We should prepare for more Mirage nerfs

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/19600/upcoming-wintersday-balance-update

Looks like they are killing condi in PvE to appease the 5 people who still play PvP.

So scepter 2, axe 3, Jaunt (I can see that being reduced to 2 stacks), torch trait... wait does anything else we have apply more than one or two stacks of any damaging condition? I mean shatters are all single application - unless they do something about F2 and Illusionary Retribution doubling up on the confusion.

Tbh for mesmer I can't see how they can balance this easily because we don't have many single skills that inflict huge stacks upfront - most condi burst is a combination of many skills used together, where each individual skill only adds a one or two stacks to the pile.

@Levetty.1279 said:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/19600/upcoming-wintersday-balance-update

Looks like they are killing condi in PvE to appease the 5 people who still play PvP.

TBF having conditions spike their damage near instantly goes against the entire reasoning behind them being DoT effects. This has the potential to be quite a good balance change in the long run

@Levetty.1279 said:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/19600/upcoming-wintersday-balance-update

Looks like they are killing condi in PvE to appease the 5 people who still play PvP.

They have been taking about brining Condi in line for ages now in both PvE and PvP. If what they say is to be true then yes a nerf to “burst Condi” is coming for PvP Mirage, but PvE shouldn’t change to much except increase ramp time? Someone more knowledgeable could point out if this will be meta defining (like if something like sinister will be relevant over viper?)

Either way the talk about vulnerability traits makes me cautiously optimistic we’ll get something cool to replace rendering shatter.

@Curunen.8729 said:So scepter 2, axe 3, Jaunt (I can see that being reduced to 2 stacks), torch trait... wait does anything else we have apply more than one or two stacks of any damaging condition? I mean shatters are all single application - unless they do something about F2 and Illusionary Retribution doubling up on the confusion.

Tbh for mesmer I can't see how they can balance this easily because we don't have many single skills that inflict huge stacks upfront - most condi burst is a combination of many skills used together, where each individual skill only adds a one or two stacks to the pile.

If we look at the 30k build posted on these forums with clones there’s only 2 skills that stack more than 2 stacks of any condition so I doubt anything will change for PvE builds at all and I can’t see any reason why it would do less damage in PvE, I don’t think it would get much more of a ramp up either.

I’d expect lingering thoughts to get hit, axes of symmetry, jaunt, ether barrage and pretty much only them. I doubt it will be anything more than halve the stacks but double the duration or 3 becomes 2 and they buff the duration by 50%. I don’t think anyone can honestly say that condi mirage burst is balanced by being able to stack 8-10 confusion off the bat with a simple jaunt while ambush into shatter, which then let’s you get riddle of sand to do it all again.

Someone doesnt play WvW where condi is killing the game...

This is more than likely aimed at scourge, not mirage. Confusion/torment specs do damage sure but its actually a pretty weak PvP burster and its few condis to cleanse. Most have dumped mesmer condi specs in favor of shatter spike builds because a condi memser isnt even remotely competetive against a condi scourge. They just press a few buttons and bam you got like 10 conditions on you and certain death because you are dropping 5k+ hp a second instantly. PvE raid dps is irrelevant. Thats the real burst. Now make these ~50% of the foes you meet and glhf.

Or at least I would hope so.

@Levetty.1279 said:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/19600/upcoming-wintersday-balance-update

Looks like they are killing condi in PvE to appease the 5 people who still play PvP.

Read the post again. For PVE, this simply means a greater DPS gain per Expertise/Condition Duration, compared to pure Condition Damage. It will, however, affect Mirage's (and most condi builds') cleave on adds, but for long fights, I actually expect Condi DPS to go up.

I actually like what they are about to do. I've always thought that it should take longer to stack condis, meaning less stacks per attack, but they ought to last for quite some time once applied.Right now they are in some cases as bursty as power damage which is wrong imo. They are Damage Over Time after all.I look forward to it, and hope it's gonna be a good change.

Not seeing this as an issue. It will affect all condi builds and classes. Here is how I see this:

• condi gets reworked properly leaving it as very useful in pve and the ramp up time gives power builds more room in spvp/wvw
• condi gets destroyed, well it would shake up things and force all game modes to adapt. Not necessarily a bad thing

I can live with either outcome. I do enjoy the condi meta a lot more than the pure zerker meta from before due to slight variations in builds, but it has made some game modes a tad stale.

