What's the point of Time Warp now ?

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

5sec quickness for 120 sec CD. Is this a joke ?

 

Is it because of the slow application ? Nerfing Danger Time  wasn't enough they had to change core skills too ?

[MithranArkanere.8957]

It also slows, it's unblockable, hits 10 targets, and creates an ethereal combo field.

 

But it's true it could use a little more oomph, and I believe the best option for it would be a new effect that protects boons from being removed while it lasts. A counter to boon removal. 

That way Feedback would become kind of the opposite of Winds of Disenchantment, preventing enemies from taking your quickness away.

 

Not that useful in PvE, but that's a design problem as NPC rarely remove boons, if ever, something they should try to do much more often to teach players to deal with boon strip. 

[Zenith.7301]

22 minutes ago, MithranArkanere.8957 said:

It also slows, it's unblockable, hits 10 targets, and creates an ethereal combo field.

 

But it's true it could use a little more oomph, and I believe the best option for it would be a new effect that protects boons from being removed while it lasts. A counter to boon removal. 

That way Feedback would become kind of the opposite of Winds of Disenchantment, preventing enemies from taking your quickness away.

 

Not that useful in PvE, but that's a design problem as NPC rarely remove boons, if ever, something they should try to do much more often to teach players to deal with boon strip. 

 

 

The obvious fix would be to make Time Warp 60 sec cd 20 secs of quickness+alacrity and apply chill+slow and pulse boon strip.

 

Would still be largely redundant in PvE since firebrand and renegade maintain trivial 100% uptime on alacrity and quickness with low cd mere utility/core skills, and chronomancer has been systematically castrated out of a support/utility role and left with lower DPS to boot in its utility spec that is infinitely harder to play and execute well compared to firebrand or renegade.

 

But at least the pulsing boon strip would have its uses in PvE.

[Sunshine.5014]

49 minutes ago, Zenith.7301 said:

 

 

The obvious fix would be to make Time Warp 60 sec cd 20 secs of quickness+alacrity and apply chill+slow and pulse boon strip.

 

Would still be largely redundant in PvE since firebrand and renegade maintain trivial 100% uptime on alacrity and quickness with low cd mere utility/core skills, and chronomancer has been systematically castrated out of a support/utility role and left with lower DPS to boot in its utility spec that is infinitely harder to play and execute well compared to firebrand or renegade.

 

But at least the pulsing boon strip would have its uses in PvE.

 

Or we should nerf alac and quickness from Rev/Guard. It's kinda OP for one slot to increase the total squad damage by 20%. It's better if it takes two slots to provide 100% uptime of an important boon like that.

[Zenith.7301]

1 hour ago, Sunshine.5014 said:

 

Or we should nerf alac and quickness from Rev/Guard. It's kinda OP for one slot to increase the total squad damage by 20%. It's better if it takes two slots to provide 100% uptime of an important boon like that.

 

Might is even more of a boost, why not start there then as well? What about stability+aegis and guardian's monopoly on it, making Fractals an absolute guardian stack because you lose more than 20% damage when you're forced to avoid getting pinballed by the boss?

 

Quite frankly, if it were up to me, I'd scrap might stacks (make might a sole boon) and spread boon access, but even then it sidesteps the issue, which is that alacrity was initially introduced because mesmer had nothing to offer besides portal skips/Time Warp and was getting passed over until HoT came.

 

I get that they are trying to force class and playstyle variety in order to avoid just stacking the highest DPS spec like eles used to do.

 

But the big mistake was not making alacrity/quickness 10 man and giving more unique auras like Assassin's Presence/Spotter to more classes to encourage bringing a variety of classes.

 

Reaper would benefit from an expertise aura, mirage from a condi damage aura, Herald from an incoming damage or healing received increase aura, etc.

 

Now we just have a whack a mole of which class brings the most practical boon access and high DPS, and that's completely crushed by Guardian while Scourge might see a tumble after the barrier share trimming in its DPS spec (which is fair, but scourge balance is tenuous, since it can go from completely mediocre to really stupid).

 

Initially classes also with poor boon access were justified because they would bring support in the form of debuff conditions, but debuff conditions were made utterly obsolete and niche thanks to the implementation of a breakbar. Even looking at Weakness, it does not come close to Protection in terms of damage mitigation against mobs without a breakbar. So necromancer and mesmer naturally suffered.

