Unhindered Combatant vs Elusive Mind

Is it just me or does Elusive Mind need the same treatment that Unhindered Combatant got? Stunbreak on dodge combined with sword ambush is kinda more powerful...

I can honestly say I have had/seen little issue with Elusive Mind/Sword. Imo elusive mind is ok where its at.

@Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:I can honestly say I have had/seen little issue with Elusive Mind/Sword. Imo elusive mind is ok where its at.

Honestly I'm not even participating this season after Equilibrium was removed and scourge is still scourge, my point of view is mostly WvW but any talk about balance there is drowned out by "nerf scourge" (kind of same here lol)

@BeepBoopBop.5403 said:

@Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:I can honestly say I have had/seen little issue with Elusive Mind/Sword. Imo elusive mind is ok where its at.

Yeah, it was kind of insane to nerf an underperforming profession while simultaneously giving scourges and firebrands buffs. They put spellbreakers in a good place, but they messed up a fair number of things.

They should revert the nerf on theif and just put a CD on the condi removal.

Mesmer stun break also needs a cooldown. Ideally I would like to see the stun break removed and turned into removes 3 condis when dodge.

Elusive Mind really, seriously, is not the problem. If a Mirage is breaking out of stun, then they have used their dodge/ambush when they don't want to use it.

Unhindered Combatant was broken because thieves were pairing it with three dashes and loading a hundred other things on their dodges in addition to all of their shadowsteps(which do NOT need line of sight) to do a massive amount of damage and being absolutely impossible to touch due to bouncing out of combat just as easily.

Thieves: Use Sword #2 to shadowstep into combat + immediately immobilize their enemy. They dodge once(or twice) off of them, use the Sword #2 chain to shadowstep back out of the area, and Unhindered Combatant trivialized their attack as their one vulnerable point was only susceptible to hard CC(and even then, they could escape).

At first glance, it looks like Mirage has all those same problems, but they don't:-Mirage has two dodges-Mirage's dodge roll only provides the effects of Elusive Mind. They CAN trait to gain an illusion on dodge roll, but this is not the meta choice.-Meta Mirage doesn't use Mirage Advance, the skill that emulates Thief's Sword 2. If they did, note that it has a VERY large cooldown compared to.... no cooldown at all.-Elusive Mind is primarily held up by the presence of Rune of the Adventurer and Sigil of Energy. The rune gives one single dodge roll at the cost of a heal skill, and the sigil is neither meta nor a full dodge roll on weapon swap.-Elusive Mind is also supported by vigor uptime, which the meta build has a lot of. Vigor on Crit and Vigor on Shatter. (There's also Vigor built into the Mirage heal, but not everyone uses that.)

Mirage is extremely powerful, don't get me wrong - I mentioned elsewhere that I think shaving a stack of confusion and burning off of a few things would probably be fair - but note that just about everything that interacts with Elusive Mind has a fairly large cooldown, or at the very least a large tactical price. My opinion is that Elusive Mind is the reasonable counter to all the boon rip chain-CC builds out there, which thanks to sigils, are basically everywhere. The meta NEEDS elusive mind.

Seriously - it's a scapegoat. If they nerf EM, mesmers will use Infinite Horizon, which is extremely powerful under an even lower skill build, or Dune Cloak, which.... does damage and bleeding on dodge!

@Kadj.6725 said:Elusive Mind really, seriously, is not the problem. If a Mirage is breaking out of stun, then they have used their dodge/ambush when they don't want to use it.

Unhindered Combatant was broken because thieves were pairing it with three dashes and loading a hundred other things on their dodges in addition to all of their shadowsteps(which do NOT need line of sight) to do a massive amount of damage and being absolutely impossible to touch due to bouncing out of combat just as easily.

Thieves: Use Sword #2 to shadowstep into combat + immediately immobilize their enemy. They dodge once(or twice) off of them, use the Sword #2 chain to shadowstep back out of the area, and Unhindered Combatant trivialized their attack as their one vulnerable point was only susceptible to hard CC(and even then, they could escape).

