Mesmer patch notes?

[Curunen.8729]

2 hours ago, Quadox.7834 said:

 

It will be protection on Chaos Aura (not just staff 4).

Good to know, assuming just an oversight on the notes and the tooltip in game should state chaos aura.

[Veprovina.4876]

You know, when i think about it, this doesn't really affect my boonstrip WvW build that much if at all...

So... Yay i guess? I mean, Mesmers are still one trick ponies in WvW so whatever...

I did make a perma quickness and perma alacrity scepter chrono build that will probably be overnerfed now, but that was just a meme build so i'm not that cross about it.

 

Hizen's Staff Mirage will probably become meta now that it gives alacrity, might and changes to Chaos Armor...

Actually... With might on dodge food and new might on staff ambush...

Oh god, Anet, what have you done! 😅

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

28 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Hizen's Staff Mirage will probably become meta now that it gives alacrity, might and changes to Chaos Armor...

Actually... With might on dodge food and new might on staff ambush...

Oh god, Anet, what have you done! 😅

 

Don't worry.  The influx of staff-mers come May 11 will kick off a fresh round of nerf Mirage discussions and Anet will continue to ignore all the things that really need attention.

[Curunen.8729]

On reflection it's confusing/disappointing how things ended up going down this path.

 

Instead of encouraging mirage to be more thief like and frequent bouncing around with deceptions, evades etc, every patch has further incentivised bunkering up, letting clones do the work, and using increasingly squeezed resources in the most passive/defensive manner possible.

 

Staff should be an aesthetically satisfying kiting stick while dancing around and causing chaos. One big benefit of this patch has been the blind on chaos armour - finally it can be used as active defence (no more stupid rng weakness on cast...).

 

But the lack of any other offensive skill - especially the terrible phantasm - still leaves it as a monotonous 1111 spam weapon. At least change the phantasm to some kind of decent player attack on cast so there is some variety, and have the phantasm do something interesting for once (it's beyond useless).

 

And the even stranger thing is that instead of offloading condition applicaiton from clone ambush to the player - the boon application has been shifted, so it doesn't look like they ever intend to change clone ambushes (because otherwise there would be no point).

 

Then there is the completely bizarre change of normal staff auto to have Confusion on subsequent bounces - when they specifically went out of their way to remove confusion from the original staff ambush and axe ambush because it should be limited burst application. So now clones can just spam it on auto (sure, not the first hit, but still...)? I mean - yeah I'm happy it's more thematic than burning/bleeding, but why not put it on the ambush instead as before?

 

And the bottom line - still can't wrap my head around it - why tf did they put alacrity on mirage - and in the most monotonous place possible - on a weapon that already spams 11111 - so they want you to spam 11dodge111dodge111 even more? If they had to put alacrity, then at least put it on some other skill for variety in pressing buttons.

It makes no sense thematically. I appreciate mirage has some synergy with boons (vigour, regen) but surely there were dozens of other possibilities that would be more fitting.

 

I dunno, on one hand I love the changes to downed #2, chaos armour, staff auto flight speed, sc/sw block quality of life, and the potential to play hybrid again on mirage instead of pure condi given various changes. But the gameplay style doesn't look to be all that interesting - as in hindsight on pof launch, regardless of total lack of balance, at least the playstyle was more engaging.

 

For a minimal change, I'd have preferred no alacrity, putting some kind of -20% deception cooldown on elusive mind or similar (remove one condition) and force giving up clone offence for personal mobility/defence.

[FalsePromises.6398]

What bums me out the most about that patch is that you won't be able to take Medic's Feedback and Restorative Mantras at the same time since they're both in the same column of Inspiration, both two powerful support options that together could make core mesmer and mirage a very potent offheal, but debatably not with only one at a time. I'd love it if they swapped the placements of Warden's Feedback and Medic's Feedback so that you could take both Medic's Feedback and Restorative Mantras at the same time, because otherwise it feels like a painstaking tradeoff to pick one or the other when core mesmer and mirage already have VERY few support options in terms of healing/reviving: giving up your only reliable area revive or your only reliable area heal (other than wells (most needing traits)) doesn't sit right.

