What's the deal with 2 staff traits?

[AlphatheWhite.9351]

I'm not seeing any chatter about it, so I'll ask: does anyone know why they would think 2 competing staff traits in the Chaos line would be a positive experience? Especially with what looks to be a broken synergy chain, where the Chaos Armor trait provides the protection and regeneration you need to maintain Membrane for more condi damage, but at the cost of your staff cooldowns and condi damage bonus?

Worse, there's a potential synergy chain between Mirage Mantle and Chaotic Transference that you can't take advantage of without forgoing a weapon trait. If you're running axes you gotta skip the axe trait, and if you're running staff you gotta skip the main staff trait.

These aren't inherent problems, but it feels clunky as hell. Did they just not realize that Chaos Armor is a staff ability specifically?

[Stavros.8249]

9 minutes ago, AlphatheWhite.9351 said:

I'm not seeing any chatter about it, so I'll ask: does anyone know why they would think 2 competing staff traits in the Chaos line would be a positive experience? Especially with what looks to be a broken synergy chain, where the Chaos Armor trait provides the protection and regeneration you need to maintain Membrane for more condi damage, but at the cost of your staff cooldowns and condi damage bonus?

Worse, there's a potential synergy chain between Mirage Mantle and Chaotic Transference that you can't take advantage of without forgoing a weapon trait. If you're running axes you gotta skip the axe trait, and if you're running staff you gotta skip the main staff trait.

These aren't inherent problems, but it feels clunky as hell. Did they just not realize that Chaos Armor is a staff ability specifically?

U dont use  Choatic transference. U use renewing oasis from mirage trait line. Perma regen

[Alpha.1308]

8 minutes ago, Stavros.8249 said:

U dont use  Choatic transference. U use renewing oasis from mirage trait line. Perma regen

that doesn't explain away their poor decision to implement it this way

Edited May 11, 2021 by Alpha.1308

[Curunen.8729]

It's a bit strange that it is for chaos armour only and not any source of chaos aura.

 

I suppose the "gain regen when you get protection" is kind of universal (though not that many sources of protection unless they are thinking middle line of Chaos is defensive - eg if you take PU then can proc additional regen when you get protection in stealth), but for staff it seems the 20% lower cooldown is just better all around anyway - for defence and offence.

 

Yeah I don't quite get the design.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Curunen.8729

[AlphatheWhite.9351]

1 hour ago, Stavros.8249 said:

U dont use  Choatic transference. U use renewing oasis from mirage trait line. Perma regen

And I sure do love being locked into a trait I wasn't using before, don't you just know.

But really, Alpha's point is the right one. I'm complaining about the clunkiness, not that there's no way to make this functional. I weave together my builds on other classes, and most of them I don't have to make dumb decisions, the synergy is designed to let me take the stuff together that works together.

Another example:
They seem to want me to like this change for my axe+axe mirage too, so let's see how that goes? I don't really wanna take Chaotic Potency because it's a mere 120 condi dmg for the trait. Maybe I'll do that, but it's weak for a Master, right? I could take Chaotic Transference instead...and not be able to use the Chaos Armor portion. But maybe the extra regen will be worth it, so I can get Riddle of Sand or Self-Deception back, right? But no, where am I getting protection if I don't have Chaos Armor or Mirage Mantle? I'm not really. So Chaotic Transference is out for Axe+Axe. Leaving me deciding between the weak offense of Chaotic Potency, or the defensiveness of Auspicious Anguish, which is very much not what I thought they were trying to give me with this change (a stronger Chaos tree).

And since so much of the redesign is founded on Regen, am I now locked into Renewing Oasis to maintain my regeneration? Should I be looking into a heftier boon duration kit just so I can keep my condi bonuses? I have questions, and none of them seem to really resolve themselves on diving into the actual build possibilities. It seems like they just put things in random places and then didn't bother to find out if those places worked out smoothly.

[Leonidrex.5649]

ngl was thinking something new is gonna be good on staff, then logged in game, noticed ~500 dmg staff ambush, and 300 dmg auto-attacks and noped the kitten out xd

[Gryxis.6950]

13 minutes ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

ngl was thinking something new is gonna be good on staff, then logged in game, noticed ~500 dmg staff ambush, and 300 dmg auto-attacks and noped the kitten out xd

with burning being changed to confusion on the ambush (and aa rebound), condi mirage is even better at killing noobs and trash at killing skilled players, who thought this was healthy for the game ?

