So... regarding Distortion

So yeah, uhm I guess Distortion is gone and so far the reaction from the raiding community seems to be somewhere between "eh don't care" "good riddance" and "NOOOOOOOOOO".In every discussion that happened, on this forum and elsewhere, there seemd to be a consensus that the trait that shares distortion is to strong and prevents other classes from ever being a viable option in replacing a chrono... on tuesday we learned that the devs agree.

For everyone that is either not aware what is going on or has not red the patchnotes yet:Chrono was able to to distort himself that means 1 second of invulnerability for him, while this is still possible chrono is now unable to share this distortion to his group via inspiring distortion. Chrono also got a buch of other ways to generate tons and tons of quickness via mantra of concentration.

With this change and the other changes to chrono the class has become very stale to me and to other raid chronos. From what was a very cool high skill ceiling, very active class to a very low skill ceiling class. When you wanted to distort Gorseval slams before you had to hit the timing and distort just before his fist hits the ground, now you have a 5 second window in timing. From what felt like a really rewarding thing to pull of is now a really easy but unfun thing that just kinda happens.

"but..." you might say, "now you've got aegis and the class becomes easier to learn for newcomers".First things first: aegisThis boon is not great, not even close to decent, because wing 1-4 were designed with distortion in mind that means while you can't block with aegis you can distort them, same thing with samarog waves and a million other mechanics have these nasty "one hit to strip aegis, one to deal dmg". This makes the trait just utterly useless in a lot of situations ."but at least it's easier to learn"Yep, true but there is almost nothing to master you can not really do more than giving 100% quickness/100% alacrity that is now the best you can do.

"Well, don't just sit there and whine! what do you want?"Here is what I want either give the chronos back distortion but make it a group wide block for 1 second. This would get around things like VG greens and other mechanics that can not be blocked.ORchange the boon itself: make aegis a 1 second block. This would also impact the wvw and pvp crowd. I don't really play these modes tell me if it is to op, if it is I would propose that after you got aegis you get a debuff (kinda like revealed) that you can not get it again for x seconds.

at the very least change the god-forsaken name: inspiring distortion?

TLDR: Distortion gone, good chronos kinda sad, aegis no skill=no fun. Make aegis good plox

I don't think shared distortion is coming back. It took them this long to remove it and while I agree that newer fights were already designed with disallowing distortion and the actual use of it was limited to some few specific boss fights, the masses have spoken and the amount of carry a chrono could provide was far beyond anything any other class could to.

Does it reduce the skill ceiling on chrono tremendously? Absolutely.Does it make chronos way worse at carrying an entire raid? Yes.Does it remove chrono from the meta? Very doubtful.Does it open up more composition options for raids (with firebrand+renegade taking over quickness and alacrity duty)? Time will tell, I doubt it but we shall see.

This is very similar to the change to Well of Precognition and is likely a remnant of pre HoT design before the problem of immunity was realized.

As far as aegis, it's even more than 5 seconds since most raid and fractal chronos run boon duration you are looking at 9 seconds of aegis every potentially 5 seconds. I'd say this makes it even stronger in many fractal, spvp and wvw situations than before. Time will tell.

Greetings, in this I want to state my own opinion on the current changes to the Mesmer trait Inspiring Distortion.

tl;dr: I don’t like the current state of the art when u consider that distortion was a reliable tool/way to block mechanics, not to nullify mechanics (that was just a result, something needs to change).

Let's have a look back onto the way Inspiring Distortion worked. Whenever the Chrono gave himself a distort he also gave it to his (sub-)group, on a 5-second icd.Now let’s take a look what Inspiring Distortion provides in its current state of the art. Whenever the Chrono gives himself distortion he now provides Aegis to his (sub-)group.

This change brings up some problems.1st: The name of the trait Inspiring Distortion inspires your (sub-)group to distort themselves, which it does not anymore it inspires your (sub-)group to block one attack only and not all attacks for one second, linking this back to raids and fractals (the only place where u see Mesmers running around, IMO), we now see that people used Chrono to block hits that would be applied multiple times (e.g. Samarog wave). So there is a groundbreaking problem with Aegis, in general, it is unreliable. And people want reliability/consistency so they can actually time their skills right (because most of the people want to get better at the game, which is provided by consistency).2nd: Chrono players do not know what to do not (personal example). Since I started maining Chrono I put hours and hours of time into this class, pugging a lot to provide reliable distorts, theorycraft to take as much work from the DPS players so they can actually feel good not interrupting their rotation and can show how good they are. When the patch hit the servers I felt like I wasted hours of playtime for nothing

But there are some positive things as well to this patch.As already mentioned by @Imhariel.5683 it is easier now than ever to pick up Chrono and it is very easy to provide perma quickness and alacrity.