 

Boons are definitely a problem, but short of an overhaul I don't think we will see a fix to the class imbalance they create anytime soon.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Make time warp a 3D distorsion, with proj block, 2sec of slow instead of 1 or slow+chill.

It's not much but at least it'd help in WvW and may be in raids for Slow uptime.

[Alpha.1308]

14 hours ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

5sec quickness for 120 sec CD. Is this a joke ?

 

b-b-b-but it's slow too 

 

-glances at warrior bubble- 

and it's a fast... cast....?

 

at least they sorta....fixed it, and made it pulse every second, instead of every 2... for wvw....

 

[Genesis.5169]

I have no idea why they decreased the duration, only time mesmers ran in was for content with alot of people.

[Leonidrex.5649]

1 hour ago, Genesis.5169 said:

I have no idea why they decreased the duration, only time mesmers ran in was for content with alot of people.

end game raids stacked chronos, huge damage bonus from slow, and time warp was the way for them to stack it.
instead off balancing damage nerfing the slow was clearly the way

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

35 minutes ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

end game raids stacked chronos, huge damage bonus from slow, and time warp was the way for them to stack it.
instead off balancing damage nerfing the slow was clearly the way

They did both.

[Leonidrex.5649]

4 minutes ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

They did both.

in the typical mesmer fashion 🙂 
now we have medicore dps with slow, and cant get our own slow, all the while having the most unreliable rotations, having to use healing skill for dps, and being general bad for anything other then bosses, PogieS

[Genesis.5169]

14 hours ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

in the typical mesmer fashion 🙂 
now we have medicore dps with slow, and cant get our own slow, all the while having the most unreliable rotations, having to use healing skill for dps, and being general bad for anything other then bosses, PogieS

Mesmer life is the best life.

 

[MithranArkanere.8957]

On 8/20/2021 at 4:07 AM, Zenith.7301 said:

 

 

The obvious fix would be to make Time Warp 60 sec cd 20 secs of quickness+alacrity and apply chill+slow and pulse boon strip.

 

Would still be largely redundant in PvE since firebrand and renegade maintain trivial 100% uptime on alacrity and quickness with low cd mere utility/core skills, and chronomancer has been systematically castrated out of a support/utility role and left with lower DPS to boot in its utility spec that is infinitely harder to play and execute well compared to firebrand or renegade.

 

But at least the pulsing boon strip would have its uses in PvE.

That's be adding more of what there's already there.

 

What we need is more incomparable elements that are harder to tell whether they are better than something or not than with mere numeric values.

[Yoci.2481]

I really dont understand why anything in this game is balanced around how fast 10 people can whack down a scripted target.

[Genesis.5169]

19 hours ago, Yoci.2481 said:

I really dont understand why anything in this game is balanced around how fast 10 people can whack down a scripted target.

 

If this game was balanced around raids it would be way better trust me, this game is balanced around OW meta's and solo people who aren't the brightest.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Genesis.5169

[Yoci.2481]

At least for Mesmer that is just not true. It got nerfed constantly because of raids. Especially Chronomancer.

[Zenith.7301]

6 hours ago, Yoci.2481 said:

At least for Mesmer that is just not true. It got nerfed constantly because of raids. Especially Chronomancer.

 

 

Mesmer has gotten way more cumulative nerfs over PvP than it ever has for raids, don't even try.

 

Confusion was for the first time changed and did the same damage as bleeds but with the confusion proc bonus, PvP'ers cried their hearts out over it, and then Confusion was reverted into this unbalanceable mess of big confusion procs only, which was really strong in some fights and mediocre in others, and then we have the dumpsterfire it is now. When it could've stayed 100% bleed damage with the boss action bonus like torment, but as usual PvP is what strangles the mesmer.

 

This goes as to why phantasms have such hideously long cd's despite doing less damage than a Whirling Wrath with more ramp up, or why Cry of Frustration has more than double the cd of Mindwrack despite being the condi equivalent and far weaker, and Diversion is single target only instead of AoE due to the Guild Wars 2 vanilla beta having PvP nerf it down.

 

It's why Moa signet is a ridiculous 120 sec cd, and why well is a 90 sec cd.

 

Mind Stab also at some point had an aoe daze and did more damage, and then that was changed. Guess why. Yeah, not PvE.

 

There used to be a trait for clones dying causing conditions. That too was removed. Guess why, not PvE.

