Revert the nerfs to staff mirage

[Zenith.7301]

I didn't say people didn't want to play easy specs, that's your strawman. I said people will play hard specs if they're effective despite your claims that they will opt for easy specs. If firebrand had a condi engineer rotation but equally effective performance, people would use it regardless if scourge's epidemic didn't exist and trivialize so many mechanics (which is why it either should have its range of spread halved or a nerf to its amount of conditions transferred applied). People doing CM's are not as inept and lazy as you suggest them to be.

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Zenith.7301 said:

I didn't say people didn't want to play easy specs, that's your strawman. I said people will play hard specs if they're effective despite your claims that they will opt for easy specs. If firebrand had a condi engineer rotation but equally effective performance, people would use it regardless if scourge's epidemic didn't exist and trivialize so many mechanics (which is why it either should have its range of spread halved or a nerf to its amount of conditions transferred applied). People doing CM's are not as inept and lazy as you suggest them to be.

Inept? No. Lazy? Yes. If it wasn't the case people would not use consumables , choya tonics, epidemic on anomaly, minimally prestack boons at mistlock for 98/99, etc. to speed things up in average non-speedclear groups.

Support is and always will be a factor. That's why CFB + Scourge + Renegade are dominant. You only have 5 party slots.

It's even true when raiding casually. You will see far more staff mirages than axe mirages even when you have more than 2 staff mirages at SH for example , and there is no denying axe does more than staff mirage. (which again, is the topic of the thread by the way: staff mirage)

When's the last time you seen a core condi engineer? Condi holo  actually has decent burst by the way.

I leave you with this quote from Roul (SC) from last month (source https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/orac3e/what_makes_a_dps_class_viable_in_raids/h6huaxd/):

Quote

 

the currently biggest offenders in the meta in terms of dps, which are Chrono, Firebrand, Renegade, DH and Mirage (admittedly the last two ones a bit less). Okay, let's go:

Something the final dps number of a golem isn't able to properly capture is the burst, and the consistent dps of a class. The end number is a mixture of consistent dps and bursting, which ends up distorting the final results and, even worse, actually inflates the dps of a lot of classes.

Let's look at weaver: The current condi/hybrid weaver rotations end on weaveself, the strongest burst skill in the game (20% condi dmg for 30 seconds). This skill is up every 60ish seconds, and makes your dps skyrocket. Weavers consistent dps on the other hand is, well, garbage. This means if you end a boss with weaveself, your dps ends up being quite decent, if you don't, it is significantly lower (I remember running it in a few MOs back in the day, we are talking 34k dps vs 39k dps on it depending on when it dies). It also suffers more from phases if your weaveself isn't up at the start of said phase, once again because your consistent dps is terrible.

Now let's look at chrono. Chrono has a gigantic burst via Continuum split, making it very strong whenever the class has CS up at the start of phases or ends the fight on CS (KC is the prime example for that). Sounds like cweaver, right? Well, the problem is chrono has great consistent dps, simply making it rely less on when exactly a boss dies than it does for condi weaver.

Renegade/Mirage work in a completely different way to this. They simply have completely insane consistent dps (as I said mirage is less of a problem since it's only op on bosses that attack a lot), and since last patch they also have a decent burst on top of that. This means it basically doesn't matter whatsoever when the boss dies, these classes are probably the best ones in the game to play right now in terms of raw dps, on bosses that are considered bad for renegade it still is almost top dps. To make it worse, even rr rens are top dps on some bosses. We are talking about a class that is top dps whilst providing alacrity here. Same is the case for staff mirage, there are some bosses where the only class that can outdps staff mirage is, well, axe mirage.

...Which brings me to the last scenario of gameplay that makes a class broken, firebrand/DH. Both of these specs actually do not have decent consistent dps, but here's the thing: they don't need to. DH has the least downtime between bursts in the game, with it being roughly 7ish seconds inbetween your f1s. I'd go as far as to say that you basically will never not end on a burst on dh. Granted, in hardcore raids that only makes them top dps on bosses that allow for permanent aegis uptime, however even without that it still makes them a decent pick/top dps contender. Maybe someone disagrees with me saying dh is broken, which I can respect.