Edited May 11, 2021 by Gryxis.6950
forgot a letter

[Curunen.8729]

4 minutes ago, Gryxis.6950 said:

with burning being changed to confusion on the ambush (and aa rebound), condi mirage is even better at killing noobs and trash at killing skilled players, who thought this was healthy for the game ?

Yep it doesn't make sense - when they removed confusion from staff ambush in the first place because they didn't want spammable confusion.

 

Now we have confusion on staff auto and staff ambush. I can smell the incoming tidal wave of complaints already.

[Leonidrex.5649]

5 minutes ago, Gryxis.6950 said:

with burning being changed to confusion on the ambush (and aa rebound), condi mirage is even better at killing noobs and trash at killing skilled players, who thought this was healthy for the game ?

I found the staff being bad at killing even npcs ( that stand still and take 2x dmg from confusion )
attacking players must be a joke

[Gryxis.6950]

2 minutes ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

I found the staff being bad at killing even npcs ( that stand still and take 2x dmg from confusion )
attacking players must be a joke

roamed as a double staff mirage a bit, there's quite a few time in not even 2h where i killed a player without doing anything else than summoning clones and trying to survive as i was outnumbered, with the clones aa ricocheting between my ennemies. It's stupidely easy to kill untrained players even when they're surrounded by good ones now.

[Gryxis.6950]

also for some reason they gave us the pve boons in wvw so perma 25 might helps

[Gryxis.6950]

basically you're going to have 990 (1140 under vigor) bonus condi stats, 10% bonus condi damage and 250 expertise as long as you're on staff and use renewing oasis so it definitely works. It's wayyyy too strong against bad players and I'm afraid they're going to nerf it without looking as to why it's so strong against bad players cuz it's already not that efficient against good players due to which condis are applied

Edited May 11, 2021 by Gryxis.6950
got a number wrong

[Leonidrex.5649]

18 minutes ago, Gryxis.6950 said:

roamed as a double staff mirage a bit, there's quite a few time in not even 2h where i killed a player without doing anything else than summoning clones and trying to survive as i was outnumbered, with the clones aa ricocheting between my ennemies. It's stupidely easy to kill untrained players even when they're surrounded by good ones now.

nobody cares what happens in wvw, I used my pve gear ( full berserker + scholar ) soulbeast and killed 3 supports 1v3, this is how bad people are in wvw

[Gryxis.6950]

1 minute ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

nobody cares what happens in wvw, I used my pve gear ( full berserker + scholar ) soulbeast and killed 3 supports 1v3, this is how bad people are in wvw

speak for yourself

[Gryxis.6950]

52 minutes ago, AlphatheWhite.9351 said:

And I sure do love being locked into a trait I wasn't using before, don't you just know.

But really, Alpha's point is the right one. I'm complaining about the clunkiness, not that there's no way to make this functional. I weave together my builds on other classes, and most of them I don't have to make dumb decisions, the synergy is designed to let me take the stuff together that works together.

Another example:
They seem to want me to like this change for my axe+axe mirage too, so let's see how that goes? I don't really wanna take Chaotic Potency because it's a mere 120 condi dmg for the trait. Maybe I'll do that, but it's weak for a Master, right? I could take Chaotic Transference instead...and not be able to use the Chaos Armor portion. But maybe the extra regen will be worth it, so I can get Riddle of Sand or Self-Deception back, right? But no, where am I getting protection if I don't have Chaos Armor or Mirage Mantle? I'm not really. So Chaotic Transference is out for Axe+Axe. Leaving me deciding between the weak offense of Chaotic Potency, or the defensiveness of Auspicious Anguish, which is very much not what I thought they were trying to give me with this change (a stronger Chaos tree).

And since so much of the redesign is founded on Regen, am I now locked into Renewing Oasis to maintain my regeneration? Should I be looking into a heftier boon duration kit just so I can keep my condi bonuses? I have questions, and none of them seem to really resolve themselves on diving into the actual build possibilities. It seems like they just put things in random places and then didn't bother to find out if those places worked out smoothly.

couldn't agree more

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

As far as I can tell, the new Chaos line is a boost to an old condi build that nobody uses.  A few years ago, the meta strategy for Mirage was to never shatter clones.  It used the chaos line to get as high of a baseline buff to condition damage as possible.

