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Staff Mirage still needs a nerfby a significant amount, Dueling Illusions Axe/Torch+Pistol Mirage is supposed to be the dps class right but there's no way it can compete.


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Well if numbers don't convince people that this build is still too strong for what it does then I dont understand what will.

 

Also like someone already explained. You can't just play on max ranged or spread out like in WoW. Boons have certain radius in which they are applied. Meaning you will sit with no boons in raids and your ambush boons will go to waste on just yourself. Not very bright. 

 

Also why do you need to have top tier dps to have fun playing a build? Thats just sad to be honest. It just shows that for people the build in general doesnt matter. I remember still playing PBM rifle holo after the nerf on overheat (full lockout of F skills while cooling down) because I just like the build and didnt care about the crippled dps. Know your class and what you are doing and you will still do top dps in groups with people who just roll the strongest the build that the meta offers while doing a bad job with it (spoiler: you barely cant do anything wrong with mirage).

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Who comes to the Mesmer forum and cries about a really overrated Alac build to be nerfed? Only on the Mesmer forums, lol. The funny part is you guys are like practically begging for it to be nerfed to the ground. Just a thought: Mirage Alac like the Axe/pistol/torch build is highly situational and doesn't see much play outside of bosses that suffer from confusion. Also, compared to Alac Rev, Mirage Alac has very obvious shortcomings -

 

Low CC, Low Proc uptime, You have to like hug your teammates to properly apply Alac, very low group utility, laughable at encounters where confusion is busted... It's absolutely horrible for fractals, save 100, due to its low cc because we all know CC is crucial in fracs for that exposed damage. So please, go on, cry more pleaseeeeee

 

Staff finally gets a buff after years of being obsolete and before than it was really only good in PvP/WvW for its clone generation and extra teleport through Phase Retreat. And further, its been dumped in PvP/WvW for years because of  its laughable damage output. Now it has a fighting chance and people are literally losing their kitten over it. IDK, glad I hardly play anymore.

Edited by dontlook.1823
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1 hour ago, dontlook.1823 said:

Who comes to the Mesmer forum and cries about a really overrated Alac build to be nerfed? Only on the Mesmer forums, lol. The funny part is you guys are like practically begging for it to be nerfed to the ground. Just a thought: Mirage Alac like the Axe/pistol/torch build is highly situational and doesn't see much play outside of bosses that suffer from confusion. Also, compared to Alac Rev, Mirage Alac has very obvious shortcomings -

 

Low CC, Low Proc uptime, You have to like hug your teammates to properly apply Alac, very low group utility, laughable at encounters where confusion is busted... It's absolutely horrible for fractals, save 100, due to its low cc because we all know CC is crucial in fracs for that exposed damage. So please, go on, cry more pleaseeeeee

 

Staff finally gets a buff after years of being obsolete and before than it was really only good in PvP/WvW for its clone generation and extra teleport through Phase Retreat. And further, its been dumped in PvP/WvW for years because of  its laughable damage output. Now it has a fighting chance and people are literally losing their kitten over it. IDK, glad I hardly play anymore.

Ok first of all, the main nerfs are for PvE only. If you would read the patchnotes, you would know. Here as reminder the nerfs from the past two patches:

  • - Winds of Chaos: When cast by a clone, the durations of applied torment and confusion have been reduced from 5 seconds to 2 seconds in all game modes.
  • - Chaos Vortex: Reduced alacrity applied to nearby allies from 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds in PvE only.
  • Chaos Vortex: When cast by a clone, the duration of the applied confusion condition has been reduced from 8 seconds to 3 seconds in PvE only.

 

No more comment needed about your PVP/WvW stuff.

 

Second about cc... You are probably one of those guys who never uses F3, which is 400 breakbar damage with 3 clones in pretty much an instant. 100 from staff, 300 from one of your signet in emergency. Very low indeed. Just your typical egocentral dps player. And hugging your teammates is one weak argument I gotta admit. Look at chrono wells or firebrand mantras for reference.

