Staff & Axe Nerfs

[LKEY.9567]

Hello, 

"we're making very small cuts to condition damage on Mirage's axe and staff..."

I am sorry, small cuts? Small? Is anyone at ANet do basic napkin math or just put random numbers to see what happens? Mirage has been ignored for a long time, we were happy. We didn't need buffs, neither nerfs. Currently Mirage is BIS on 2-3 raids and viable at the rest, is it really a call for nerfhammer? The changes you want to implement will hit by around 3k, so around 8% of total DPS, why? Mirage wasn't overperforming, it was really rarely played, this class is way less played than Virtuoso! It is very complex build, mechanically challenging and requires constant fight with bugs (looking at you, cancelled ambushes).

Staff skills are meaningless regarding dps (buff to Chaos Armor, hah!) but I got it, you want to enchance the experience of the leveling but why are you nerfing the damage? Do we really must play Condi Virtuoso instead of Mirage because you say so? It's boring to play and not challenging at all.

Mirage is not a competitor to Virtuoso, leave us alone. Overperformence is the myth, the same as Catalysts'. Do not make these damage changes as they are not required and not justified.

 

 

[HotDelirium.7984]

5 minutes ago, LKEY.9567 said:

Hello, 

"we're making very small cuts to condition damage on Mirage's axe and staff..."

I am sorry, small cuts? Small? Is anyone at ANet do basic napkin math or just put random numbers to see what happens? Mirage has been ignored for a long time, we were happy. We didn't need buffs, neither nerfs. Currently Mirage is BIS on 2-3 raids and viable at the rest, is it really a call for nerfhammer? The changes you want to implement will hit by around 3k, so around 8% of total DPS, why? Mirage wasn't overperforming, it was really rarely played, this class is way less played than Virtuoso! It is very complex build, mechanically challenging and requires constant fight with bugs (looking at you, cancelled ambushes).

Staff skills are meaningless regarding dps (buff to Chaos Armor, hah!) but I got it, you want to enchance the experience of the leveling but why are you nerfing the damage? Do we really must play Condi Virtuoso instead of Mirage because you say so? It's boring to play and not challenging at all.

Mirage is not a competitor to Virtuoso, leave us alone. Overperformence is the myth, the same as Catalysts'. Do not make these damage changes as they are not required and not justified.

 

 

What does "enchance the experience of the leveling" even mean with staff. Maybe the nerf wont be too too bad since we get a lower cooldown of staffskill 2 and 3. More of warlocks shooting and more chaos aura = more boons for us and more conditions for them? Sure it's not great overall. Maybe have the staff ambush increase alac by 1 second as a consolation prize?

Edited August 13, 2022 by HotDelirium.7984

[AshkyLicious.4729]

18 hours ago, LKEY.9567 said:

Hello, 

"we're making very small cuts to condition damage on Mirage's axe and staff..."

I am sorry, small cuts? Small? Is anyone at ANet do basic napkin math or just put random numbers to see what happens? Mirage has been ignored for a long time, we were happy. We didn't need buffs, neither nerfs. Currently Mirage is BIS on 2-3 raids and viable at the rest, is it really a call for nerfhammer? The changes you want to implement will hit by around 3k, so around 8% of total DPS, why? Mirage wasn't overperforming, it was really rarely played, this class is way less played than Virtuoso! It is very complex build, mechanically challenging and requires constant fight with bugs (looking at you, cancelled ambushes).

Staff skills are meaningless regarding dps (buff to Chaos Armor, hah!) but I got it, you want to enchance the experience of the leveling but why are you nerfing the damage? Do we really must play Condi Virtuoso instead of Mirage because you say so? It's boring to play and not challenging at all.

Mirage is not a competitor to Virtuoso, leave us alone. Overperformence is the myth, the same as Catalysts'. Do not make these damage changes as they are not required and not justified.

 

 

Tot agree with you on everything! This is so unjustified to Mirage as a whole, and they are going to gut the spec in a really bad way if they actually decide to go through with these changes for mirage!

I hope hope hope they reconsider this... but the chances are low for them to do that unfortunately...

Edited August 14, 2022 by AshkyLicious.4729

[Nephalem.8921]

4 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

What does "enchance the experience of the leveling" even mean with staff. Maybe the nerf wont be too too bad since we get a lower cooldown of staffskill 2 and 3. More of warlocks shooting and more chaos aura = more boons for us and more conditions for them? Sure it's not great overall. Maybe have the staff ambush increase alac by 1 second as a consolation prize?

Are you part of the balance team? Because the warlock is so bad that using it is a dps loss. Now you can not press it more often. Great! Chaos armor is such a low value skill that it doesnt matter at all.

[Firebeard.1746]

Yeah. And I can't even begin to understand why they wiggled axe into this nerf to justify a leveling buff for staff, like WTF? 

