Malicious Sorcery

[zeyeti.8347]

Hello, 

I was hoping this trait would actually make mirage staff/staff alac back in track , with the nerf to Illusionary Membrane (maintaining chaos aura being certainly more difficult than previously regeneration) i saw Malicious Sorcery  being a cornerstone for mirage being based on confusion , when is aw the +25% confusion duration and 3 stack of confusion inflicted to the target whom attack you dodged i wa sincerly thrilled ... but sadly the +25% duration don't bypass expertise/condi duration 100% treshold ...

So i am asking if it is a bug , or tooltips are not up to date , or is it seriously worked for being at 75% dondi duration and investing in some torment duration to be paired for ? If it is the 3rd solution , well it's sad 😭.

i see traits working that way , like guardian Amplified Wrath and necro Lingering Curse , but ofc there is also thief poison duration increase who don't work that way , so i am just asking if it is intended to be so, knowing trait for specific condition don't bypass the experstise and trait affecting a certain skill condi duration bypass it , i kind of am afraid of the answer.

Edited November 29, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Geronmy.3298]

24 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Hello, 

I was hoping this trait would actually make mirage staff/staff alac back in track , with the nerf to Illusionary Membrane (maintaining chaos aura being certainly more difficult than previously regeneration) i saw Malicious Sorcery  being a cornerstone for mirage being based on confusion , when is aw the +25% confusion duration and 3 stack of confusion inflicted to the target whom attack you dodged i wa sincerly thrilled ... but sadly the +25% duration don't bypass expertise/condi duration 100% treshold ...

So i am asking if it is a bug , or tooltips are not up to date , or is it seriously worked for being at 75% dondi duration and investing in some torment duration to be paired for ? If it is the 3rd solution , well it's sad 😭.

i see traits working that way , like guardian Amplified Wrath and necro Lingering Curse , but ofc there is also thief poison duration increase who don't work that way , so i am just asking if it is intended to be so, knowing trait for specific condition don't bypass the experstise and trait affecting a certain skill condi duration bypass it , i kind of am afraid of the answer.

It also interrupts Ambush so i don't really can see it on staff/staff mirage.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

Tbh I don't think that buff justifies taking Illusions over Dueling yet. Dueling traits still offer far more synergy with Staff/Staff Mirage than any tier 1 and 2 traits in Illusions. 

[xRos.8375]

RIP illusionary membrane. Your near permanent uptime ripped through to about 12 seconds of chaos field uptime. If anyone knows a way to get more chaos aura uptime, let me know. I am still fairly new to Mirage 😄.

[Mell.4873]

On 11/30/2023 at 8:04 AM, zeyeti.8347 said:

Hello, 

I was hoping this trait would actually make mirage staff/staff alac back in track , with the nerf to Illusionary Membrane (maintaining chaos aura being certainly more difficult than previously regeneration) i saw Malicious Sorcery  being a cornerstone for mirage being based on confusion , when is aw the +25% confusion duration and 3 stack of confusion inflicted to the target whom attack you dodged i wa sincerly thrilled ... but sadly the +25% duration don't bypass expertise/condi duration 100% treshold ...

So i am asking if it is a bug , or tooltips are not up to date , or is it seriously worked for being at 75% dondi duration and investing in some torment duration to be paired for ? If it is the 3rd solution , well it's sad 😭.

i see traits working that way , like guardian Amplified Wrath and necro Lingering Curse , but ofc there is also thief poison duration increase who don't work that way , so i am just asking if it is intended to be so, knowing trait for specific condition don't bypass the experstise and trait affecting a certain skill condi duration bypass it , i kind of am afraid of the answer.

I feel like they messed it up since Cry of Pain already extends the duration of Confusion by 33% on F2. They need to make it 25% damage increase rather than a duration increase. 

Edited December 4, 2023 by Mell.4873

[zeyeti.8347]

11 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I feel like they messed it up since Cry of Pain already extends the duration of Confusion by 33% on F2. They need to make it 25% damage increase rather than a duration increase. 

Yes should be nice as confusion is the worst condi damage of the game now.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

13 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I feel like they messed it up since Cry of Pain already extends the duration of Confusion by 33% on F2. They need to make it 25% damage increase rather than a duration increase. 

That would make Virtuoso busted, considering that Dueling Virts can already inflict 20 stacks of Confusion with just a single F2 press, and a 25% damage increase is a lot less innocent than a 1s duration increase.

[Mell.4873]

15 minutes ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

That would make Virtuoso busted, considering that Dueling Virts can already inflict 20 stacks of Confusion with just a single F2 press, and a 25% damage increase is a lot less innocent than a 1s duration increase.

Would it not be the same since I'm sure they are not running 100% confusion duration in WvW or sPvP. I guess you would have less time to cleanse it so maybe make it a 20% damage increase...?

[Roadkizzle.2157]

Would boosting Confusions damage be complicated by the split damage on it?

 

Do you boost the damage per action or the tick damage? 

I'm just thinking they were wary of making confusion so much more powerful against only a couple of bosses how they've struggled balance it so far.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Roadkizzle.2157

[Levetty.1279]

They could always revert confusion to how it was at PoF launch.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

36 minutes ago, Levetty.1279 said:

They could always revert confusion to how it was at PoF launch.

