Curunen.8729

Really depends how you want to play because many possibilities. In some brief testing of different options in wvw I currently settled on this last night after defeating a couple of condi mirages despite playing pretty chaotically (been a long time since having played): http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?Pi0Ac+ZlJkwuybSJNogmZoWsP/PXA-zVRYVhnN6myIzUt3qy1TQA/tUlZF-w (Edit for updated gw2skills.net). It's not optimal by far, but it suits my playstyle best because despite power nerfs on axe and staff, F1 is on a low cooldown with alacrity. Taking EM frees up utility slots so I can use blink/IA/StG - again simply because aesthetically I enjoy those abilities. Yes, Signet of Illusions and Desert Distortion is simply better for multiple reasons, but I find signets boring to use, and don't enjoy that gimmick. I tried other stats - eg cele/viper, more condi leaning with malign infusions and other utility enhancement, tb+rabid, even full cele. Ultimately I like mostly cele because of concentration/expertise, and then whatever else to buff up the power/condi - grieving is nice for the F1 and other crits. Anticipating some new stats with EoD in any case. Main internal debate has been IH+utility cleanse vs EM+freedom of all other skills. For the former, things like Arcane Thievery are amazing on low cooldown with alacrity - but personally not like having restriction of range, los, and target when kitten hits the fan and you need to remove condi right now. It's a great skill though if you like the associated playstyle. Mantra is... ok... but of course all mantras suck right now. Null Field is not great since losing protection on all sources of chaos aura (before it was nice with additional leaps etc to get high uptime of chaos aura). Also thought about trying passive condi duration reduction via regen, -25% on runes and -20% on food, to free up having to take much cleanse, but dodge food is mandatory IMO - the loss of endurance regen rate is huge without that food. On the flipside, while IH clone ambushes put out a TON of condi on staff, I find that as shattering more often for burst, that normal staff auto is still putting a decent amount of confusion. Adding to this that the player generates the boons on staff now so small point of requiring clones to be ambushing as well. And with the torment change plus lack of easy way to prevent opponent movement in this build, find axe clone ambush to be not as beneficial. EM on the other hand is just ridiculously good cleanse. Boring uninspired trait design for sure, but good cleanse and allows freedom to pick any skills you want. Heal is interesting - tried both FO and Mirror - pros and cons for each. Vigour on FO is amazing as is the mirror spawn, and I experimented with a few different rune options as the endurance refill from adventurer not really necessary in that case because it is kind of overkill in such short duration when you get vigour and the mirror spawn (eg tried things like antitoxin, leadership among others). But the heal itself of FO I find really weak - even with alacrity I just don't like the downtime between the weak ~6.5k total heals. Mirror on the other hand has better healing, and alacrity brings the recharge very low (depending how much alacrity you generate). I find the reflect to be great, as well as the short burst of superspeed. The main downside to Mirror is the cast time - is quite exposed, and also have to be careful timing if covering with dodge so the ambush window doesn't expire (eg if in staff end up losing opportunity for alacrity). And sure, adventurer rune is only proccing every other heal - would be nice if they could bring the pvp version of 25 endurance and 10s icd instead of 50 endurance and 20s icd - but I find that is nice to have especially at the start of a fight. Small notes - tried Blinding Dissipation vs Evasive Mirror - really could go either way. Evasive Mirror is stupid design now with the 10s icd making it effectively rng after the first proc in a fight (good luck keeping track of when it will proc next). But equally I wasn't finding BD that useful, already having blind of staff 4 and torch 4. BD obviously better if taking Ineptitude, but I still prefer DE for clone generation for shatters. Edit - forgot to add, one major point against Evasive Mirror is random reflect can kitten with torch 4 stealth causing reveal. This is very annoying when it happens and certainly in favour of taking BD. At least Mirror heal can be controlled so not to reflect breaking stealth at the wrong time. Of course, IH with trailblazer etc is better - but I don't enjoy that as much (love the clone ambush visuals, but don't like lack of decent F1). And as mentioned above, SoI with Desert Distortion is also better. Probably also Pistol is better. In any case, major skill split nerfs will be incoming for staff ambush/auto confusion spam I reckon, so that could impact on certain decision making (maybe IH becomes mandatory again for sufficient damage). Probably not going to test much further until a couple of week's time as quite busy irl, and may find the need to change the build a lot.

I think there should at least be some kind of requirement to build for boon duration in order to maintain... boons.

I'd be happy with that. Gear (and food tbh) has been responsible for too much of the nerfs, making said gear even more of a necessity, instead of dealing with balancing/removing the gear itself. Another option is they could change the direct endurance refill instead to gain eg 2s vigour on weapon swap. Do the same for adventurer rune (eg 2s vigour on heal with 10s icd, similar to things like rune of the revenant giving 2s resistance on heal). Still have some synergy in various builds, but no immediate refill.

I don't think that complaint is accurate - I think many would like the idea of forcing choice as it leads to greater diversity, especially when the nature of the game has been limited number of "decent" combinations in the past despite there being on paper many choices to build from. The thing here is that if taking staff, the competing -20% cd and condi damage buff seems to far outweigh the other option both offensively and defensively (via lower cooldowns on 2, 4 and 5), as there aren't many on demand sources of protection to justify getting a bit of additional regen every now and then. Sure if not taking staff they're both kind of half a trait (regen on protection vs +120 condi damage) though a balanced choice. I like the idea of having separate defensive and offensive competing options, but the execution here is not great.

They want people to have rsi on their dodge finger/thumb? xD I don't get the thought process behind this decision...

