Giving distortion to Virtuoso was really the worst idea in 2022

[Arheundel.6451]

I need just few words to describe current virtuoso : It's busted , I was quite happy with the design of virtuoso at launch, at least we'd get a mesmer elite where people don't wish for it to be destroyed by nerfs and that it doesn't get abused to hell...that's what I thought. This mesmer class is either not busted...or it is...nothing in the middle. I don't know the devs but having something with 2/4 of the time distortion up...another 1/4 stealthed and the remaining 1/4 with weapon blocks....how that makes any sense and how does that work with your balance philosophy?

[Mell.4873]

3 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

I need just few words to describe current virtuoso : It's busted , I was quite happy with the design of virtuoso at launch, at least we'd get a mesmer elite where people don't wish for it to be destroyed by nerfs and that it doesn't get abused to hell...that's what I thought. This mesmer class is either not busted...or it is...nothing in the middle. I don't know the devs but having something with 2/4 of the time distortion up...another 1/4 stealthed and the remaining 1/4 with weapon blocks....how that makes any sense and how does that work with your balance philosophy?

Its all good and well you say that but the reality is they are doing almost no damage when they go immune, only 2 of the three possible damage immunity skills still let you attack and even those 2 require you to shatter to cast them for a long duration.

[Carnifex.3275]

6 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

I need just few words to describe current virtuoso : It's busted , I was quite happy with the design of virtuoso at launch, at least we'd get a mesmer elite where people don't wish for it to be destroyed by nerfs and that it doesn't get abused to hell...that's what I thought. This mesmer class is either not busted...or it is...nothing in the middle. I don't know the devs but having something with 2/4 of the time distortion up...another 1/4 stealthed and the remaining 1/4 with weapon blocks....how that makes any sense and how does that work with your balance philosophy?

You're missing the point. Remember that DPS virtu role won't be using distortion (especially pVirtu cuz it's alot slower to build up blades). As a dps role u gotta focus on f1f2 and not waste your blades on distortion/block. If you start using distortion - it's already a trade off and a dps loss.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

Just to be sure, are we talking about PvP content ? I genuinely doubt giving distortion to Virtuoso would drastically change anything in PvE

 

However in any PvP content, having more invul is definitely a strenght 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Alcatraznc.3869

[Zaret.1450]

in pve its kinda irrelevant, yes it is a great save button but it also punishes a lot, as for pvp i dont know much there but i guess you still can play arount things a bit, other mesmers or other builds like thief with invis can outplay you in a duel.

as for wvw well, its great, you can go through lots of stuff with it, but in the end virtu in a zerg isnt that op, it works but it isnt op

[Kodama.6453]

I agree, it goes against the entire design premise of the virtuoso as well.

The entire idea has been that virtuoso is supposed to be a glass cannon spec with less defense than the core class, but more damage in exchange. Partly by removing the clones (no distractions for the enemy anymore), but also with the replacement of distortion with a block (a block is a weaker form of defense than distortion, since unblockable moves can still damage you).

But now they gave it back the distortion, meaning that the spec has access to both, the block and the distortion now... which kinda makes it have more defense than the core class. If they wanted to buff virtuoso, they should have done it another way, not by betraying their initial design concept for it.

[Leo G.4501]

They did want to get rid of those "trade-offs", right? Because it'd be more fun that way...

 

Personally, I feel, if you do have trade-offs in the elite specs, it opens more room for the thing the source trades for to be more exaggerated and powerful. You take away the trade-offs and you have to time everything down so the shiny parts don't break balance too bad. The main problem is not making those trade-offs meaningful sacrifices or the new mechanic not justify the trade-off. 

[Dr Meta.3158]

1 hour ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I agree, it goes against the entire design premise of the virtuoso as well.

The entire idea has been that virtuoso is supposed to be a glass cannon spec with less defense than the core class, but more damage in exchange. Partly by removing the clones (no distractions for the enemy anymore), but also with the replacement of distortion with a block (a block is a weaker form of defense than distortion, since unblockable moves can still damage you).

But now they gave it back the distortion, meaning that the spec has access to both, the block and the distortion now... which kinda makes it have more defense than the core class. If they wanted to buff virtuoso, they should have done it another way, not by betraying their initial design concept for it.

Making a glass cannon mesmer spec is already a foolish idea as mesmer is already inherently a glass cannon. Powershatter already kills anyone in one go if you can't defend against it and chronomancer can already outdo that by a significant margin. There's no more up to go beyond that.

[Arheundel.6451]

43 minutes ago, Leo G.4501 said:

They did want to get rid of those "trade-offs", right? Because it'd be more fun that way...