 

Third is still the problem that you never want to play axe at those bosses where its busted. Why? Because it shits out boons left and right, while doing too much damage and being way easier to play. Thats the same problem of firebrand by the way, just worse. And ANET themself said that they want the axe build to do the damage and staff to do the boons, not kittening both. Get that in your head for once.

 

Edited by anbujackson.9564
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3 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Ok first of all, the main nerfs are for PvE only. If you would read the patchnotes, you would know. Here as reminder the nerfs from the past two patches:

  • - Winds of Chaos: When cast by a clone, the durations of applied torment and confusion have been reduced from 5 seconds to 2 seconds in all game modes.
  • - Chaos Vortex: Reduced alacrity applied to nearby allies from 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds in PvE only.
  • Chaos Vortex: When cast by a clone, the duration of the applied confusion condition has been reduced from 8 seconds to 3 seconds in PvE only.

 

No more comment needed about your PVP/WvW stuff.

 

Second about cc... You are probably one of those guys who never uses F3, which is 400 breakbar damage with 3 clones in pretty much an instant. 100 from staff, 300 from one of your signet in emergency. Very low indeed. Just your typical egocentral dps player. And hugging your teammates is one weak argument I gotta admit. Look at chrono wells or firebrand mantras for reference.

 

Third is still the problem that you never want to play axe at those bosses where its busted. Why? Because it shits out boons left and right, while doing too much damage and being way easier to play. Thats the same problem of firebrand by the way, just worse. And ANET themself said that they want the axe build to do the damage and staff to do the boons, not kittening both. Get that in your head for once.

 

Really funny that you insulted me before even asking. Great way to construct an argument. 10/10

 

Okay here's the deal:

 

Diversion has a 38s CD little bit less with Alac

Signet of Domination 45s cooldown little less with Alac

Chaos storm has one Daze proc with a 25s CD

The traited Chaos storm also has one Daze Proc with a higher internal cd

Could take Moa signet for even more CC but again LONG CD

 

Now Rev

Darkrazor's Daring 6 second Daze with a 12s CD Less with Alac

Staff 5 20s CD Less with Alac

Jade Winds 5s CD Less with Alac

Assassin's Presence 100+Ferocity 

Ability to provide on demand Stability

Very high protection uptime

Reliable Alac uptime with little trade off

Bring a Alac Mirage into encounters where Confusion won't flourish and you are basically grieving your Teammates. Don't even think about bringing it into Fractals other than 100. They require short-phases where you need CC on demand. Mirage's CC is not reliable because it has way too long of a CD.

 

Oh, I'll run inspiration and run Mantras and Heal and stuff. Cool, at that point I'd rather take a Hybrid Rev because your damage trade off will have you doing less damage than a HB.

 

Also, they don't poop out boons. They provide 100% Might uptime ,fury, and Alac with random applications of Resolution, Aegis, and Swiftness. Take the inspiration variant and you could take signet of inspiration and copy boons over that already last long enough, great work! 

 

I'm not saying they are bad. They are just not that good to where people need to request nerfs left and right. 

 

 

Also, I don't know what your reading comprehension level is but I was using PvP/WvW to further exemplify how long staff has been busted. Not complaining about recent nerfs.. Read before you jump to conclusions, good sir.

Edited by dontlook.1823
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12 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

 

While I agree with yours and the quoted message I will throw this out there. 

 

Even with a ranged weapon this gameplay doesn't exist, because of how boons work. U will generally stack together to make healing and boons easier to apply in a raid enviroment I'm afraid.

...

But standing away from your group/raid will affect you negatively as it will be harder for the group to try and heal you and keep uptime on boon application. So u will sit in melee regardless. 

This is definitely on my wishlist for something I'd really like to see changed with Anet's next look at combat tuning. Tweak the mechanics of boon application and healing (in pve) to make it not so mandatory to stand on each other and fight as one eldritch blob of flailing limbs and weapons, exploding with particle effects.  It would REALLY help with fight visual clarity, and should help with player fantasy so you can actually see your own character fighting instead of this horrible flashy/fleshy mess.