 

Don't know how high the DPS will be now.  Chances are, nobody is going to test it, since the shatter traits are so strong.  

[Chrolo.8536]

23 hours ago, AlphatheWhite.9351 said:

I'm not seeing any chatter about it, so I'll ask: does anyone know why they would think 2 competing staff traits in the Chaos line would be a positive experience? Especially with what looks to be a broken synergy chain, where the Chaos Armor trait provides the protection and regeneration you need to maintain Membrane for more condi damage, but at the cost of your staff cooldowns and condi damage bonus?

Worse, there's a potential synergy chain between Mirage Mantle and Chaotic Transference that you can't take advantage of without forgoing a weapon trait. If you're running axes you gotta skip the axe trait, and if you're running staff you gotta skip the main staff trait.

These aren't inherent problems, but it feels clunky as hell. Did they just not realize that Chaos Armor is a staff ability specifically?

 

Don't really get what you complain about. Chaos Armor and Chaos Storm got their cool downs reduced - so they are allready better then before the patch. And then you have the two traits where you can decide to chose a defensive trait or an offensive trait. That's it - a decision to make.

[Obtena.7952]

13 minutes ago, Chrolo.8536 said:

 

Don't really get what you complain about. Chaos Armor and Chaos Storm got their cool downs reduced - so they are allready better then before the patch. And then you have the two traits where you can decide to chose a defensive trait or an offensive trait. That's it - a decision to make.

The complaint is "People don't like having to make decisions that are hard" so they think complaining about it will somehow fix that. They just want everything. I faced the same decision today on these traits and it was easy. I just asked myself what I wanted the build to do ... and chose properly for the build to do that. 

[Curunen.8729]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The complaint is "People don't like having to make decisions that are hard" so they think complaining about it will somehow fix that. They just want everything. I faced the same decision today on these traits and it was easy. I just asked myself what I wanted the build to do ... and chose properly for the build to do that. 

I don't think that complaint is accurate - I think many would like the idea of forcing choice as it leads to greater diversity, especially when the nature of the game has been limited number of "decent" combinations in the past despite there being on paper many choices to build from.

 

The thing here is that if taking staff, the competing -20% cd and condi damage buff seems to far outweigh the other option both offensively and defensively (via lower cooldowns on 2, 4 and 5), as there aren't many on demand sources of protection to justify getting a bit of additional regen every now and then. Sure if not taking staff they're both kind of half a trait (regen on protection vs +120 condi damage) though a balanced choice.

 

I like the idea of having separate defensive and offensive competing options, but the execution here is not great.

[necromaniac.7629]

On 5/11/2021 at 11:45 AM, AlphatheWhite.9351 said:

I'm not seeing any chatter about it, so I'll ask: does anyone know why they would think 2 competing staff traits in the Chaos line would be a positive experience? Especially with what looks to be a broken synergy chain, where the Chaos Armor trait provides the protection and regeneration you need to maintain Membrane for more condi damage, but at the cost of your staff cooldowns and condi damage bonus?

Worse, there's a potential synergy chain between Mirage Mantle and Chaotic Transference that you can't take advantage of without forgoing a weapon trait. If you're running axes you gotta skip the axe trait, and if you're running staff you gotta skip the main staff trait.

These aren't inherent problems, but it feels clunky as hell. Did they just not realize that Chaos Armor is a staff ability specifically?

I think you're over-reacting, you're not "forced" to take anything based of taking X or Y, even if you take chaotic transference you wont upkeep 100% regen, just simply take renewing oasis and boom, easy regen, and its better to run illusiosn over chaos anyways  if you're gonna run axe. 

[necromaniac.7629]

On 5/11/2021 at 1:25 PM, Leonidrex.5649 said:

I found the staff being bad at killing even npcs ( that stand still and take 2x dmg from confusion )
attacking players must be a joke

Thats just staff tho, it has a slowish stacking playstyle, its great for champions, bosses etc

[necromaniac.7629]

On 5/11/2021 at 12:04 PM, Alpha.1308 said:

that doesn't explain away their poor decision to implement it this way

i don't see what u guys are complaining about...what?