Upcoming Weapon Balance - Rifle Confirmed Chrono Support Only Weapon

[Teknomancer.4895]

2 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

The only solution I see is taking away Chrono's Alac share and limit it to sharing Quick only, so that Mirage can be fleshed out as the Alac spec. But if that's implemented I'm sure all of Mesmer playerbase will immediately throw a fit. 

And rightly so, especially now that we know the "balance" patch contains yet another bunch of Mesmer nerfs.

It's not necessary to take something away from Chrono just to give it to Mirage; that's a false choice.

[Geronmy.3298]

2 minutes ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

And rightly so, especially now that we know the "balance" patch contains yet another bunch of Mesmer nerfs.

It's not necessary to take something away from Chrono just to give it to Mirage; that's a false choice.

Indeed, after all, you can only play on spec at a time.

[HotDelirium.7984]

5 hours ago, mirage.8046 said:

At this point, they likely think alac mirage was a mistake and they don't want mirage to be able to do that unless they want to dual wield staffs, which means giving up the brand new weapon for that.

If they give alac to all ambushes they create alachealmirage and alacdpsmirage,  allegedly.

[HotDelirium.7984]

6 hours ago, Geronmy.3298 said:

Should be alacrity. If it's not then you might have a spec providing both essential boons even if it's bad at it. Alacrity plus some might and prot should be ok, considering Staff does Alacrity, might and fury.

And they literally despise Mirage. It's a meme spec for them and it's been obvious this whole time. You can see how they joke about it on the streams every time someone bring the topic up.

I'm okay with alac and maybe give quickness to wells for chorno and BAM we have at least 2 options instead of just one......and they just look at us and dont do it...smh

[ShadowKatt.6740]

22 minutes ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

If they give alac to all ambushes they create alachealmirage and alacdpsmirage,  allegedly.

Why stop there though? Give alcrity to all ambushes AND all shatters. And all utilities. And all weapon skills.

In fact why don't we just adjust ALL the timers in the game to just account for alacrity, and then we can just get rid of alacrity entirely and MOVE THE F ON.

[Teknomancer.4895]

10 hours ago, Geronmy.3298 said:

Indeed, after all, you can only play on spec at a time.

True, although I hotkey-swap spec/build on the fly pretty frequently (even during missions), so that line can get a bit blurry. All you need is OOC. 😜

They all have their individual use cases and even when hot-swapping you can still only run one spec at a time, so there's no reason to make one worse in order to make another better.

People around here often seem to view Chrono/Mirage/Virtuoso as separate "classes" even though they're nothing more than different bags of tricks for the Mesmer class to pull from.

The concept of a "power budget" is fine, but it needs to be reckoned for each build or Elite Specialization, not for any given Class as a whole.

Edited February 18 by Teknomancer.4895

[draxynnic.3719]

14 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

The concept of a "power budget" is fine, but it needs to be reckoned for each build or Elite Specialization, not for any given Class as a whole.

This. There's a degree to which a build's ability to flex without affecting its core function should be considered in the power budget (eg taking Feedback on a DPS build for certain mechanics) but as much as possible, even substantially different builds within an elite specialisation really should have their own individual budgets. For instance, if a condi build for a particular elite spec is strong, this does not mean that power or healing builds on the same elite spec should be weak to compensate.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

On 2/17/2024 at 11:09 PM, Geronmy.3298 said:

And people only care about alacrity is for Mirage to do SOMETHING. As it stands right now you have no other reason to play it other than being a masochist who likes the spec.

Honestly, the rest of what you wrote doesn't matter. This does. This matters more than anything else. And the answer is to, from what I've read on these forums across multiple threads is to give Mirage MORE alacrity! Alacrity on ALL Ambushes! Alacrity on MORE traits!

Do....do people not understand how insane that is? Do they really not see what they're asking for? The mirage is like some kind of autistic savant that's REALLY good(though for mirage that's debatable) at exactly ONE thing but can't do anything else. Can't dress themselves, can't feed themselves, can't even speak, but plays piano like a classical virtuoso (No, not that kind).

And the solution that the forums seem to have is....give them MORE brain damage on the hopes that maybe they'll be worth something in the end. Just...keep bashing away at their skull and wait to see if some kind of new ability shows up. Or they die of severe cerebral hemoraging.