Regarding firebrand, ever since virtues became meta you have your tome up incredibely often aswell, which makes same thing true for it too, it usually always ends on a burst. On top of that:

1: Precasting aotj and then resetting it with RF is still a thing, and it's absurdly broken, see here. This is the real currently strongest burst in the game, which benchmarks don't really show.

2: Tome resets. There actually are a few of bosses in the game that reset tomes, and every single one firebrand is op/very strong on. Same is the case on DH with spear of justice resets, however it is slightly less op.

So this is it, I hope I'm making sense here, I had my 2nd vaccine yesterday and am not feeling so great lol, TLDR guardian ren and mes are way stronger than other classes, dps benchmarks don't capture the individual burst and consistent dps of classes properly. If I had to rank them, it'd probly go something like: #1 RR Ren, #2 Chrono, #3 normal Ren #4 Firebrand, #5 mirage (since it is only broken on bosses that attack a lot). After that, the list would go something like #6 Necro if stacked for bug, #7 DH #8 Thief (atleast it's very strong on a few bosses), #9 Dps War (amazing consistent dps, quite a decent pick tbh), #10 Weaver and Engi (They are honestly kinda in the same boat, maybe they deserve a slightly higher spot on the list, however I think everything after the #5 spot on this list is pretty close), #11 Necro if not stacked. War with banners is kinda hard to classify, it's obviously still super super strong, I guess it would be #2 after RR Ren

 

and re: your weaver rant , this comment from 3 months ago when power weaver was randomly nerfed:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/nvs3qr/i_feel_the_need_to_talk_about_the_most_recent_ele/h19fvg1/
 

Quote

Elementalis benchmarks show you basically nothing of the builds actual dps.

Condition weaver ends on weaveself, which is quite a massive dps inflation right at the end, boosting yourself up from what would usually be a significantly lower end number. If the boss happens to end on weaveself in a real scenario, good for you, if it doesn't, unlucky. Truth be told even if you do have that perfect ending, you still will not have any kind of massive advantage over other classes.

Power weaver has some of the worst burst in the game, it's slow, it doesn't peak high, it's cluncy, making it a terrible power class, since what makes power classes better than condi classes in some scenarios is burst. It only starts being able to compete with other classes as soon as bosses reach sub 50, which at most bosses is already too late.

You have a wrong idea of supports. In a perfect world supports would indeed have no dps, but right now that is simply not the case. Won't go too much into detail, but the biggest offenders to this right now are most definitely condition ren, warrior and guardian. Condi ren has absurdly high dps on every boss even if maintaining alacrity ("RR ren"), warrior can have the dps of a normal dps spec while bringing banners on many scenarios, and no, guardian does not lose a lot of dps for maintaining quickness at all.

There most definitely are classes with outstanding dps rn, mirage is one, renegade is one, and pchrono/guardian are also still very op on some scenarios. Benchmarks simply do not properly show this.

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Stavros.8249]

The dps with the changes to confusion are is 31k

I still think that is low for conditions support, but it's better now. Also increase the alacrity duration, it's so small. I do ambuses like crazy and barely keep it at 100% upkeep. 

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Stavros.8249

[Leonidrex.5649]

On 9/10/2021 at 8:26 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

Inept? No. Lazy? Yes. If it wasn't the case people would not use consumables , choya tonics, epidemic on anomaly, minimally prestack boons at mistlock for 98/99, etc. to speed things up in average non-speedclear groups.

Support is and always will be a factor. That's why CFB + Scourge + Renegade are dominant. You only have 5 party slots.

It's even true when raiding casually. You will see far more staff mirages than axe mirages even when you have more than 2 staff mirages at SH for example , and there is no denying axe does more than staff mirage. (which again, is the topic of the thread by the way: staff mirage)

When's the last time you seen a core condi engineer? Condi holo  actually has decent burst by the way.

I leave you with this quote from Roul (SC) from last month (source https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/orac3e/what_makes_a_dps_class_viable_in_raids/h6huaxd/):

and re: your weaver rant , this comment from 3 months ago when power weaver was randomly nerfed:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/nvs3qr/i_feel_the_need_to_talk_about_the_most_recent_ele/h19fvg1/
 

 

I dont know man, spending hours to get choya tonic, downloading 3rd party program to have it as a easy to access feature, learning skips, and precasting to make them work to save 5s doesnt sound lazy to me but what do I know, im a filthy hfb player that greeds dps 😄

[Kondor.2904]

1 hour ago, Stavros.8249 said:

The dps with the changes to confusion are is 31k

I still think that is low for conditions support, but it's better now. Also increase the alacrity duration, it's so small. I do ambuses like crazy and barely keep it at 100% upkeep. 