This will kill condi in PvE for anything that isn't a raid boss/high level fractal. Clone Mirage needs buffing up to be back above Phantasms (and not be buggy) which a general condition nerf isn't likely to give, the last thing Mesmer needs is more ramp up and power Mesmer is terrible outside of PvP so its not like this is opening anything up to us.

I swear all you people care about is hitting that test golem.

This time seems about burst skills, not a change in how conditions works now and that will affect combos too. So prepare your body.

It's not the same do like in the example: "- e.g. Purging Flames: Burning has been adjusted from 3 stacks for 5 seconds to 2 stacks for 8 seconds."Than say: Mirage has too much burst stacking clones, shave their conditions to 1 stack per clone in the auto rotation and ambush, increase the duration and give them some vulnerability through a trait: "Re-vamping several passive vulnerability traits".

The result could be... the ramp up of a sloth. The oposite that we want for the Mirage as specialization. I only hope that it'll be really a small balance update... But Mirage is too narrow, and a single change could destroy it as we saw in last patch, unless they reorient it more to power and take away conditions...

Are you ready to change your build again? ;P Hopefully we will not have to do it.

@Levetty.1279 said:This will kill condi in PvE for anything that isn't a raid boss/high level fractal. Clone Mirage needs buffing up to be back above Phantasms (and not be buggy) which a general condition nerf isn't likely to give, the last thing Mesmer needs is more ramp up and power Mesmer is terrible outside of PvP so its not like this is opening anything up to us.

I swear all you people care about is hitting that test golem.

Funnily enough, mesmer already struggles in general open world PvE due its poor class mechanics. This won't make it any worse than we've been dealing with for the past 5 years.

i mean , people who play raid and fractal won't care much about mirage nerf if there is any .coz it's trash tier for most fights . and for cairn and matt , even they delete mirage , condi mes will still be viable or meta .

the thing we should care is : EM and sword ambush are overpoweredand rest of mirage is poorly designed , anet can't balance something they don't know how it works to begin with .all ambush skills are weak , mirror is crap .utilities are crap .

it was carried by bug in pve and one op trait EM in pvp .those thing never last long .

just play another class for the time being and wait for new spec .

Well, since they nerv us to the ground i wonder if we can get some more clone generation, i mean: before they changed scepter, the clones replaced each other every time a new clone was generated with the auto and that was terrible since you wanted the aggro to stay on the clones, but i realized that my clones can not hold the aggro really good since hot...and they die fast...maybe they can change it to something like: your auto (with every weapon) creates 1 clone everytime you hit an enemie, it can not replace phantasms, and when you reach the maximum number of generated clones the old ones are not just replaced, instead they are replaced with a new clone and the old one runs automatically to the enemie and shatters there without pressing F1....

I mean: Phantasms make good dmg, but clones not...they just make good dmg when you shatter them....so auto shatter would be a good option....but i dont want to make F1 useless, so here is my solution: the clones that shatter while using the auto-attack instead of using F1 make 20% lower dmg with the auto attack shatter, but they heal you for 15% from the dmg you have done, let´s say: you have 3 clones up (every clone would make 100 dmg to the enemie when you shatter them with F1, so total 300 dmg) and you auto attack generates a new clone and you dont shattered the old ones....so one of the old ones run to the enemie and makes 80 dmg (instead of 100)...and from the dmg you get 15% health back...so 15% from 80 dmg is 12 health...i would find this a good solution since we really have not much healing options...(looking at the thief and his traits for healing...looking at the dmg from other classes....)....

@musu.9205 said:i mean , people who play raid and fractal won't care much about mirage nerf if there is any .coz it's trash tier for most fights . and for cairn and matt , even they delete mirage , condi mes will still be viable or meta .

the thing we should care is : EM and sword ambush are overpoweredand rest of mirage is poorly designed , anet can't balance something they don't know how it works to begin with .all ambush skills are weak , mirror is crap .utilities are crap .

it was carried by bug in pve and one op trait EM in pvp .those thing never last long .

just play another class for the time being and wait for new spec .

