agrippastrilemma.8741

I already preempted this response by saying "(and no, it isn't about cast time)". Even with quickness (i.e. 0.5s cast time), ray of judgement has a good and clear animation. Yes. Which isn't a problem. That's fine, but then we have one utility+elite skill that you could argue was nerfed because of CS and was relevant for PvP (Moa), or three if we take PvE into PvE (Time Warp, Moa, SoI). Meanwhile you said "CS is why most utilities on mesmer are kinda poo". So even if we assume that you meant to include elites within "utilities", the statement is still wildly incorrect. What I said was that Chrono was fairly well balanced with regards to core Mesmer while distortion was gone. For 2+ years (2020-07-07 to 2022-10-04), chronomancer had self-shatter but no distortion. In other words, the problem was that core Mesmer was too weak to compete, not any intrinsic problem with chronomancer. What do you mean "you might have meant remove distortion and do something else but you didn't say that", I literally said "if they removed it again now they would obviously have to massively buff core Mesmer" from the start. Chronophantasma should be (and should have been) removed/reworked, yes. I'll grant you SoI, but that was only relevant in PvE. SoE is and was inextricably connected to chronophantasma. I'll grant you Moa as well as I have said previously. True, Alacrity is the bigger reason why chrono is and was strong than CS itself.

You must be living in a completely different universe to me, because in my universe, power Chronomancer is not considered meta whatsoever and instead, Condi Chrono is, which uses neither Moa nor Stealth. Even when power Chrono is played, it is more often with shield + gravity well at least on EU. Are you even talking about anything real or are you just saying words? "Ultimately what happens is Moa is allowing coordinated teams to perpetually benefit 5v4 the entire match" Crazy that this insane incredible super-strat wasn't used in the last mAT as far as I can tell.

Yeah because they don't care about 2v2 / 3v3. They didn't used to split mechanics between PvP and PvE either but have recently started doing so on occassion. I'm not even strongly advocating for them to do this because I don't care about 2v2/3v3, which is why I said "You can just disallow elites or disable things like Moa and Lich if you really wanted to."

I am making a counterargument to the claim some people like to push that CS existing makes Chronomancer impossible to balance. We know this isn't true because back when Chrono did not have Distortion, picking Chrono over Core wasn't an obvious choice - I went back and forth a lot and felt that Chrono was still somewhat more powerful but core was still better in certain matches depending on enemy team comp. This can be compared to the current situation, where picking core Mesmer over Chrono is NEVER worth it. So, from a theoretical balance lens, removing Distortion from Chrono (and buffing core Mesmer to compensate) would be a proper thing to do (in other to make the core-chrono tradeoff more meaningful and even). However from a practical lens, it would most likely be a bad decision currently since chrono with Distortion isn't really causing problems, isn't too op, and because Anet are lazy and would not compensate the removal properly. I agree that asking for nerfs because of 2v2/3v3 is pretty dumb. You can just disallow elites or disable things like Moa and Lich if you really wanted to.

I said IF they removed it. This is more of a hypothetical to show that it is very possible to balance Chrono despite CS existing. They probably should not remove Distortion right now however, because it isn't really causing problems and as you say, they are astronomically unlikely to compensate it properly.

Sure, though bringing up Distortion in this thread was more of a hypothetical to show that it is certainly possible to balance Mesmer despite CS existing. It's a strong skill, but not that strong and the tradeoff with Distortion is not obviously worth it in either direction. Another hypothetical option I've toyed with before would be to make Portal an F5 skill for core Mesmer only, though this is outside of the scope of this thread. Currently I probably wouldn't touch Distortion on Chrono because it isn't really causing issues (condi chrono can and should be nerfed in different ways). If you just removed/changed Distortion what would happen is that the difference in power level between condi chrono and power chrono would grow even more (condi chrono would get stronger relatively). Besides, people need to consider that for a Mesmer to really capitalize on Moa he really needs to play one of the most squishy builds possible, full zerk power chrono with 3 offensive traitlines and pistol offhand (also offensive). Virtuoso cannot finish moa. Condi chrono cannot generally finish moa. Even power Chrono with torch instead of pistol cannot finish moa. It's good to have a glass cannon build like that in the game to possibly counter really tanky specs like say defense spellbreaker, sidenode rangers, certain necros with shroud back in the day, and such. Chronos would just all go back to playing defensive offhand + gravity well which isn't even more fun to face than pistol + moa chrono.

That's why I said in my reply to you before that "if they removed it again now they would obviously have to massively buff core Mesmer" Edit: sorry, it was in reply to Apharma. You have the same profile picture.

