Chrono isn't That OP, Anet Plz Don't Destroy it

Lordrosicky.5813 · April 13, 2018

@whoknocks.4935 said:Basically mesmer right now seems a pve spec used in pvp.
What i mean is: they go on a node, 2 people comes and they start a skill rotation same as the ones in pve used for bosses. And pvp is based on using the skill on the right moment and when it's needed, it shouldn't be a monotone rotation like mesmer has.
This means even bad players can achieve great result with it, spam clones, shatter, make more clones shatter again, invuln, dodge, evade and repeat while the enemy is surrounded by 10+ clones and all of his attacks fails to land because it is not that obvious when you can actually do your countermove to win the fight.
The best bet is just ignore the fight and dont waste time on it, but the problem is with the crazy mobility mesmer can easily outrotate you and rekt you.
At least firebrand has zero mobility, he just live on mid or camp a node, but doesn't rotate efficiently. Mesmer does it even better.
It requires a serious rework and put some cap on clones or something else that can't be abused with traits like right now.

You basically just described gw2 pvp for at least 3 years. You win by knowing the other specs and by spamming your rotation on point. You change this rotation based on what spec you are against. No skill required. Just knowledge of the games meta and running an OP spec.

Lordrosicky.5813 · April 13, 2018

The only way to nerf mesmer is to nerf f1-f4. Anything except this is worthless as their trait lines are so deep in power that any nerfed traits can easily be replaced by an equally OP trait.

EpicTurtle.8571 · April 13, 2018

@Lordrosicky.5813 said:The only way to nerf mesmer is to nerf f1-f4. Anything except this is worthless as their trait lines are so deep in power that any nerfed traits can easily be replaced by an equally OP trait.

Sufficient nerfs would be along the lines of reducing the damage of the utility phantasms and addressing overperforming traits and skills. Shatters do not belong to either of those categories, especially F2-4.

OriOri.8724 · April 13, 2018

@ButterPeanut.9746 said:IMO, one of the underlying issues that isn't talked about quite as much is the damage potential of the defensive/utility phantasms. I think the damage needs to be toned way down on Echo of memory, Disenchanter, and Defender. Give disenchanter the Break enchantments treatment. Make it useful as utility skill, but only does ~1k with demo amulet. These phantasms should be used defensively (or not at all pending on other changes). If they are used defensively the reward for doing should be that you avoided damage, ripped boons, etc...not doing 10k damage along side it

Well this just isn't true. The high damage on our utility and defensive phantasms has been pointed out and complained about plenty. It just sounds like you aren't looking in the right places. Pretty much everyone with any sense agrees that the damage on some of our phantasms is too high, especially in conjunction with our ability to pump them out so quickly right now.

OriOri.8724 · April 13, 2018

@Enigmoid.1264 said:
@OriOri.8724 said:Threads like this do absolutely nothing to help mesmer get balanced, but they sure do seem to contribute to the growing kitten of people asking for the wrong nerfs to the class. Nerfs that don't fix any underlying issues at all.

The simple answer is that Mesmer needs far more nerfs than anyone really thinks - especially the specific (not all) Mesmer mains who think that changing a few traits will somehow 'fix' the class. Their proposed nerfs generally do not fix the class and appear to be based on reducing Mesmer from Zeus God level to Heracles Demigod level - still incredibly OP. In the vast majority of cases these 'nerfs' include buffs as well and will not remove the class from its S+++ tier level - it will still be far stronger than its competition.

Look at all the nerfs Scourge had since PoF launched, how many times people cried that due to nerfs it was dead and it still dominates hard in PvP and WvW (I realize that this is the PvP subforum but changes to mesmer are going to affect other gamemodes so I will briefly try to touch on them). Look at all the nerfs Holo had including the 25% damage reduction on photon at PoF launch. Still pretty strong. Spellbreaker is still a decent build. All of these took multiple waves of nerfs to bring them into line. Nobody wants this mesmer train to last the 6+ months it is taking Anet to fix scourge. Multiple classes and specializations still need buffs (Revenant and Elementalist) and don't have a meta build to their name. With this said, Anet should focus on balancing mesmer properly, not little by little nerfing it, cause it could take easily 6+ months to fix this class and the playerbase is going to revolt. Try to balance mesmer not gut it but a little overnerfing is better than undernerfing.