Yeah I find the lack of blink disturbing and certainly multiple instances where no answer to incoming cc/burst. I can't play without blink and an additional gtfo skill . Looks like troll duelling build.

I'm still confused how, after the specifically removed confusion from axe ambush and staff ambush in the past because it was too spammable - now decided to put it back both staff auto and ambush, and encourage the spam by giving alacrity on ambush... Sure I like how confusion is more thematic for mesmer than burning, but given how much salt was caused by confusion spam in the past, it is only a matter of time (probably not much time) before the flood of complaints begin. Add to that Chaos Armour is now basically F2 traited for blind (edit - for the record the new Chaos Armour is excellent - really great to see staff 4 finally being a good skill), and building other traits appropriately there's some insane confusion bomb potential out there, in addition to passive confusion spam. Especially given all the other different nerfs for mirage in the past - now buffing in a way that encourages such monotonous play is really "confusing". The funny thing is in a roundabout way this shaves all the nerfed Deception skill cooldowns to have more flow for porting around more frequently. The only good part is the player is encouraged to cast staff ambush themselves to get the boons, so there is some requirement to face the target and press 1 rather than just dodge and let clones do their thing.

wb as well! 😮 Nice to see that balance patches bring people back for discussion. 🙂 Hope Anet takes note of it. Personally today is more interesting/exciting than any of the content in the coming 2 months aside from the EoD elite spec reveals.

Props to them actually running a decent amount of cleanse - see too many going all in that melt under any incoming burst/pressure.

Yep it doesn't make sense - when they removed confusion from staff ambush in the first place because they didn't want spammable confusion. Now we have confusion on staff auto and staff ambush. I can smell the incoming tidal wave of complaints already.

woah, welcome back! 😮

Yeah it's absurd in OW - perma alacrity, perma 25 might, non stop ambushes.

I didn't realise - Chaos Vortex now actually does torment, confusion and bleding (no burning) which is interesting.

It's a bit strange that it is for chaos armour only and not any source of chaos aura. I suppose the "gain regen when you get protection" is kind of universal (though not that many sources of protection unless they are thinking middle line of Chaos is defensive - eg if you take PU then can proc additional regen when you get protection in stealth), but for staff it seems the 20% lower cooldown is just better all around anyway - for defence and offence. Yeah I don't quite get the design.

To be fair it is stated in the patch notes it should be skill split with 4 stacks, and regardless of other things nobody should be able to stack 25 might so easily. On that note, this is insane with aristocracy runes. Might for years, lol!

I'm just testing and seems to be a bug that chaos vortex is giving 8 stacks of might in wvw instead of the split 4 stacks. xD Utterly broken tbh - easy 25 might. Edit - lol, with even 50% boon duration and dodge food i'm going straight to 25 stacks for like 20s after 3 ambushes. Probably going to be fixed asap.

Yes. 🙂

Just realised the additional nice buff to chaos storm by retaliation -> resolution. So nice rng choice between swiftness, resolution and aegis. 🙂

Yeah I was curious if the 66% speed bonus somehow still got affected by this rune, even though on paper it seems like it shouldn't - and as you say probably doesn't anyway.

I recall they nerfed it, but then didn't compensate after follow up nerfs of moving it to F4 etc, so reckon it should be acceptable to lower this cooldown again.

Yeah, definitely always hopeful maybe they can dedicate time to it following EoD. 🙂

Oh I'm not saying it's a good thing - just that I seriously can't see them giving back 2 dodges in wvw/pvp following some of these changes unless they do massive redesigns which based on past patches doesn't seem likely. So the only alternative in terms of not ignoring those game modes, is forcing 50 endurance across the board - then at least the pve balance team will make necessary changes that will have outcomes across all game modes. Depending on the changes it would at least be a better situation than it is right now.

Anyone tried rune of the Zephyrite? I only just noticed it existed and curious about the superspeed bonus - does it interact with mirage cloak speed bonus? (given that got changed to 66% speed, so am assuming sadly it doesn't)

I've been thinking, if there is some hidden motive by the various changes (torment, alacrity, etc) - that they're setting up to, at some point in the future, normalise mirage endurance across all game modes. As it seems going by the direction from this patch it's extremely unlikely we'll ever be seeing 2 dodges again in wvw/pvp. And given this looking like a significant buff for pve in many ways - nevermind all mirage skills/utilities etc are the same godlike low cooldowns there, I wonder if they'll use that as an excuse to then say "we are setting mirage endurance in pve to 50, to match pvp/wvw and allow better balance of the spec across all game modes". I mean, personally it can only be right one way or the other - either 2 dodges restored at the expense of greater changes in those modes, or everything blanket 1 dodge allowing for an equal foundation to balance from.

NICENIKESHOE has covered it pretty well - looks like they precast GS4 with two izerkers spawning on you immediately and then blink/mirror blade with mantras into F1 and GS3 by the looks of it. This is pretty unlucky as in wvw there's a lot to keep an eye out for, as well as longer play sessions typically causing slight loss in sharpness than eg in pvp, nevermind lag in big fights which is horrible when it comes to reacting to this kind of burst. And the additional pve stats so is possible to do massive damage in the right build. However in an ideal situation as soon as you noticed a mesmer blink up to you I'd reaction dodge into them immediately. Of course this is easy to say vs do, though the point is the burst was not instant and is possible to react to (again bearing in mind additional challenge in wvw as mentioned above). The #1 rule of thumb - if you see any mesmer blink to you, expect a burst and respond immediately - they're not going to waste vital cooldown like that for no reason. And if you survive - they have nothing so are free to pressure/kill unless they gtfo or have allies. 🙂