Standing in THE GROUP SPOT with the rest of the team isn't fun or challenging.  It doesn't make my own combat performance optimization feel any deeper, it's just boring to me.

 

 

12 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

It's not bad game design, it's simply pros and cons of the way gw2 is built. To have a game with no roles effectively you have these issues where compromises happen.

Agree to disagree on this one I guess.  I see the game's intrinsic design punishing you for using an option it supposedly says you have (and YOUR CLASS SUPPOSEDLY PREFERS) is not a good design.  "here I made you your favorite food for the banquet. Don't eat it tho I also spiked it with laxatives, it's a tradeoff for having so much food you see"

 

 

15 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Every system has its downfalls. This Is gw2s, but the fact WoWs systems has the same problem just opposite way around and so does FFXIV to a extent kinda shows no systems making both roles equally valuable. 

 

Because if you make ranged do equal damage to melee ranged will instantly become meta. That's just the way it is. The game becomes more forgiving as a ranged player. You will never have a game which equalises it 

I have no idea what your talking about with XIV's system.  It ABSOLUTELY encourages you to include every role the game provides (tank/healer/2melee/1caster/1phys ranged, you get a penalty for stacking classes, and a bonus for having every role), and it provides different mechanics and fight requirements that no one is over safe/over stressed. (AND melee are still pulling ahead most of the time in raid parses anyway, except in some cases with rooted nuke caster blackmage being number 1. Though even though there is a hierarchy, all the jobs are pretty evenly matched outside of physical ranged dragging behind.)

 

There ARE ways to make high end content not require everyone and their mob to stand at one range, and there's nothing about the core of gw2's combat/role design that makes it impossible.  They just need to make ranged gameplay as mechanically complex, and just as dangerous as melee, while still allowing them to benefit from and contribute to the utilities of their group.  Will that take some retooling of a few of their systems? Yeah sure, but I think it would be worth it to basically double the amount of play-style options that are available.

 

I have honestly never played an mmo outside of gw2 that so heavily forces its playerbase to play at one range despite suggesting it has other options. This isn't a quirky no-roles gameplay thing, especially not in the modern age of mmos where we have the horsepower to have interesting combat encounters and mechanics. This is just gw2 completely tunnel visioning one play-style for years and failing to accommodate one of its core systems.

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1 hour ago, Roda.7468 said:

This is definitely on my wishlist for something I'd really like to see changed with Anet's next look at combat tuning. Tweak the mechanics of boon application and healing (in pve) to make it not so mandatory to stand on each other and fight as one eldritch blob of flailing limbs and weapons, exploding with particle effects.  It would REALLY help with fight visual clarity, and should help with player fantasy so you can actually see your own character fighting instead of this horrible flashy/fleshy mess.

Standing in THE GROUP SPOT with the rest of the team isn't fun or challenging.  It doesn't make my own combat performance optimization feel any deeper, it's just boring to me.

 

 

Agree to disagree on this one I guess.  I see the game's intrinsic design punishing you for using an option it supposedly says you have (and YOUR CLASS SUPPOSEDLY PREFERS) is not a good design.  "here I made you your favorite food for the banquet. Don't eat it tho I also spiked it with laxatives, it's a tradeoff for having so much food you see"

 

 

I have no idea what your talking about with XIV's system.  It ABSOLUTELY encourages you to include every role the game provides (tank/healer/2melee/1caster/1phys ranged, you get a penalty for stacking classes, and a bonus for having every role), and it provides different mechanics and fight requirements that no one is over safe/over stressed. (AND melee are still pulling ahead most of the time in raid parses anyway, except in some cases with rooted nuke caster blackmage being number 1. Though even though there is a hierarchy, all the jobs are pretty evenly matched outside of physical ranged dragging behind.)

 

There ARE ways to make high end content not require everyone and their mob to stand at one range, and there's nothing about the core of gw2's combat/role design that makes it impossible.  They just need to make ranged gameplay as mechanically complex, and just as dangerous as melee, while still allowing them to benefit from and contribute to the utilities of their group.  Will that take some retooling of a few of their systems? Yeah sure, but I think it would be worth it to basically double the amount of play-style options that are available.