 

This doesn't take confusion into consideration, which boosts it to around ~33k to ~45k. 

[Nezekan.2671]

On 9/19/2021 at 10:01 AM, Kondor.2904 said:

This doesn't take confusion into consideration, which boosts it to around ~33k to ~45k. 

It also doesn't take into consideration how most bosses have invuln phase and your dps will go down crazy because staff mirage has one of the highest ramp up times in the game and is punished completely if the boss loses all conditions and they have to be applied again. There are like 3 bosses alacrity mirage performs better than Alacren.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Nezekan.2671

[Kondor.2904]

54 minutes ago, Nezekan.2671 said:

It also doesn't take into consideration how most bosses have invuln phase and your dps will go down crazy because staff mirage has one of the highest ramp up times in the game and is punished completely if the boss loses all conditions and they have to be applied again. There are like 3 bosses alacrity mirage performs better than Alacren.

Well, yes, that's a design trade-off of being a confusion class. You're less useful on certain encounters and unrivalled on others. Some builds are more niche than others. 

If you have concerns about anet design decisions, you can surely share them and propose potential changes that would be healthy for mesmer in your opinion 🙂

Edited September 20, 2021 by Kondor.2904

[Zenith.7301]

49 minutes ago, Kondor.2904 said:

Well, yes, that's a design trade-off of being a confusion class. You're less useful on certain encounters and unrivalled on others. Some builds are more niche than others. 

If you have concerns about anet design decisions, you can surely share them and propose potential changes that would be healthy for mesmer in your opinion 🙂

 

Already proposed several times, by changing how confusion works to be more like torment.

 

The problem is the changes they did to confusion were supposed to be a rebalancing, but in reality they were just flat nerfs in most content, period.

 

Also, placing alacrity on mirage is ridiculous. Staff on its own should be a worthwhile support weapon, which it isn't. More importantly, chronomancer is supposed to be the support spec, and now it's basically entirely supplanted as a support spec.

 

Ideally, staff should grants 100% alacrity uptime via chaos storm and chaos armor being made a 10 person aura benefit that also grants alacrity.

 

The place for shield would be to expand the supportive capabilities to quickness, aegis/prot/regen/vigor provision with supporting traits from the chronomancer traitline at the expense of DPS. But in both cases the boon maintainenance needs to be drastically increased. Wells in particular need significant buffing and reduction in CD.

 

Mirage can be the dedicated condition DPS spec and virtuoso the power DPS spec.

 

Cry of Frustration should be retooled. The confusion stacks should be doubled and combined with Mindwrack, and Cry of Frustration should be the debuff shatter that applies blind+chill+slow+weakness per clone shattered, if it's insufficiently powerful it can also strip boons per clone shattered. Distortion should apply aoe daze by default, and the trait affecting it should instead make it a stun.

[Infusion.7149]

Josh Davis said on WVW stream that game balance is on maintenance til EOD drops except for things that are gamebreaking. Given Chaos Vortex is 10 man and two mirage can apply might + alacrity to 10 targets rather reliably (most people can do 40-50% uptime) while some benchmarkers can do it solo with food/utility I would not say that it will be changing. If you can upkeep alacrity on chrono 100% with staff alone then you would have the scenario chrono would provide quickness and alacrity and I doubt they would want that. It is more likely Lost Time is given group alacrity so you choose quickness or alacrity than such a change.

Anyhow condi renegade (it was 33K RR and 37K full cDPS before torment changes) and scourge could both use a shave after the torment changes in the interim along with cFB.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Nezekan.2671]

If you use boon duration sigil, and a rune that gives boon duration coupled with utility, one alac mirage can give alacrity to 10 people reliably. Its like 7%-10% DPS loss, but its pretty good if you need alacrity. There is no need to take 2 alacrity mirage when any other condi dps would be better in the slot, except on very specific confusion bosses like Largos. Twin Largos is like Alacrity mirage dream. The squad splits in two, so each needs one alacrity provider and confusion is very effective.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Nezekan.2671

[Zenith.7301]

Staff chrono would do significantly less damage than staff mirage, so why does it matter if it can apply quickness and alacrity? These are called tradeoffs.

