Dear Anet, about confusion damage

[Yasi.9065]

Hey,

 

ever since the confusion re-work, quite honestly, it has been a pain in PvE. On some bosses, like Largos, that have a faster than average attack rate, confusion focused builds are brokenly high in DPS, on other bosses like for example Gorseval, they are beyond bad.

This is especially bad for players that actually like to play mirage in raids. And not just on 2-3 bosses, but at least on all non-powerDPS-exclusive bosses.

Sure, you could now say "then do that, dps isnt that important anyway", but then sitting below everybody even though giving your best... it just feels horrible.

 

Now this:

> Raid: Adina: Seismic Suffering: "Confusion" was doing more damage than expected on this ability so a change was made to make "Confusion" not do any damage on skill activation.

 

I mean, at this point... Anet... PLEASE... I BEG YOU... can you not just finally split confusion to be another dot effect in PvE, like it was before the horrible re-work? I can understand it working out acceptably in PvP and WvW, but in PvE... its insufferably unbalanced. And I really dont think mobs even care about having confusion on them or not.......

[Ben K.6238]

Hmm. Back in GW1, getting ludicrous damage out of putting Spiteful Spirit / Visions of Regret etc. on certain types of enemies wasn't considered "more damage than expected" but just smart gameplay.

 

I actually don't like the idea of dumbing down confusion to yet another generic DoT. A diverse range of offense options helps make gameplay more tactical, provided you actually have a choice in which options you take.

 

If it's not a good idea to use it in specific fights, it'd be better to provide ways to convert it to burn or bleed instead, and change confusion and torment so they only do damage on skill activation or movement respectively.

[Crystal Black.8190]

I agree, confusion and torment should only deal damage while moving and on skill activation again and no longer do damage over time. The dot effect makes them way to similar to bleeding, burning and poison in my opinion.

[Westenev.5289]

I like the idea that confusion is more effective on enemies with a high skill spam, and wish Anet used it as a model for other conditions. Enemies seldom use heal skills (making poison useless), seldom move (making torment useless) and bleed/burn are just boring. And for everything else, it's covered by the breakbar.

 

Where is the smart gameplay potential?

[yusayu.3629]

There should just be an alternative. Either a trait that decreases on-activation confusion damage and increases the DoT (that sounds kinda boring though), or a trait/utility skill that converts your confusion on an enemy into another DoT, with some extra effect.

[Trise.2865]

Confusion: deals damage when an enemy attacks. More effective vs fast-attackers, less effective vs heavy hitters.

 

Working as intended.

 

[Yasi.9065]

Mirage, and to some extend Renegade, are build around confusion and torment damage. That means, on some bosses especially Mirage is hilariously OP, and on other bosses Mirage is absolute crap.

For torment its somewhat not as bad since the dot part is pretty high. For confusion builds - and therefore Mirage in particular - this is hell.

If you like Mirage, then you lost because you can play it only really on a handful of bosses.

If you hate Mirage, then you lost because its somewhat mandatory in many squads on at least 2 bosses.

 

And lets be honest here. Theres nothing "skilled" about confusion in PvE. You just spam it and wait for mobs to attack. Like with every other damaging condition. Same with torment, its not as if there is a tactic to move bosses around on purpose for the extra damage. Just as theres no skill or tactic behind using interrupt skills anymore, it all got dumbed down. So why insist on having confusion in PvE the way it is? Because of the big shiny number that pops up every few seconds? Sorry, doesnt make sense.

 

I would have LOVED to see a real condition rework, with confusion and torment being turned into debuffs, removing percentage of life for each step/skill you execute while under the effect, poison dmg being removed and all skills reworked to either cause burning or bleeding dmg as well as the debuff.

But hey, didnt happen, and it will never happen because gw2 is nearly 7 years old and the majority of players only play fashion wars anyway.

Turning confusion into a dot in PvE again, however, is quite doable, and would make Mirage quite a lot more balanced in that content.