At first glance, it looks like Mirage has all those same problems, but they don't:-Mirage has two dodges-Mirage's dodge roll only provides the effects of Elusive Mind. They CAN trait to gain an illusion on dodge roll, but this is not the meta choice.-Meta Mirage doesn't use Mirage Advance, the skill that emulates Thief's Sword 2. If they did, note that it has a VERY large cooldown compared to.... no cooldown at all.-Elusive Mind is primarily held up by the presence of Rune of the Adventurer and Sigil of Energy. The rune gives one single dodge roll at the cost of a heal skill, and the sigil is neither meta nor a full dodge roll on weapon swap.-Elusive Mind is also supported by vigor uptime, which the meta build has a lot of. Vigor on Crit and Vigor on Shatter. (There's also Vigor built into the Mirage heal, but not everyone uses that.)

Mirage is extremely powerful, don't get me wrong - I mentioned elsewhere that I think shaving a stack of confusion and burning off of a few things would probably be fair - but note that just about everything that interacts with Elusive Mind has a fairly large cooldown, or at the very least a large tactical price. My opinion is that Elusive Mind is the reasonable counter to all the boon rip chain-CC builds out there, which thanks to sigils, are basically everywhere. The meta NEEDS elusive mind.

Seriously - it's a scapegoat. If they nerf EM, mesmers will use Infinite Horizon, which is extremely powerful under an even lower skill build, or Dune Cloak, which.... does damage and bleeding on dodge!

Unhindered Combatant only used with D/P thief builds to any effect, and taking any other GM than Elusive Mind on Mirage would be a nerf of gigantic proportions, try Infinite Horizon or Dune Cloak.

@Kadj.6725 said:Elusive Mind really, seriously, is not the problem. If a Mirage is breaking out of stun, then they have used their dodge/ambush when they don't want to use it.

Unhindered Combatant was broken because thieves were pairing it with three dashes and loading a hundred other things on their dodges in addition to all of their shadowsteps(which do NOT need line of sight) to do a massive amount of damage and being absolutely impossible to touch due to bouncing out of combat just as easily.

Thieves: Use Sword #2 to shadowstep into combat + immediately immobilize their enemy. They dodge once(or twice) off of them, use the Sword #2 chain to shadowstep back out of the area, and Unhindered Combatant trivialized their attack as their one vulnerable point was only susceptible to hard CC(and even then, they could escape).

At first glance, it looks like Mirage has all those same problems, but they don't:-Mirage has two dodges-Mirage's dodge roll only provides the effects of Elusive Mind. They CAN trait to gain an illusion on dodge roll, but this is not the meta choice.-Meta Mirage doesn't use Mirage Advance, the skill that emulates Thief's Sword 2. If they did, note that it has a VERY large cooldown compared to.... no cooldown at all.-Elusive Mind is primarily held up by the presence of Rune of the Adventurer and Sigil of Energy. The rune gives one single dodge roll at the cost of a heal skill, and the sigil is neither meta nor a full dodge roll on weapon swap.-Elusive Mind is also supported by vigor uptime, which the meta build has a lot of. Vigor on Crit and Vigor on Shatter. (There's also Vigor built into the Mirage heal, but not everyone uses that.)

Mirage is extremely powerful, don't get me wrong - I mentioned elsewhere that I think shaving a stack of confusion and burning off of a few things would probably be fair - but note that just about everything that interacts with Elusive Mind has a fairly large cooldown, or at the very least a large tactical price. My opinion is that Elusive Mind is the reasonable counter to all the boon rip chain-CC builds out there, which thanks to sigils, are basically everywhere. The meta NEEDS elusive mind.

Seriously - it's a scapegoat. If they nerf EM, mesmers will use Infinite Horizon, which is extremely powerful under an even lower skill build, or Dune Cloak, which.... does damage and bleeding on dodge!

When talking about thief, you specifically talk about combining sword 2 with dash and how the mobility from that combination was broken, but no one uses sword with Daredevil...

Meanwhile when talking about mirage, everything that could be powerful is dismissed because "not meta." Double standard much.

Also, I know I'm picking on EM,but I also wouldn't mind specifically nerfing sword ambush instead. One build with dash-like mobility AND stunbreak on dodge is borderline broken.

@Chaith.8256 said:

@Kadj.6725 said:Elusive Mind really, seriously, is not the problem. If a Mirage is breaking out of stun, then they have used their dodge/ambush when they don't want to use it.

Unhindered Combatant was broken because thieves were pairing it with

three

dashes and loading a hundred other things on their dodges in addition to all of their shadowsteps(which do NOT need line of sight) to do a massive amount of damage and being

absolutely

impossible to touch due to bouncing out of combat just as easily.