Look, you see it. I know you do. You SAID THE WORDS! Mirage doesn't need Alacrity. What it NEEDS is help. It NEEDS to be fixed. It needs, as I pointed out above...or in another thread, I don't know, I keep repeating these points so many times, it needs to be given a SINGULAR purpose and then let it branch out from there. I think the Mirage should be more Strike focused. So make it good at that. And after you've done that, flipped all the switches, dialed in all the knobs, then you can go back to the traits and say "Now that it's in a good place and can stand on its own, NOW we can look at OPTIONS." And right now there's only one option anyone even cares about because if this was a car, nothing works but the radio.

Fix the car. Make Mirage Great Again. And after that Chrono can take up the whole Alacrity thing again, or any one of 7 other professions at this point since EVERYONE ELSE got Alacrity now. But fix Mirage. Make it awesome. And then give it added toys to play with. And honestly this is really not hard. Like I am pleading here, it's not that hard. Look at the Mirage kit with its ambushes and its Mirage Cloak and make that work with absolutely ZERO traits. Okay, that's all we need. Make the Mirage work with ZERO traits. Now you know that your new spec with its new weapons and new utilities actually works. THEN you can add in traits that switch things up. I'm reminded of playing a wizard in Diablo 3. I get a Ray of Frost. It's good. And then with the appropriate traits I can make it fire, or lightning, or disintegrating, or change the shape from a ray into a PBAOE. But those are OPTIONS, and the basic Ray of Frost works just fine on its own. That's what Mirage needs right now. And it doesn't matter how much Alacrity, or Quickness, or Protection, or ANY boon that we give it they will NEVER fix what we need right now.

[Curunen.8729]

13 minutes ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

Honestly, the rest of what you wrote doesn't matter. This does. This matters more than anything else. And the answer is to, from what I've read on these forums across multiple threads is to give Mirage MORE alacrity! Alacrity on ALL Ambushes! Alacrity on MORE traits!

Do....do people not understand how insane that is? Do they really not see what they're asking for? The mirage is like some kind of autistic savant that's REALLY good(though for mirage that's debatable) at exactly ONE thing but can't do anything else. Can't dress themselves, can't feed themselves, can't even speak, but plays piano like a classical virtuoso (No, not that kind).

And the solution that the forums seem to have is....give them MORE brain damage on the hopes that maybe they'll be worth something in the end. Just...keep bashing away at their skull and wait to see if some kind of new ability shows up. Or they die of severe cerebral hemoraging.

Look, you see it. I know you do. You SAID THE WORDS! Mirage doesn't need Alacrity. What it NEEDS is help. It NEEDS to be fixed. It needs, as I pointed out above...or in another thread, I don't know, I keep repeating these points so many times, it needs to be given a SINGULAR purpose and then let it branch out from there. I think the Mirage should be more Strike focused. So make it good at that. And after you've done that, flipped all the switches, dialed in all the knobs, then you can go back to the traits and say "Now that it's in a good place and can stand on its own, NOW we can look at OPTIONS." And right now there's only one option anyone even cares about because if this was a car, nothing works but the radio.

Fix the car. Make Mirage Great Again. And after that Chrono can take up the whole Alacrity thing again, or any one of 7 other professions at this point since EVERYONE ELSE got Alacrity now. But fix Mirage. Make it awesome. And then give it added toys to play with. And honestly this is really not hard. Like I am pleading here, it's not that hard. Look at the Mirage kit with its ambushes and its Mirage Cloak and make that work with absolutely ZERO traits. Okay, that's all we need. Make the Mirage work with ZERO traits. Now you know that your new spec with its new weapons and new utilities actually works. THEN you can add in traits that switch things up. I'm reminded of playing a wizard in Diablo 3. I get a Ray of Frost. It's good. And then with the appropriate traits I can make it fire, or lightning, or disintegrating, or change the shape from a ray into a PBAOE. But those are OPTIONS, and the basic Ray of Frost works just fine on its own. That's what Mirage needs right now. And it doesn't matter how much Alacrity, or Quickness, or Protection, or ANY boon that we give it they will NEVER fix what we need right now.