 

I have honestly never played an mmo outside of gw2 that so heavily forces its playerbase to play at one range despite suggesting it has other options. This isn't a quirky no-roles gameplay thing, especially not in the modern age of mmos where we have the horsepower to have interesting combat encounters and mechanics. This is just gw2 completely tunnel visioning one play-style for years and failing to accommodate one of its core systems.

 

It does, just like lots of mmorpgs appears punishing from a melee pov while it actually isnt. It's the playerbases meta requirement which does. People don't let ranged in because it doesn't fit what they want. Not because it can't do content. 

 

FFXIV does you are right, which is why I said to a extent and when I said that I ment:

 

In your DPS line up you would always take black mage or summoner over a samarui. However they do aid it the problem much better. Although I'd argue alot of the melee speccs which get into groups do so by having alot of utility. 

 

Dragoon / ninja both provide alot of RDPS. For example. The major DPS classes have always been ranged.

 

Bad game design only applies to a situation they can help however they cannot, the way other games encourage use of melee and ranged is by providing classes which are ranged or melee only. 

 

Due to how classes work in gw2 effectively the game will "punish" one side of this every time. You cannot balance ranged v melee. Because in most games you stack 1 side to make stacking easier. Even in WoW they do this. 

 

It's easier to stack ranged or melee into the same spot. So you will always stack one. 

 

This is because

 

If ranged do equal damage to melee, melee is redundent. 

 

But if the mechanics aren't hard enough to punish being melee enough. Ranged become redundent. 

 

The reason ranged is so demanded in WoW for example is bosses and things have random one shots etc etc which primarily are against melee. They intentionally make the game 10x harder to play as a melee. 

 

 

Edited by Daddy.8125
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6 hours ago, dontlook.1823 said:

Really funny that you insulted me before even asking. Great way to construct an argument. 10/10

 

Okay here's the deal:

 

Diversion has a 38s CD little bit less with Alac

Signet of Domination 45s cooldown little less with Alac

Chaos storm has one Daze proc with a 25s CD

The traited Chaos storm also has one Daze Proc with a higher internal cd

Could take Moa signet for even more CC but again LONG CD

 

Now Rev

Darkrazor's Daring 6 second Daze with a 12s CD Less with Alac

Staff 5 20s CD Less with Alac

Jade Winds 5s CD Less with Alac

Assassin's Presence 100+Ferocity 

Ability to provide on demand Stability

Very high protection uptime

Reliable Alac uptime with little trade off

Bring a Alac Mirage into encounters where Confusion won't flourish and you are basically grieving your Teammates. Don't even think about bringing it into Fractals other than 100. They require short-phases where you need CC on demand. Mirage's CC is not reliable because it has way too long of a CD.

 

Oh, I'll run inspiration and run Mantras and Heal and stuff. Cool, at that point I'd rather take a Hybrid Rev because your damage trade off will have you doing less damage than a HB.

 

Also, they don't poop out boons. They provide 100% Might uptime ,fury, and Alac with random applications of Resolution, Aegis, and Swiftness. Take the inspiration variant and you could take signet of inspiration and copy boons over that already last long enough, great work! 

 

I'm not saying they are bad. They are just not that good to where people need to request nerfs left and right. 

 

 

Also, I don't know what your reading comprehension level is but I was using PvP/WvW to further exemplify how long staff has been busted. Not complaining about recent nerfs.. Read before you jump to conclusions, good sir.

Ok so while my comment was a bit over the head on the cc part and I'm sorry about that, it just hurts to see this argument for mirage (especially after knowing that many people don't even want to do any cc because it would hurt their dps).

 

Sure when comparing cooldowns it falls behind. But literally everything falls behind renegade since staff 5 exists. Darkrazor I dont consider that good in most situations. You want fast breaks not over 6 seconds to actually break the boss, especially in fractals (in raids the time between breaks is mostly longer, except like samarog where you never play condi and sloth with good dps, therefore making longer cooldowns irrelevant). Just the fact that you cant really prestack at mistlock and that your ramp up (no real confusion dmg in exposed) is slow makes it bad in fractals. I never mentioned it for fractals anyway. 