[Veprovina.4876]

1 hour ago, Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

 

Don't worry.  The influx of staff-mers come May 11 will kick off a fresh round of nerf Mirage discussions and Anet will continue to ignore all the things that really need attention.

Oh definitely i'm not worried about Anet ignoring us. I'd be more worried if Anet tried to actually do something that we've been saying for years because that is one of the signs that the apocalypse is nearing! 😛

 

I'm joking of course, but yeah, i'm definitely predicting more "mermer OP" whine and Anet caving to it like they always do so...

[Veprovina.4876]

20 minutes ago, Curunen.8729 said:

On reflection it's confusing/disappointing how things ended up going down this path.

 

Instead of encouraging mirage to be more thief like and frequent bouncing around with deceptions, evades etc, every patch has further incentivised bunkering up, letting clones do the work, and using increasingly squeezed resources in the most passive/defensive manner possible.

 

Staff should be an aesthetically satisfying kiting stick while dancing around and causing chaos. One big benefit of this patch has been the blind on chaos armour - finally it can be used as active defence (no more stupid rng weakness on cast...).

 

But the lack of any other offensive skill - especially the terrible phantasm - still leaves it as a monotonous 1111 spam weapon. At least change the phantasm to some kind of decent player attack on cast so there is some variety, and have the phantasm do something interesting for once (it's beyond useless).

 

And the even stranger thing is that instead of offloading condition applicaiton from clone ambush to the player - the boon application has been shifted, so it doesn't look like they ever intend to change clone ambushes (because otherwise there would be no point).

 

Then there is the completely bizarre change of normal staff auto to have Confusion on subsequent bounces - when they specifically went out of their way to remove confusion from the original staff ambush and axe ambush because it should be limited burst application. So now clones can just spam it on auto (sure, not the first hit, but still...)? I mean - yeah I'm happy it's more thematic than burning/bleeding, but why not put it on the ambush instead as before?

 

And the bottom line - still can't wrap my head around it - why tf did they put alacrity on mirage - and in the most monotonous place possible - on a weapon that already spams 11111 - so they want you to spam 11dodge111dodge111 even more? If they had to put alacrity, then at least put it on some other skill for variety in pressing buttons.

It makes no sense thematically. I appreciate mirage has some synergy with boons (vigour, regen) but surely there were dozens of other possibilities that would be more fitting.

 

I dunno, on one hand I love the changes to downed #2, chaos armour, staff auto flight speed, sc/sw block quality of life, and the potential to play hybrid again on mirage instead of pure condi given various changes. But the gameplay style doesn't look to be all that interesting - as in hindsight on pof launch, regardless of total lack of balance, at least the playstyle was more engaging.

 

For a minimal change, I'd have preferred no alacrity, putting some kind of -20% deception cooldown on elusive mind or similar (remove one condition) and force giving up clone offence for personal mobility/defence.

I still think Alacrity should have been Chrono specific. Makes no sense for anyone else to have it. And it makes even less sense for Revenants to be better at it than Chronos because they're already good at pretty much everything else, they don't really need to also give alacrity...

[Curunen.8729]

3 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

I still think Alacrity should have been Chrono specific. Makes no sense for anyone else to have it. And it makes even less sense for Revenants to be better at it than Chronos because they're already good at pretty much everything else, they don't really need to also give alacrity...

Yeah I agree it should have stayed as a chrono exclusive effect.

 

I suppose one could say that given chill exists as a condition (in terms of increasing cooldowns), it can make sense the opposite should exist as a boon. And I appreciate the challenge of encouraging variety in group instanced pve the moment you have one class that has exclusive access to global cooldown reduction.

But then what is chrono, as a "time mage" meant to be in concept, to make it a unique and different way of playing the game? Just happening to have additional access to a boon that other specs/classes have, alongside increased slow/quickness and an incredibly long cooldown rewind mechanic?