More importantly, it would give the support utility function to its intended spec, the chronomancer, and leave the design space open for mirage to function as a complete condition spec.

This is the problem with Virtuoso and Vindicator. We have support specs in Herald and Chronomancer that have already been cannibalized by PoF specs that do everything they are supposed to do better, on top of having more role flexibility and competency. That needs to be reversed.

Herald should be the support revenant spec just like chronomancer should be the support mesmer spec (it's why it was designed to begin with, mesmer utility ebfore chrono was nonexistent outside time warp and portal skips, so they invented alacrity to make sure it had a place in group content where portal skips were useless). Vindicator and Virtuoso should be the power DPS specs.

Virtuoso and Vindicator as they are stand to tell that Anet clearly has not learend the lesson from chronomancer and Herald. Same goes for them trying to make Harbinger a fit in power and support all in one while Reaper is still a garbage power DPS spec and Scourge would benefit from being expanded as a support spec while Harbinger could focus on the condi DPS spec theme.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Infusion.7149]

5 minutes ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Staff chrono would do significantly less damage than staff mirage, so why does it matter if it can apply quickness and alacrity? These are called tradeoffs.

 

More importantly, it would give the support utility function to its intended spec, the chronomancer, and leave the design space open for mirage to function as a complete condition spec.

Chrono before nerfs was doing what, 11K DPS when it was giving both alac + quickness? Now it is 27K  or something on StM.

Seeing how condi chrono can do alacrity already and staff is condi what is even the point? https://lucky-noobs.com/builds/condition-support-chronomancer

Power StM chrono usually doesn't run Well of Recall https://lucky-noobs.com/builds/power-chrono-support

Snowcrows and hardstuck drop it completely, they don't even include it as a variant.

It is quite clear they don't really want one class to give both quickness and alacrity, especially to ten targets. You can do 10 man quickness StM but it isn't actually 10 man it requires maneuvering position.

 

[Zenith.7301]

6 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Chrono before nerfs was doing what, 11K DPS when it was giving both alac + quickness? Now it is 27K  or something on StM.

Seeing how condi chrono can do alacrity already and staff is condi what is even the point? https://lucky-noobs.com/builds/condition-support-chronomancer

Power StM chrono usually doesn't run Well of Recall https://lucky-noobs.com/builds/power-chrono-support

Snowcrows and hardstuck drop it completely, they don't even include it as a variant.

It is quite clear they don't really want one class to give both quickness and alacrity, especially to ten targets. You can do 10 man quickness StM but it isn't actually 10 man it requires maneuvering position.

 

Numbers are irrelevant, they are the most easily fixed in a single patch. Mechanics is more important, and what guide makers and world racers do follows the balance, not the other way around. They tried to fix chrono DPS to be competitive with firebrigade and failed at it badly, when they should have instead spread the alacrity+quickness utility to other classes while keeping single boon higher DPS variants an alternative at the cost of one whole DPS slot (which is what staff mirage does outside dedicated condi bosses where confusion needs to be reworked to work more like Torment anyways).

It is not quite clear they don't want one class giving alacrity and quickness, when it already existed before, continues to exist with some Herald comps, and is a totally arbitrary line when Healbrand can bring every other boon but alacrity, druid and warrior bring irreplaceable utility by any other class, yet somehow being a spec that brings alacrity and quickness is one bridge too far.

People complain about DPS balance, but healthy spread of competitive and viable support builds is a far bigger issue now. There needs to be more competitive alternatives to firebrigade. Healbrand in particular is utterly oppressive as a support spec either because it does too much, or the others are too limited in what they bring as support specs.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Infusion.7149]

4 minutes ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Numbers are irrelevant, they are the most easily fixed in a single patch. Mechanics is more important, and what guide makers and world racers do follows the balance, not the other way around. They tried to fix chrono DPS to be competitive with firebrigade and failed at it badly, when they should have instead spread the alacrity+quickness utility to other classes while keeping single boon higher DPS variants an alternative at the cost of one whole DPS slot (which is what staff mirage does outside dedicated condi bosses where confusion needs to be reworked to work more like Torment anyways).