 

Also I never said that its good in every raid encounter. I said they are still too strong on the encounters where confusion is op, which is where axe is supposed to do the job. Thats my only problem still. Either cut the damage or cut the boons and get them back with traits at a dps loss. Its simple as that. 

 

And about that PvP/WvW reference... Well why would you bring that up anyway even if its just a reference? Its about PvE in this discussion just like the changes in general, no one cares how the weapon performs now or performed in the past in PvP. And a bad performing weapon doesnt justify these changes which are questionable to begin with. There are weapons which perform much worse (for example warrior hammer and rifle or staff on necro are horrible in PvE). Should they be just as loaded as staff from mesmer now, too? 

 

You know I can understand why people don't care about such stuff in PvE. To some its fun, and they are just happy to do the content and see big numbers. But on a more serious perspective they would see how bad such builds are for it. I mean just look at the powercreep. When will it stop being fun to do big damage and kill everything with no challenge whatsoever because everything dies in seconds? We dont need more bloated builds which do damage and boons at the same time with no investment. We need damage and support separated. I think we can agree on this. Sadly ANET's philosophy is the other way around. 

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16 hours ago, dontlook.1823 said:

Who comes to the Mesmer forum and cries about a really overrated Alac build to be nerfed?

Well, it's not overrated; the May 11th changes really did impact Staff builds to be top of the heap for PVE at least ... as someone that admits how much they hardly play, maybe you should play more often before making these kinds of uninformed statements. 

Edited by Obtena.7952
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I just feel it was too much nerf. Not so much about confusion, but for the torment changes. The dps except confusion went from 30k to 27k. I would like to see the standard condition damage rise and lower the confusion stacks, so condition mirage and condition chrono used to everything than just some bosses. 

OR FIX confusion to do some of the current damage as a per second condi damage. 

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6 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Ok so while my comment was a bit over the head on the cc part and I'm sorry about that, it just hurts to see this argument for mirage (especially after knowing that many people don't even want to do any cc because it would hurt their dps).

 

Sure when comparing cooldowns it falls behind. But literally everything falls behind renegade since staff 5 exists. Darkrazor I dont consider that good in most situations. You want fast breaks not over 6 seconds to actually break the boss, especially in fractals (in raids the time between breaks is mostly longer, except like samarog where you never play condi and sloth with good dps, therefore making longer cooldowns irrelevant). Just the fact that you cant really prestack at mistlock and that your ramp up (no real confusion dmg in exposed) is slow makes it bad in fractals. I never mentioned it for fractals anyway. 

 

Also I never said that its good in every raid encounter. I said they are still too strong on the encounters where confusion is op, which is where axe is supposed to do the job. Thats my only problem still. Either cut the damage or cut the boons and get them back with traits at a dps loss. Its simple as that. 

 

And about that PvP/WvW reference... Well why would you bring that up anyway even if its just a reference? Its about PvE in this discussion just like the changes in general, no one cares how the weapon performs now or performed in the past in PvP. And a bad performing weapon doesnt justify these changes which are questionable to begin with. There are weapons which perform much worse (for example warrior hammer and rifle or staff on necro are horrible in PvE). Should they be just as loaded as staff from mesmer now, too? 

 

You know I can understand why people don't care about such stuff in PvE. To some its fun, and they are just happy to do the content and see big numbers. But on a more serious perspective they would see how bad such builds are for it. I mean just look at the powercreep. When will it stop being fun to do big damage and kill everything with no challenge whatsoever because everything dies in seconds? We dont need more bloated builds which do damage and boons at the same time with no investment. We need damage and support separated. I think we can agree on this. Sadly ANET's philosophy is the other way around. 

 

To start, look at the title of this forum post. It states: Staff Mirage still needs a nerfby a significant amount, Dueling Illusions Axe/Torch+Pistol Mirage is supposed to be the dps class right but there's no way it can compete.

