion:

• chronobunker has been nerfed significantly with the last patch, but still has a higher sustain than bunker guard, mostly thanks to the very high alacrity uptime
• condi rev still has the most ridiculous sustain. This kind of sustain should not be possible for a offensive build.
• power rev is even worse (higher invulnerability uptime), and is only “weaker” thanks to the amount of conditions in the current meta.

note: I did not include all details of the calculations because they are a lot of numbers. I do not claim my numbers are perfect, but I sincerely did my best.

messiah.1908:

Silverkey.2078:

The change of precog means now it is not about spamming anymore. You have to think for using it. I don’t mind that change, it makes the skill cap a bit higher and we will see less bad mesmers everywhere.

it makes me think

if we dont see in tommorow esl bunker mesmer it means thay they were noobs as they spam tkills……
if we see it mean bunker mesmer is still working

maybe we see DH as a counter to them having a comeback…

I don’t think there is an ESL tomorrow. It’s holiday break.

The change of precog means now it is not about spamming anymore. You have to think for using it. I don’t mind that change, it makes the skill cap a bit higher and we will see less bad mesmers everywhere.

Not removing it, but making so that the sum of its stats is the same as the other 3-stats amulets. Celestial is just mathematically the strongest amulet, and as long as your build can make full use of it, it will give very good results.

1. a-net creates a new class and 8 new elite specs. A big part of their focus was raid, with for example a terrible side effect that all elite specs needed to be good at breaking the break bars (i.e. 3s daze on kitten cooldown is completely legit)
2. it organizes beta week-ends
3. players after only a few hours of playing PvP, without enough time to figure out the best builds, ask for rewords or buffs to most elite specs, nerfs to some others.
4. a-net does not rework anything, instead they buff the numbers until people stop complaining. But they do not nerf what people asked for (I asked to nerf precog and shield block already during beta week-ends since I was already playing the bunker chrono at this time and saw I could be near-invulnerable for 10-15s)
5. a-net releases the expansion and announce that they won’t make a balance patch until 4 months later…

The worst offender is of course number 5. Number 3 was not too surprising, and number 4 most likely because they were in a hurry (it is clear that many elite specs were finished at the last minute).

Nocta.5274:

Sigmoid.7082:

All they are are defensive pack runes essentially. Both runes have a 175 of a main stat, Some form of boon duration, #4 bonus is 3 offensive/defensive boons, #6 bonus is +125 of a complimentary stat to the main stat.

The issue is that durabiltiy is flat boon duration, and pack is only swiftness.
Durability should be protection duration only, not every boon.

this!

I think durability should be regen duration. Protection would be a bit too strong.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Silverkey.2078:

I would just like to add that this is still bad design. In particular, this means that you will never want more than one mesmer in a 5-man party because they will become redundant. Simply put, mesmer cannot take the “DPS” role in PvE, they are stuck to a support role. This is better than before, but still, this goes against the “play what you want”.

Regardless of alacrity, mesmer sustained DPS should be increased. This would be a huge bonus in PvE but also in PvP where we are stuck in either full support (essentially the PvE build) or burst-only.

To make sure chrono does not get OP in PvE, I guess this should be designed so that you cannot have good DPS and strong buff (which currently is already strong enough to offset the lack of damage) in the same build.

So, a new elite spec that fixes the mesmer’s damage woes, just as the Chrono fixes the mesmer’s lack of group support.

Chrono is a shatter-based spec, and shatters will never be viable sustained damage.
So the next one could go in one of two directions:

• Phantasms are awesome
• Weapon attacks are awesome

Yes, I think an elite spec may be the easiest way to do that since you can change the class mechanics.

However, this is kind of the limit of the system. In PvP, if I want to be a bruiser, I need sustained damage, but I would also need defenses (like the shield provides) and traits like “Danger Time” to boost my crits despite my (let’s say) soldier stats. But I can’t have 2 elite specs slotted…

There may be other ways to fix it in core mesmer though:

• Removing ~10% burst damage from shatters and boosting ~10% sustained damage from phantasms/weapon skills
• putting a strong phantasm-boosting trait in competition with mental anguish and making so that you can use phantasms reliably for damage
• changing the whole illusion concept since it is obviously a failure (unlikely to happen)

Welcome back!

Yes, basically you missed the most boring and least diverse meta of all time. I think 6 or 7 out of 8 teams in pro league EU ran

• 1 bunker chrono
• 2 condi revenants
• 1 tempest
• 1 scrapper (or 1 druid)

and 6 or 7 out of 8 in NA ran

• 2 bunker chrono
• 2 condi rev
• 1 tempest
  (even the abjured, except with a scrapper instead of tempest).

A large majority of the games ended up because of the timer (it was not rare to see 0 caps for the first 8 minutes). And overall, this was absolutely boring to watch.

Good times!

I would just like to add that this is still bad design. In particular, this means that you will never want more than one mesmer in a 5-man party because they will become redundant. Simply put, mesmer cannot take the “DPS” role in PvE, they are stuck to a support role. This is better than before, but still, this goes against the “play what you want”.

Regardless of alacrity, mesmer sustained DPS should be increased. This would be a huge bonus in PvE but also in PvP where we are stuck in either full support (essentially the PvE build) or burst-only.