 

Mesmer has been an absolute hostage to WvW roaming and sPvP inspired balance.

 

Chrono doesn't even have a distortion anymore courtesy of PvP inspiring devs to replace distortion with continuum split to nerf bunker builds in spvp.

 

Mantra of Pain is still a meme utility far worse than the Firebrand Mantra. Why? Not PvE, but PvP related burst holding mesmer skills hostage.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Leonidrex.5649]

4 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

 

 

Mesmer has gotten way more cumulative nerfs over PvP than it ever has for raids, don't even try.

 

Confusion was for the first time changed and did the same damage as bleeds but with the confusion proc bonus, PvP'ers cried their hearts out over it, and then Confusion was reverted into this unbalanceable mess of big confusion procs only, which was really strong in some fights and mediocre in others, and then we have the dumpsterfire it is now. When it could've stayed 100% bleed damage with the boss action bonus like torment, but as usual PvP is what strangles the mesmer.

 

This goes as to why phantasms have such hideously long cd's despite doing less damage than a Whirling Wrath with more ramp up, or why Cry of Frustration has more than double the cd of Mindwrack despite being the condi equivalent and far weaker, and Diversion is single target only instead of AoE due to the Guild Wars 2 vanilla beta having PvP nerf it down.

 

It's why Moa signet is a ridiculous 120 sec cd, and why well is a 90 sec cd.

 

Mind Stab also at some point had an aoe daze and did more damage, and then that was changed. Guess why. Yeah, not PvE.

 

There used to be a trait for clones dying causing conditions. That too was removed. Guess why, not PvE.

 

Mesmer has been an absolute hostage to WvW roaming and sPvP inspired balance.

 

Chrono doesn't even have a distortion anymore courtesy of PvP inspiring devs to replace distortion with continuum split to nerf bunker builds in spvp.

 

Mantra of Pain is still a meme utility far worse than the Firebrand Mantra. Why? Not PvE, but PvP related burst holding mesmer skills hostage.

add in removal of traits, on CC trait in chrono that slowed and delt damage, F3 stun in domination, elusive mind removal, chaotic interuption...
now that I think about it, mesmer got absolutely kittened, since I started playing, they got more kitten removed then all other classes combined lol

[Chrolo.8536]

At the momemt its a bit of a sad afair with Time Warp. As I understand it was nerfed because of the slow it gives in combination with the Power Chrono build and its interaction with slow. 

 

They should change it in a way that makes it good again for core mes and not broken with Chrono. Maybe just remove the slow and half the CD? And reduce target cap to 5 allies/enemies again? Or leave it at 120 but make it really impactful.

 

The Elite choices for core mes are very situational (stealth and cc) and a third skill which is good in most situations would be great. But 5s quickness on 120s CD is just not fun to use.

[Mik.3401]

I think the only use it has is to give virtuoso enough quickness to even finish casting shatter before the enemy finishes countering. Otherwise it is just another dead elite skill - probably making space so that the virtuoso one can shine (and yet it also sucks lol).

[Noodle Ant.1605]

it got butchered because having 8 dps chronos maintaining perma quick while doing top tier dps was deemed too scary for pve

 

i have no idea why it didnt get skillsplit for pvp/wvw though

 

maybe slotting chronophantasma should halve outgoing boon duration or something, or chronomancer should have an alt version like virtuoso sword #3 that changes it somehow. but at the same time, 9 non-chronos arent allowed to be able to perma quick with the version that is left. mathematically, this means that the total quick output of the skill cannot surpass 10%, which already puts the skill back to its presently weak state

 

or perhaps a there should a be glamour trait that increases a base target cap of 5 to 10, which would justify a base output of up to 20%…?

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Noodle Ant.1605

[OriOri.8724]

On 8/20/2021 at 12:42 AM, Zenith.7301 said:

I get that they are trying to force class and playstyle variety in order to avoid just stacking the highest DPS spec like eles used to do.

 

But the big mistake was not making alacrity/quickness 10 man and giving more unique auras like Assassin's Presence/Spotter to more classes to encourage bringing a variety of classes.

 

Initially classes also with poor boon access were justified because they would bring support in the form of debuff conditions, but debuff conditions were made utterly obsolete and niche thanks to the implementation of a breakbar. Even looking at Weakness, it does not come close to Protection in terms of damage mitigation against mobs without a breakbar. So necromancer and mesmer naturally suffered.

