Chaos traitline and regeneration

[Ellon.4316]

A post about regeneration, why it is important for mesmer and also why the current situation is lacking. In short regeneration is a boon that gives health every second. It does quite some healing but more importantly it interacts with multiple traits in the chaos trait line. In chaos we have:

• “Illusionary Membrane”: Increase outgoing condi damage, decrease incoming condi damage while having regeneration
• “Chaotic Persistence”: Gain concentration and expertise while having regeneration

Both are minor traits so picking chaos means you will always have these traits. These traits are pretty strong but getting regeneration consistently as a mesmer is quite difficult. Below are the ways to get regen and why they are not always ideal. Will also suggest some balance changes to make this trait line more consistent. Yes, i understand the irony in making chaos consistent.

(chaos) Metaphysical Rejuvenation

This minor trait in chaos gives 10 second regen with an internal cooldown of 15 seconds. The only catch is that you need to get hit while below 75% health. “Getting hit in the face” is something I want to avoid. Not make it part of the DPS rotation. This is also a reactive trait and therefore impossible to trigger if you are not being hit.

(chaos) Chaotic transference and staff

The trait “chaotic transference” in the chaos traitline makes it so that we get protection and regen when we get chaos armor. This is 5 seconds of regen on a 15 second cooldown, so 33% uptime. It also means we can’t take “chaotic potency” which increases our condi damage mostly for staff. So we get the choice between more condi damage, or more condi damage and defense but only 33% of the time.

(chaos) Bountiful Disillusionment

Gives regen on shatter 4, which is 10 seconds of regen on a 50 second cooldown or when playing virtuoso that cooldown is 30 second. If you are playing chrono you get “resistance” instead of regen. So depending on the elite spec it is either 33% uptime, 20% uptime or 0% uptime. Now shatter 4 is a defense skill you want to keep for dangerous situations so making it a part of your rotation might not be a solid choice. Still the regen application is ok, not good, just ok.

(virtuoso) Duelist's reversal

This trait gives 3 seconds of regen on a 3 second internal cooldown when you block/evade an attack. So it is possible to get 100% regen uptime with this if you are attacked every 3 seconds and dodge/block those attacks each time. To make it worse it is again a reactive trait so no solid way to trigger this.

(mirage) Renewing Oasis on mirage

This one is solid, 4 seconds of regen on dodge (not evade so just dodging triggers it) with no internal cooldown. Awesome trait no complaints here.

The rest

Now there are some other skills that give regen. Namely virtuoso heal, signet of inspiration or the prismatic understanding trait. These are random so you might get regen, you might not. These are unreliable at best for getting regeneration.

 

My point

Let’s say i want 100% regen uptime to trigger those DPS traits (assuming open world, no dedicated supports, and not gearing into 100% boon duration) then i need to play mirage or play virtuoso with staff. Pick the correct traits and even then i only consistently hit 66% uptime by using “chaos armor” on staff with the “chaotic transference” trait and shatter 4 with the “bountiful disillusionment” trait.

That is an awful lot of work to be allowed to use 66% of the minor traits in chaos. Traits you can’t even switch to something else. Looking at other classes mesmers are quite unique in being the only ones that have half a traitline nuked by missing a boon without even a single utility skill to get that boon.  Signet of inspiration doesn’t count, it is 9% chance to get 3 seconds of regen with a cooldown of 10 seconds.

 

The big fix, the point of this wall of text, the reason you have made it this far

My suggestion to fix this consists of changes to two traits. The goal is to make regen application more consistent without having to make a lot of compromises. Regen uptime will not increase greatly so there is still some trade-offs to be made. Also getting an easy 100% regeneration in core trait lines without gearing for boon duration might be a bit much.

Metaphysical Rejuvenation

This trait will now give 5 seconds of regen when applying torment, internal cooldown stays at 15 seconds.

Part of chaos trait line so it feels like a good candidate to improve the chaos traits. Because the application is more consistent the duration is lowered. This change also means the chaos traitline syncs really nice with staff and scepter (both apply torment) without buffing virtuoso too much. Condi virtuoso can still access this regen via the illusions trait line which gives torment on shatter.

Capping 100% regen will still be quite hard to do but at least there is a guaranteed 33% uptime. Not sure if this change is the correct way to solve the regen issue, might be too much of a nerf but making it too strong means guardians get jealous which results in 5 years of mesmer nerfs.

Healing prism

This minor trait will now give 3 seconds of group wide regen instead of the heal, internal cooldown and other bonuses stay the same

This is a trait in Inspiration that heals allies when we heal ourselves (532 health on 10s internal cooldown). It gives another way of regen for a super defensive chaos/inspiration build. It also allows mesmer to be a better group healer when geared for healing/boon duration at the cost of a lot of DPS. Firebrand, mechanist, druid will still be able to provide better support but considering Inspiration is a core trait line and not an elite spec that seems fair. Plus we can't make the firebrand players too jealous, 5 years is a really long time.

