Curse

makosi · Sep 17, 2006, 08:00 AM // 08:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theus

El.Oh.El.

Swift Chop:Attack. If this attack hits, you strike for +1...16 damage. If Swift Chop is "blocked," your target suffers a Deep Wound for 20 seconds and takes an additional 1...16 damage. Swift Chop cannot be "evaded."

Irressistable Blow:Hammer Attack. If this attack hits you strike for +5...17 damage. If Irresistible Blow is "blocked", your target is knocked down and takes 5...17 damage. Irresistible Blow cannot be "evaded".

Leviathan/Griffon's Sweep:Melee Attack. If this attack hits, you strike for +5...17 damage. If this attack is "evaded" your target is knocked down and suffers 10...29 damage.

Warriors Cunning:Skill. For 5...10 seconds your melee attacks cannot be blocked or evaded.

Jaizhenju/Pure Strike:Sword Attack. If Jaizhenju Strike hits, you strike for +1...24 damage. If you are not using a Stance, Jaizhenju Strike cannot be "blocked" or "evaded."

Seeking Blade:Sword Attack. If this attacks hits you strike for +1...16 damage. If Seeking Blade is evaded, your target begins bleeding and takes 1...16 damage. Seeking Blade cannot be blocked.

Wild Blow:Melee Attack. Lose all Adrenaline. If it hits, this attack will be a critical hit. If Wild Blow hits, any Stance being used by your target ends. This attack cannot be "Blocked" or "Evaded"

GeeGee.

Amen amen amen.

Don't forget all the ranger skills that ignore evasive stances too. Distortion WAS nerfed a few months back increasing the energy lost per evasion and pressure on the user will drain their energy failry quickly.

Skuld · Sep 17, 2006, 09:19 AM // 09:19

I'm surprised at these responses, especially the W/Me and tanking ones, wth?

I heard a suggestion a while ago about raising it to 10 second duration, I think that might make people think twice. However it would need to be balanced with Dark Escape, which would probablly replace it in most cases lol.

llsektorll · Sep 17, 2006, 10:14 AM // 10:14

lol... these distortion whinners get more rediculous with every post....
here are a couple of facts about distortion...

1. IT ALREADY HAS BEEN NERFED

with that said here is another fact

2. there are many counters to it... like the warrior ones stated in the second post as well has hexes like rigor mortis, seeking arrows, cip shot, etc...

3. you cannot maintain distortion forever... sooner or later your gonna run out of energy...

Gee Gee now go cry to ur mommy

LightningHell · Sep 17, 2006, 01:30 PM // 13:30

I'd say both sides are getting a bit ludicrous.

Ranger/Warrior defensive stances aren't used because they're generally useless.

Swift Chop, Warrior's Cunning (!!!), Wild Blow, Griffon's Sweep, Pure Strike, Seeking Blade?

But I agree on the fact that Distortion is fine as it is. You probably won't be able to kill them anyway if they know the basic concept of kiting, provided they have a monk.

Thomas.knbk · Sep 17, 2006, 03:30 PM // 15:30

@OP
Have you actually *PLAYED* a mesmer with diversion?
You can't "SPAM" diversion. The energy loss would get you totally screwed.

Theus · Sep 17, 2006, 03:51 PM // 15:51

The only time a mesmer can use Diversion consistantly without much trouble would be using A illusion/Inspiritation build using Spirit of Failure and Distortion.

Amity and Truth · Sep 17, 2006, 04:43 PM // 16:43

You can stop flaming the OP now oO
I guess he has taken enough flak for even bringing Distortion up onto the Discussion Table.

I'd put distortion into the same boat as Ether Prodigy and Blinding Flash. Devastatingly powerful but mostly due to the lack of alternatives. It's a very powerful counter to every physical spike out there. A single use of which totally screws an Adren Spike.. a single use totally owns a ranger spike... a single use breaks the chain of just any Sin. The list is long and this is basically what makes this stance so powerful it's an all almost around counter on those that can afford to use it.

