Chaotic Transferance - RIP - April 16, 2024 - Please revert

[Ghin.1653]

- Chaotic Transference: This trait no longer shares chaos aura with nearby allies. It now grants regeneration to nearby allies when you apply chaos aura to yourself.

Chaotic Transferance was a new iconic & fantastic way for support mesmers to play, being one of the only ways to en mass grant chaos aura to allies.
What support auramancer was to Elementalist, Chaotic Transferance was a new iconic way to play support mesmer.

There are HUNDREDS of ways to apply regeneration. There is only one class in the game that has open access to chaos armor. This isn't even remotely close to a good exchange.

Please revert this change, I think this build style was destroyed way too quickly. It hasn't even been 6 months since this trait was reworked in such an amazing way, the decision to immediately butcher it now feels like premeditated murder because someone didn't want to take the time to deal with a larger balance issue.

If chaos armor is too strong when combined with this trait, then examine chaos armor so its not so broken when mass applied to a group. There isn't any issue with elementalist auramancer granting 4 different aura's consistently, to the point that 2/3 of its elite spec's have a way to revolve builds around it.

[dead.7638]

🦗 🎻 

[Chyro.1462]

Can't really talk about how strong aoe chaos aura was cause I'm not playing the content where it matters.

But I do think it's a really bad direction to do nerfs in a way that makes them bland and not really a pickable choice. Think this has been a trend for a while, where a overperforming trait rather than being slightly adjusted just gets changed into something useless. Regen really isn't a boon that mesmer struggles to keep up and having that on another trait makes the trait more or less worthless if it doesn't offer anything else.

Approaching trait nerfs in this fashion narrows down build diversity, which I don't think is healthy for the game overall. Please change this approach anet and give a bit more thought to making interesting trait options when you decide to change a trait.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

As much as I love the interaction, Elementalist's elemental auras are garbage compared to Chaos Aura. That's the only reason why they're allowed to be shared en masse. Meanwhile, Chaos Aura effectively cuts the enemy's damage by 83% in PvP interactions (Protection + Weakness), even more damage if we consider Weakness's side effect to nullify critical chance. This is extremely powerful in tipping the scale of the fight, I have witnessed it myself in WvW where a small group of us managed to slaughter an enemy zerg via Chaos Aura spam.

This is a good reminder to those saying that Mesmers don't have support capabilities; it's not that Mesmers don't have such capabilties, but every time Mesmers do support the game just breaks. I mean, sharing Distortion? Copying boons? And now Chaos Aura spam. What could go wrong with allowing a class that actively breaks game mechanics to share the peasants that same ability to break game mechanics? (/sarcasm).

Personally, I'm not upset with this change. Yes it'll kill the identity of support Mesmers during the past 6 months, but it preserves the power of Chaos Aura for our selfish use. If we're going to share it again I fear they'll nerf the aura to uselessness like the Ele's auras.   

[Arheundel.6451]

2 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

As much as I love the interaction, Elementalist's elemental auras are garbage compared to Chaos Aura. That's the only reason why they're allowed to be shared en masse. Meanwhile, Chaos Aura effectively cuts the enemy's damage by 83% in PvP interactions (Protection + Weakness), even more damage if we consider Weakness's side effect to nullify critical chance. This is extremely powerful in tipping the scale of the fight, I have witnessed it myself in WvW where a small group of us managed to slaughter an enemy zerg via Chaos Aura spam.

This is a good reminder to those saying that Mesmers don't have support capabilities; it's not that Mesmers don't have such capabilties, but every time Mesmers do support the game just breaks. I mean, sharing Distortion? Copying boons? And now Chaos Aura spam. What could go wrong with allowing a class that actively breaks game mechanics to share the peasants that same ability to break game mechanics? (/sarcasm).

Personally, I'm not upset with this change. Yes it'll kill the identity of support Mesmers during the past 6 months, but it preserves the power of Chaos Aura for our selfish use. If we're going to share it again I fear they'll nerf the aura to uselessness like the Ele's auras.   

