Thoughts on Confusion

[Kyniel.4706]

With the announced changes to confusion seeming to be received poorly, I wanted to see if I could get some feedback on something I'd been thinking about for a long time. I don't claim to be an elite player - I just had a (probably naive) thought I was hoping that someone could explain to me why it wouldn't work 😅

 

I have always been saddened by the change to confusion post-launch that added the DoT component. I felt that it damaged the identity of the condition - and by extension, the identity of the Mesmer. However, there was an obvious problem with the massive difference between attack speed in PvE vs in PvP/WvW which had to be addressed.

 

My idea would be to have confusion be a stacking condition, but when someone attacks, all confusion stacks are removed and they receive damage based on the number of stacks they had. This way, it would keep the flavour that original confusion had, but would not make the damage received dependent on the enemy's attack speed. If you are dropping a new confusion stack once per second, it doesn't matter whether the enemy is attacking every second or every 5 seconds, they still take the same damage.

 

As you'd only get a single packet of damage per confusion application, it would probably need to hit harder than it currently does. This would also be nice as it would create a condition damage option that gives quite bursty damage, which could be interesting.

 

I'd love to hear what people think of this concept. Sorry if it's been suggested before!

[Tseison.4659]

So when it comes to Confusion, I was thinking more of a combination of the old Backfire and Empathy skills from the Original Mesmer in Guild Wars 1. Obviously it would have to be tweaked but the new condition would essentially be "every time the enemy attacks, they take XX amount of damage AND everytime they activate a skill they take XX amount of damage." Again, take in mind that there's no numbers to this suggestion so the damage received would obviously vary depending on the game mode. Additionally the confusion application across all skills would likely have to be a short duration, atleast for pvp/wvw, but yeah, just a thought though. 

 

Not that it's going to happen but I hope when EoD comes out, they fix Confnusion and hopefully some Mesmer traits/skills etc.

 

 

[Jokubas.4265]

 

Someone mentioned that this is the sixth time that Confusion has been overhauled. At this point, it clearly isn't just an issue with the power level of Confusion but with its inherent design. The ability punishing nature of Confusion (in abilities like Backfire) made perfect sense in Guild Wars 1, in which combat was much more meticulous and precise, monsters belonged to player professions, and everything was clearly labeled to counter and react to. In Guild Wars 2, there's simply too much variety in attack speeds and what abilities can even do for ability punishment to ever be consistent. Truly fixing Confusion is not a matter of numbers, but a matter of role.

 

The stacking idea seems somewhat sound off the top of my head. I think the first definite requirement is that Confusion has a relatively lengthy duration and meant to stay until triggered like Blinded. It doesn't matter what it does if it expires by the time an NPC attacks, and NPCs can sometimes take long breaks before attacking (I can't tell you the number of times that I've hit a block ability when seeing a monster winds up for an attack, only for the block to expire long before they actually finish that same swing).

 

Confusion definitely seems to be based on Backfire and Empathy, but it's hard to make that as consistent and relevant as it was in Guild Wars 1. Perhaps another direction could be to take inspiration from the Confuse status in games like Final Fantasy or Pokemon. Make the "harm yourself (or even allies) when attacking" more literal, almost like a melee version of Reflect. It still wouldn't be consistent, but it might at least feel more like an intentionally situational counter, instead of a normal Condition that can vary massively in usefulness between encounters.
 

I think the issues with Confusion are also indicative of issues with Mesmer as a whole though. Mesmer's core design seems to be committed to concepts that aren't anywhere near as useful or consistent in Guild Wars 2 as they were in Guild Wars 1, and could use rethinking from the ground up. Not that a literal complete overhaul is needed, just an approach to balance that uses a new perspective, unafraid to let go of what doesn't work and commits to what does.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Jokubas.4265

[GoingMenthol.7281]

9 hours ago, Jokubas.4265 said:

The ability punishing nature of Confusion (in abilities like Backfire) made perfect sense in Guild Wars 1, in which combat was much more meticulous and precise, monsters belonged to player professions, and everything was clearly labeled to counter and react to. In Guild Wars 2, there's simply too much variety in attack speeds and what abilities can even do for ability punishment to ever be consistent.