Insanely powerful? Yes!
Overpowered? Yes!
Should it be nerfed? No!
Why? For the lack of alternatives and further imbalances in the game. Fix those first, than talk about nerfing Distortion.

Brett Kuntz · Sep 17, 2006, 06:39 PM // 18:39

You can run Mesmers out of energy real fast if they spam distortion, the skill is fine.

Franco · Sep 17, 2006, 06:39 PM // 18:39

Quote:

Out of all the mesmer skills, there are only 2 defensive skills...Distortion and Ether Feast. They're already weak as it is already.

LoL, a mesmer is weak ?

A Mesmer can OWN anything in this game, bring it ranger, ele, warrior, assassin, ritualist or necro.

And Distortion has been nerfed.

And you dont need to worry about distortion energy management... If you put distortion on it means you have to run until the dumb warrior gives up, sorry but most of them are too stupid to realise you have a stance and they dont even bring wild blow.

El Panty Bandito · Sep 17, 2006, 08:14 PM // 20:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuzubee

Probably one of the top 3 most overpowered abilities in the game. Spammed by every mesmer under the sun.

Instant, almost never ending 75% melee negation. And if you couple if with other skills it truly does become never ending.

How about 75% chance to resist all spells and hexes for 4 adrenaline, 5s cooldown? in the warrior trees to compensate. Oh wait what am i thinking thats ridiculously overpowered, go figure.

It is just another defense skills, its like complaining about Shield of Deflection, or Bonnetis, quit crying, and learn how to kill a mesmer.

Jade Zephyr · Sep 17, 2006, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Quote:

Quote:
Out of all the mesmer skills, there are only 2 defensive skills...Distortion and Ether Feast. They're already weak as it is already.

LoL, a mesmer is weak ?

A Mesmer can OWN anything in this game, bring it ranger, ele, warrior, assassin, ritualist or necro.

I think he was talking about Ether Feast and Distortion as being weak defensive skills.

Alleji · Sep 17, 2006, 11:03 PM // 23:03

I think it was my fault. I recently molested some wammos in AvA with distortion + spirit of failure (+ineptitude). Sorry :/

Arkantos · Sep 17, 2006, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franco

LoL, a mesmer is weak ?

A Mesmer can OWN anything in this game, bring it ranger, ele, warrior, assassin, ritualist or necro.

Mesmer=strong
Your sence of reading=weak.

He was talking about defensive skills, not the class itself. Read before you write plz, it will save you from embarassment.

Zuzubee · Sep 18, 2006, 12:48 AM // 00:48

Love the rampant caster bias going on here. They obviously didnt go far enough the first time they nerfed it.

What if hex breaker was on 5s cooldown eh? cancel all your hexes as you cast them for 5 energy. That would be funny, and also ironic as its also a mesmer skill.

Most warrior damage comes from spikes, specificaly linked chains of skills. Distortion destroys spikes for the barest minimum cost with the shortest cooldown imaginable.

Also I like the rather ignorant people who say things like 'lawl use wild blow'. You do realise this skill dumps all adrenaline. It is 100% useless 90% of the time to any warrior. Only Bunny Thumpers and Assassins can use this as thier spikes come from energy not adrenaline.

Like I said earlier its not just a simple case of spamming your bar with anti evade/block skills. If you do you have no room for your spike combo which means far less damage. And this is all besides the point, as soon as you start your spike and get your colorfull animation, bam distortion, spike killed. Because its a stance its completely instant and you can even activate it while knocked down which is a major LOL.

Ill give you a close approximation you can understand. Think all of your nice hexes, with long cooldowns and high costs but really powerfull.
You like using them right? sure you do. But what if there was a cheap fast skill that kept countering all your expensive hexes >repeatedly<. You would have to downgrade to cheaper hexes with shorter cooldowns so that when your first wave is nullified off the bat your not standing around like a gimp with nothing to do execpt wait on cooldowns.
Understand?, your suggesting warriors to downgrade to lower damage skill sets to counter 1 single ability.