Changing the trait this way will slightly nerf it when not geared for healing but buffs it when geared properly. The numbers: on 0 healing power this means 532 healing becomes 390 healing over 3 seconds (this trait also gives 13% of power as healing power so the actual value will be closer to 450 - 500). With 1000 healing power and 50% boon duration it changes from a flat heal of 732 to a total of 1147 over 4.5 seconds.

More importantly most if not all mesmer group heal traits are quite bursty, this gives a group heal over time effect which is currently lacking in the mesmer toolkit.

 

Unimportant anti "git gud" part

The chaos traitline to me always felt like it missed something because outside of team comps it is near impossible to get the full potential. Yeah it benches nice against golems with some builds but remove regen from the equation and you immediately lose >10% DPS.

Also my suggested changes might be terrible. I tried to keep them fair without nerfing/buffing mesmer too much but i'm not a game designer or balance genius. Far from it. So feel free to suggest other fixes/changes. The big point is that i just want that flat 10% condi dps increase from chaos 😜 

 

[mungozen.2379]

The thing about your metaphysical rejuvenation changes is….Superior Rune of Tormenting

I don’t think we need nearly identical triggers on a 6 piece Rune and a Minor Trait. 
 

That said, I don’t disagree that another source of regen would be welcome.  

[xXxNikiGoesWildxXx.3678]

You get regeneration from chaos aura. So that is where you get that regeneration uptime in pvp/wvw while in pve it is very possible someone else gonna give you boons. 

For virtuoso i would like regeneration to be moved from Duelist's Reversal to Sharpening Sorrow . So it would fit that chaos traitline condi direction much better. 

[Ellon.4316]

16 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

I don’t think we need nearly identical triggers on a 6 piece Rune and a Minor Trait. 

 

Fair point, agree that identical triggers is not ideal. Not sure what the correct fix would be.

 

2 hours ago, Svez Poizon XD.5268 said:

pve it is very possible someone else gonna give you boons. 

Sure, in instanced content especially. My point is mainly outside instanced content were you would not have a dedicated support with you all the time. You could use the jade protocols for EOD, take tormenting runes and there are probably some other ways but i think those buffs should "enhance" your build and not be something your build depends on.

When it comes to pvp/wvw i'm not experienced enough to comment on, so if you say that works then i guess it works.

 

2 hours ago, Svez Poizon XD.5268 said:

For virtuoso i would like regeneration to be moved from Duelist's Reversal to Sharpening Sorrow . So it would fit that chaos traitline condi direction much better. 

Ooh, i like this change.

[Xaylin.1860]

10 minutes ago, Ellon.4316 said:

Sure, in instanced content especially. My point is mainly outside instanced content were you would not have a dedicated support with you all the time.

I think it's also noteworthy that both BD and PU provide Regeneration. That being said: I think there are options to add more Regeneration to Inspiration or certain Utilities.

2 hours ago, Svez Poizon XD.5268 said:

For virtuoso i would like regeneration to be moved from Duelist's Reversal to Sharpening Sorrow . So it would fit that chaos traitline condi direction much better. 

Oh, please no! Leave at least some sustain for pVirtuoso!

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

5 hours ago, Svez Poizon XD.5268 said:

You get regeneration from chaos aura. So that is where you get that regeneration uptime in pvp/wvw while in pve it is very possible someone else gonna give you boons. 

For virtuoso i would like regeneration to be moved from Duelist's Reversal to Sharpening Sorrow . So it would fit that chaos traitline condi direction much better. 

On one hand, good suggestion, Duelist's Reversal is pretty overloaded. On the other hand, Duelist's Reversal is the defensive trait (it's on block/evade) so in that way it makes sense to give regen.

Edited June 30, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Ellon.4316]

On 6/30/2022 at 10:00 PM, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

On one hand, good suggestion, Duelist's Reversal is pretty overloaded. On the other hand, Duelist's Reversal is the defensive trait (it's on block/evade) so in that way it makes sense to give regen.

To more i think about it the more i'm also doubting the change of moving regen from "duelist reversal" to "sharpening sorrow". For condi builds using chaos it would be a nice change. The quoted post and the one before make good suggestions about keeping regen in "duelist reversal". I'm also of the opinion reactive traits/skills should be more rewarding so having duelist reversal be pretty stacked isn't necessarily bad because it is more situational then for example a plain 10% damage increase trait.

 

I still think the solution to this should be sought in changes to an utility skill, the chaos or inspiration trait lines. These trait lines are focused on either defense/condi or healing so it makes sense to put the extra regenaration there.