 

In my opinion if attack speeds were less variable then I think a lot of the game would be improved, not just confusion (getting hit more often means more reason to have defensive gear instead of everyone running berserker/scholar and only caring about dps. That could make less often used stats/runes/sigils become more viable). It would also make PvE/WvW/PvP easier to balance

 

On 8/14/2021 at 11:57 PM, Tseison.4659 said:

every time the enemy attacks, they take XX amount of damage

 

9 hours ago, Jokubas.4265 said:

harm yourself (or even allies) when attacking

 

What if...:

 

Confusion: Stacks up to 25 times. Condition does not inflict damage over time. Every time the target affected by confusion activates a skill, they take a percentage (1% per stack, up to 25%) of the outgoing strike damage they deal onto themselves, plus a percentage of your condition damage

 

An enemy wouldn't have to hit their target to be damaged as it would complete the damage calculation with their own armour rating

[Silvey.4287]

5 hours ago, GoingMenthol.7281 said:

 

In my opinion if attack speeds were less variable then I think a lot of the game would be improved, not just confusion (getting hit more often means more reason to have defensive gear instead of everyone running berserker/scholar and only caring about dps. That could make less often used stats/runes/sigils become more viable). It would also make PvE/WvW/PvP easier to balance

 

 

 

What if...:

 

Confusion: Stacks up to 25 times. Condition does not inflict damage over time. Every time the target affected by confusion activates a skill, they take a percentage (1% per stack, up to 25%) of the outgoing strike damage they deal onto themselves, plus a percentage of your condition damage

 

An enemy wouldn't have to hit their target to be damaged as it would complete the damage calculation with their own armour rating

It would be a flat nerf vs condi builds which would be really really bad. perhaps whatever damage would be the highest(including crits), still I think base dot damage is fine in theory as long as it doesnt diminish the proc damage.

[Kyniel.4706]

 

15 hours ago, Jokubas.4265 said:

Someone mentioned that this is the sixth time that Confusion has been overhauled. At this point, it clearly isn't just an issue with the power level of Confusion but with its inherent design.

 

Definitely agree! Hope the team do too 😅

 

15 hours ago, Jokubas.4265 said:

The stacking idea seems somewhat sound off the top of my head. I think the first definite requirement is that Confusion has a relatively lengthy duration and meant to stay until triggered like Blinded. It doesn't matter what it does if it expires by the time an NPC attacks, and NPCs can sometimes take long breaks before attacking (I can't tell you the number of times that I've hit a block ability when seeing a monster winds up for an attack, only for the block to expire long before they actually finish that same swing).

 

Yup, totally - idea would be that it would be fairly analogous to blind, so would make sense to change durations to be in line with blinds.

 

15 hours ago, Jokubas.4265 said:

Confusion definitely seems to be based on Backfire and Empathy, but it's hard to make that as consistent and relevant as it was in Guild Wars 1. Perhaps another direction could be to take inspiration from the Confuse status in games like Final Fantasy or Pokemon. Make the "harm yourself (or even allies) when attacking" more literal, almost like a melee version of Reflect. It still wouldn't be consistent, but it might at least feel more like an intentionally situational counter, instead of a normal Condition that can vary massively in usefulness between encounters.

 

I really like this idea and considered something similar, but it seems odd to give an offensive mechanic that scales on your opponents stats rather than your own. You could make it scale off the Mesmer's power damage, I guess, making it like a more active replacement for Retaliation, but it feels like moving Confusion to a power role would probably mess with the condi/power balance across Mesmer weapons too much, perhaps?