After all, I do not only want to say what is wrong I also want to provide some alternatives. As @Imhariel.5683 already said give Chronos their old Inspiring Distortion back and make some mechanics unable to be negated by distorting, rework Aegis so block for an interval (also if that means splitting boons in between game modes) or just make a new buff that can be applied by Inspiring Distortion, like Blur.

How about we make the aegis only last .5 seconds (1s with 100% boon duration) then you need the same precise timing you did with distortion?

@ArthurDent.9538 said:How about we make the aegis only last .5 seconds (1s with 100% boon duration) then you need the same precise timing you did with distortion?

Aegies blocks 1 attack. Distortion was invuln. There's no comparing them honestly, no matter how you dress up the aegis. This is healthier for the game, but its not comparable to distortion share

Change the name to distortion consider it a lesser distortion and make act exactly like aegis. To me its about class identity it was something that was on your buff bar that made you realize you were in a pt with a mesmer. Return the distortion in any form you like anet but return it.

Honestly I think the chrono players who are whining about distortion sharing being removed are being very selfish. Yes you lost a key mechanic that you spent hours and hours on, boo fucking hoo! Unfortunately Anet has to think about more than just your pride to do what is best for the game, and distortion sharing was a very unhealthy mechanic. Any mechanic that lets you completely ignore key aspects of a fight is bad game design and makes the fight pointless, turning what could be an amazing fight into a tank'n'spank against a target golem with a different look.

Really I'm amazed, because I thought the raiding community as a whole would be complaining more about loss of distortion sharing, but they know how broken and unhealthy it is, and the only people complaining are the chrono players themselves.

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Honestly I think the chrono players who are whining about distortion sharing being removed are being very selfish. Yes you lost a key mechanic that you spent hours and hours on, boo kitten hoo! Unfortunately Anet has to think about more than just your pride to do what is best for the game, and distortion sharing was a very unhealthy mechanic. Any mechanic that lets you completely ignore key aspects of a fight is bad game design and makes the fight pointless, turning what could be an amazing fight into a tank'n'spank against a target golem with a different look.

Really I'm amazed, because I thought the raiding community as a whole would be complaining more about loss of distortion sharing, but they know how broken and unhealthy it is, and the only people complaining are the chrono players themselves.

Anet has made bad decisions in the past and this is one of them. I don't know how you can be the sole arbiter of who's right and whose wrong, but why didn't anet just stop distortion from being full immunity in the raid encounters they were trying to balance instead of ruining a spec defining trait that separates mesmers from other supports?

Mesmers cannot heal can't res down people with a skill (why did they buff merciful intervention to these insane levels idk), alacrity and quickness and portal has already been given away. So exactly what makes the class unique on a 8man team now? And before you point out phantasms the only one of real use is disenchanter and its not very controllable and very rng based.

TLDRThis wasn't only a nerf it was one more step to class homogenization which i despise with a passion you do not understand i have left many mmos because of this and is the main reason why i continue to play gw2 even though the way how the game is structured is not my cup of tea.

double post delete this

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Honestly I think the chrono players who are whining about distortion sharing being removed are being very selfish. Yes you lost a key mechanic that you spent hours and hours on, boo kitten hoo! Unfortunately Anet has to think about more than just your pride to do what is best for the game, and distortion sharing was a very unhealthy mechanic. Any mechanic that lets you completely ignore key aspects of a fight is bad game design and makes the fight pointless, turning what could be an amazing fight into a tank'n'spank against a target golem with a different look.