"just play another class for the time being and wait for new spec " i told this to myself after crono( tank only , only support, all the cry for quickness, always rely on others it was so boring) and what did we got a pvp mirage , and now this. Things around mesmer only turn from bad to worst . :(

@Levetty.1279 said:This will kill condi in PvE for anything that isn't a raid boss/high level fractal. Clone Mirage needs buffing up to be back above Phantasms (and not be buggy) which a general condition nerf isn't likely to give, the last thing Mesmer needs is more ramp up and power Mesmer is terrible outside of PvP so its not like this is opening anything up to us.

I swear all you people care about is hitting that test golem.

While I agree on the issue of mirage needing some love and basically being almost useless besides being fun.

What else is there besides raid and high level fractals which requires any sort of balance in pve between condi and power?

• Dungeons - power rules supreme, even now pre nerfs
• open world - who the f- cares? trailblazer is a beast due to tankiness and damage, won't change much
• story instances? - aside from some gimmicky achievements I really don't see an issue here. both power and condi work
• low level fractals? - again power is superior in most cases already
• mid level fractals? - probably the only area where it might matter somewhat
• high level fractals - who in their right mind runs mirage here? go chrono
• cm fractals - yeah, good luck going as mirage. chrono rules supreme
• raids - the gimmick boss fights which make mirage useful will remain, all the rest mirage was useless already

I'm really not seeing it for pve, sorry.

LOL Mesmers will never have nice things.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l36/Kagesuchi/gw041_zpsaizk80rs.jpg

5 Year old mesmer i remember back during core where everyone cried about mass invis and portal, then in HoT when every cried about bunker even tho FB bunker is FAR worse. I'm really tired of this the community hates the class because they can't faceroll it so they cry nerf and Anet being who they are just listen to tears and throws objectivity out of the window ima just delete the mesmer now because its clear unless mesmers are stuck at the bottom of the dps list and at the bottom of pvp the community will never be satisfied.

GG anet and GW2 community i wish you all a terrible god damn holiday.

@Genesis.5169 said:LOL Mesmers will never have nice things.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l36/Kagesuchi/gw041_zpsaizk80rs.jpg

5 Year old mesmer i remember back during core where everyone cried about mass invis and portal, then in HoT when every cried about bunker even tho FB bunker is FAR worse. I'm really tired of this the community hates the class because they can't faceroll it so they cry nerf and Anet being who they are just listen to tears and throws objectivity out of the window ima just delete the mesmer now because its clear unless mesmers are stuck at the bottom of the dps list and at the bottom of pvp the community will never be satisfied.

GG anet and GW2 community i wish you all a terrible god kitten holiday.

I love the fact that you posted this thinking there was some kind of useful or relevant information in there.

They are reducing the spike damage condis do and keeping the total damage each skill does around the same, don't panic.

@Bottles.2095 said:

@Genesis.5169 said:LOL Mesmers will never have nice things.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l36/Kagesuchi/gw041_zpsaizk80rs.jpg

5 Year old mesmer i remember back during core where everyone cried about mass invis and portal, then in HoT when every cried about bunker even tho FB bunker is FAR worse. I'm really tired of this the community hates the class because they can't faceroll it so they cry nerf and Anet being who they are just listen to tears and throws objectivity out of the window ima just delete the mesmer now because its clear unless mesmers are stuck at the bottom of the dps list and at the bottom of pvp the community will never be satisfied.

GG anet and GW2 community i wish you all a terrible god kitten holiday.

It's relevant, its an unwarranted nerf. And the opinion is coming from a mesmer who has have 1k hours over 5 years whose lived threw multiple overhauls and balance changes and from experience there was never ever a time where Mesmers were top slot in any game mode without anet immediately nerfing it all the way to the bottom of the list not even moderate nerfs.

It took years for meteor to get nerfed on Eles, weeks for clone mirage to die.But im sure the post you just made is more informative then anything i could ever say.

@OriOri.8724 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:This will kill condi in PvE for anything that isn't a raid boss/high level fractal. Clone Mirage needs buffing up to be back above Phantasms (and not be buggy) which a general condition nerf isn't likely to give, the last thing Mesmer needs is more ramp up and power Mesmer is terrible outside of PvP so its not like this is opening anything up to us.

I swear all you people care about is hitting that test golem.