 

Personally, I feel, if you do have trade-offs in the elite specs, it opens more room for the thing the source trades for to be more exaggerated and powerful. You take away the trade-offs and you have to time everything down so the shiny parts don't break balance too bad. The main problem is not making those trade-offs meaningful sacrifices or the new mechanic not justify the trade-off. 

Distortion literally acts as a Mistform, and an ele gets it for 3s every 48s if treated, meanwhile a virtuoso now gets distortion for 5s every 42s Bladesong Distortion , then for another 3s every 40s Blade Renewal , which renew for another 5s Distortion now....... then the mesmer will Blink, thx to Psychotic Riposte  the mesmer will replenish blades in 2/4 of the time alone. Now let's add the rest with 2x blocks, stealth, 2x teleports......when can the enemy attack?

Edited November 27, 2022 by Arheundel.6451

[Kodama.6453]

6 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Distortion literally acts as a Mistform, and an ele gets it for 3s every 48s if treated, meanwhile a virtuoso now gets distortion for 5s every 42s Bladesong Distortion , then for another 3s every 40s Blade Renewal , which renew for another 5s Distortion now....... then the mesmer will Blink, thx to Psychotic Riposte  the mesmer will replenish blades in 2/4 of the time alone. Now let's add the rest with 2x blocks, stealth, 2x teleports......when can the enemy attack?

Distortion is actually way stronger than mist form. Mist form doesn't allow you to use skills during it, your entire skill bar is locked. So while you are invulnerable, you also can't pressure the enemy in return.

Distortion on the other hand makes interaction absolutely one-sided. You can't do anything to the mesmer, but the mesmer can still do alot against you.

[eXruina.4956]

just one of the many instances of balance team's hypocrisy when it comes to balance philosophy and the actual implementation of balance honestly its nothing new.

 

interactive gameplay and counterplay my f*in kitten.

Edited November 27, 2022 by eXruina.4956

[oscuro.9720]

It’s not that bad tbh…

[Mell.4873]

7 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I agree, it goes against the entire design premise of the virtuoso as well.

The entire idea has been that virtuoso is supposed to be a glass cannon spec with less defense than the core class, but more damage in exchange. Partly by removing the clones (no distractions for the enemy anymore), but also with the replacement of distortion with a block (a block is a weaker form of defense than distortion, since unblockable moves can still damage you).

But now they gave it back the distortion, meaning that the spec has access to both, the block and the distortion now... which kinda makes it have more defense than the core class. If they wanted to buff virtuoso, they should have done it another way, not by betraying their initial design concept for it.

In PvP Clones and Phantasms are pretty irrelevant outside maybe Mirage which can swap places with them. Virtuoso although is claimed to be Low Intensity class is anything but when played by a Pro.

[Serephen.3420]

One thing they could have done is convert all distortions into blocks, at least on virtuoso. Then it can be countered by unblockables still? 

[stormemperor.3745]

On 11/27/2022 at 9:31 AM, Carnifex.3275 said:

You're missing the point. Remember that DPS virtu role won't be using distortion (especially pVirtu cuz it's alot slower to build up blades). As a dps role u gotta focus on f1f2 and not waste your blades on distortion/block. If you start using distortion - it's already a trade off and a dps loss.

It is a dps gain on Condi Virt.

[Tseison.4659]

Some of us in the Mesmer community were worried about the return of Distortion coming back for Chrono and Virtuoso, however, because Shatters F1-F4 are our profession mechanic and we’ve always had the same shatters so technically distortion shouldn’t have been removed. If they wanted to “evolve” the shatter skills or mainly the Distortion (F4) one, then yes by all means change it but I didn’t see a need to add an additional F skill with Chronos CS now on F5 and Virt BT on F5.

As I mentioned during the beta testing for Virt, Blade renewal should’ve replaced Bladeturn because everyone has been so conditioned to Distortion being on F4.

So basically what I’m saying for the above portion is in regards to Distortion F4:

Mesmer (Core) - default

Chrono - Distortion changed into Continuum Split

Mirage - Distortion changed into _________ .

Virtuoso - Distortion changed into Blade Renewal or whatever other unique idea.

Now I guess in regards to the ‘balance’ of it all, in PvE the extra survivability is fine but again, not really needed depending on the player and if someone mains a Mesmer they rarely wouldn’t need to rely on the extra distortion anyways.

In PvE:

Distortion (shatter) 1s per blade total of 5s (50s cooldown or 42.5 cooldown when traiting illusions)

Blade Renewal 3s on a 60s cooldown

 

In PvP/WvW

Distortion is ¾ per blade = 3.75s (50s cooldown or 42.5 cooldown when traiting illusions)

Blade Renewal 3s on a 40s cooldown

Note: Blade Renewal doesn’t add onto the Distortion shatter so a Mesmer would have to time the two when one of them finishes its duration.