 

This is coming from someone barely touching chrono since pof, but I think elite spec identity should be distinct - and that line is steadily becoming less and less clear.

 

[Veprovina.4876]

5 minutes ago, Curunen.8729 said:

Yeah I agree it should have stayed as a chrono exclusive effect.

 

I suppose one could say that given chill exists as a condition (in terms of increasing cooldowns), it can make sense the opposite should exist as a boon. And I appreciate the challenge of encouraging variety in group instanced pve the moment you have one class that has exclusive access to global cooldown reduction.

But then what is chrono, as a "time mage" meant to be in concept, to make it a unique and different way of playing the game? Just happening to have additional access to a boon that other specs/classes have, alongside increased slow/quickness and an incredibly long cooldown rewind mechanic?

 

This is coming from someone barely touching chrono since pof, but I think elite spec identity should be distinct - and that line is steadily becoming less and less clear.

 

Well i guess there's an argument to be made that if only Chronos have access to Alacrity, you make them mandatory in every Raid (which is the ONLY CONTENT THAT MATTERS amirite?), so spreading it out to other classes mitigates that. But then, Raids are inherently broken because as soon as something gets "meta levels of X thing" like alacrity, it's going to still be mandatory and only one class will be good at it. At least make it then so that whoever has acces to certain boons, can distribute them equally, not make one class better at it than another because that defeats the point of trying to have build and class diversity in such content.

 

And now Mirage can grant alacrity as well which is cool i guess, i see what they were going for, making the espec a bit more support friendly, and i like the idea of Staff being a support weapon, but they only gave Staff alacrity on ambush, meaning Chronos won't get it and now staff becomes a boon weapon only for Mirage.

I mean, i don't want to seem ungreatful that Mirage is getting some love, but i think it's getting the wrong kind of love, and since this all only ever applies to Raids, it all seems so pointless in the grand scheme of things.

 

Why balance the entire game around a niche content that the majority of players will never play?

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

 

1 hour ago, Curunen.8729 said:

On reflection it's confusing/disappointing how things ended up going down this path.

 

Instead of encouraging mirage to be more thief like and frequent bouncing around with deceptions, evades etc, every patch has further incentivised bunkering up, letting clones do the work, and using increasingly squeezed resources in the most passive/defensive manner possible.

 

Staff should be an aesthetically satisfying kiting stick while dancing around and causing chaos. One big benefit of this patch has been the blind on chaos armour - finally it can be used as active defence (no more stupid rng weakness on cast...).

 

But the lack of any other offensive skill - especially the terrible phantasm - still leaves it as a monotonous 1111 spam weapon. At least change the phantasm to some kind of decent player attack on cast so there is some variety, and have the phantasm do something interesting for once (it's beyond useless).

 

And the even stranger thing is that instead of offloading condition applicaiton from clone ambush to the player - the boon application has been shifted, so it doesn't look like they ever intend to change clone ambushes (because otherwise there would be no point).

 

Then there is the completely bizarre change of normal staff auto to have Confusion on subsequent bounces - when they specifically went out of their way to remove confusion from the original staff ambush and axe ambush because it should be limited burst application. So now clones can just spam it on auto (sure, not the first hit, but still...)? I mean - yeah I'm happy it's more thematic than burning/bleeding, but why not put it on the ambush instead as before?

 

And the bottom line - still can't wrap my head around it - why tf did they put alacrity on mirage - and in the most monotonous place possible - on a weapon that already spams 11111 - so they want you to spam 11dodge111dodge111 even more? If they had to put alacrity, then at least put it on some other skill for variety in pressing buttons.

It makes no sense thematically. I appreciate mirage has some synergy with boons (vigour, regen) but surely there were dozens of other possibilities that would be more fitting.