Actually, Condi mirage is fantastic for open world. But that's due in large part to the Condi burst. Depending how hard we get hit, this could have a significant impact on the first legitimately awesome mesmer spec in open world.

@Genesis.5169 said:

It took years for meteor to get nerfed on Eles, weeks for clone mirage to die.But im sure the post you just made is more informative then anything i could ever say.

You don't seem have to have a clear point to make. You claim that the reason mesmers do low DPS is because people are upset about them being too difficult to play, and that they therefore wanted other people to be nerfed. You then follow up with an apples and oranges comparison that finishes in the general idea that mirage got "nerfed" not because of random player complaints, but because of a bug that made it VERY OBVIOUSLY destroy every other damage spec in the game.

Furthermore, the "nerfs" haven't even come yet. Maybe wait to actually see the changes before you started crying about the sky falling?

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:This will kill condi in PvE for anything that isn't a raid boss/high level fractal. Clone Mirage needs buffing up to be back above Phantasms (and not be buggy) which a general condition nerf isn't likely to give, the last thing Mesmer needs is more ramp up and power Mesmer is terrible outside of PvP so its not like this is opening anything up to us.

I swear all you people care about is hitting that test golem.

I know how you feel but you should try to play other classes, mesmers are terrible at taging in large OW event like lake doric and DS as a mesmer you have to put in alot of work and when your on cd you really get punished. I've played as a holo/ele/gaurd/necro and i can tell you they have way better OW experience due to the fact that they have tools that are always readily available vs us we have to wait on clones or phantasm cds. Chrono may have it somewhat easier then mirage but your still relying on wells that have fairly long cds to tag and if your taging with them your not getting the alacrity from it unless your in the fight standing on it which opens up other cans of worms because some fights you just can't stay in melee in, and to boot your ranged aoe options outside of well is staff and gs 3 and 4 is laughable compare to what classes can do with just there autos.

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:

@Levetty.1279 said:This will kill condi in PvE for anything that isn't a raid boss/high level fractal. Clone Mirage needs buffing up to be back above Phantasms (and not be buggy) which a general condition nerf isn't likely to give, the last thing Mesmer needs is more ramp up and power Mesmer is terrible outside of PvP so its not like this is opening anything up to us.

I swear all you people care about is hitting that test golem.

It may slow things down for us a bit, but as long as the overall damage stays the same/goes up a bit, I think this change is needed. Mirage may suffer, but a large chunk of builds in the game will also go through changes. Condition damage has been too strong for a while now. This balance change if implemented right has good potential. Also, as far as open world, a good chunk of the damage that Mirages do still comes from the upfront power damage provided by Vipers so things may be a bit slower, but I don't see it being an issue unless they really mess things up.

Though it's kind of funny seeing the people who claim Mirage is bad in open world PvE.

@Genesis.5169 said:LOL Mesmers will never have nice things.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l36/Kagesuchi/gw041_zpsaizk80rs.jpg

5 Year old mesmer i remember back during core where everyone cried about mass invis and portal, then in HoT when every cried about bunker even tho FB bunker is FAR worse. I'm really tired of this the community hates the class because they can't faceroll it so they cry nerf and Anet being who they are just listen to tears and throws objectivity out of the window ima just delete the mesmer now because its clear unless mesmers are stuck at the bottom of the dps list and at the bottom of pvp the community will never be satisfied.

GG anet and GW2 community i wish you all a terrible god kitten holiday.

@Genesis.5169 said:I know how you feel but you should try to play other classes, mesmers are terrible at taging in large OW event like lake doric and DS as a mesmer you have to put in alot of work and when your on cd you really get punished. I've played as a holo/ele/gaurd/necro and i can tell you they have way better OW experience due to the fact that they have tools that are always readily available vs us we have to wait on clones or phantasm cds. Chrono may have it somewhat easier then mirage but your still relying on wells that have fairly long cds to tag and if your taging with them your not getting the alacrity from it unless your in the fight standing on it which opens up other cans of worms because some fights you just can't stay in melee in, and to boot your ranged aoe options outside of well is staff and gs 3 and 4 is laughable compare to what classes can do with just there autos.

So your whole argument was based on tagging mobs in open world trains? That's it?And if you needed Alacrity for these sort of content, have you tried running Sigil of Frenzy?