It was possible for a Chronomancer Condi Shatter with the old IR to do F5 -> F1-4 -> F5 -> F1-4 and get 16+ stacks of Torment and Confusion with no setup required. The new IR requires setup at the beginning of the shatter chain and some work to sustain it, which means enemies have the opportunity to actually play around it instead of just eating all those Condi stacks within a second or two (most likely while stunned by CS).
That was definitely not as easily possible as you claim, due to the .25s CD between shatters. So most likely we’re talking about first getting at least 1 illusion up to even have the time to get 4 shatters off in a row before F5 resets the time-line.
Secondly, in order to stun with CS you need to have Domination. In order to stack Torment & Confusion you obviously need Illusions, and of course to get F5 you need Chronomancer. This build would be heavily flawed as Domination is pretty useless for a Condie-focused build. You would be missing out on everything Dueling has to offer, literally to get a 1.25s stun on your F3. Not likely… So the Stun part is a bit far fetched.
Remember also that MtD was just heavily nerfed by 50%, and it’s now pretty plain why they nerfed it; Chronomancy. Kinda sad as they chose to destroy build diversity, forcing you into Chrono + Illusions to play Condie Shatter…and now the nerfs keep rolling in anyway, not because MtD was/is OPd it never was before not even with 2x Torment, but rather because Chronomancy in conjunction with MtD is maybe too much. (IMO this is hardly proven by a single BW with people playing new builds to test stuff, and as is generally the case ATM not focusing enough on Condition Cleansing.)
Sadly, this is exactly what I expected, and is par for the course for Mesmer balancing decisions.
Especially with the IR nerf, you will absolutely have to have DE for any Shatter build once again, which is basically all builds now more so than ever. This means Condition shatter has exactly one viable spec, Duel/Ill/Chrono. Hands up for build diversity! GG!
Compared to Burn Guards/Eles/Engies even the BW1 Condie Shatter Chronomancer was at best competitive. You’d have to be AFK to eat 8 shatters in a row, that’s a full 2s minimum execution time, and each Shatter individually does very very little outside of F2. It’s just 1 Torment and 1 Confusion for F1, F3, and F4. Compare that to every one of the above professions/builds hitting you with 5+ stacks of Burning quickly and pretty much ad nauseum.
Once this supposedly OPd BW1 Condie Chronomancer dumped his F5 load, he’s got a long wait before he can do that burst again! Especially now that self Alacrity is also nerfed!
It’s once again looking like we’re heading for being over adjusted, as multiple things are nerfed in the same iteration, without any reasonable amount of testing going into it. So far we’ve really never seen an “un-nerf” that I can think of. Also, as usual, the nerfs roll in faster then you can say “nerf!” and of course only for Mesmers.
It’s not the 5k+ Burning ticks that have ANet riled, it’s the Mesmer Torment and Confusion! lol! Nevermind that BOTH of these Conditions have innate counters to cut damage by at least 50% without doing anything at all, totally UNLIKE Burn, and yet we’re always rushing to nerf the Mesmer without giving anyone chance to adjust to an emerging meta with huge counter-options available.
Never mind that all 3 of the Burn-oriented professions are much tankier in nature, and can all 3 “abuse” Celestial to do both strong Condition & Direct Damage, due to their high sustain and ability to stack Might. The Condition Shatter Mesmer is totally pigeonholed into a single specialization that leaves him quite vulnerable. (No realistic hope of using Celestial for a decent mix of survivability and damage, when factoring high levels of Might, which you basically can not achieve in that build. Also no Stealth/PU is possible, and no tanky Chaos either…not without giving up DE, which with IR will be absolutely necessary for Condie Shatter.)
Sorry this turned into a rant, but the more I put 2 and 2 together, the more it irks me where this is headed for Condie Shatter and Mesmers in general.
(edited by Windwalker.7421)