Really I'm amazed, because I thought the raiding community as a whole would be complaining more about loss of distortion sharing, but they know how broken and unhealthy it is, and the only people complaining are the chrono players themselves.

anet could have just changed trait only share f4 distortion , anet could have changed it to blur or 1s block .anet could also have changed vg green to ignore distortion .

but hey healing ignore vg green too . can we remove healing from game as well coz it's unhealthy lol.and how about i sit on firebrand and shit out block + stability by spamming one button with instantly cast time .should anet remove firebrand as well .anet picked the laziest fix .should anet remove resistance as well or condition removel from support class . since we are at that , lets remove aegis , DH f3 , necro barrier as well . coz they are all the mechanic that let your ignore key aspects of a fight and all of them are far easier than distortion share .should we just delete support role .you do realize that many people complain about distortion share are mainly people who even believed that vg green is oneshot , they thought sloth shake was done by distortion share too . as for qt , raids that were easy for them will still be easy . they will still skip mechanic by dps / heal / other class mechanic .(oh should we heavily nerf dps too , since high dps skip so many mechanics ).

@"Genesis.5169" said:Mesmers can't res down people with a skillhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion_of_Life=)

@Aktium.9506 said:

@"Genesis.5169" said:Mesmers can't res down people with a skill

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion_of_Life

=)

except its not a res . but i got the meme .

@Genesis.5169 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Honestly I think the chrono players who are whining about distortion sharing being removed are being very selfish. Yes you lost a key mechanic that you spent hours and hours on, boo kitten hoo! Unfortunately Anet has to think about more than just your pride to do what is best for the game, and distortion sharing was a very unhealthy mechanic. Any mechanic that lets you completely ignore key aspects of a fight is bad game design and makes the fight pointless, turning what could be an amazing fight into a tank'n'spank against a target golem with a different look.

Really I'm amazed, because I thought the raiding community as a whole would be complaining more about loss of distortion sharing, but they know how broken and unhealthy it is, and the only people complaining are the chrono players themselves.

Sole arbitor of right and wrong? Hahahaha. No, I'm just expressing my opinion, same as you. I get that you want to be a special little snowflake but like I said, the devs need to think about more than just a single spec. Up until now they have had to tailor boss fights purely around distortion which severely limits them on what mechanics they can put in. Now with it removed I'm intetested to see how much more creative they can be with their future bosses. Is that not better for the community as a whole?

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Genesis.5169 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Honestly I think the chrono players who are whining about distortion sharing being removed are being very selfish. Yes you lost a key mechanic that you spent hours and hours on, boo kitten hoo! Unfortunately Anet has to think about more than just your pride to do what is best for the game, and distortion sharing was a very unhealthy mechanic. Any mechanic that lets you completely ignore key aspects of a fight is bad game design and makes the fight pointless, turning what could be an amazing fight into a tank'n'spank against a target golem with a different look.

Really I'm amazed, because I thought the raiding community as a whole would be complaining more about loss of distortion sharing, but they know how broken and unhealthy it is, and the only people complaining are the chrono players themselves.

You ignored the part of anet just allowing the mechanics they want to go through just distortion just to go through distortion. And if class uniqueness makes me a special snowflake then ill take it.

They could have just changed the distortion from the trait to Blur, anet already hast this mechanic on mesmers (Mainhand Sword 2 - Blurred Frenzy).

Furthermore why should a class that lost a huge portion of skill cap be healthy for the game, pls explain that to me, BCS I don't see your point

@IceWolf.4981 said:They could have just changed the distortion from the trait to Blur, anet already hast this mechanic on mesmers (Mainhand Sword 2 - Blurred Frenzy).

Furthermore why should a class that lost a huge portion of skill cap be healthy for the game, pls explain that to me, BCS I don't see your point

I agree with this LOT, I feel like a better change would have even been to just remove Blurred Inscriptions, Distortion share on the f4 only was actually very healthy I thought. It was a good way for mesmers to quickly do something to protect the group when things go south suddenly, it was a unique thing as unique as spirit rez and rebound, and if they just removed the spammability of it from signets it would have made a lot more sense overall.Is there any way to just roll the aoe distortion into the f4 instead? How would people feel about that?

@Genesis.5169 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Genesis.5169 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Honestly I think the chrono players who are whining about distortion sharing being removed are being very selfish. Yes you lost a key mechanic that you spent hours and hours on, boo kitten hoo! Unfortunately Anet has to think about more than just your pride to do what is best for the game, and distortion sharing was a very unhealthy mechanic. Any mechanic that lets you completely ignore key aspects of a fight is bad game design and makes the fight pointless, turning what could be an amazing fight into a tank'n'spank against a target golem with a different look.