To make sure chrono does not get OP in PvE, I guess this should be designed so that you cannot have good DPS and strong buff (which currently is already strong enough to offset the lack of damage) in the same build.

dank.3680:

Magira.6390:

How do you write correctly: There is a meta as it is played by VOIP Premades at tournaments. No more and no less.

For “normal” and especially for solo players, it has no meaning.

As an example: None of the meta build is good in Hot Join. There is therefore a different Meta. The same applies to unranked, and the lower leagues. Everywhere is another meta.

Only perhaps 1% of the players play in tournaments. So it’s a waste of time to deal with the Pro Meta if one is not pro. ^^

Unless of course you have a hierarchical worldview, then of course you always look upwards. But then a therapist would be more advisable.

This, it’s hard to get people to understand it though. “Meta” builds by pro players are designed around teamplay. If you are soloQ or hotjoin or unkranked etc, you don’t have the luxury of calling for a cleanse, heal, cure, port, etc on voip. Builds need to be more self reliant in these situations, which for the most part metabattle builds are not.

+1

in general, a meta build is designed

• to be played with other meta builds
• to play against other meta builds
• to be played in a coordinated team
• to be played by a pro

if you don’t fulfill all those criterions, the build may not be best for you.

A typical example as stated is condition cleanse, which you will often need more than what meta builds take.

I don’t mind the alacrity concept. I just think we got too much “free” alacrity. Taking a trait to get cooldown recharge (for example AWtEW) is fine. Getting a minor (flow of time) reducing ALL cooldown better than the “Illusion” minor does it for shatters cooldowns is stupid. Despite all the disagreement I get from people, I think flow of time should be removed or at least made a major trait so that you actually need to spec alacrity to get alacrity.

messiah.1908:

Silverkey.2078:

What I meant is that it is not healthy for a class to have 4.5/30s block + 2.5/12s blur + 3/45s blur + 1-4/50s distortion, all of this on shorter CD thanks to alacrity.

And it is even worse in PvE since in PvP, the enemy may interrupt your block.

This is stupid regardless of the game mode.

And as many mentioned, in the PvE meta of “full damage is the only thing which matters”, this is actually a buff.

check engi block 6/30 shields , 2 immunities another 6 sec, perma regen, stealth like thieves, best healing skills in the game not to mention maraduer amulet as a sustain/bruiser build 20% less condi dmg….

I am well aware of that. Which is why engi can tank on a marauder amulet. Same problem with revenant, who can use berserker or viper (two hyper-glassy amulets).

The thing is all those things should be adjusted together in one massive nerf. Because if you look at the meta right now, you actually need those to survive. There is a reason why scrapper, rev, mesmer and tempest are the only classes left: they have absurd survivability which is their only way to deal with the absurd damage.

If you nerf engi.’s defenses, it will just fall out of the meta. I hope the january balance patch while be a severe toning down of all those blocks/invuln and this damage for all classes (only warrior is balanced imho), to get back to a reasonable meta.

I agree this is far healthier.

I don’t quite understand how optimistic/naive a-net was. You release 8 elite specs and 1 fully new class. It is doomed to be imbalanced, nothing wrong with that. So you don’t promise “no balance patch for 3 months”. This rhythm may work once the game as reached a decent balance, but we’re not there at all.

But yes, thanks for the fixes, I hope they will be enough to add some diversity back in the meta.

Carighan.6758:

Silverkey.2078:

So yes, I claim that this is universal truth, perfectly axiomatic: having so much invulnerability uptime is not healthy, and I am happy they nerfed that.

To me it just means that classes cannot specialize enough in GW2 right now.

I can’t be someone blasting wide areas with ridiculous AE damage, I can’t be a near-invulnerable tank, I can’t be a shining group defender with lots of support auras, etc.

I mean sure, all those exist in small versions. But we lack the archetypical RPG designs where someone is standing in front blocking a dragon’s attacks, and since our PvE and story is just as ridiculous as EQ1 or D&D or so, we might as well get the good parts, too.

If we’re not getting a story based on being “just someone”, then I want to feel special on a gameplay level, too. I want to be a clone-centric mesmer where it is flat out impossible for an enemy to truly know where I am, and short of just blanketing the whole area to make sure the real mesmer is hit, they got no chance to bring me down.
(In return, beyond annoying and harassing I don’t do anything to them)

I don’t really agree. Chronomancer is one of the most unique archetypes. It has a very unique form of support (alacrity and quickness). Actually, it makes PvE more fun since it’s not anymore “spawn 3 phantasms and AA to death”. But having too much invulnerability reduces the importance of timing your defensive skills well, so it dumbs things down.

There are many ways to create unique archetypes, unique flighting styles, unique defense mechanisms without reaching extremes. Now I hope they will apply the same thing to power revenant (sword/shield-staff, shiro-glint) since they have actually a higher block/invuln uptime than us.

From me the main thing is that before HoT, there was 7/8 classes played regularly in tournaments, and even rangers were sometimes used. Now we have 3-4/9 classes used regularly with nearly all teams running the exact same comp.

I personally like pre-HoT meta, the only problem for me was rune of vampirism. Now, I think we should nerf 8 out of 9 classes (only warrior seems fine to me).

venusiano.8246:

Nice try. Except for the fact that the lord easily walks away from the distortion field. Or any other for that matter.

+ on that

In Foefire I did try to defend a lord a few times where he just ran away from every single well I put there. He died without me being able to do anything. I would have had more success on a power build if I could kill the one person attacking.