[OriOri.8724]

On 8/26/2021 at 9:54 PM, Jokubas.4265 said:

 

Someone mentioned that this is the sixth time that Confusion has been overhauled. At this point, it clearly isn't just an issue with the power level of Confusion but with its inherent design. The ability punishing nature of Confusion (in abilities like Backfire) made perfect sense in Guild Wars 1, in which combat was much more meticulous and precise, monsters belonged to player professions, and everything was clearly labeled to counter and react to. In Guild Wars 2, there's simply too much variety in attack speeds and what abilities can even do for ability punishment to ever be consistent. Truly fixing Confusion is not a matter of numbers, but a matter of role.

 

The stacking idea seems somewhat sound off the top of my head. I think the first definite requirement is that Confusion has a relatively lengthy duration and meant to stay until triggered like Blinded. It doesn't matter what it does if it expires by the time an NPC attacks, and NPCs can sometimes take long breaks before attacking (I can't tell you the number of times that I've hit a block ability when seeing a monster winds up for an attack, only for the block to expire long before they actually finish that same swing).

 

Confusion definitely seems to be based on Backfire and Empathy, but it's hard to make that as consistent and relevant as it was in Guild Wars 1. Perhaps another direction could be to take inspiration from the Confuse status in games like Final Fantasy or Pokemon. Make the "harm yourself (or even allies) when attacking" more literal, almost like a melee version of Reflect. It still wouldn't be consistent, but it might at least feel more like an intentionally situational counter, instead of a normal Condition that can vary massively in usefulness between encounters.
 

I think the issues with Confusion are also indicative of issues with Mesmer as a whole though. Mesmer's core design seems to be committed to concepts that aren't anywhere near as useful or consistent in Guild Wars 2 as they were in Guild Wars 1, and could use rethinking from the ground up. Not that a literal complete overhaul is needed, just an approach to balance that uses a new perspective, unafraid to let go of what doesn't work and commits to what does.

Agreed, confusions current design means it cannot be balanced in both PvP/WvW and in PvE. It will always be unbalanced in at least one game mode, because of the differences between a player and an NPC. And that's a design issue, not a numbers issue. As long as confusion's proc damage remains the same, regardless of how fast or slowly it procs, it can't be balanced in every game mode.

 

I think that it can be saved without completely redesigning it though. I'd like to see the proc damage on confusion scale higher based on how long it has been since it last procced. This would allow it to still be impactful on regular NPCs who attack slow as heck, while giving ANet the ability to keep it balanced against the few bosses who do attack quickly and where it was overperforming.

 

 

On 8/27/2021 at 7:44 AM, GoingMenthol.7281 said:

 

In my opinion if attack speeds were less variable then I think a lot of the game would be improved, not just confusion (getting hit more often means more reason to have defensive gear instead of everyone running berserker/scholar and only caring about dps. That could make less often used stats/runes/sigils become more viable). It would also make PvE/WvW/PvP easier to balance

 

 

 

What if...:

 

Confusion: Stacks up to 25 times. Condition does not inflict damage over time. Every time the target affected by confusion activates a skill, they take a percentage (1% per stack, up to 25%) of the outgoing strike damage they deal onto themselves, plus a percentage of your condition damage

 

An enemy wouldn't have to hit their target to be damaged as it would complete the damage calculation with their own armour rating

Normalizing attack speed between PvE and real players (i.e. making NPCs attack significantly faster) has no bearing on balancing stuff between the game modes. The fact is that players have a real person making decisions and reacting, whereas an NPC is just hardcoded to a set difficulty level by its AI. And players also have a full build to play with, whereas most NPCs have 1 or 2 different skills they can use.

 

Also, this design is super easy to cheese. Not only does it only really work against power builds, but someone could easily just use a non-very low damaging skill to proc your confusion stacks and then negate most of the damage coming from them.

[Zenith.7301]

I'd rather they just split balance PvE so confusion does 85-100% of bleed damage.

 

Diversion for all mesmer specs should also apply Slow by core, it's such a bad CC skill for how much it costs.