Thieves: Use Sword #2 to shadowstep into combat + immediately immobilize their enemy. They dodge once(or twice) off of them, use the Sword #2 chain to shadowstep back out of the area, and Unhindered Combatant trivialized their attack as their one vulnerable point was only susceptible to hard CC(and even then, they could escape).

At first glance, it looks like Mirage has all those same problems, but they don't:-Mirage has two dodges-Mirage's dodge roll only provides the effects of Elusive Mind. They CAN trait to gain an illusion on dodge roll, but this is not the meta choice.-Meta Mirage doesn't use Mirage Advance, the skill that emulates Thief's Sword 2. If they did, note that it has a VERY large cooldown compared to.... no cooldown at all.-Elusive Mind is primarily held up by the presence of Rune of the Adventurer and Sigil of Energy. The rune gives one

single

dodge roll at the cost of a heal skill, and the sigil is neither meta nor a full dodge roll on weapon swap.-Elusive Mind is also supported by vigor uptime, which the meta build has a lot of. Vigor on Crit and Vigor on Shatter. (There's also Vigor built into the Mirage heal, but not everyone uses that.)

Mirage is

extremely powerful

, don't get me wrong - I mentioned elsewhere that I think shaving a stack of confusion and burning off of a few things would probably be fair - but note that just about everything that interacts with Elusive Mind has a fairly large cooldown, or at the very least a large tactical price. My opinion is that Elusive Mind is the reasonable counter to all the boon rip chain-CC builds out there, which thanks to sigils, are basically everywhere. The meta NEEDS elusive mind.

Seriously - it's a scapegoat. If they nerf EM, mesmers will use Infinite Horizon, which is extremely powerful under an even lower skill build, or Dune Cloak, which.... does damage and bleeding on dodge!

I used to run IH and it worked well. Im only currently trying EM

@BeepBoopBop.5403 said:When talking about thief, you specifically talk about combining sword 2 with dash and how the mobility from that combination was broken, but no one uses sword with Daredevil...

Meanwhile when talking about mirage, everything that could be powerful is dismissed because "not meta." Double standard much.

No one uses sword with DD? That was literally the core of the cancer "condi DD" build. The thing is, all the smarter players used D/P.

Also, I know I'm picking on EM,but I also wouldn't mind specifically nerfing sword ambush instead. One build with dash-like mobility AND stunbreak on dodge is borderline broken.

You know, I am not sure how they'd nerf that, but I can agree to that one. The problem is none of the strong components to the skill are really right to remove. Since specializations are at their best when they cover the core profession's weaknesses, mesmer really needs the target-free leap. The daze provides it some much-needed utility, and the clone generation is... honestly the only thing really keeping mirage afloat. Without any of those peices, Mirage will suffer greatly and be reduced to a fairly low-mobility profession.

I honestly feel like the overall damage backing the specialization is about the only thing that can reasonably be altered. Second to that, maybe dropping stunbreak from Signet of Midnight, or preventing Jaunt from being used under CC. Most other modifications I can think of would require massive fundamental changes to the specialization, and with the changes made between beta and release, I think Anet has shown they want to change as little as possible.

@Kadj.6725 said:

@BeepBoopBop.5403 said:When talking about thief, you specifically talk about combining sword 2 with dash and how the mobility from that combination was broken, but no one uses sword with Daredevil...

Meanwhile when talking about mirage, everything that could be powerful is dismissed because "not meta." Double standard much.

Quick correction, yes sword was used on condition DD but Unhindered Combatant was not.

Mostly agree on everything you said about Mirage. Really feels like they overloaded sword ambush to cover a lot of bases. I hope they rebalance some of the utility from Sword ambush to other skills.

@BeepBoopBop.5403 said:Quick correction, yes sword was used on condition DD but Unhindered Combatant was not.It wasn't? My bad - must have misremembered.

I actually find that nerf really weird, then. I legitimately only remember seeing a couple other d/p DDs in previous seasons, and I certainly didn't see them dodging around so much and in general abusing the trait. Granted, though, I was d/p thief before this season, and had the good sense not to stick around the teamfight too long...

Mostly agree on everything you said about Mirage. Really feels like they overloaded sword ambush to cover a lot of bases. I hope they rebalance some of the utility from Sword ambush to other skills.I wouldn't mind seeing the clone on something else at least - perhaps staff, since the ambush just doesn't feel nice to use. I suppose they want us to keep considering Duelist's Evasion though. The only reason the clone is on the sword ambush is because that was actually our 2 skill in beta, anyway.