Is ambushing even worth it when they nerf condi duration by 25%? 

[Nephalem.8921]

Honestly staxe or axe mirage are very strong when played optimally. But there are like 5 players in the game who can do that. Mirage has a lot of bugs which you have to work around for decent dps. Why even bother learning a very hard build when you could achieve similar or better results with face ->keyboard playstyles.

All builds being equal in dps is an extremely bad approach. The more complex the spec the more mistakes can happen which will lower average dps outside of golem situations.

A cmech stack has also beaten mirage stack on largos in the raiding league. So the "but mirage has confusion" argument is not even carrying it on the 3 encounters where its extremely strong.

[LKEY.9567]

It looks like Mechanist is The Golden Boy. We can only expect it to be BIS everywhere. In the process, everything must be downgraded, including Mirage. What a circus. Devs, please, explain why you nerf Condi Mirage because it's not SMALL CUT, it is huge!

[Valisha.8650]

Honestly, if it goes live, im deleting my mesmer

[Mell.4873]

We will have to wait and see on the damage numbers, I guess it will be comparable to Virtuoso now.

[Prob Not A Bot.3452]

• The topic "Does Anet hate Mesmers?" is kinda funny looking now, knowing how practically all the changes in the patch were huge buffs for everyone and nerfs for Mesmer Axe Mirage.

And is actually even funnier when you realize that if you wants go Axe Condition Mirage, you need to have a trait less because you need to pick "Mirrored Axes" that gives you the now standarized damage of the axes and cant take "Desert Distorsion", "Mirage Mantle" or an actually impactfull trait.

[Salt Mode.3780]

13 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

What does "enchance the experience of the leveling" even mean with staff. Maybe the nerf wont be too too bad since we get a lower cooldown of staffskill 2 and 3. More of warlocks shooting and more chaos aura = more boons for us and more conditions for them? Sure it's not great overall. Maybe have the staff ambush increase alac by 1 second as a consolation prize?

Literally does nothing to your dps. iWarlock is the most useless phantasm and is only ever used as clone fodders. 

[Salt Mode.3780]

3 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

We will have to wait and see on the damage numbers, I guess it will be comparable to Virtuoso now.

Axe mirage has a more complex rotation then Virtuoso, naturally this should have slightly higher dps then Virtuoso not lower or equal. Not to mention Axe Mirage dps falls hard if the target moves whereas Virtuoso is consistent. So no this should not be the case ever. Stop looking at Snowcrow's dps on a golem.

Edited August 14, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[draxynnic.3719]

Not to mention that axe mirage isn't benefiting from the "buff" at all. They may be thinking that staxe gives too much DPS given that two of them means you have alacrity covered, but if so they should be upfront about that, rather than hiding behind the claim that slight buffs to the cooldown of skills that weren't an important part of the rotation to begin with require stiff nerfs to actually important skills to compensate.

And if that is the concern, maybe buff sceptre so that axe/scepter can be viable as a selfish condi build that has some ranged capability rather than such builds defaulting to staxe even if the alacrity isn't needed, or make the alacrity into a GM trait so it can compete with IH and they can stop nerfing DPS builds to keep alacrity builds under control.

[Mell.4873]

57 minutes ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

Axe mirage has a more complex rotation then Virtuoso, naturally this should have slightly higher dps then Virtuoso not lower or equal. Not to mention Axe Mirage dps falls hard if the target moves whereas Virtuoso is consistent. So no this should not be the case ever. Stop looking at Snowcrow's dps on a golem.

Whatever it was just a comment, I was able to pull higher numbers when I played Mirage so I wasn't going off snowcrow. A thing to note is if you use a line of sight features on Virtuoso you can achieve above 40k DPS and similarly if you run Chaos on shatters for Mirage the same thing can be done in a burst situation with AoE.

[Infusion.7149]

Yep I was amazed at the lack of insight on their part with respect to staff on mirage. Warlock is a DPS loss and so is chaos armor and chaos storm most of the time.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Yep I was amazed at the lack of insight on their part with respect to staff on mirage. Warlock is a DPS loss and so is chaos armor and chaos storm most of the time.

Chaos armour is instant cast, so it can't be a DPS loss. Certainly isn't exactly build-defining, though.

[Erick Alastor.3917]

12 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Why even bother learning a very hard build when you could achieve similar or better results with face ->keyboard playstyles.

Face to keyboard playstyles are no longer meta, new meta is "rightclick once and afk" playstyle.

[otto.5684]

The changes to axe are whatever. The changes to staff are not. One of the main additions to mirage staff was providing 25 might to allies. Limiting it to 25 effectively removes the weapon from group PvE content. 
 

These changes are poorly thought and very poorly implemented. 

Edited August 14, 2022 by otto.5684

[draxynnic.3719]

9 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

The changes to axe are whatever. The changes to staff are not. One of the main additions to mirage staff was providing 25 might to allies. Limiting it to 25 effectively removes the weapon from group PvE content. 
 