It is not quite clear they don't want one class giving alacrity and quickness, when it already existed before, continues to exist with some Herald comps, and is a totally arbitrary line when Healbrand can bring every other boon but alacrity, druid and warrior bring irreplaceable utility by any other class, yet somehow being a spec that brings alacrity and quickness is one bridge too far.

Show me where someone is putting out quickness and alacrity on a herald. Herald doesn't even put out quickness.

Firebrand came after chronomancer, they did not fix chrono DPS to be competitive with firebrand. Firebrand was buffed too many times and the exposed change basically made it defacto standard in fractals over StM chrono and quickness scrapper (which has none of the ramp issues of chrono so it is not a chrono issue).

[Zenith.7301]

25 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Show me where someone is putting out quickness and alacrity on a herald. Herald doesn't even put out quickness.

Firebrand came after chronomancer, they did not fix chrono DPS to be competitive with firebrand. Firebrand was buffed too many times and the exposed change basically made it defacto standard in fractals over StM chrono and quickness scrapper (which has none of the ramp issues of chrono so it is not a chrono issue).

 

.....Herald F2 brings a 20% boon duration increase, and is used in some heal variants. It is a complement to support chrono's boon provision, not a substitute for it.

They kept fixing chronomancer DPS up after they removed its ability to reliably maintain alacrity and quickness to be a quickness DPS alternative to quickbrand, it failed badly at it instead of reverting to chronomancer sharing alacrity and quickness and spreading that capacity to other support specs.

StM is a late stage nerfed chrono spec, a failed experiment that should have been reverted long ago after realizing you would have to buff chrono DPS to the point where it once again breaks power DPS chrono in order for support chrono to compete with firebrand and now scrapper. Again, this is an issue with proper role division and them trying to stretch out some specs to fit all roles.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Infusion.7149]

https://lucky-noobs.com/teamcompositions
 

StM looks pretty meta to me. Only not included on Sabetha.

[Zenith.7301]

On a website limited to W1-W3, of which half the recommendations are as a quickness tank or on fights that disfavor condi specs.

[Infusion.7149]

The point was StM chrono is still relevant despite how you frame it as unplayable.

Even if you are talking about W4-7 it's still usable , some people still use condi StM for TL /SH for example if they don't use firebrand or scrapper and you would always rather have a well played StM over firebrand for W6 CA or W7 Adina.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Stavros.8249]

Well today we got this change

 

Chaos Vortex: Targeting for the boons provided by this skill will now prioritize party members and then squad members in the area before enhancing other players. This skill now additionally draws a thin circle on the ground visible by allies for 1 second, making it easier to gauge distance and positioning for granting boons to allies.

 

Nice utility though

 

[Nezekan.2671]

2 hours ago, Stavros.8249 said:

Well today we got this change

 

Chaos Vortex: Targeting for the boons provided by this skill will now prioritize party members and then squad members in the area before enhancing other players. This skill now additionally draws a thin circle on the ground visible by allies for 1 second, making it easier to gauge distance and positioning for granting boons to allies.

 

Nice utility though

 

Its seems to have created a bug where an enemy needs to be in the area or boons do not trigger

[Ilsalay.6831]

"In the area" must be immediately next to you. I just did a round of strikes and boons were triggering maybe every other strike. And they weren't triggering on me, let alone the party. Personal DPS and Squad DPS loss.

 

Good change.

[KinkyPotato.4219]

Yeah Chaos Vortex doesn't apply its boons anymore - tried it in Lion's Arch with no enemies and I did not receive Alacrity or Might at all (tried it 10 times). Yay

[Kondor.2904]

23 minutes ago, KinkyPotato.4219 said:

Yeah Chaos Vortex doesn't apply its boons anymore - tried it in Lion's Arch with no enemies and I did not receive Alacrity or Might at all (tried it 10 times). Yay

It's bugged and applies them around your target instead of you 

[Stavros.8249]

Also doesn't apply buffs at all if you have no target.

[Levetty.1279]

On 9/22/2021 at 6:15 PM, Kondor.2904 said:

It's bugged and applies them around your target instead of you 

If this was Guard or Rev it would be fixed within minutes.