Potential Change of Chaos Storm: A Potential Buff in Disguise?

[Virtuality.8351]

First, let's look at the original announcement:

MesmerChaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.

Now, let's look back at the tooltip of Chaos Storm:

Chaos StormCreate a magical storm at the target location that applies random conditions to foes and boons to allies.

 Damage: 133 (0.33)? Aegis (3s): Block the next incoming attack. Retaliation (3s): Reflect incoming damage back to its source. Swiftness (3s): 33% Movement Speed Chilled (1s): -66% Skill Recharge Rate, -66% Movement Speed Poisoned (4s): 134 Damage, -33% Heal Effectiveness Weakness (2s): -50% Endurance Regeneration, 50% Fumble (Unrestricted) Daze: 1 second Number of Targets: 5 Radius: 240 Combo Field: Ethereal Range: 1,200

While in the description the effects the skill has on the opponents are phrased as 'conditions', they actually include Daze, which means that for every tick, an effect is randomly drew from a pool of four (Chilled, Poisoned, Weakness, Daze) instead of just the 'conditions'. If the announced change is implemented, Daze will no longer be in the pool, leaving the pool consisting of all conditions, which are all elsewhere barely accessible by Mesmer and could server perfectly as cover-up conditions*, making the skill a now perfectly consistent mean to counter-pressure with cDPS. However minor the advantage in terms of the consistency the change would provide, if the developers' aim was to nerf it, they would probably be getting instead the opposite.

• While Daze could be mitigated with Stability by the opponents, cover-up conditions can only be cleansed or temporarily bypassed with Resistance. While playing against a Mesmer with condition-based build, I'd say cleansing and Resistance are far more stressed resources than Stability or Stun Break.

Please let me know if this makes sense to you. All comments welcomed!

[Leonidrex.5649]

@"Virtuality.8351" said:First, let's look at the original announcement:

Mesmer

Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.

Now, let's look back at the tooltip of Chaos Storm:

Chaos Storm

Create a magical storm at the target location that applies random conditions to foes and boons to allies.

 Damage: 133 (0.33)? Aegis (3s): Block the next incoming attack. Retaliation (3s): Reflect incoming damage back to its source. Swiftness (3s): 33% Movement Speed Chilled (1s): -66% Skill Recharge Rate, -66% Movement Speed Poisoned (4s): 134 Damage, -33% Heal Effectiveness Weakness (2s): -50% Endurance Regeneration, 50% Fumble (Unrestricted) Daze: 1 second Number of Targets: 5 Radius: 240 Combo Field: Ethereal Range: 1,200

While in the description the effects the skill has on the opponents are phrased as 'conditions', they actually include Daze, which means that for every tick, an effect is randomly drew from a pool of four (Chilled, Poisoned, Weakness, Daze) instead of just the 'conditions'. If the announced change is implemented, Daze will no longer be in the pool, leaving the pool consisting of all conditions, which are all elsewhere barely accessible by Mesmer and could server perfectly as cover-up conditions*, making the skill a now perfectly consistent mean to counter-pressure with cDPS. However minor the advantage in terms of the consistency the change would provide, if the developers' aim was to nerf it, they would probably be getting instead the opposite.

• While Daze could be mitigated with Stability by the opponents, cover-up conditions can only be cleansed or temporarily bypassed with Resistance. While playing against a Mesmer with condition-based build, I'd say cleansing and Resistance are far more stressed resources than Stability or Stun Break.

Please let me know if this makes sense to you. All comments welcomed!

that is true, but the daze on chaos storm was VERY good at denaying revives, not it wont be making mesmer even shittier in teamplaying + it gave safty net agains dummies that ran into 2 storms, constant interupts, now its gonna be get resistance -> run in, kill for free, walk away.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I'm looking forward to the greater degree of control. I don't like the pre-change chaos storm because it is wildly inconsistent. I can't count on it to do anything, let alone a timely interrupt. With this new change, Chaos Storm becomes a large AoE daze with a lingering effect, dazing when I want it to.