Anyway keep the arguments coming, round 3 is on. Ding Ding.

arredondo · Sep 18, 2006, 01:59 AM // 01:59

HB was a 5s cooldown and they nerfed that too (nerfed it twice actually as you can no longer run it with L0 Dom points, lol)). It's different for that though because in general Hexes can't be spammed as fast as melee attacks. If you have problems with hitting a Distorter, besides the attacks mentioned earlier you have the following buffs/hexes to use by you or in some cases a teammate to help. Except for one, they each allow multiple attacks that can not be evaded:

Warrior's Cunning (Warrior)
Seeking Arrows (Ranger)
Unseen Fury (Assassin, need a Blind first)
Way of the Fox (Assassin)
Expose Defenses (Assassin)
Rigor Mortis (Necro)
Illusionary Weapon (Mesmer, special attacks)
Guided Weapon (Ritualist)
Anthem of Guidance (Paragon, any one attack)
Guiding Hands (Dervish)
Sand Shards (Dervish, special attacks)

So the question isn't why Distortion isn't nerfed. Perhaps the question is why you and your teammates haven't taken advantage of any of these options?

huMptY DumPty · Sep 18, 2006, 02:45 AM // 02:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by lightblade

lmao, if you're warrior, you should think about boosting Warrior's Cunning[ instead of nerfing distortion.

and if you're a ranger, you should consider bringing Seeking Arrows

Out of all the mesmer skills, there are only 2 defensive skills...Distortion and Ether Feast. They're already weak as it is already.

I like that suggestion...

Ok... distortion is meant to be a fairly effective defense in a short run. Lasts 5 seconds. If you're a warrior... just keep hacking and chugging away, energy pool will go down the drain, keep pressuring the target.

Make long explanation short, it's not overpowered.... its the only means of defence mesmers have against melee, other than using hexes and such.

Arkantos · Sep 18, 2006, 03:11 AM // 03:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

Warrior's Cunning (Warrior)
Seeking Arrows (Ranger)
Unseen Fury (Assassin, need a Blind first)
Way of the Fox (Assassin)
Expose Defenses (Assassin)
Rigor Mortis (Necro)
Illusionary Weapon (Mesmer, special attacks)
Guided Weapon (Ritualist)
Anthem of Guidance (Paragon, any one attack)
Guiding Hands (Dervish)
Sand Shards (Dervish, special attacks)

Sure those all counter distortion, but over half of those skills are never used.

Lex Talionis · Sep 18, 2006, 04:06 AM // 04:06

Why don't we nerf every class except warriors so that everyone who isn't a warrior gets owned. Distortion isn't overpowering. If we kill every professions' defense wtf is the point? Do everyone a favor and go back to pve.

Sab · Sep 18, 2006, 04:08 AM // 04:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuzubee

Love the rampant caster bias going on here. They obviously didnt go far enough the first time they nerfed it.

What if hex breaker was on 5s cooldown eh? cancel all your hexes as you cast them for 5 energy. That would be funny, and also ironic as its also a mesmer skill.

Most warrior damage comes from spikes, specificaly linked chains of skills. Distortion destroys spikes for the barest minimum cost with the shortest cooldown imaginable.

Also I like the rather ignorant people who say things like 'lawl use wild blow'. You do realise this skill dumps all adrenaline. It is 100% useless 90% of the time to any warrior. Only Bunny Thumpers and Assassins can use this as thier spikes come from energy not adrenaline.

Like I said earlier its not just a simple case of spamming your bar with anti evade/block skills. If you do you have no room for your spike combo which means far less damage. And this is all besides the point, as soon as you start your spike and get your colorfull animation, bam distortion, spike killed. Because its a stance its completely instant and you can even activate it while knocked down which is a major LOL.