 

I dunno, on one hand I love the changes to downed #2, chaos armour, staff auto flight speed, sc/sw block quality of life, and the potential to play hybrid again on mirage instead of pure condi given various changes. But the gameplay style doesn't look to be all that interesting - as in hindsight on pof launch, regardless of total lack of balance, at least the playstyle was more engaging.

 

For a minimal change, I'd have preferred no alacrity, putting some kind of -20% deception cooldown on elusive mind or similar (remove one condition) and force giving up clone offence for personal mobility/defence.

 

Exactly.  Pretty much what I was getting at here:

 

9 hours ago, Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

The improvements to Staff reinvite the safe, passive play style that led to nerfs in the first place. Meanwhile, the change to Torment makes already high-risk, moderate-reward Axe even less effective in competitive modes (though probably significantly better in a lot of PvE scenarios). Together, these changes seem to push Mirage the opposite direction of where they were trying to go with a lot of the nerfs.

 

To each their own, but passive-play staff Mirage at its peak was one of the most reviled builds in competitive modes and the coming update is a push back towards that.  QoL improvements are always nice, but I would personally prefer they improved, dare I say buffed (or just partially un-nerfed), the far more active and risky Axe, and do little things like restore Jaunt if a second dodge is non-negotiable.  Not to mention trait lines have been butchered so bad over the last few years they may as well blow them up and start over.  It's amusing when other professions actually have discussions about choices among trait lines to take and traits to pick.

[Stavros.8249]

I looked for a gear that combine concetration and condition dmg but couldn't find something like diviners for power. Should we count only in fractal potion and the new chaos trait for boon duration. in my calculations with those 2 would be like 3.75s per dodge alacrity for fractals only. Is it possible with those number to have perma alacrity? I quess we could get a food and utility also for concetration, but its a dps loss. 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Stavros.8249

[Curunen.8729]

6 hours ago, Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

 

 

Exactly.  Pretty much what I was getting at here:

 

 

To each their own, but passive-play staff Mirage at its peak was one of the most reviled builds in competitive modes and the coming update is a push back towards that.  QoL improvements are always nice, but I would personally prefer they improved, dare I say buffed (or just partially un-nerfed), the far more active and risky Axe, and do little things like restore Jaunt if a second dodge is non-negotiable.  Not to mention trait lines have been butchered so bad over the last few years they may as well blow them up and start over.  It's amusing when other professions actually have discussions about choices among trait lines to take and traits to pick.

I think they overnerfed cooldowns on axe and deceptions.

 

All because people were incapable of simple retargeting and/or cleave...

 

And the power nerf on axe (and staff also tbh) just further pushed towards sitting back, being even more passive.

 

Instead of the above, they could have addressed clone condi ambush in relation to the player, shaving/shifting appropriately. I'd have taken a nerf in offence via clones in favour of retaining lower skill cooldowns (and two dodges) which would allow for more fun gameplay - being able to port around more frequently but requiring the player to land most of the damage.

 

On the flip side I think this shatter spam build with Signet of Illusions is equally stupid and reminiscent of old condi chrono when you'd use F5 to double up and just spam all the shatters. It's not what mirage should be unique for, to be different from core/chrono. Of all the things this patch they should have made the effort to create new shatters for mirage at least.

[Quadox.7834]

8 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Well i guess there's an argument to be made that if only Chronos have access to Alacrity, you make them mandatory in every Raid (which is the ONLY CONTENT THAT MATTERS amirite?), so spreading it out to other classes mitigates that. But then, Raids are inherently broken because as soon as something gets "meta levels of X thing" like alacrity, it's going to still be mandatory and only one class will be good at it. At least make it then so that whoever has acces to certain boons, can distribute them equally, not make one class better at it than another because that defeats the point of trying to have build and class diversity in such content.

 

And now Mirage can grant alacrity as well which is cool i guess, i see what they were going for, making the espec a bit more support friendly, and i like the idea of Staff being a support weapon, but they only gave Staff alacrity on ambush, meaning Chronos won't get it and now staff becomes a boon weapon only for Mirage.