The issue is not limited to Chronophantasma or Signet of the Ether. Mesmer is massively overperforming on all levels across the board (talking PvP, WvW, and PvE) and needs more than a couple trait and weapon changes to bring it in line. Mesmer pretty much requires a massive trait nerf to be anything close to reasonable - look at the absurdity that is chaos. There simply are not any significant weak points to current mesmer builds. High damage while running defensive traitlines. Able to dodge while channeling skills or stomping at basically 0 cost (other classes can do this but they have to take a tradeoff). Excessively tanky (lots of access to vigor and protection, distortion).

Honestly the issue beyond CS, CP, and Ether phantasm spam is that traits simply don't have necessary cooldowns, are dependent on conditions that are far too spamable/general, or are uncapped such that while the average benefit from that trait is in line the maximal benefit is completely nuts. Here are a couple examples.

Illusionary Defense: 5% damage reduction for 5 seconds when summoning an illusion. 5 stack max. Adept.First this condition is very easy to fufill. Mesmer is always summoning illusions and this trait basically operates as a passive. This is not a conditional trait in that it only works under a particular circumstance (i.e. Light Density Amplifier: reduced damage

while in photon forge

) - this trait always operates at effective 100% uptime (Geomancer's Defence: 10% damage reduction from foes within 360 range. Not always useful.) and does not require you to significantly modify your playstyle (Putrid Defense: take 10% less damage from poisoned foes. This requires you to poison your enemy.) to gain a benefit. This is not a trait that gives any negative effects (Light Density Amplifier: gain extra heat). This is a trait where the maximum benefit is significantly higher than almost every other damage reduction trait in the game (Resilience of Shadows is also 25% but in stealth). This trait is consistent, strong, has no negatives, and is easy to use. Yes it does require you to be summoning illusions but it will generally be active to some level almost constantly and more importantly you will have high stacks while executing a burst (can be up for a long time when using CS + Ether). This is one of the best DR traits in the game and it is

Adept

.

Chaotic Persistance: 3% boon and condition duration for every boon you have on you.The issue here is how massive this can scale. With a significant number of boons this outscales any other concentration trait in the game but it also provides condition duration as well. With boonspam the way it it this trait is very overpowered. It also lies in a boon heavy traitline.

Evasive Mirror: Gain mirror (2s) after a successful evasion. 1.5 s cd.On mirage this is really quite strong and can shut down ranged builds. Not always taken but with the vigor mirage gets and the longer doges (more likely to evade an attack) this is an awful lot of projectile hate off of a single trait.

Mirage Mantle: Gain Protection (2s) when mirage cloak ends.Why does mirage with its innate class design need so much protection? This is a lot of protection as well coming off a single trait.

Phantasmal Haste: Phantasms spawn with quickness (3s), gain quickness when you spawn a phantasm.The is no ICD on this trait making it very abusable in conjunction with CS and Ether. Huge issue dealing with huge numbers of phantasms with this trait. Lots of quickness uptime.

Bountiful Disillusionment: Gain boons on shatter. Gain 5s stability on shatter. No ICDThis is a lot of easy stability for a slippery class and one who can dodge while attacking. Also needs to be nerfed because of PvE due to the excessive boonshare (Chrono already has enough). The fact that stability is gained on any shatter and the mesmer doesn't need to have any clones out makes it a very strong get-out-of-jail free card.

The strength and overpoweredness of mesmer is not just from CS + CP + Ether, its not just that the traits have a lot of synergy, its that the traits themselves are very strong especially when complementing class mechanics.

Mesmer needs a significant across the board haircut. This is not just limited to PvP either. End game PvE revolves around the Mesmer.