Believe me I'd rather delete alacrity from mirage and unnerf all our deception cooldowns in wvw among other things. Never made sense in the first place apart from to shoehorn into these confounded roles for instances pve. For the record not saying the old way of play full zerker or go home in pve was better, but neither is the current state fun.

I want mirage to be the rapidly porting around pink thief that does more sustained damage and survivability than core at the expense of the size of instantaneous burst (whether power or condi). IA to 25s, and Jaunt back to 20s would be a start.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

 I'm reminded of playing a wizard in Diablo 3. I get a Ray of Frost. It's good. And then with the appropriate traits I can make it fire, or lightning, or disintegrating, or change the shape from a ray into a PBAOE. But those are OPTIONS, and the basic Ray of Frost works just fine on its own. 

Nitpicky, but that's a terrible example. Ray of Frost is one of the few Wizard skills that you can't change the damage type for. Disintegrate is a separate skill. And I'm pretty sure nobody uses it in endgame because Diablo 3 is heavily gear-based and there just aren't the items available to make it competitive against Disintegrate and Arcane Torrent that do have supporting gear sets.

Even without picking on Ray of Frost specifically, unruned versions of skills aren't good. There's pretty much always at least one rune that is a straight upgrade of the base skill. The base skills are functional if you really need a particular capability and you don't have a rune that's a direct upgrade yet, but nobody would consider them competitive at high levels.

...Which actually makes your analogy accurate for how things are now. Base mirage IS solid, but like Ray of Frost, it lacks the tools to really make it competitive at the top. Alacrity on a trait is like a rune, but it should be balanced against other options that allow it to do competitive damage.

And as has been repeated ad nauseum, ArenaNet needs to stop balancing based on golem numbers and pay more attention to actual performance in real situations and usage rates.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Nitpicky, but that's a terrible example.

You'll have to forgive me, I only actually played D3 once and it was a long time ago. You got what I was saying though. I'll disagree though because I don't think Mirage is solid. Not that I purrsonally have any problems but I'm not competetive either. The general consensus though is that the Mirage is NOT in a good place, especially when all anyone wants from it is just an alacrity monkey. A Mirage should be a terrifying tour de force with, and correct my math if I'm wrong here, every dodge giving 0.75 seconds invulnerability so every Mirage Cloak should give the same. And we get Mirage Cloak for every dodge (2) plus every mirror (5) plus shattering (6) plus traits (7). So that's, by my math, 5.25 seconds of absolute invulnerability in addition to 7 ambushes. ON THAT ALONE seeing a Mirage coming towards you should instill a level of panic into anyone to make them try and flee. That much spike damage should murder absolutely anything that is foolish enough to stand in front of us. But as it stands Mirage is a joke and for no reason. This should be so easy to fix. And then we wouldn't need this whole alacrity discussion. Mirage is your murderous assassin buddy. And you could slap on dueling for a crit assassis, Chaos for a plague assassin, Illusion for the Assassin Squad, or Inspiration for your Friendly Neighborhood Assassinman (Or mix and match however you want, you have two slots to play with). But I'm sure if you went Condi it would probably work just as well if you could stack torment to the moon through ambush after ambush, but that's kinda the point. It's like I keep saying, do one thing, do it well, and then everything afterwards is just gravy. Everyone loves gravy.

Edit: And to whomever goes through every post I make and leaves a confused emoji, I gotta know: Are you trolling because you're bored or are you really that dense that none of this can seep through? I'm genuinely curious.

Edited February 20 by ShadowKatt.6740

[draxynnic.3719]