 

Boons are definitely a problem, but short of an overhaul I don't think we will see a fix to the class imbalance they create anytime soon.

I think that class unique buffs are a rather lazy way to encourage more class diversity. Doing that means that ANet doesn't have to tackle any more fundamental issues with a class to give it a better reason to be used, which means that outside instanced content like that, nothing is better for those classes.

 

But back to the original topic, time warp is just bad compared to other quickness options available in the game. It brings nothing that justifies a 2 minute CD.

 

It suffered the same fate as everything that mesmers have, one or two builds were overperforming for various reasons, and so ANet nerfed an unrelated  thing to the ground in order to bring the builds in line. When the core design flaws are the reasons for overperforming builds, and they aren't addressed, you eventually end up with a spec full of underwhelming options that just isn't nearly as much fun to play.

 

 

[Zenith.7301]

14 minutes ago, OriOri.8724 said:

I think that class unique buffs are a rather lazy way to encourage more class diversity. Doing that means that ANet doesn't have to tackle any more fundamental issues with a class to give it a better reason to be used, which means that outside instanced content like that, nothing is better for those classes.

 

But back to the original topic, time warp is just bad compared to other quickness options available in the game. It brings nothing that justifies a 2 minute CD.

 

It suffered the same fate as everything that mesmers have, one or two builds were overperforming for various reasons, and so ANet nerfed an unrelated  thing to the ground in order to bring the builds in line. When the core design flaws are the reasons for overperforming builds, and they aren't addressed, you eventually end up with a spec full of underwhelming options that just isn't nearly as much fun to play.

 

 

 

Sure, but given the history of the scope of changes given to classes in class balance patches, do you think this is a realistic expectation instead of the lazy, quick fix?

 

I can count the amount of mesmer phantasm style reworks on my hand. It's called exactly one out of five fingers. Ranger pets have been a disaster since inception, only fixed by their removal via soulbeast, which gives enough of a stat boost to compensate for the abysmal power weapon coefficients that the pets don't compensate for because they don't cleave or scale with traits, consumables, runes, and sigils like other classes do-- and why all ranger meta builds tend to be condition builds unaffected by a pet tax.

 

Or maybe why necromancer has been a mess until Scourge, which removed the ill designed death shroud, preventing necromancers from receiving healing, and a spec which gave them the utility the core class so sorely lacks.

 

Or maybe Revenant without renegade, whose sheer boon output and utility eclipses the core design flaws of the energy system that cripples the other specs.

 

The point is, Anet does not do class design in depth or with enough frequency to justify expecting anything more than simple, quick solutions.

[Nezekan.2671]

Core mesmer elites all need a revisit. They all range from situational to irrelevant.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

18 hours ago, OriOri.8724 said:

I think that class unique buffs are a rather lazy way to encourage more class diversity. Doing that means that ANet doesn't have to tackle any more fundamental issues with a class to give it a better reason to be used, which means that outside instanced content like that, nothing is better for those classes.

 

But back to the original topic, time warp is just bad compared to other quickness options available in the game. It brings nothing that justifies a 2 minute CD.

 

It suffered the same fate as everything that mesmers have, one or two builds were overperforming for various reasons, and so ANet nerfed an unrelated  thing to the ground in order to bring the builds in line. When the core design flaws are the reasons for overperforming builds, and they aren't addressed, you eventually end up with a spec full of underwhelming options that just isn't nearly as much fun to play.

 

 

 

A lazy way, but an effective way and somewhat more effective than some solutions we got. 

I think you better want to exist, to be jailed, in a predefined role ;  chrono support/tank; spirit druid/SB, war banner, kiter etc rather than be free but because of sufficiency, benchmark and mechanics no one wants you in group no matter you role.

 

Plus unique buffs / restricted boons/buffs can also compensate for low dps / rotation, for example people with difficulties or big newbies, or the high risk of some classes; otherwise most of dps classes have only one thing to offer : dps, and they are not even the best for that compared to Ren/Fb/scourge meta because of the same reason. Even war now is forgotten in fractals.  See weaver, thiefs ... and chrono ...

 

I believe if all classes got their (accessible w/o huge sacrifice) "assassin presence" "empower allies", banners ... some unique  and effective support; they might be worth the risk no matter if it's not the best "dps" slot.

Players will always find the "best" composition, but may be we'll see more squad with diversity of classes and you won't be totally useless

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Zhaid Zhem.6508