Really I'm amazed, because I thought the raiding community as a whole would be complaining more about loss of distortion sharing, but they know how broken and unhealthy it is, and the only people complaining are the chrono players themselves.

Ok so lets say Anet changed all the raid boss attacks and all the fight mechanics to completely ignore distortion. Congratulations, you've now made distortion completely worthless!

The problem with distortion (and aegis for that matter) is the amount of times you can use it in a fight with no consequence. In a traditional mmorpg those sorts of aoe shielding abilities would be major 1 time use abilities on long cooldowns. This forces you to choose which parts of the encounter to use your abilities on rather than using them on everything.

What they could do is put distortion back in but put an effect on it where once you have used it, you cannot benefit from the distortion again for a certain amount of time (say 30 seconds or so). You could also differentiate between aegis and distortion more. For example, change aegis to block all melee attacks for a small amount of time, barriers to block all ranged attacks and distortion to negate all damage including conditions. Now each type of block is unique and you have to choose carefully when to use each 1.

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:Honestly I think the chrono players who are whining about distortion sharing being removed are being very selfish. Yes you lost a key mechanic that you spent hours and hours on, boo kitten hoo! Unfortunately Anet has to think about more than just your pride to do what is best for the game, and distortion sharing was a very unhealthy mechanic. Any mechanic that lets you completely ignore key aspects of a fight is bad game design and makes the fight pointless, turning what could be an amazing fight into a tank'n'spank against a target golem with a different look.

Really I'm amazed, because I thought the raiding community as a whole would be complaining more about loss of distortion sharing, but they know how broken and unhealthy it is, and the only people complaining are the chrono players themselves.

No, it's not only chrono players themselves. I highly doubt the change and I completely disagree the mechanic was unhealthy for the game because of the reasons you cited.

Was it too powerful? Absolutely.

Was it bad? Not really. Skipping mechanics aren't a problem. There are different ways to skip different mechanics and a lot of them are still valid. For instance, you can still skip updrafts on Gorseval by simply having high enough dps. You still can dps Cairn and never see its slam and donut attacks. You can completely ignore Samarog's shockwave attack by having a Firebrand use heal and elite mantras on every attack. You still can trivialize Matthias by getting an extra healer. And you know what's the common thing about all these? They're teamplay. Cancelling a mechanic, or rendering it harmless, is simply the reward you get for your group playing as a team, instead of having everyone play for himself. Sharing distortion was just another way of doing that.

Again, I agree the trait was too powerful. But Aegis is too fiddly. And not because of unblockable attacks, because you can lose it to random chip damage. The boon itself is in the weird position of being a boon for which boon duration is not necessarily beneficial, and might even be counter-productive. That's mostly why I don't like this change - it might end up taking away some teamplay from the group content. And no, that's not healthy.

The true test of whether a major skill change was good for the game doesn't come during the first week after implementation. It comes only when the community has absorbed the new mechanic(s) and finished adapting tactics.

People have mentioned some good things to check to see if this was a good thing or a bad, such as: will classes feel too homogeneous? are there rewards for skillful gameplay (especially for mesmer)? Are raid/fractal-CM speedclears more diverse? Are PUG raids/fractals more diverse? Is there more or less participation in raids? Did non-mesmers get better at raid/fractal mechanics? Can other classes shine in ways that weren't likely before the change? Are people having fun?

Unlike a lot of balance changes, this one was extremely disruptive, as it was intended to be. We simply can't tell until we find the new equilibrium whether it made things better, worse, or just changed one set of problems for another equally frustrating set.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:The true test of whether a major skill change was good for the game doesn't come during the first week after implementation. It comes only when the community has absorbed the new mechanic(s) and finished adapting tactics.

People have mentioned some good things to check to see if this was a good thing or a bad, such as: will classes feel too homogeneous? are there rewards for skillful gameplay (especially for mesmer)? Are raid/fractal-CM speedclears more diverse? Are PUG raids/fractals more diverse? Is there more or less participation in raids? Did non-mesmers get better at raid/fractal mechanics? Can other classes shine in ways that weren't likely before the change? Are people having fun?

Unlike a lot of balance changes, this one was extremely disruptive, as it was intended to be. We simply can't tell until we find the new equilibrium whether it made things better, worse, or just changed one set of problems for another equally frustrating set.