These changes are poorly thought and very poorly implemented. 

Part of the overarching theory seems to be that there'll be more Might coming from everyone, so the supports don't have to provide 25 Might on their own. We'll have to see how that works in practice, but if it does work, losing a bit of Might might not be a big deal as long as it still provides enough to get groups up to 25.

The DPS nerfs are DPS nerfs whatever the end result is regarding boons, though. If the OP's guesstimate of a 3k DPS loss is accurate, that knocks axe/axe mirage down to 35.5k, which is probably not competitive (particularly when duelling condivirtuoso still gets close to 38k at range) unless there's some other reason you really want a mirage.

[otto.5684]

4 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Part of the overarching theory seems to be that there'll be more Might coming from everyone, so the supports don't have to provide 25 Might on their own. We'll have to see how that works in practice, but if it does work, losing a bit of Might might not be a big deal as long as it still provides enough to get groups up to 25.

The DPS nerfs are DPS nerfs whatever the end result is regarding boons, though. If the OP's guesstimate of a 3k DPS loss is accurate, that knocks axe/axe mirage down to 35.5k, which is probably not competitive (particularly when duelling condivirtuoso still gets close to 38k at range) unless there's some other reason you really want a mirage.

Ya, I too think the mirage nerf is coming out of no where. It parses slightly ahead of virtuoso. However, it is a melee dps compared to virtuoso being ranged. Do anet think buffing warlock phantasm slightly will close the gap. It sure would not.

[Stavros.8249]

4 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

Ya, I too think the mirage nerf is coming out of no where. It parses slightly ahead of virtuoso. However, it is a melee dps compared to virtuoso being ranged. Do anet think buffing warlock phantasm slightly will close the gap. It sure would not.

The previous specs can't be better than the last expansion specs, cause people won't buy it. 

[AshkyLicious.4729]

21 minutes ago, Stavros.8249 said:

The previous specs can't be better than the last expansion specs, cause people won't buy it. 

I actually dont get why Anet thinks like this? Balance all the specs and core individually and make them viable by defining their specific role for that profession. This way you'll get a variation of different playstyles, many builds to choose between, which also results in making the game 1000 times more fun and interesting.

They'll keep old expansions relevant, which makes customers also wanting to buy those expansions aswell and not only the newest one. You know... up-sell for Anet... Win-Win for everybody!

[Guybrush.4762]

As other people have mentioned Staff Phantasmal Warlock is a dps loss

Beside rotation incident there exactly three uses of this skill in end game PvE and only one of them may arguably be cooldown sensitive:
-It's the beginning of the fight and it's your opener so you precast a well time Phantasmal warlock to gain clones just after your first F2.
-You need to use your shatter (F3 for CC or F4 for invulnerability) but Phase retreat is unavailable at the moment so you cast Phantasmal retreat instead to gain your clones back.
-The fight is designed in such a way that your clones pops at some point and you need to recreate them more frequently (Fights against small adds like open-world, boss disapearing, etc). In fights where it happens so frequently that the Phantasmal warlock buff would matter you would still not bring your mirage because your dps is too slow to properly ramp up during such short windows.

...So basically Phantasmal warlock buff does not really achieve anything and we are left with a sizable nerf to the spec in exchange of a barely noticeable buff to chaos armor. I don't really understand where this change comes from. Yes Mirage is stacked on some confusion favored bosses but even on those fights, Mirage is still not the most frequently seen spec. Not to mention reducing confusion in favor of other conditions like bleed and torment would have probably been a more targeted nerf if it was the issue.

To be fair, I like most things in this patch but I am not too hot about the mesmer part if I am being honest :D.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Guybrush.4762

[zeyeti.8347]

I readed small cuts to "virtuoso" , hmmm seems fair , the class do a freaking lot of damage and... oh no it's on mirage , like wtf , why why why mirage i dont see any mirage players in endgame content , every mesmer is playing virtuoso , why nerfing it .... i can understand the cut for might provider from the staff , but lowering the condition duration on axe and staff ... ah yes i know why , same as catalyst,  the class do freaking huge damage when you have skilled players behind them... elitism yuuuukkk -.-  .

but dont worry our favored mech pew pew afk 28K sleeping is getting a buff , +5% (i know i always bring up mechs in all of my posts , but that lazy class disgust me)

I bet this is how they choose the spec to nerf :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-PtEJEaqY

Edited August 15, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[taara.3217]

7 hours ago, Stavros.8249 said:

The previous specs can't be better than the last expansion specs, cause people won't buy it. 

But what does it mean - "better"?
DPS? Party support? Playstyle? Visual effects? PVE oriented? WvW oriented? PVP oriented? Solo play? ...
It has different meaning for different people )