They added confuse emote...for telling the truth.

[Dadnir.5038]

4 hours ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Chaos Aura effectively cuts the enemy's damage by 83% in PvP interactions (Protection + Weakness)

I don't think you really understand how Protection and Weakness "stack" nor do I think you understand how weakness work.

First of all, weakness don't prevent critical hits. Weakness have a 50% chance to reduce outgoing strike damage by 50%. So, effectively, it would be a 25% reduction in outgoing strike damage through the duration of weakness.

Protection is a 33% incoming damage reduction.

Both stack multiplicatively which mean:

Weakness(1-0.25) x Protection(1-0.33) = 50% damage reduction (no matter the gamemode)

The aura also give the opportunity to apply those. It's a 1 chance out of 3 to apply either weakness, protection or both with a 1s ICD. (I'm not going to bother trying to calculate the odds of getting the rigth combination of boon/condition through the duration of the aura but that's a factor that drop down the "effectiveness" of the damage reduction of the aura).

Objectively, chaos aura's defensive effectivness is close to frost aura (chill increasing skill recharge can reduce damage output by quite a lot), shocking aura (disabling a foe for 1 second every 2 second is, effectively, a 50% damage reduction) and magnetic aura (make you "immun" to projectile attacks with no ICD). The difference being that elementalist can tie a lot of boons to those auras, protection included.

 

As for the change to chaotic transference itself, I don't think it's a "bad" thing. Not because it was "OP" but because this redefine more accurately the purpose of the trait itself. It's purpose wasn't to provide chaotic aura to the mesmer's allies but to provide regeneration. A nice side effect will be that it will also reduce visual pollution.

[Ghin.1653]

• Shock aura stuns en mass roughly every 2 seconds per player that activates the effect - powerful
• Magnetic aura reflects proj - powerful
• Frost aura chills enemy and reduces dmg by 10% - good defence, powerful if chill isnt cleansed
• Flame aura grants might and burns enemies - powerful if condi support but might is better granted elsewhere

In comparison

• Chaos aura randomly gives regen, protection, swiftness to allies with weakness, confusion, cripple to enemies when hit - powerful if someone is repeatedly hitting them in rapid succession

While Chaos aura IS powerful, is it really more so than a support elementalist.
Comparing mainly what occurs when an aura is granted VS the rest of the support:

Elementalist

• Active heals (trait) + passive heals (water & regen)
• Mass Protection + Vigor + Regen everytime they grant an aura (trait)
• Mass Reactive stun + crowd control
• Mass reflect
• Mass damage reduction (frost aura AND protection)

Mesmer

• Passive heals (Regen)
• Mass Reactive Protection + Swiftness + Regen - Randomly Allocated
• Mass Reactive Weakness + Confusion + Cripple - Randomly Allocated

There's also a massive difference in the sheer quantity of applications for these abilities. Elementalist literally gets these aura's as utilities AND skill bar abilities where mesmer has only Illusionary Membrane (trait), Staff 4, Rifle 3 (a self fulfilling blast combo) & leap + one other blast combo (torch 4)

[cenesirio.7124]

We waited (in WvW) more than 10 years to make chaos aura a usefull skill. We waited more than 10 years to have build diversity and to be able to play a decent support/healer mesmer and few whinners made to undo this changes. As a tempest elementalist, our aura are spammable the same and way more usefull, esp magnetic and frost aura. Sorry to say but Anet is really terrible at balancing this game. Just see the illogical change to wall and gate rebuild at 50%.from 10%.

Edited April 17 by cenesirio.7124

[Strider.7849]

On 4/16/2024 at 8:44 PM, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

As much as I love the interaction, Elementalist's elemental auras are garbage compared to Chaos Aura. That's the only reason why they're allowed to be shared en masse. Meanwhile, Chaos Aura effectively cuts the enemy's damage by 83% in PvP interactions (Protection + Weakness), even more damage if we consider Weakness's side effect to nullify critical chance. This is extremely powerful in tipping the scale of the fight, I have witnessed it myself in WvW where a small group of us managed to slaughter an enemy zerg via Chaos Aura spam.