Additionally, yes, one can take more Distortion via Blurred Inscriptions in the Inspiration tree, but once again, you’re trading damage for more sustain 🤷‍♀️ which I guess in WvW it’s more favourable but in PvP 🤷‍♀️

The only thing I see them doing since this is literally just a repeat of people complaining about the Mirage but now on the Virtuoso just because of them having BT and BR already, they could just increase the cooldown for BR. 

Other than that, I don’t see them removing the Distortion shatter.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Tseison.4659

[Daniel Handler.4816]

On 11/27/2022 at 9:26 AM, Leo G.4501 said:

They did want to get rid of those "trade-offs", right? Because it'd be more fun that way...

 

Personally, I feel, if you do have trade-offs in the elite specs, it opens more room for the thing the source trades for to be more exaggerated and powerful. You take away the trade-offs and you have to time everything down so the shiny parts don't break balance too bad. The main problem is not making those trade-offs meaningful sacrifices or the new mechanic not justify the trade-off. 

The tradeoff is the loss of illusory persona. 

The other specs can daze and distort with f3/f4 at instant speed point blank aoes without any clones out. With clones out they have longer durations.  Virtuosos f3 is especially bad because it's a .5 cast time and a projectile that can only hit once, core f3 can be chained up to 4 times to lock an enemy down. This comes up quite often vs mobile classes who can get behind you. 

On 11/26/2022 at 7:16 PM, Arheundel.6451 said:

I need just few words to describe current virtuoso : It's busted , I was quite happy with the design of virtuoso at launch, at least we'd get a mesmer elite where people don't wish for it to be destroyed by nerfs and that it doesn't get abused to hell...that's what I thought. This mesmer class is either not busted...or it is...nothing in the middle. I don't know the devs but having something with 2/4 of the time distortion up...another 1/4 stealthed and the remaining 1/4 with weapon blocks....how that makes any sense and how does that work with your balance philosophy?

9.75 every 50 seconds is a 1/5th uptime. You might get a little longer with signets but now you are running inspiration. Stealth uptime is absolutely not 1/4  nor are weapon blocks. You can bring up adding chaos for more stealth but now you have no damage trait lines. Congratz you are super tanky and you do no damage. 

But here is my question OP. What is the difference between combining a bunch of blocks/distortions and a thief being in stealth, or a necromancer being in shroud? They can avoid damage for just as long and you aren't hitting them in either case.

People were happy with the design of virtuoso at launch because they could easily kill them by walking behind them and using unblockable skills. People playing Virtuoso were not happy.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Daniel Handler.4816

[Daniel Handler.4816]

On 11/27/2022 at 10:17 AM, Kodama.6453 said:

Distortion is actually way stronger than mist form. Mist form doesn't allow you to use skills during it, your entire skill bar is locked. So while you are invulnerable, you also can't pressure the enemy in return.

Distortion on the other hand makes interaction absolutely one-sided. You can't do anything to the mesmer, but the mesmer can still do alot against you.

Please tell me what the original virtuoso can do against something like https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking_Strike 

f1/f2/f3  don't hit behind us. And the skill is unblockable. Blade renewal is channeled so "while you are invulnerable, you also can't pressure the enemy in return". We can stealth, so can they. We can teleport away, so can they.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Daniel Handler.4816

[Kodama.6453]

1 hour ago, Daniel Handler.4816 said:

Please tell me what the original virtuoso can do against something like https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking_Strike 

f1/f2/f3  don't hit behind us. And the skill is unblockable. Blade renewal is channeled so "while you are invulnerable, you also can't pressure the enemy in return". We can stealth, so can they. We can teleport away, so can they.

The same applies to every other class in the game. "What can they do against something like flanking strike?"

Mesmer (and with the coming update, Untamed) is the only class which is able to become invulnerable and still have the ability to cast any skill it wants. Every other invulnerability in the game is either a channel (so once you want to actually do something against the enemy, you end the channel and with it the invulnerability) or takes away your skill bar (examples being mist form or elixir s).

But for some reason, you think this is an unique problem for the poor mesmer and that they desperately need that tool to counter unblockable skills? What is that reasoning? So you are in favor of giving every other class an invulnerability which allows them to cast their skills in it, too, right? Because they need to get to do against unblockable stuff like flanking strike!

That argument is complete nonsense, sorry.

[Carnifex.3275]

13 hours ago, stormemperor.3745 said:

It is a dps gain on Condi Virt.

Im talkin bout pVirtu. For condi yeah, it is kind of a dps gain when f1f2f3 is on CD.

[Daniel Handler.4816]

17 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

The same applies to every other class in the game. "What can they do against something like flanking strike?"

Mesmer (and with the coming update, Untamed) is the only class which is able to become invulnerable and still have the ability to cast any skill it wants. Every other invulnerability in the game is either a channel (so once you want to actually do something against the enemy, you end the channel and with it the invulnerability) or takes away your skill bar (examples being mist form or elixir s).