 

No where in there does this state this is only about raid encounters where Mesmer is viable. 

 

You cannot just go ahead and write unwritten rules like: Oh, this is about PvE, people don't care about WvW/PvP.. Look, if you don't care about it then skip over it. Don't be that guy and say most people here don't care about that. It's, again, another fallacy. It's called an overgeneralization. You just don't know what everybody is into here, man.

 

Also, I never replied to YOU. I made a statement of my own that you replied to and addressed all the points I covered. I have a right to go ahead and double back to reiterate the points I brought up in more detail in order to clarify my argument. 

 

In any case, you keep saying PvE content... Fractals is PvE content, Raids are PvE content, Open World is PvE content. I had no limits there. My argument stems from the fact that they are viable for very few encounters. This build sees optimal play in three encounters:  

, 

 or the 

.

You can go ahead and checkout my source for yourself: https://snowcrows.com/builds/mesmer/mirage/condition-alacrity-mirage

 

 

If you really want to talk about something that is overpowered, look at scourge.  So much group utility it's not even funny with a reliable 36k benchmark that can see play in a lot more encounters.

 

Mirage Alac has a 26.4k Benchmark (https://snowcrows.com/builds/mesmer/mirage/condition-alacrity-mirage) , no utility, and is highly situational - Yet people are going absolutely bonkers. 

 

Here is a quote taken directly from the rotation video provided by snowcrow:

 

"...There was quite a big drop in terms of DPS since last time - and rightfully so! Alacrity Mirage (in my opinion) is now in a rather balanced state. Confusion still carries the build's DPS yet the very slow ramp up will keep it at bay for most encounters. As it is with anything that applies a lot of Confusion; Alacrity Mirage does extremely well against the fast attacking Raid bosses: Cairn, Soulles Horror and the Twin Largos. A part of the DPS drop is because we no longer can afford to go full damage oriented gear..."

 

To go further, the guy who created this post made an excellent point. I'm going to go ahead and paraphrase him here. 

Mirage is not the problem. The problem is confusion/ boss attack speed. As long as confusion continues to function as is, these problems will continue to exist.  It used to be a 50/50 split between DoT and Proc.. However, Anet went away from this function.

 

So no need to nerf the class... Nerf the function of confusion or boss attack speed.

 

I hope that this helps.

 

This build is finally in a good place yet people are still crying for a nerf. It's just sad.

 

P.S.

 

Darkrazor is really strong.. You can precast it and use other CC in tandem.. 😕

 

Edited by dontlook.1823
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14 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

 

It does, just like lots of mmorpgs appears punishing from a melee pov while it actually isnt. It's the playerbases meta requirement which does. People don't let ranged in because it doesn't fit what they want. Not because it can't do content. 

 

FFXIV does you are right, which is why I said to a extent and when I said that I ment:

 

In your DPS line up you would always take black mage or summoner over a samarui. However they do aid it the problem much better. Although I'd argue alot of the melee speccs which get into groups do so by having alot of utility. 

 

Dragoon / ninja both provide alot of RDPS. For example. The major DPS classes have always been ranged.

 

I'm sorry but this is nonsense and "to an extent" is doing an INSANE amount of work in that sentence then.  Can you do an all ranged dps raid party? Sure.  Is it optimal? HELL no. (go to fflogs. look at the speed clears. all of the top ones take 2 melee, 1 phys ranged, and 1 caster. There are a few 3/1 ranged/melee dps comps but they are not the norm, and I'm sure it's due to specific friend-group preferences than actual optimization)

Samurai and Summoner don't compete for the same slot so you would not take one over the other (my static has both!), as the game balance stands right now the only time you would throw a black mage/summoner into that spot is if your friend group just preferred to play that class over any melee.

 

Also RDPS is all that matters when it comes to optimization. Black mage is the only selfish ranged dps and it has a notorious learning curve to justify its high personal dps. Redmage has the support tax and has way lower personal dps, (smn has always been hard for SE to balance 'cause they have no idea how to do dots and pets, so they seem to have settled with leaving smn as overtuned) and the phys range are ALL lagging WAAAAAAAAAY behind everyone else in terms of both personal AND raid dps.