This is a good reminder to those saying that Mesmers don't have support capabilities; it's not that Mesmers don't have such capabilties, but every time Mesmers do support the game just breaks. I mean, sharing Distortion? Copying boons? And now Chaos Aura spam. What could go wrong with allowing a class that actively breaks game mechanics to share the peasants that same ability to break game mechanics? (/sarcasm).

Personally, I'm not upset with this change. Yes it'll kill the identity of support Mesmers during the past 6 months, but it preserves the power of Chaos Aura for our selfish use. If we're going to share it again I fear they'll nerf the aura to uselessness like the Ele's auras.   

One of the big problems with how the developers go about it though is they keep nerfing around the issue and then when it doesn't work, they remove it.

The issue this causes is that the spec becomes not only unfun to play but they wreaked so much havoc across the board leading up to that removal, that all you're left with at the end is a full set of gear that isn't useful anymore or having to rework it into an entirely different role.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

it was nice while it lasted.

I'm not gonna pretend that Chaos Aura was SUPER significant. It only procced conditions when you were hit, and as a mesmer you don't want to be hit so it wasn't doing you much good. It might have been more useful on OTHER people since they'd be in the fray of things. I mostly just used it for the regeneration anyway. But that's not what I wanna talk about.

While I don't PvP it's not because I don't get PvP. I just hate losing. One of the things that I have forever had a complaint with is that if you're a staff mesmer and you have 3 clones you want to BLEND IN with them. That means if you use Chaos Shield, OOPS! There's the mesmer. You just outted yoruself. So on the staff you have five skills and ONE of them is now absolutely useless because it actually harms you more than helps you. When you could share it though you tap it once and ALL your clones get it. You get all the benefits of Chaos Aura AND you haven't marked yourself as the target to kill.

This is once again a case of Anet has no idea how mesmers work, how mesmers play, or what mesmers do. I have to assume that they are absolutely ignorant of their own game because the only other option is that they DO know what they're doing and they're breaking the mesmer on purpose. Unfortunately, I tend to lean more towards the latter these days than the former.

[mirage.8046]

in other words, our leap finishers into ethereal fields no longer trigger chaos aura share. the synergy wasn't powerful enough to begin with as mesmer doesn't have nearly as many leaps or blasts for the ethereal fields it has unless someone was relying on other allies' ethereal fields.

it's becoming more and more apparent that anet nerfs these nice interactions for something bland or less than useful to 'reduce' the potency. anet could have made chaos aura more useful and accessible than just the aura granting regeneration. our only aura skills come from trident and staff. triggering chaos aura is pretty clunky in practice, because you'd then dedicate to rifle, wells if chrono, feedback, or null field. maybe a condi to boon conversion upon getting a chaos aura would've spiced things up for mesmer support. elementalist has sooo many more synergies with auras. so why can't chaos mesmer be the same in this fashion? 

[Excitonalt.7340]

When the trait came out, I knew it was strong. Chaos aura share is something worthy of a GM trait. If they find it too problematic and want to remove it, I am honestly fine. On the bright side, we get rifle skill 3 which you can self-reliantly apply chaos aura to allies.

That being said, a master trait reduced to just applying regen feels lackluster. I wish it do a bit more, maybe apply randomly another boon like swiftness/protection/resolution to allies.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

The previous version was even worse. It’s just a self-Regen and some measly Protection when you gain Chaos Aura, hard cooldown.

I’m just going to say that Anet, if you have decided that we aren’t allowed to share Chaos Aura, then can we get the previous Illusionary Membrane back? Please? The one where the damage bonus is tied to Regen, and not Chaos Aura uptime?