52 minutes ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

You'll have to forgive me, I only actually played D3 once and it was a long time ago. You got what I was saying though. I'll disagree though because I don't think Mirage is solid. Not that I purrsonally have any problems but I'm not competetive either. The general consensus though is that the Mirage is NOT in a good place, especially when all anyone wants from it is just an alacrity monkey. A Mirage should be a terrifying tour de force with, and correct my math if I'm wrong here, every dodge giving 0.75 seconds invulnerability so every Mirage Cloak should give the same. And we get Mirage Cloak for every dodge (2) plus every mirror (5) plus shattering (6) plus traits (7). So that's, by my math, 5.25 seconds of absolute invulnerability in addition to 7 ambushes. ON THAT ALONE seeing a Mirage coming towards you should instill a level of panic into anyone to make them try and flee. That much spike damage should murder absolutely anything that is foolish enough to stand in front of us. But as it stands Mirage is a joke and for no reason. This should be so easy to fix. And then we wouldn't need this whole alacrity discussion. Mirage is your murderous assassin buddy. And you could slap on dueling for a crit assassis, Chaos for a plague assassin, Illusion for the Assassin Squad, or Inspiration for your Friendly Neighborhood Assassinman (Or mix and match however you want, you have two slots to play with). But I'm sure if you went Condi it would probably work just as well if you could stack torment to the moon through ambush after ambush, but that's kinda the point. It's like I keep saying, do one thing, do it well, and then everything afterwards is just gravy. Everyone loves gravy.

Edit: And to whomever goes through every post I make and leaves a confused emoji, I gotta know: Are you trolling because you're bored or are you really that dense that none of this can seep through? I'm genuinely curious.

Moral: Be careful when using analogies that the analogy you're using actually means what you think it means.

I think if you look closely at what you wrote, you'd realise why the mirage power level you just described (5s of invulnerable frames combined with murderous spike damage) could not exist in competitive. On the PvE side, mirage is generally regarded as having the strongest mesmer solo build and while it's not top tier in instanced content, it's still well above troll tier. I think Arenanet is still too eager to nerf based on golem numbers, but I also think you grossly exaggerate the problem. Mirage is already pretty good at dealing damage. It's just competing with a lot of other builds that are also good at doing damage, and they can't all be the absolute best in the game.

I don't think alacrity is strictly necessary, nor do I think the way it's been implemented is that good, but I don't agree with your soapbox position that it's inherently a problem either. As long as the alacrity option requires sacrificing DPS, there's no reason an alacrity build can't coexist with good DPS builds.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

8 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think if you look closely at what you wrote, you'd realise why the mirage power level you just described (5s of invulnerable frames combined with murderous spike damage) could not exist in competitive.

Okay....but it does. I'm not going to claim to be the most knowledgable when it comes to the competetive side of GW2 but I have been merced enough times in wvw to know this absolutely already exists, and it ain't Mirage. From stunlock to overwhelming spike damage to people who just won't die no matter what you throw at them, this idead that "Oh, well, the Mirage with the kit that we gave it is just too powerful" doesn't fly with me. First off, if that's the case, then a redesign is in order. Just throw it in the trash and rebuild it. If you're not willing to do that then I have nothing more to say. Otherwise we need to look at the rest of the game as a whole because if Mirage absolutely under no circumstances should be allowed to be that powerful, then no one should be. But they absolutely are, so that excuse is out as well. So you'll have to forgive me if I'm not going to sit here and just take it while Mirage is reduced to a joke because 'Oh no, it's too powerful' while everyone else is allowed to play. That 5 seconds of invulnerability is literally the Mirage's kit. I guess since Scourge is such a potent support class maybe we should reduce or remove its Sand Shades. How else could we possibly balance anything.

My god, you actually make me so nihilistic towards this game I'm actually slipping back towards nuke the whole thing and just try GW3 at this point.

[draxynnic.3719]

Stunlock can be countered, and usually requires cooperation by multiple players to actually get a stunlock kill since in competitive, most CCs do just enough damage to stop the CCer from remaining in stealth after landing a hit. Spike builds usually have a certain degree of fragility to them, giving a prepared opponent the opportunity to turn the tables. High durability builds usually do lower damage in exchange for that durability - they wear you out over time, they're not spikers. (Also worth noting that's probably a WvW thing - sPvP removed most of the more defensive stat combos a long time ago.)

You do NOT get to be invulnerable for five seconds while being able to deal enough damage to have basically won the fight within that window (a spike build that takes much longer than five seconds to down someone in sPvP just isn't a spike build). The closest thing I can think of to what you're proposing is a soulbeast with Signet of Stone, and they're still subject to CCs and conditions, so there are ways to counter their spike without needing to have your own 5s of invulnerability.