This is a well thought out post, but you don't seem to quite grasp how much nerfing the synergy between CP and SotE will do in terms of reigning the class in. Are those the only things on mesmer that are overperforming? No, but they overshadow everything else by so much that they need to be the top priority to fix. That is why we are focusing on them. Besides, they nerf a whole lot of other things along with them. For example, imagine if just SotE active effect and CP were changed. No resetting phantasm CDs, and CP changed so that a phantasm attacks twice, instead of summoning a new phantasm after it attacks:

Instantly, cut down on the number of possible phantasms summoned by more than half (closer to 3/4). Already this is a pretty solid nerf, but I agree that its not enough. However, still a solid nerf for mesmer and chronomancer, but most importantly, it carries a chain reaction
Phantasmal haste procs nearly 3/4 less often than it did prior to this change, massively reducing our access to quickness via said trait. Can we still maintain high quickness uptime? Yes, especially as a chrono. However, we can no longer do that with just 1 trait, which means we have to increase our investment if we want quickness, which lowers the investment we can put in other places
Compounding power gains a ramp up time. What I mean is that we can no longer get 4 stacks of compounding power from a single skill use. Significant nerf? Not really. But at least we would have to do something to reach max stacks, unlike now.
Phantasmal force becomes 1/2 - 2/3 less effective as it is now. This makes it significantly harder for a mesmer or chrono to stack high might on themselves. Right now, with Avenger/Warlock/traited berserker and CP, a single skill use (technically 2 for avenger, but insignificant detail) will generate 12 personal might on ourselves in PvE, 8 personal might in PvP/WvW. With just the changes listed to SotE and CP, this will drop down to 6 might in PvE, and 4 in PvP/WvW from this single skill. When you take this into consideration of all of our phantasm generation, this is a huge nerf to this might generation trait, which in turn is a pretty large nerf to our damage output across the board.
Sharper images - Not truly significant, but fewer phantasms out means fewer illusions scoring critical hits, means fewer bleeds stacked on you. Again, not significant, but it will be nerfed if SotE and CP are addressed
Sympathetic Visage - Again, its proccing significantly less, so it will be cleansing fewer conditions from the mesmer. Significant nerf? I think its more than some people would give credit, makes it harder for us to run a build without a dedicated condi cleanse skill
Mental Defense loses its reset from SotE. Cuts our ability to use this trait in half, which again just compounds the effects of the other effects
PoM will proc significantly less often than it does now. Reduces our ability to keep perma boons up, by quite a bit, along with that note that, under the example change to CP given, PoM will never share quickness or aegis with us, as those would time out on the phantasms before they complete their second attack. So on top of proccing less often, it would also never give us aegis or quickness.

Now, on top of all of that, the change to SotE would also cut our clone generation from phantasm skills, leading to weaker shatters overall, which would, of course, also nerf the effect of every single shatter related trait in the game.

Are there other things that need nerfing with mesmer and our elites? Yes, absolutely. We aren't denying that. You rightfully pointed out illusionary defense, you also forgot shatter storm and a few other traits. But that doesn't change the fact that changing SotE and CP will have a massive cascading nerf effect on the rest of core mesmer, and hence also on chrono and mirage. You, and many many other people on the forum, don't seem to understand just how big of a nerf will come from just that 1 skill and 1 trait being changed. No, its not enough, its also much bigger of an effect than you give it credit though.

shadowpass.4236 · April 13, 2018

@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:The damage is also a huge problem. As is the survivability and cc. Also the boon duration. On top of having portal.
The CS suggestion is pretty awful as well.

The damage isn’t a problem, the cool down manipulation is.

If I could do a 16k attack every 20s you know to avoid that attack, you can look for it’s tells and win by avoiding the strongest attacks.If I could do a 10k attack, then repeat it if you dodged, followed by another if you dodged the second that’s where these things get out of control.

It’s the same reason why coalescence of ruin is completely broken in WvW, the damage now is fine as it won’t oneshot you if you have a bit of health padding but at 4s cool down you just spam it to kill people.

Tell that to Gazelle's Charge. The skill could do 4k base damage every 20 seconds, or 20k with a lot of setup and a specific build and the damage got nerfed by 50% in less than a month.

Meanwhile Chronos can do equivalent damage repeatedly while ccing and maintaining permanent boon uptime while being tankier and more mobile than other classes, and they have portal.

Gazelles charge was a FGS type effect issue if I remember correctly where it would hit multiple times doing large amounts of damage.