Which they changed away from for a reason.

[Vinny.7260]

I've always stood by that Malicious Sorcery should just increase the effectiveness of Compounding Power and make the stacks last longer. Could also make it increase condition duration per stack instead.

5% per stack instead of the 2%. Just something outlandish to compete with Phantasmal Force and Master of Fragmentation.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

So, as usual, I'm behind on this one. When the patch came out I didn't pay too much attention since I wasn't really in the mood to go through and edit all my builds. I did note that they gutted the chaos line and turned it into Inspiration V1.6 and a few abilities had changed, but that was about it. So I found myself playing my Chrono last night and it's a shatter build, and I found myself with more shatters than clones, so I figured I'd check my build since there's an Illusion trait that lets my scepter attack faster which would give me more clones. After studying for a while and not finding it I finally check the patch notes to see they completely obliterated that and instead replaced it with this, giving us a little bit more confusion, just a smidge.

Actually, I did know about this, I just didn't put two and two together because I run this ability on my base mesmer with a staff and relies primarily on Confusion and Torment as the primary source of damage. ANd from what I've seen.....it doesn't. I haven't tried to benchmark anything, haven't gone to the training golem or anything, but I haven't felt a difference, haven't seen that many extra stacks of confusion on my targets that the 25% extra duration would seem to bring (Afterall, you'd think that 25% more duration would equal 25% more stacks, right?). But no, it doesn't seem to have made any difference, and NOW I realize what they took away to do it.

So, we got a confusion duration boost that doesn't seem to do much of anything at all AND they took away the augment for scepters. Greatsword still has Bountiful Blades, Staff and Trident still have Chaotic Potency, and every other weapon has an augment as well, so from where I'm sitting I have no idea what their intention was, but it looks like they tried to improve...something and all they did was make the scepter worse, or at least robbed it of its higher potential..

[Mevelios.4809]

28 minutes ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

So, we got a confusion duration boost that doesn't seem to do much of anything at all AND they took away the augment for scepters.

The attack speed increase was not stacking with quickness, so it was utterly meaningless aside from playing the storyline. The CD reduction has been normalized too, and these two thingies were all that trait was offering. It was definitely not worth keeping! While that new extra confusion duration isn't really attractive (I mean, we already hit the 100% cap on viper+food+Chaotic persistence) the three confusion stacks on dodge are welcome as a little extra for our trouble!

1 hour ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

it looks like they tried to improve...something and all they did was make the scepter worse, or at least robbed it of its higher potential..

I disagree. The scepter was quite a dead weapon apart from some PvP uses. Good on the defense, handy for generating illusions, but terribly slow and it took the counter to produce actual low damage (an upgrade from abysmal low).

Now, the counter can be offensively broken with real interest (5 stacks of confusion, +2 with Ineptitude since it kept its blind). PvP & WvW didn't get even a single confusion stack on that so it'll likely remain rare there, but the CD reduction improves its performances while the mirage's Ether barrage can still be a good source of bleeding through Sharper images.

It's still underperforming against other options, especially if not running it as mirage. But it got an up from that change! Surely not enough to make it a main weapon, but possibly as a side one when mechanics force you to move away from the target, making your axe useless.

31 minutes ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

Greatsword still has Bountiful Blades, Staff and Trident still have Chaotic Potency, and every other weapon has an augment as well, so from where I'm sitting I have no idea what their intention was

Personally, I hope they'd remove already all weapon traits which do not affect a whole gameplay but rather a single weapon type, normalizing most of the associated effects. Might be a crazy idea, but weapon proficiencies could be turned instead into an independant system apart from the build tab, although working similarly; it could take HPs to train and unlock traits for each weapon your profession can use, one line per weapon from which we could pick a single trait to alter said weapon, so you get to experience completely new effects while retaining their current moves!

As a mesmer, want to keep your greatsword and optimize it for power builds? Here, have a trait for power that works the same way Bountiful blades does; want to use it as a condi tool? There, this other trait reduces the power modifier on all skills to add bleeding or torment stacks here and there; want to use it as a healer? Here, that trait reworks your auto-attack making it a healing beam similar to the druid's staff; your Mirror blade loses damage but gains extra bounces, might duration & becomes a projectile finisher; your Mind stab becomes a light field for the sake of combos on other skills; your Phantasmal berserker summons two phantasms, losing half their damages but retaining their whirl finishers; Illusionary wave provides boons on use such as fury & might, and could even turn into a blast finisher.

It would likely involve too much work to ever happen and make autoattacks feel bland by likely reproducing similar effects from others (see my example above, making the GS beam the same as the druid's staff beam) but such a system could give a chance at experiencing our favorite weapons in completely different roles. We're already picking weapon traits because they vastly improve their respective weapons (thus often slotting said weapon on both weapon switches) or provide raw stats (looking at Chaotic potency obviously, which you end up taking even if you don't play the staff) so currently I really feel like they don't give us much of a choice: you want these weapon traits BEFORE whatever improves/introduces mechanics in your build. Feels like there's only the illusion of choice in the end!