I would note that, while a more difficult build to play than most, power mesmer has already been known for its spiking ability. But that spike includes shattering for damage, so you don't really get to add Distortion to the spike.

Edited February 21 by draxynnic.3719

[Ravenwulfe.5360]

On 2/17/2024 at 8:03 PM, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

In other profs then Chrono would be the Quick spec while Mirage would be the Alac spec. That's how they are balanced: 1 Alac spec, 1 Quick spec, and heal is more a byproduct of their traits' capability. That's why we see a lot of boon DPS but we don't see any heal Warriors, Quick Heal Deadeye, Alac Heal Willbender or Quick Heal Harbinger.  

But Chrono does both, in fact it can fill anything now that it can heal. That's why for Mesmers it's kinda weird, and Mirage is stuck having no clearly defined roles unlike other specs. Why play Alac Mirage with its abysmal uptime when Chrono does it 10x times better? Why play condi Mirage when Virt does it 100x times easier?

The only solution I see is taking away Chrono's Alac share and limit it to sharing Quick only, so that Mirage can be fleshed out as the Alac spec. But if that's implemented I'm sure all of Mesmer playerbase will immediately throw a fit. 

While I agree rifle ambush needs to provide either quick or alac to actually be a bother, to say Chrono is the only spec that provides either the choice of quick or alac is actually quite wrong. Mirage has that option as well. Scepter ambush provides quickness for a mirage. In theory, a mirage could be both alac and quickness with decent weapon swapping and a lot of boon time.

The thing that strikes me and this again is a hot take, is the design. In essence, a Mirage should have had the daggers that Virtuoso has but kept the ambushes. On the flip, a Virtuoso should have been a more control based bardic type class. I mean it is in the name after all, a virtuoso being someone highly skilled in music which I think would have gone a long way considering the trident has music notes for its effects, after all. The problem of course being that most of Mirage's skills don't seem to have an upfront use for most players and their playstyles in this game as well, most wanting upfront flashy damage which the Mirage has surprisingly little of for am ambush class.

Honestly, if they were going to fix the mirage to do what it's suppose to, would probably require them to do a re-write of the two specialties in their entirety, but considering we got years behind both now, it's unlikely to happen.

Edited February 21 by Ravenwulfe.5360

[Gesbo.6420]

22 minutes ago, Ravenwulfe.5360 said:

While I agree rifle ambush needs to provide either quick or alac to actually be a bother, to say Chrono is the only spec that provides either the choice of quick or alac is actually quite wrong. Mirage has that option as well. Scepter ambush provides quickness for a mirage. In theory, a mirage could be both alac and quickness with decent weapon swapping and a lot of boon time.

The thing that strikes me and this again is a hot take, is the design. In essence, a Mirage should have had the daggers that Virtuoso has but kept the ambushes. On the flip, a Virtuoso should have been a more control based bardic type class. I mean it is in the name after all, a virtuoso being someone highly skilled in music which I think would have gone a long way considering the trident has music notes for its effects, after all. The problem of course being that most of Mirage's skills don't seem to have an upfront use for most players and their playstyles in this game as well, most wanting upfront flashy damage which the Mirage has surprisingly little of for am ambush class.

Honestly, if they were gong to fix the mirage to do what it's suppose to, would probably require them to do a re-write of the two specialties in their entirety, but considering we got years behind both now, it's unlikely to happen.

The quickness is like 2 sec and it is personal only. 

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

1 hour ago, Ravenwulfe.5360 said:

While I agree rifle ambush needs to provide either quick or alac to actually be a bother, to say Chrono is the only spec that provides either the choice of quick or alac is actually quite wrong. Mirage has that option as well. Scepter ambush provides quickness for a mirage. In theory, a mirage could be both alac and quickness with decent weapon swapping and a lot of boon time.

Like Gesbo said, the Quickness from Scepter ambush is personal only and you can't share it.

Even if hypothetically that it could, there isn't a universe anywhere that Anet would allow a spec to provide both Alac and Quick with their current balance philosophy. It would either be so bad it would be unplayable, or it would be so good and recreate the Chrono jail situation. 

I'm not saying that Mirage can't ever be like Chrono and do both, but the current Mirage Mantle design allows Mirage to access both at once and we can't have that. It needs to be like Chrono where access is restricted by trait choices.