[Leonidrex.5649]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I guess I'm in the minority here, but I'm looking forward to the greater degree of control. I don't like the pre-change chaos storm because it is wildly inconsistent. I can't count on it to do anything, let alone a timely interrupt. With this new change, Chaos Storm becomes a large AoE daze with a lingering effect, dazing when I want it to.

from what i remember its not a daze, it just interrupts. 0s daze. i wish first AND last would daze so you get to interrupt res, where you storm, wait 2s storm. and get back to back to back 4 dazes. sometimes its possible to stop. usually not, becouse 19stacks of stability and all.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I guess I'm in the minority here, but I'm looking forward to the greater degree of control. I don't like the pre-change chaos storm because it is wildly inconsistent. I can't count on it to do anything, let alone a timely interrupt. With this new change, Chaos Storm becomes a large AoE daze with a lingering effect, dazing when I want it to.

from what i remember its not a daze, it just interrupts. 0s daze. i wish first AND last would daze so you get to interrupt res, where you storm, wait 2s storm. and get back to back to back 4 dazes. sometimes its possible to stop. usually not, becouse 19stacks of stability and all.

...The OP listed the effect text verbatim. It's a 1 second daze.

[Leonidrex.5649]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I guess I'm in the minority here, but I'm looking forward to the greater degree of control. I don't like the pre-change chaos storm because it is wildly inconsistent. I can't count on it to do anything, let alone a timely interrupt. With this new change, Chaos Storm becomes a large AoE daze with a lingering effect, dazing when I want it to.

from what i remember its not a daze, it just interrupts. 0s daze. i wish first AND last would daze so you get to interrupt res, where you storm, wait 2s storm. and get back to back to back 4 dazes. sometimes its possible to stop. usually not, becouse 19stacks of stability and all.

...The OP listed the effect text verbatim. It's a 1 second daze.

NotesEffects occur once upon activation and again each second over 5 seconds, affecting up to 5 allies and 5 foes.Daze is pulsed as a 0-second effect, meaning that it is a potential interrupt every second instead of being a 5 second daze.

tooltip is simply wrong

[Delofasht.4231]

While I am looking forward to seeing some reliability included in Chaos Storm, I would really like to see the Cooldown reduced by 10 seconds (5 to 7 seconds is probably more fair though) since it’s potential for long duration interruption has been massively reduced (same for the CD on Lesser Chaos Storm). Coupled with other proposed changes, I foresee the changes overall just pushing the profession into a different build that ends up just as annoyingly strong, but in a different way that ends up requiring a set of nerfs that hit far more than what is needed to keep the profession feeling smooth.

Other possible changes that would help with the loss of multiple interrupts off a single cast of Chaos Storm include: increasing durations of conditions and boons by a second or so each, or applying multiple instances of each condition instead. Basically, whatever is necessary to keep the area denial aspect at least a bit. Choosing to stand in a chaos storm should be a dangerous choice indeed (given the long cooldown).

My concern arises with cooldown resets on CI as well, historically those are dangerous things to implement (look at Continuum/Split and Mimic, so many skills and utilities nerfed because those exist).

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

@Delofasht.4231 said:While I am looking forward to seeing some reliability included in Chaos Storm, I would really like to see the Cooldown reduced by 10 seconds (5 to 7 seconds is probably more fair though) since it’s potential for long duration interruption has been massively reduced (same for the CD on Lesser Chaos Storm).

They can't reduce chaos storm cd by even 5sec, since chaos armor is 30sec cd, because of the stupid skill slot design, unless they either move chaos storm to skill 4 or reduce cds on everything else.

[Curunen.8729]

I logged in to play a bit last night and test this - am very much underwhelmed by the whole thing.

In a normal situation, Chaos Storm isn't something you tend to drop on an opponent at range to land that first daze tick - more likely is defensive on you for boons and combo field - which means unless an enemy is hugging you when you cast it they will likely not be in the aoe for the first tick.

Subsequent ticks are meaningless tbh given how easy it is to cleanse the trivial short duration poison/chill/weakness, so opponents can easily just facetank in it and continue to pressure.

Adding to this the fact it's on a 35s base cooldown and somehow they've managed to make this as meh as Staff 4. Taking into account the state of Staff 3, it highlights even more Staff being a 1+2 spam weapon. I really don't like this, it's monotonous. Skills 3, 4 and 5 should be impactful, particularly if cooldowns are 30s+.

The only place Chaos Storm daze works reliably is dropping it on downed to stop res (unless stab of course). Aside from that this feels like a significant nerf.

I understand they want to remove rng interrupt, especially given new CI trait. But damn, Staff 4 and 5 need some kind of rework in my opinion.