While I do agree that sometimes waiting and seeing how things play out is good, there are a few of the points you bring up I can answer rigth now:There are no rewards for skillfull gameplay on chrono to be a "perfect" chrono you now do 2 things keep up qucikness and alacrity. And other classes still can not really take the chrono roll as no other class combines both of those boons.

Sorry If this whole thing seems kinda whiny but me and some of my guildmates don't really feel like playing anymore, we are just bored with the way chrono is atm, the class has become the most boring to play in raid...

@"Imhariel.5683" said:Sorry If this whole thing seems kinda whiny but me and some of my guildmates don't really feel like playing anymore, we are just bored with the way chrono is atm, the class has become the most boring to play in raid...

I am sorry that you (and your mates) aren't enjoying things today. And it might be the case that you won't find a new mesmer niche later. That only answers the question of "was this a good for mesmers who liked the previous status quo?" It's still too soon to try to tell whether it's good for the game in general or even the mesmer community (given that there are some mesmers who were bored with the old way).

Things are going to be in flux as people try to figure out what works for speed clears, what works reliably for PUGs, what works for statics that used to depend on distorts, and what works now for statics that didn't depend on them. QT (maybe) will release their next benchmarks, SC & DT will share new builds and tactics, and some anons will come up with some clever stuff (not to mention the usual garbage). When that dust settles, it might turn out to be a lot more interesting for everyone. Or it might just turn out that raids are a lot harder for non-mesmers than folks realized. At the very least, it disrupts the old comps/meta and gives us something new to worry about.

Have you considered, that maybe, just maybe, Anet didn't want whole groups of players to ignore a multitude of different boss mechanics (mechanics raid devs spent a lot of time devising) with a single click?Perhaps you might now need to actually learn to run greens or jump the waves, or manage your damage in order to not be killed by Gorse retal(oh, who i am kidding, i'm sure alternative methods are already devised)

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Have you considered, that maybe, just maybe, Anet didn't want whole groups of players to ignore a multitude of different boss mechanics (mechanics raid devs spent a lot of time devising) with a single click?Perhaps you might now need to actually learn to run greens or jump the waves, or manage your damage in order to not be killed by Gorse retal(oh, who i am kidding, i'm sure alternative methods are already devised)

Tbh groups who were using distortion share "do not actually have to learn" to run greens and the other stuff. First, not every chrono was able to pull it off regularly together with alacrity and quicknes and secondly making use of distortion lead to advanced/superior strategies. The average guild group was and is far away from having two highly competent chronos. For such groups it's way easier to run greens and outrun/-heal Gorse retal.I'm sure that there were very good chronos out there that pugged sometimes to help others that were struggling with some of the mechanics. But that was not the standard. If you were that competent you really would not play with players that cannot handle the basic mechanics on a regular basis.

@Astralporing.1957 said:Have you considered, that maybe, just maybe, Anet didn't want whole groups of players to ignore a multitude of different boss mechanics (mechanics raid devs spent a lot of time devising) with a single click?Perhaps you might now need to actually learn to run greens or jump the waves, or manage your damage in order to not be killed by Gorse retal(oh, who i am kidding, i'm sure alternative methods are already devised)

Have you considered that using the single click is a risk? Basically you trust your chrono to have proper timing. If he does, you get rewarded, if he doesn't you get punished. It's a fair trade.

And for 17th time, the change doesn't stop you from negating specific attacks. It's a bit more limited, but the general principle stays. Gorse slam is blockable so no, I won't be dodging that. Dps loss. Deimos pizza is blockable, so no, I won't be dodging that either, for the same reason. Samarog shockwave unfortunately knocks you back even if blocked, so unless I have a Firerbrand to give me stab I'll keep jumping it. Sloth coconuts can still be eaten by a jumping chrono, who still has distortion for them. So what exactly are you arguing about, VG greens and Gorse retal? You realize these are just 2 out of many mechanics that used to be covered by distort, right? It stands to reason that if devs had an issue with cancelling mechanics they'd do something for all of them, right?

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:Have you considered, that maybe, just maybe, Anet didn't want whole groups of players to ignore a multitude of different boss mechanics (mechanics raid devs spent a lot of time devising) with a single click?Perhaps you might now need to actually learn to run greens or jump the waves, or manage your damage in order to not be killed by Gorse retal(oh, who i am kidding, i'm sure alternative methods are already devised)

That actually promoted less skilled play.