[draxynnic.3719]

10 hours ago, Ravenwulfe.5360 said:

While I agree rifle ambush needs to provide either quick or alac to actually be a bother, to say Chrono is the only spec that provides either the choice of quick or alac is actually quite wrong. Mirage has that option as well. Scepter ambush provides quickness for a mirage. In theory, a mirage could be both alac and quickness with decent weapon swapping and a lot of boon time.

The thing that strikes me and this again is a hot take, is the design. In essence, a Mirage should have had the daggers that Virtuoso has but kept the ambushes. On the flip, a Virtuoso should have been a more control based bardic type class. I mean it is in the name after all, a virtuoso being someone highly skilled in music which I think would have gone a long way considering the trident has music notes for its effects, after all. The problem of course being that most of Mirage's skills don't seem to have an upfront use for most players and their playstyles in this game as well, most wanting upfront flashy damage which the Mirage has surprisingly little of for am ambush class.

Honestly, if they were going to fix the mirage to do what it's suppose to, would probably require them to do a re-write of the two specialties in their entirety, but considering we got years behind both now, it's unlikely to happen.

Well, mirage does have dagger now, and mirage dagger is being buffed with other power mirage weapons.

When it comes to virtuoso, I think there's nothing wrong with the elite spec when it comes to mechanics and playstyle, it's just been misnamed.

[Ravenwulfe.5360]

12 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Well, mirage does have dagger now, and mirage dagger is being buffed with other power mirage weapons.

When it comes to virtuoso, I think there's nothing wrong with the elite spec when it comes to mechanics and playstyle, it's just been misnamed.

Yes, there is nothing wrong with the mechanics, except it should be an ambusher mechanic set to be honest since the mirage's problems are the ramp up time to make it effective of course. Virtuoso should still be more bardic honestly, but again it's a few years too late for all that.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 minutes ago, Ravenwulfe.5360 said:

Yes, there is nothing wrong with the mechanics, except it should be an ambusher mechanic set to be honest since the mirage's problems are the ramp up time to make it effective of course. Virtuoso should still be more bardic honestly, but again it's a few years too late for all that.

I'd argue virt should be less bardic. The mechanics and playstyle are purely magic DPS, there's nothing bardic in there apart from the name virtuoso and the names of the shatter replacements, which just create a false expectation. Let the psychic dagger spec focus on that, and a bard spec could be a future elite specialisation if they can find a way to do that well without stepping on chronomancer's toes.

[Zenith.7301]

I want a power DPS hammer elite spec for mesmer.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

11 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

I want a power DPS hammer elite spec for mesmer.

You get a squeaky hammer.

*reverb* ARENANET HAS SPOKEN!

[Wolfofdivinity.6251]

I'm not upset by this. I'm quite comfortable with dagger/focus/sword/pistol/gs as my options for wvw pvp.

[Mell.4873]

On 2/18/2024 at 11:40 AM, Geronmy.3298 said:

Rifle is also not a weapon any sane person can take to OW.

Most of the time you camp one weapon anyway so I could see it taking up an alternative slot just to heal. Seems to me the primary use case except if you are on Mirage. 

Greatsword Chronomancer with Rifle on the side for healing since you don't having a true healing skill due to Signet of Either. 

[ShadowKatt.6740]

1 minute ago, Mell.4873 said:

Most of the time you camp one weapon anyway so I could see it taking up an alternative slot just to heal. Seems to me the primary use case except if you are on Mirage. 

Greatsword Chronomancer with Rifle on the side for healing since you don't having a true healing skill due to Signet of Either. 

Just my two cents here, but I carry a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. I feel that makes the most sense and I never liked the idea of using ranged weapons in melee. It feels...wrong, but I guess that's my hangup. So as a mesmer we have lots of range options, GW, Stafff, Sept, Dagger, and now RIfle, and only two for melee, Sword and Axe. But it does mean that whatever ranged weapon I take, I'm stuck with it. Now I WANT to use a rifle. I've wanted a rifle forever, but I literally cannot take a rifle while I'm on my own. I have to either double up on ranged weapons or take something else.