I mean, i don't want to seem ungreatful that Mirage is getting some love, but i think it's getting the wrong kind of love, and since this all only ever applies to Raids, it all seems so pointless in the grand scheme of things.

 

Why balance the entire game around a niche content that the majority of players will never play?

All they had to do to limit the power of Chrono in raids was to reduce or even completely remove its potential for giving alacrity to allies. It should never have been possible to give perma alacrity to allies.

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

1 hour ago, Curunen.8729 said:

Instead of the above, they could have addressed clone condi ambush in relation to the player, shaving/shifting appropriately. I'd have taken a nerf in offence via clones in favour of retaining lower skill cooldowns (and two dodges) which would allow for more fun gameplay - being able to port around more frequently but requiring the player to land most of the damage.

 

Totally. This is the direction they should rework Mirage, but it would require some work. Active, engaging play instead of passive.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm just perplexed on how alacri-mirage is supposed to be used well.  Chaos Vortex is a 0.6 power skill that gets most of its damage from conditions caused by having multiple clones up.  Sure, I can run around spamming Mirage Cloak to give everybody hugging me alacrity, but the only environment where I can do significant damage is against a raid boss.  

 

In most of PVE, the clones won't live long enough to get set up, because power damage kills everything so quickly.  In PVP, people aren't going to be clustered next to me.  In WvW the clones don't survive, and also the damage will be below paltry.  

[Veprovina.4876]

16 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I'm just perplexed on how alacri-mirage is supposed to be used well.  Chaos Vortex is a 0.6 power skill that gets most of its damage from conditions caused by having multiple clones up.  Sure, I can run around spamming Mirage Cloak to give everybody hugging me alacrity, but the only environment where I can do significant damage is against a raid boss.  

 

In most of PVE, the clones won't live long enough to get set up, because power damage kills everything so quickly.  In PVP, people aren't going to be clustered next to me.  In WvW the clones don't survive, and also the damage will be below paltry.  

I think the staff ambush alacrity thing doesn't depend on clones. It just triggers around the mesmer, no clones needed, nor do they infact contribute to this, they only get the damaging part of the ambush from what i understood about it.

 

But overall - this was a Raid update without any consideration for other modes, even other PvE modes.

[SunTzu.4513]

8 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

But overall - this was a Raid update without any consideration for other modes, even other PvE modes.

I'm still thinking and hoping there must be more comming on the patch. This can not go live without other changes. I mean come on they must see what they are doing. Alone the already strong FB centred fractal meta will just become more FB heavy. Also how will a condi suport mirage work? Will concentarion still have an effect on boon duration?

[Infusion.7149]

55 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I'm just perplexed on how alacri-mirage is supposed to be used well.  Chaos Vortex is a 0.6 power skill that gets most of its damage from conditions caused by having multiple clones up.  Sure, I can run around spamming Mirage Cloak to give everybody hugging me alacrity, but the only environment where I can do significant damage is against a raid boss.  

 

In most of PVE, the clones won't live long enough to get set up, because power damage kills everything so quickly.  In PVP, people aren't going to be clustered next to me.  In WvW the clones don't survive, and also the damage will be below paltry.  

I think mostly people that like meme staff mirage openworld will play it.
In most other situations the condi RR or even condi alac setup should outperform it after the torment change.

The patch is mainly centered around raiding / 10 man instanced content such as strikes , because that's the only place you would actually say chronomancer is extremely strong. Anywhere you have trash mobs it really isn't that amazing because of the clone issue and the second strike of chronophantasma has a delay.

At least for fractals, it essentially solidifies the firebrand as a quickness provider.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Mungo Zen.9364]

41 minutes ago, SunTzu.4513 said:

I'm still thinking and hoping there must be more comming on the patch. This can not go live without other changes. I mean come on they must see what they are doing. Alone the already strong FB centred fractal meta will just become more FB heavy. Also how will a condi suport mirage work? Will concentarion still have an effect on boon duration?