Not sure why you bring it up to be honest other than you play ranger and possibly a little salty over losing the one shot as my entire point was about multiple high damage sources being on too short a cool down. The issue with Chrono being that it can reduce the cool downs on its skills and double up on them while having a baseline double up on skill use mechanic. If you have issue with the way Gazelle was nerfed or whatever then make your own thread and ask for attention to be brought to it and a fix you think is better.

Why is everyone on the internet so obsessed with getting people mad? It's a bit silly.

The multiple hits all landed at the same time. In your own words, doing 75-100% of someone's health in a single attack is perfectly fine as long as you can't spam it. Gazelle's Charge was a single attack that did:

"16k damage every 20s. You knew how to avoid the attack, because you could look for its tells and dodge it."

Yet Anet nerfed it heavily and quickly despite it being not able to be spammed. If this skill alone received a 50% damage nerf, and mesmer has access to skills that do just as much damage, multiple times. They should realistically ALL receive 70% damage nerfs MINIMUM to bring them down to a respectable level.

Disenchanter should only remove 2 boons. Defender shouldn't do damage at all.

But I’m not complaining about Gazelles charge and this thread isn’t about Gazelles or ranger. If anything all you are doing is reinforcing what many mesmer players have been saying recently and that is that the real issues of these incredibly strong skills should be tackled rather than straight up damage nerfs.

No, but the comparison is valid.

You stated:

@apharma.3741 said:The damage isn’t a problem, the cool down manipulation is.

Yet I contested that BOTH are an issue. The Gazelle damage nerf was just an example I gave of a similar situation in which a high damaging skill received an extremely heavy reduction. However, this applies even more so to mesmer because it can do MORE damage, whilst simultaneously retaining a higher effectiveness in nearly every other aspec

No singular mesmer skill is doing anything close to the damage of your gazelle example, it is a combination of multiple skills and traits causing this.A gazelle no matter what ranger build you use could have hit for 20k, whether it be core, druid or SB,

on a singular skill

.

No you're wrong. If you use the forum search tool you can find numerous threads on the topic. The 20k from Charge was upfront.

Core mesmer will not have any singular phantasm skill come close.

I've seen as high as 17k from a SINGLE Defender. Disenchanter and Defender routinely hit for 10k+. The best part is, its almost impossible to see when/where they are attacking from because there is too much visual clutter.

Mirage will not have any singular phantasm skill come close.

Mirage can absolutely hit just as hard. Though it has its own problems.

You're mistakenly believing that the damage is tied to Chrono. The phantasms alone hit extremely hard with Chaos and Illusions regardless of what elite spec you are/aren't using.

Therefore the problem is that these skills are being used more frequently than their cool downs balance them by so the targets should be what enables this.This is why I said what I said, the problem isn’t the damage, the problem is what enables the skills to be used more frequently.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Again you're wrong. One of the biggest problems and most frequent complaints is the damage. There's no reason why multiple AI on a class using PALADINS AMULET should hit for 10k while stripping all of your boons and ccing you.

I mean honestly, you can take a look at the most recent patch. They increased the cooldowns of the phantasms but it doesn't matter because their damage is completely busted. By your logic, a skill that instantly kills someone is balanced if it has a long enough cooldown. That doesn't make sense.

Those defender hits are if you keep attacking it, it has counterplay and won’t usually hit that hard. Disenchanter I’ve said plenty of time does maybe a bit too much damage but it isn’t so far out of whack it needs a huge nerf. The rest of your suggestions have been laughably made out of spite and it’s clear to anyone following.

You’ve now strayed far away from my original point and now are starting to resort to logical fallacies. I have never said a one shot mechanic is fine. I have never said 20k was fine. If you look at my post I said 16k and that’s honestly the upper limit I would put to damage skills without having to go really glassy for essentially a one shot. I have also not said the Gazelle nerf was fine either.

11k Disenchanter 11k Defender

This is on PALADINS amulet. I don't see how you fail to recognize that 16k on a single damage skill WITHOUT going really glassy is completely ridiculous. Most classes barely hit for 3k on a crit with paladins, and you're saying 16k is alright. I'm literally losing brain cells responding right now.