@Kadj.6725 said:Elusive Mind really, seriously, is not the problem. If a Mirage is breaking out of stun, then they have used their dodge/ambush when they don't want to use it.

Unhindered Combatant was broken because thieves were pairing it with three dashes and loading a hundred other things on their dodges in addition to all of their shadowsteps(which do NOT need line of sight) to do a massive amount of damage and being absolutely impossible to touch due to bouncing out of combat just as easily.

Thieves: Use Sword #2 to shadowstep into combat + immediately immobilize their enemy. They dodge once(or twice) off of them, use the Sword #2 chain to shadowstep back out of the area, and Unhindered Combatant trivialized their attack as their one vulnerable point was only susceptible to hard CC(and even then, they could escape).

At first glance, it looks like Mirage has all those same problems, but they don't:-Mirage has two dodges-Mirage's dodge roll only provides the effects of Elusive Mind. They CAN trait to gain an illusion on dodge roll, but this is not the meta choice.-Meta Mirage doesn't use Mirage Advance, the skill that emulates Thief's Sword 2. If they did, note that it has a VERY large cooldown compared to.... no cooldown at all.-Elusive Mind is primarily held up by the presence of Rune of the Adventurer and Sigil of Energy. The rune gives one single dodge roll at the cost of a heal skill, and the sigil is neither meta nor a full dodge roll on weapon swap.-Elusive Mind is also supported by vigor uptime, which the meta build has a lot of. Vigor on Crit and Vigor on Shatter. (There's also Vigor built into the Mirage heal, but not everyone uses that.)

Mirage is extremely powerful, don't get me wrong - I mentioned elsewhere that I think shaving a stack of confusion and burning off of a few things would probably be fair - but note that just about everything that interacts with Elusive Mind has a fairly large cooldown, or at the very least a large tactical price. My opinion is that Elusive Mind is the reasonable counter to all the boon rip chain-CC builds out there, which thanks to sigils, are basically everywhere. The meta NEEDS elusive mind.

Seriously - it's a scapegoat. If they nerf EM, mesmers will use Infinite Horizon, which is extremely powerful under an even lower skill build, or Dune Cloak, which.... does damage and bleeding on dodge!

I am ready to sign every word here.

Illusive Mind is not 2 chained stunbreaks in real fight. In real fight dodges spend on evading high damage attacks. It's absolutely impossible to have full endurance during hole fight (even with permanent vigor).Confusion stacking is too high now. 20-23 stacks is too much. I think 15-16 stacks should be enough. Chronomancer easily applies 12 stacks, but chrono have it's own nice little things (illusion generation, superspeed on shatter, +25% movement speed, 2 shield blocks). So Mirage should provide more pressure than Chronomancer. I'd say Jaunt confusion application should be reduced to 1 stack (or may be even changing confusion to weakness) making it mainly mobility and condi cleansing tool.

P. S.Generally I think that the key problem with Mirage is "thief game style" with much stealth and targeting breaks. There were so many blames on thieves before PoF. And PoF introduced 2 more "thieves": Mirage and Holosmith. Can't say anything about Holosmith.But Mirage heavily needs good offhand weapon to move away from stealth play. Offhand sword and pistol are just bad now. Both have clunky phantasms (especially sword) and both phantasms are weaker than torch's phantasm. Other skills? Sword block is viable but not awesome and is not really needed because mesmer has permanent vigor from Dueling. Pistol's Magic Bullet doesn't really fit in any build.Torch is mesmer's burst weapon. But there's no alternative burst weapon (without stealth) or utility weapon or sustain weapon. Chronomancer has shield as sustain weapon and almost anyone prefers shield to torch (except power builds).

@Kadj.6725 said:No one uses sword with DD? That was literally the core of the cancer "condi DD" build. The thing is, all the smarter players used D/P.

You're thinking of Lotus training, the dodge roll was the key component to apply 3 stacks of Spider venom per dodge.. Unhindered Combatant you have totally misplaced, in meta builds it's just been used for D/P conquest roamer.

Yeah, i am still waiting for Karl's justification for nerfing UC with excuses like this https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/252419/#Comment_252419 while ignoring everything else in game, like EM or scourge madness we have atm.

Elusive mind needs to be addressed. You guys are welcome to give your input as to how it should be addressed, because last I checked there isn't a consensus in the mesmer forums as to the best way to deal with it, but we do agree that it needs to be addressed.