 

 

14 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Bad game design only applies to a situation they can help however they cannot, the way other games encourage use of melee and ranged is by providing classes which are ranged or melee only. 

 

Due to how classes work in gw2 effectively the game will "punish" one side of this every time. You cannot balance ranged v melee. Because in most games you stack 1 side to make stacking easier. Even in WoW they do this.

Yeah no I don't think Anet "can't help" this situation.  They seem to have really good content designers on their team and a system that allows them to do some really cool things.  They just need to wake up to an mmo population that they've been chasing off since launch.

 

And like, you REALLY shouldn't look at game mechanics as "punishment" that's just like REALLY bad form.  (seriously, dealing with mechanics, and having to optimize uptime isn't a punishment. It's the entire reason why I like raiding o_0)

 

14 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

It's easier to stack ranged or melee into the same spot. So you will always stack one.

Easily dealt with.

Mechanics that track an aoe explosion on x players. Does no, or little, damage to the person with the aoe on them, but does damage, or increased damage, to others caught in it.  Mortally wounds those caught in two overlapping aoes. XIV uses this trick a lot.  You can do a lot of other mechanics  to discourage stacking in one spot and make positioning a more thoughtful part of an encounter too. (polarity mechanics where you need to be a certain distance from a specific player, hot-potato mechanics where you need to pass certain effects from one player to another but not double up, virus telegraphs that spread from one player to another if they tag someone, different mob behaviors at different ranges forcing some players to bait mechanics away from the group, cleaves you have to bait around the boss or clip someone and kill you both)

 

14 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

If ranged do equal damage to melee, melee is redundent. 

 

But if the mechanics aren't hard enough to punish being melee enough. Ranged become redundent.

If all things are equal (damage/utility, hazards/mechanics, and rotation complexity) NEITHER will be redundant because they are both two different gameplay niches.  Like, people genuinely enjoy playing melee characters just like I enjoy and prefer playing at range.  Given the option people will play what feels best to them.  In all the games I've played where there's been a balance people still played both ranges of combat just 'cause that was their brand of fantasy.  I swear, melee players will be fine if ranged players are properly included in this game's combat.

 

And this is what I'm arguing for.  Give us ranged players something to do, and let us properly contribute.

 

  1. increase the range of boon applications and heals (in PvE)
    1. doesn't have to be an entire arena's size, let us dip in and out if we need to reapply our buffs/get topped off
  2. Bring up the dps of ranged builds to put them in line with melee builds (in PvE)
    1. a good way to deal with the dilemma of matching melee's uptime challenge/optimization with that of a mobile ranged class is to give them more of a computational challenge/optimization.  More things to track in their skills. Buffs, procs, ammo, conditional positioning (like how a lot of casters in mmos have a circle you can slap down and camp in it to get +X% damage).  Suck up the player's brain-bandwidth in just the right amount and you'll get a similar result to melee's "BUT I WANNA HIIIIIT" risk assessment.
  3. Design mechanics that encourage spreading out, and give players at range an interesting fight (don't treat ranged players as a specialized gimmick for specific fights either.  At least not the SAME specialized gimmick)

This honestly extends past mesmer to the other classes.  My dream is to eventually see every class have a viable ranged and melee build for single target power, single target condi, aoe power, aoe condi, and support.  It's a lot, and I don't expect that to come all at once, but gw2 has been describing itself as having highly customizable gameplay with versatile classes (AND MY OWN CLASS BEING SPECIFICALLY, OFFICIALLY BRANDED AS FAVORING RANGED, YES I'M STILL ANGRY), and they really haven't made efforts to realize that ideal since save for a few specific cases, it's melee or bust. :T

Edited by Roda.7468
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That's a falsehood and you know it. Ranged DPS has higher DPS uptime already if they ever have to get off stack.
That's one reason why scourge is pretty overbuffed right now (along with condi renegade and firebrand which aren't full ranged). You can't have supportive classes doing as much or more damage than DPS classes while not even speccing a single stat into it. If that happens you don't bring DPS classes: so much for diversity.