But for some reason, you think this is an unique problem for the poor mesmer and that they desperately need that tool to counter unblockable skills? What is that reasoning? So you are in favor of giving every other class an invulnerability which allows them to cast their skills in it, too, right? Because they need to get to do against unblockable stuff like flanking strike!

That argument is complete nonsense, sorry.

I will use holosmith as an example just based on your profile photo.

You have holographic shockwave, corona burst, magnetic shield, and the grenade kit to pressure enemies who are around and behind you. Not to mention slotting in bomb kit. Or just go mechanist and the pet will cc them for you.

Necromancer (and with the coming update, Specter) is the only class to get a second health bar. 

Ranger (and with the coming update, Mechanist) is the only class to get a companion with the "Attack my Target" and "Return to me" commands.

I'm not in favor of giving every other class one our profession mechanics. But I could see them giving them something like it as part of an elite specialization. It would be difficult to balance. Mesmer was designed with distortion in mind. Being able to attack while distorting is strong. But we spend the resource we use to attack to distort.

The lack of aoes is a unique problem for mesmer to compensate that we have good single target damage and survivability.

[Voyant.1327]

If they swap f4 & f5 I'd be happy, adding distortion to be the regen proc at a 50 second cool down instead of the prior 30 cd set back my build a bit.

I now have to intentionally take damage to get the 75% regen proc in solo play now to maintain 100% regen uptime, when before it was possible with just the f4. Which requires switching off the signet healing in trade for twin blade so that I actually ever fall below 75% for it. 

I like having the skill, but its mostly just been super annoying because of the proc it broke for using more creative builds.  

All n all because they added distortion I have to make myself squishy to do the same thing I was doing before. 

[Peter.3901]

On 11/27/2022 at 3:58 AM, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

Just to be sure, are we talking about PvP content ? I genuinely doubt giving distortion to Virtuoso would drastically change anything in PvE

 

However in any PvP content, having more invul is definitely a strenght 

Of course it is, he was probably massacred by some Virtuoso and came here to complain...

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

As a Mesmer main since starting, I'm going to have to come out and say giving Distortion to block-heavy Virtuoso is definitely not the way to foster interactive combat with intuitive counterplay in competitive modes.  Way, way too much "can't touch me" up time while being able to attack (during Distortion) and even be bursty.  And unblockable attacks are not common.  By giving Virtuoso Distortion, Anet painted a big bright "nerf me" target on its back, and we know how the track record on nerfs is.

On 11/28/2022 at 1:44 PM, Daniel Handler.4816 said:

But here is my question OP. What is the difference between combining a bunch of blocks/distortions and a thief being in stealth, or a necromancer being in shroud? They can avoid damage for just as long and you aren't hitting them in either case.

This comparison is a stretch at best.  Stealth ≠ invuln.  In stealth, you take damage and get tracked by projectiles, ranged NPCs, and savvy players throwing AOEs and cleaves all the time.  Stealth is also hindered by Marked (in WvW), can be cancelled by Reveal, or even by knocking a Thief out of their Shadow Refuge.  Everyone's seen a thief come out of stealth in downstate.

And unlike Distortion, if a thief is stealthed, they're not attacking.  Period.

Shroud is an even worse comparison.  Definitely not invuln.  Still subject to CC, and yes, damage, even if they temporarily have a second health bar.  Just because you shouldn't waste big cool downs into shroud 1v1 doesn't mean you can't play around it.  It is also much more telegraphed and can even be interrupted, unlike instant-cast Distortion.

Distortion is invuln with the ability to simultaneously use any skills.  That's as good as it gets.  It has no equal, not by a long shot.

On 11/29/2022 at 10:04 AM, Daniel Handler.4816 said:

The lack of aoes is a unique problem for mesmer to compensate that we have good single target damage and survivability.

Are you kidding?  All the meta weapons have AOEs/bounces/cleave.  GS, SW, Axe, Staff...

Mesmer in general has other problems--possibly the biggest hack job to trait lines of any profession in the name of balancing, and a minimum of two dodges should be standard game-wide, no exceptions.  But dramatically upping Virtuoso's "can't touch me" up time is not the way.

[zealex.9410]

On 11/27/2022 at 8:31 AM, Carnifex.3275 said:

You're missing the point. Remember that DPS virtu role won't be using distortion (especially pVirtu cuz it's alot slower to build up blades). As a dps role u gotta focus on f1f2 and not waste your blades on distortion/block. If you start using distortion - it's already a trade off and a dps loss.

Still having acess to it and just being able to cast distort even with 1 or 2 blades on top of all other tools the spec has is fairly op. In pve virt never needed distortion.