 

Possibly before EoD, but almost certainly after EoD and the elite specs we should see a multi-mode pass for all professions.  However, given how they targeted specific changes I would assume that they are not going to give Chrono or Mirage much more.  I expect the focus to be on the next Mesmer eSpec and how it affects the meta.

 

To be fair, I don't really feel that these changes affect my gameplay much for Chrono.  I have been messing with hybrid overworld tagging and support builds the past year since I am almost always in a group.  I am thinking of working on some nonsense Celestial Chrono for giggles, since it is a direction these changes could support....

[Veprovina.4876]

  

52 minutes ago, SunTzu.4513 said:

I'm still thinking and hoping there must be more comming on the patch. This can not go live without other changes. I mean come on they must see what they are doing. Alone the already strong FB centred fractal meta will just become more FB heavy. Also how will a condi suport mirage work? Will concentarion still have an effect on boon duration?

 

Maybe this is kind of an "initial balance", and i'm sure there's more coming when EoD comes out. This balance patch just seems like a stepping stone toward the changes that are coming in the expansion and the new elite specs. So while it doesn't really make sense now, i think it will in EoD. I mean, they're changing boons and conditions globally, i think they have something planned for EoD that makes this change necessary. We'll see... Until then, it's a really perplexing patch for sure.

 

36 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

I think mostly people that like meme staff mirage openworld will play it.
In most other situations the condi RR or even condi alac setup should outperform it after the torment change.

The patch is mainly centered around raiding / 10 man instanced content such as strikes , because that's the only place you would actually say chronomancer is extremely strong. Anywhere you have trash mobs it really isn't that amazing because of the clone issue and the second strike of chronophantasma has a delay.

At least for fractals, it essentially solidifies the firebrand as a quickness provider.

 

I play the meme mirage build for open world and it's funny that it might even be viable for other stuff now lol.

I also made a meme perma quickness/alacrity chrono before, but wit the quickness nerf to 1sec, it's now even worse than a meme build lol. So yeah, firebrands all the way again. Anet loves their firebrands!

[Mungo Zen.9364]

1 minute ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

  

 

Maybe this is kind of an "initial balance", and i'm sure there's more coming when EoD comes out. This balance patch just seems like a stepping stone toward the changes that are coming in the expansion and the new elite specs. So while it doesn't really make sense now, i think it will in EoD. I mean, they're changing boons and conditions globally, i think they have something planned for EoD that makes this change necessary. We'll see... Until then, it's a really perplexing patch for sure.

 

 

I play the meme mirage build for open world and it's funny that it might even be viable for other stuff now lol.

I also made a meme perma quickness/alacrity chrono before, but wit the quickness nerf to 1sec, it's now even worse than a meme build lol. So yeah, firebrands all the way again. Anet loves their firebrands!

 

It is the rise of the Quickness Scrapper at the cost of Mesmer.....Similar to the Rise of AlacRen at the cost of Mesmer......

 

okay maybe a bit dramatic.....but it does sound sensational.

[Infusion.7149]

2 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

 

It is the rise of the Quickness Scrapper at the cost of Mesmer.....Similar to the Rise of AlacRen at the cost of Mesmer......

 

okay maybe a bit dramatic.....but it does sound sensational.

It's simplification of the game for steam release probably.

Playing a chrono and then playing firebrand / renegade after that is so much easier. Not many players can play chrono with high proficiency.

Even after scrappers gain quickness, unless you run 2 scrappers with 3 gyros each you still need Diviner gear or harrier gear with boon duration on top of it which means firebrand is still going to remain the defacto choice. That's especially true for PVE since blocking an attack that does a large amount of damage is more advantageous than outhealing it , both for scholar uptime reasons and mechanically due to added effects of attacks such as conditions or CC.

[Veprovina.4876]

4 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

 

It is the rise of the Quickness Scrapper at the cost of Mesmer.....Similar to the Rise of AlacRen at the cost of Mesmer......