With mirages if you have to evade something you just use mirage cloak and you gain DPS instead of losing it. If staff mirage is to be fixed up a bit for general usage outside of confusion fights, then they should add some torment or something that isn't conditional onto Phantasmal Warlock instead of more passive garbage on autoattacks. Because mirages are so strong on certain encounters they are stacked. Even if you only run two of them you can essentially have 100% alacrity uptime and far more might than alacrity renegades.

Mirage with a staff is not great for fights where the target isn't attacking. Had someone try to run it on 98CM (Nightmare) and on the split they were doing barely any damage (like 5K or something). They didn't want to run axe+pistol (torment procs even when adds are channeling) so they ended up leaving. If you truly care about staff specifically then the suggestion should be to add torment , burning, or bleeding onto the warlock. That would also make it less terrible for core or chrono.

Staff is rather terrible for WVW unless you are soloing towers or something. In group scenarios the clones will likely die and also you have one dodge on mirage which you supplement with phase retreat and jaunt/blink. Not to mention staff is projectile , that is not something that has changed in the May 11 patch. Since staff is inherently a condi weapon it also has to contend with condition clears in group environments and cleansing sigil in roaming.

 

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10 hours ago, Roda.7468 said:

Yeah no I don't think Anet "can't help" this situation.  They seem to have really good content designers on their team and a system that allows them to do some really cool things.  They just need to wake up to an mmo population that they've been chasing off since launch.

 

And like, you REALLY shouldn't look at game mechanics as "punishment" that's just like REALLY bad form.  (seriously, dealing with mechanics, and having to optimize uptime isn't a punishment. It's the entire reason why I like raiding o_0)

 

Ranger, necromancer, staff mesmer, renegade, guardian. These are all ranged meta builds. 

 

However there's a reason why u don't call it "ranged gameplay" even though they actually are. 

 

And that's because being ranged still puts u in the stack so u get boons. 

 

The game itself isn't the problem. The game has plenty of ranged builds in the meta. The problem is the way boons and healing works in this game.

 

That's because at core it's a PvP game and on a ground level is built to work in a competitive node holding game. 

 

It's not looking at game mechanics that I call punishing. It's when a certain playstyle becomes much harder then another I call it punishing. 

 

For example WoW retails m+ scene is highly punishing to melee. This is because the reaction speed you need to certain mechanics is so insanely fast the vast majority are better off playing ranged options. 

 

My argument isn't that ranged classes can't exist in gw2. They already do. 

 

My argument is it's not the builds that are the problem. It's the way boons and healing works in the game creating the problem. 

 

100% boon uptime is the goal. You won't get that if you stood outside the stack. Because these are small AoEs and fields which u stack inside for the applications. 

 

Imho I think this games boons are among the worse of many I've seen. No game should be building itself around 100% boon uptime. Because there's no point. Your nerfing classes DPS to cater to a layer they're susposed to have 100%. 

 

It means u could delete every boon in the game. Baseline the effects and the entire fight would be identical. Which basically means Ur class has been pushed 5 steps back. To walk 5 steps. 

 

imho delete permanant boons. That's my honest opinion. If classes don't work without quickeness and alacrity then speed up the baseline rotation of the proffession. Don't add a mandatory layer for it to function. 

 

then the classes with ranged builds. Can be ranged. 

 

Edited by Daddy.8125
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/20/2021 at 12:05 AM, Daddy.8125 said:

 

Imho I think this games boons are among the worse of many I've seen. No game should be building itself around 100% boon uptime. Because there's no point. Your nerfing classes DPS to cater to a layer they're susposed to have 100%. 

Agreed 100%, but ArenaNet doesn't have the staffing to completely overhaul the game, and the community would cry bloody murder.
 

At least at launch boons required some effort with blasting fields and such.

 

"Pile up in a blob" is the worst style of play to encourage, yet that's the reality in WvW and many forms of PvE.

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