See, you're wrong again. You're assuming that everyone is running a vitality amulet. 16k damage can range from 50%-100% of someone's health on the current meta builds.

The Gazelle nerf WAS fine. It was bad for the game and the fact that you said otherwise just proves you really don't know what you're talking about.

shadowpass.4236 · April 13, 2018

@mortrialus.3062 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:The damage is also a huge problem. As is the survivability and cc. Also the boon duration. On top of having portal.
The CS suggestion is pretty awful as well.

The damage isn’t a problem, the cool down manipulation is.

If I could do a 16k attack every 20s you know to avoid that attack, you can look for it’s tells and win by avoiding the strongest attacks.If I could do a 10k attack, then repeat it if you dodged, followed by another if you dodged the second that’s where these things get out of control.

It’s the same reason why coalescence of ruin is completely broken in WvW, the damage now is fine as it won’t oneshot you if you have a bit of health padding but at 4s cool down you just spam it to kill people.

Tell that to Gazelle's Charge. The skill could do 4k base damage every 20 seconds, or 20k with a lot of setup and a specific build and the damage got nerfed by 50% in less than a month.

Meanwhile Chronos can do equivalent damage repeatedly while ccing and maintaining permanent boon uptime while being tankier and more mobile than other classes, and they have portal.

Gazelle's charge was instant gibbing players for 45k damage on top of basically instantly cleaving their downstate. Like Chrono is ridiculous right now,

was okay either.

Look at the video more slowly. It didn't insta gib players for 45k damage THEN cleave their downstate. It hit for roughly 20k up front, then the rest of the damage came from the multi-hit bug in downstate, which did the rest of the damage.

Mantra mesmers can do just as much damage up front from stealth while stunning you. However, people had an issue when the damage came from AI. Mesmer has like 8 Gazelle's right now that do much more than just damage.

Lordrosicky.5813 · April 13, 2018

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:
@Lordrosicky.5813 said:The only way to nerf mesmer is to nerf f1-f4. Anything except this is worthless as their trait lines are so deep in power that any nerfed traits can easily be replaced by an equally OP trait.

Sufficient nerfs would be along the lines of reducing the damage of the utility phantasms and addressing overperforming traits and skills. Shatters do not belong to either of those categories, especially F2-4.

All those f1-f4 skills are extremely strong. Across the board nerfs to all of them would bring some balance. I would suggest cast times on all those skills to add some counter play. If this is not possible with the skill splits then probably just double the cooldowns of all these skills would be appropriate. Other changes would be needed alongside f1-f4 nerfs though. As these nerfs alone would still leave mesmer too strong.

Yukio blaster.9082 · April 13, 2018

@Lordrosicky.5813 said:
@EpicTurtle.8571 said:
@Lordrosicky.5813 said:The only way to nerf mesmer is to nerf f1-f4. Anything except this is worthless as their trait lines are so deep in power that any nerfed traits can easily be replaced by an equally OP trait.

Sufficient nerfs would be along the lines of reducing the damage of the utility phantasms and addressing overperforming traits and skills. Shatters do not belong to either of those categories, especially F2-4.

All those f1-f4 skills are extremely strong. Across the board nerfs to all of them would bring some balance. I would suggest cast times on all those skills to add some counter play. If this is not possible with the skill splits then probably just double the cooldowns of all these skills would be appropriate. Other changes would be needed alongside f1-f4 nerfs though. As these nerfs alone would still leave mesmer too strong.

Just for you to know the F1-F4 skill can't dmg you if the clones don't reach you so it's all ready on some type of delay only the dmg from your self is instant if in range . you probably didn't knew that so here you are learning new things, cos you clearly don't have a clue about Mesmer .No offence.

Wolfric.9380 · April 13, 2018

I would rework signet of eather. While i like a minion style play being availabe pushing out more then 5 (clones and phantasms together at once) is just too much. alone the visual noise.

Yukio blaster.9082 · April 13, 2018

@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@apharma.3741 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:The damage is also a huge problem. As is the survivability and cc. Also the boon duration. On top of having portal.
The CS suggestion is pretty awful as well.