 

okay maybe a bit dramatic.....but it does sound sensational.

 

Can Mesmers get something at the cost of some other class? This is getting ridiculous... 🙄

 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

It's simplification of the game for steam release probably.

Playing a chrono and then playing firebrand / renegade after that is so much easier. Not many players can play chrono with high proficiency.

Even after scrappers gain quickness, unless you run 2 scrappers with 3 gyros each you still need Diviner gear or harrier gear with boon duration on top of it which means firebrand is still going to remain the defacto choice. That's especially true for PVE since blocking an attack that does a large amount of damage is more advantageous than outhealing it , both for scholar uptime reasons and mechanically due to added effects of attacks such as conditions or CC.

 

Oh that's right, they had a Steam release planned lol. Whatever happened to that? You think it's coming and this patch is kind of the precursor?

 

Also the main problem i have is that yes, you need high proficiency to play Mesmers  and other classes are easier, but then, the high ceiling gameplay should have high rewards (damage, condi, boon uptime for those who can pull it off), not lower rewards than easier to play classes that do the same better and easier. What point is then in playing Mesmer at all?

[Infusion.7149]

The problem with mesmer nerfs are they are almost always heavy handed. For example the proposed Danger Time nerf (removal of 10% completely , rather than a shave to maybe 3-7%), which was understandable along with Time Warp changes , since both were used to stack chronos. Seize the moment was changed from 1.5s to 1s duration. Then Chronophantasma was hit as well (because currently ~40% of damage is from phantasms , so 25% reduction in half of that would be ~5%)...

Even tank chronos weren't spared because Restorative Mantras' heal was cut in half.

Realistically a full DPS chronomancer isn't going to do 42K benchmark unless you stack them for slow uptime and clones don't die before you get to shatter them. Hitting Danger Time and Time Warp that hard would have been enough.

If someone is giving up ~ 25% damage just to output quickness currently assuming they have perfect timing, then they should have been allowed to do that. Leeway is far less than on cQB, since QB only need 25% boon duration and Firebrand runes provide 40%. After patch you would need 50-60% boon duration probably for StM chronos. It is also predicted with 100% slow that power Chronomancer (no quickness output from StM) will bench 37K , which means someone building for solo chrono or without using Danger Time will be doing even less, more like 33K. If you currently drop Danger Time you already lose 15% damage if you try to hit crit cap without it (i.e. the 42K benchmark is more like just under 36K).

I predict that StM chrono will do less damage than condi Quickbrand after May 11 while being far harder to achieve quickness uptime of the same level ; removal of Danger Time damage bonus would already drop it below 30K and that is assuming you have 100% slow uptime. If you were building around no slow uptime at all right now, you're already at 27K-ish benchmark because gearing alone causes 15% damage loss from the stat drop. Probably the aim was to reduce it to the level of power quickbrand which isn't really used in raid scenarios, discretize has it listed at just over 23K and that is with fractal potions probably.

People in instanced PVE that don't play them hate mesmers , people in PVP hate mesmers because apparently figuring out which ones are clones is too difficult. With the mantra changes on top of this, cQB will be able to go spamming mantras off cooldown at all times (as opposed to saving last charge), alac renegade will still be using Orders from Above F4 off cooldown.

[SunTzu.4513]

9 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Maybe this is kind of an "initial balance", and i'm sure there's more coming when EoD comes out. This balance patch just seems like a stepping stone toward the changes that are coming in the expansion and the new elite specs. So while it doesn't really make sense now, i think it will in EoD. I mean, they're changing boons and conditions globally, i think they have something planned for EoD that makes this change necessary. We'll see... Until then, it's a really perplexing patch for sure.

This sounds logic. But why would they not comunicate it this way if it is the case? Hey guy's we will start putting out some balance patches to bring everything in line step by step towards EoD. Regardless of the patches in the past i normaly find people in my guilds/FL which say the changes are okay for them. But this time everyone seems just utterly confused/mad even my balance give, balance take philosophy guys...