It really, really, really is not. Even Spinal Shivers with its green-black glow and unique hand waveing motion is much more recognizable. Also look at something like Guardian Focus (and no, it isn't about cast time). You can absolutely make good animation for offhands. Yes. So then why say "CS is why most utilities on mesmer are kinda poo, because chrono can double cast them". This is clearly an incorrect statement. 2v2 is garbage. This one is true, though this is and was only relevant for PvE. An elite skill, not a utility. An elite skill, not a utility. Of course the Wells should be balanced around CS existing. I do not ignore this whatsoever. However, this is not a problem in any way. Ok, so above we went over one core Mesmer utility that we could say got hard nerfed because of CS (Signet of Inspiration), yet you said "CS is why most utilities on mesmer are kinda poo" If you had said elite skills instead, that would have been a better argument. On that note, I actually advocated for Continuum Split not working for elite skills back in the day (similar to how it doesn't work for Mimic). You could also easily make elite skills have a, say, 50% or 100% longer cooldown for Chrono if you wanted to. Though I don't think this is worth caring about right now, it isn't really an issue (even in PvE I'm pretty sure Virtuoso is much better than Chrono these days, could be wrong). Let's say that Distortion hypothetically was removed from Chrono again. That would be a pretty significant and fair tradeoff for being able to double your skills once every 90 seconds.

I do not understand why you are so unreasonably insistent that the issue of two offhand skills having 90% the same animation and thus being difficult to distinguish from each other would be impossible to fix. There is no justification for this. No, this is simply not true. Most utilities on Mesmer were the same or weaker before Chronomancer was even added to the game. That includes things like Mirror Images, Null Field, Arcane Thievery, Mantras, Illusion of Life, ... That would be a very stupid decision by the balance team. I don't care about PvE. This is irrelevant because Wells are only available on Chrono so of course they should be balanced with regards to CS, it doesn't mean anything. You might have had a point if lots of core utilities had been nerfed because of CS but this is not the case. Besides, we recently got a massive well buff with the new Stretched Time trait (Alacrity on Wells). Yes, this was a stupid change because it makes all wells about equal instead of being more unique and good in different situations. But this is a problem of Anet being lazy with their trait/skill design and not with CS - not in any way. Double Gravity Well is silly to complain about because it is exclusive to Chronomancer, thus it is trivial to balance it with regards to CS.

"leads to what happened with phantasm utilities" "PvP phantasm spam chrono" That was fueled by Chronophantasma specifically. A trait that I've long advocated for removing/reworking. A trait that has been both more problematic and less fun than CS. It's not hard, for example imagine you make Phantasmal Duelist have an animation where you put your hand up in the air (remember how the old Phantasmal Berserker animation used to look like) that would already mean Magic Bullet would be more easy to discern. Or just add some kind of flash or glow as Terrorhuz said. There are a ton of options.

People are giving you bad answers, the real answer is that the balance between large scale fights and small scale fights is very finnicky in this game, particularly with regards to AI. For instance, if pets/mechs were more viable to kill in duels then they would have to be so weak that they would die extremely quickly in teamfights (notice how ranger has almost always been used on the sidenode rather in teamfights, etc). Thus, so as to not make these specs useless in larger scale fights, they have been given tools to keep their summons alive or to resummon them fairly regularly/quickly.

If you nerf all these things people will just play easier-to-play things like Torch offhand or even Shield. Because why would you risk taking something which can get countered by blocks, dodges, projectile denial, etc, that doesn't give you much reward (just daze) when you can just take a really consistent defensive skill instead. Magic Bullet has been a 1/2s cast, 2s stun skill since launch and hasn't been a problem, in fact for most of the duration of this game pistol hasn't been meta.

It's actually fine. This isn't really the thread for this discussion but back when Chrono didn't have Distortion it was fairly on par with core (still a bit better but not hugely). Which is why I was against adding Distortion again (if they removed it again now they would obviously have to massively buff core Mesmer). Not to mention it is a very fun mechanic and this game is supposed to be fun. I didn't say that the cast time is too quick, I was talking about the animation itself - specifically, how subtle it is combined with looking very similar to pistol #4 (one solution to this would be to change the pistol 4 animation). If this were changed it would instantly be much more easier to dodge consistently. What Terrorhuz said would also probably be fine "some bright flash on the mesmer or something of the sorts". Your nerf idea would make pistol strictly inferior to focus in every scenario.

It is a mostly made-up non-issue. I'm sorry that you got farmed by Shorts again.

Gw2 players do not understand high risk high reward, they would rather have a match of catalysts, spellbreakers and condi chronos bruising eachother for 15 minutes (this is hyperbole but directionally correct)

CS is fine. Magic Bullet animation is stupid yes.

34% difference 2% difference

Not how quickness works - or in other words: point proven.

First of all it's not 1/4s, second of all you are talking about quickness, not superspeed. In conclusion, GeneralBM does not know what he is talking about.

Not only can you dodge, block, interrupt, etc the skill when they first cast it, but you can also run away and dodge 3 times while in moa form. I almost never die in moa form.

You disagree that they did not dodge pistol 5 despite being able to do so in moa form?

You can literally dodge 3 times and run away

I do agree with moa revealing you on cast

the virtuoso in the screenshot is not terrorhuz

I guess because he is facing perpendicular to you and dagger skills do not auto-face your target (because they have no channel time - such skills tend to work this way, it's pretty annoying).