@Cynz.9437 said:Yeah, i am still waiting for Karl's justification for nerfing UC with excuses like this https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/252419/#Comment_252419 while ignoring everything else in game, like EM or scourge madness we have atm.

Usual thief defense: No we are balanced because we have a slight issue when fighting a {insert class that everyone else in the game considers busted OP}

Yeah everyone has issues when fighting Scourge, join the club.

@OriOri.8724 said:Elusive mind needs to be addressed. You guys are welcome to give your input as to how it should be addressed, because last I checked there isn't a consensus in the mesmer forums as to the best way to deal with it, but we do agree that it needs to be addressed.

I still think moving the condition cleanse on dodge to another trait and making elusive mind purely stunbreak on dodge would sort it out. Right now no trait can compete with stunbreak and condition cleanse on dodge but if you have cleanse on another trait and 3 stunbreaks you might pick a different GM, alternatively if you want 3 non stunbreak utilities then EM would let you get stunbreak from dodge. Still risky but it would balance out the investment.

Also @ OP, you can’t use one skill that is nearly completely unrelated to a trait as justification for a nerf, mirage thrusts power is not derived from elusive mind and the really funny part is EM actually makes mirage thrust worse.

Maybe move the condition clear on dodge to the protection on dodge trait?

Can mirages dodge while CC'd without EM? If not, maybe allow dodging while CC'd but remove actual stunbreak a la Phase Retreat?

@apharma.3741 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:Elusive mind needs to be addressed. You guys are welcome to give your input as to how it should be addressed, because last I checked there isn't a consensus in the mesmer forums as to the best way to deal with it, but we do agree that it needs to be addressed.

That would help a lot, but I still think stunbreak on every dodge is very powerful. That's, at its worst mind you (assuming permanent weakness and no vigor), a stunbreak every 15 seconds. On average it will work out to about one stunbreak every 10 seconds, from a trait no less. To me that's still ridiculously strong, even if you remove the condi clear from it.

Mirage can dodge when cc'ed anyway, I realllllly have never seen anyone take EM personally nor do I between blink dodging while cc'ed and either phase retreat on staff or illusionary leap if the first part of the skill is active before getting cc'ed. Plus Infinite Horizon and dune cloak are massive damage boosters to mirage damage honestly if it wasn't for Infinite Horizons or Dune cloak in a pvp setting mirage damage would be pretty crappy.

@OriOri.8724 said:

@apharma.3741 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:Elusive mind needs to be addressed. You guys are welcome to give your input as to how it should be addressed, because last I checked there isn't a consensus in the mesmer forums as to the best way to deal with it, but we do agree that it needs to be addressed.

The thing is putting an ICD on it is not something I would like to see not because I think it would make the trait worthless but because ICDs should in general be avoided as much as possible otherwise you have to start keeping track of loads of trait procs on both sides of the fight. A consistent mechanic is far easier to play around as you know it will consistently be applied under a certain condition for both user and enemy player. I agree stunbreak on dodge is very strong but mesmer already has a lot of stunbreaks and quasi stunbreaks so it’s value is somewhat diminished by build choice. The only other option is change it to do something else, as mentioned above it could be changed to allow dodge while under the effects of CC but at that point I doubt many mesmers would use it at all as infinite horizon would be much better in nearly every instance and so would dune cloak for the duration increase.

Moving the condition cleanse to another trait choice means to get the current functionality they have to use 2 of 3 trait choices, especially if it was on mirage mantle, a trait few choose at all. A lot of the adept traits are a pick the one you like the sound of, they have subtleties and can find a place as part of a larger theme of a build but in general are kind of meh, especially compared to Chrono.

If IH and EM are too weak people will go back to chrono.

They should make EM, if a Mesmer breaks stun using EM they are unable to Sun break for 4 seconds.

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:They should make EM, if a Mesmer breaks stun using EM they are unable to Sun break for 4 seconds.

That would be as meaningful as the change to Unhindered Combatant.

Actually no, it would mean even less than the UC change, because it not like you ever going to be using stunbreaks within 4 seconds of each other. The UC change at least had a handful of extreme edge cases where it meant something.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:They should make EM, if a Mesmer breaks stun using EM they are unable to Sun break for 4 seconds.

Haha being locked out of all Stunbreaks for 4 seconds isn’t meaningful? Oh that’s great in this CC Spam Joke of a game.