It’s freaking clunky to manage something so tight and lasting so short, and we don’t have enough Aura sources to allow for wiggle room and maintain it 100% in encounters. The current Membrane was bearable when Chaos Aura could be shared, but now that it couldn’t anymore there’s also 0 reason for the current Membrane.

[apharma.3741]

On 4/17/2024 at 4:44 AM, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

As much as I love the interaction, Elementalist's elemental auras are garbage compared to Chaos Aura. That's the only reason why they're allowed to be shared en masse. Meanwhile, Chaos Aura effectively cuts the enemy's damage by 83% in PvP interactions (Protection + Weakness), even more damage if we consider Weakness's side effect to nullify critical chance. This is extremely powerful in tipping the scale of the fight, I have witnessed it myself in WvW where a small group of us managed to slaughter an enemy zerg via Chaos Aura spam.

This is a good reminder to those saying that Mesmers don't have support capabilities; it's not that Mesmers don't have such capabilties, but every time Mesmers do support the game just breaks. I mean, sharing Distortion? Copying boons? And now Chaos Aura spam. What could go wrong with allowing a class that actively breaks game mechanics to share the peasants that same ability to break game mechanics? (/sarcasm).

Personally, I'm not upset with this change. Yes it'll kill the identity of support Mesmers during the past 6 months, but it preserves the power of Chaos Aura for our selfish use. If we're going to share it again I fear they'll nerf the aura to uselessness like the Ele's auras.   

I agree that shared chaos aura is broken, however claiming that frost aura spam isn't broken is not accurate. You cause enemies to be perma chilled moving 66% slower AND having massive recharge penalties to skills while taking 6%-10% less damage (depends on modifiers). Frost aura is a very broken aura to be spammed.

As for distortion share, it was fine WHEN MESMER ONLY HAD F4 FOR DISTORTION, where it broke was the stupid distortion spamming enabled by blurred inscriptions and signet of illusions which no-one enjoys fighting in any incarnation. Add to that signet of illusions recharging distortion (while granting it itself) and continuum splitting it, and you can see why distortion share was broken. It wasn't because it's bad, it was because there was/is too much distortion in the game.

I agree keep chaos aura just for the mesmer and don't share but the trait really needs to do more than share regen, that boon is passively vomited out by many classes, especially support classes, maybe an idea is that chaos aura's detonate at the end giving you 1-3 of the boons it can give and inflicting 1-3 of the conditions on enemies. Allows more control over the application of the conditions and to limit it to a certain range.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

3 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

I agree keep chaos aura just for the mesmer and don't share but the trait really needs to do more than share regen, that boon is passively vomited out by many classes, especially support classes, maybe an idea is that chaos aura's detonate at the end giving you 1-3 of the boons it can give and inflicting 1-3 of the conditions on enemies. Allows more control over the application of the conditions and to limit it to a certain range.

I still want Chaos Aura on my clones. How about we compromise?

[Gesbo.6420]

22 hours ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

I still want Chaos Aura on my clones. How about we compromise?

Absolutely agree, I think there should be an option that would allow us to punish people that want to cleave the clones and the chaos armor transferrence was that to some degree. It will also help hiding in your clones when you are not the only person with a big purple circle around you. I think there should me more "you and your illusions" type of traits.

I've been also thinking about chaos armor being detonated somehow like elementalist auras. Would be cool to have different effects depending on the shatter you you use. 

One can dream...

[Voyant.1327]

You had to expect it to be removed because it's Mesmer and that's what they do.
Change a skill for no reason with the promise of it being better and then remove the thing that made it better.

Sure, you can keep 100% uptime on Chaos Aura on a group, but that's literally because we needed to in order to get the damage bonus we used to just have... And they wanted to make Chaos traitline support based.

That being said all the Mesmer changes these past few years have been consistently one thing...
Not fun to play and constantly have their knees cut out from them any time you try to do anything interesting.

I'll log in to play again when I see they understand the point of a game is to have fun.