Ill give you a close approximation you can understand. Think all of your nice hexes, with long cooldowns and high costs but really powerfull.
You like using them right? sure you do. But what if there was a cheap fast skill that kept countering all your expensive hexes >repeatedly<. You would have to downgrade to cheaper hexes with shorter cooldowns so that when your first wave is nullified off the bat your not standing around like a gimp with nothing to do execpt wait on cooldowns.
Understand?, your suggesting warriors to downgrade to lower damage skill sets to counter 1 single ability.

Anyway keep the arguments coming, round 3 is on. Ding Ding.

QFT.

To add to this, just because a skill can be countered, it doesn't mean that the skill is balanced. Look at what's been nerfed - smite, thumpers, etc. - they all have counters, and yet they were still arguably overpowered. In other words, saying "just counter it" is not a very strong argument when talking about skill balance - there's more to the issue than that.

I say leave Distortion as it is and buff the counters. Right now, most of the counters listed in this thread are a joke, they're much too hard to fit into a skillbar without seriously hurting either damage output or self defence.

Terra Xin · Sep 18, 2006, 05:39 AM // 05:39

Before I run down the OP. Let me make a few things clear

1. Just because a skill is spammable, doesn't mean that you are capable of spamming it indefinately (or until your target dies).

2. A mesmer who activates distortion uses 5 energy plus additional energy for each attack that is missed. Warriors tend to attack 3 times before they realise they're missing their target, which will result in a further energy loss of 6 for the mesmer (at rank 13, this is reduced to 1 energy loss, but in PvP, domination is more effective, so the mesmer should only spend points to rank 8 minimum)

3. There is a short interval between when Distortion ends, when the skill recharges and when you can activate Distortion again. This interval is about 1/2 a second long, but that 1/2 second is another weakness for this stance.

4. Unlike Adrenaline Spike which actually requires a skill to counter it. Distortion has a no-skill counter, i.e. the counter is, attack, attack, attack.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuzubee

What if hex breaker was on 5s cooldown eh?

But it's deson't... point lost. Don't give a "what if" if you know it's not going to happen. You also forgot to reply to those that have stated the fairly obvious, so I'll re-quote:

Quote:

Originally Posted by kunt0r

You can run Mesmers out of energy real fast if they spam distortion, the skill is fine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomas.knbk

@OP
Have you actually *PLAYED* a mesmer with diversion?
You can't "SPAM" diversion. The energy loss would get you totally screwed.

To add to the quote above; it's also unwise to spam this skill. Even if you nerf this skill to 10 seconds, it will just stop the mesmer from being able to waste their energy unnecessarily, but it's not going to stop them from killing your spikes where it is needed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuzubee

Most warrior damage comes from spikes, specificaly linked chains of skills. Distortion destroys spikes for the barest minimum cost with the shortest cooldown imaginable.

amongst other skills... Oh wait.... Mesmers are designed to be killed by warriors? didn't know that. Understand that Mesmers suffer from adrenaline spikes and only lower that amount of suffering by a "bare minimum" with the amount of energy they lose. Take this from the perspective of a Mesmer in any given situation, it is only best to use distortion once, from then on, you're depleting your energy reserves, and if you continue to use it, you will die. The most obvious counter to distortion is either focus fire, or constant pressure, and it is not nevecarily stance-ending skills. It's the only stance in the game that will end if you run out of energy. When attacking a mesmer, Just think of yourself as an e-denialist warrior instead of a spiker as you so commonly try to promote.

Also remember that distortion will only drain 1 energy if it is at 13 ranks or higher, so it is far less useful for secondary classes. And where a mesmer is ranked 13 or higher, then that mesmer is an Illusionist (unlike some gvg battles, where distortion is used as a quick defence, rather than something actually useful in battle, so they will not put in all of their points into illusion, but rather conserve the remains for domination.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuzubee

Also I like the rather ignorant people who say things like 'lawl use wild blow'. You do realise this skill dumps all adrenaline. It is 100% useless 90% of the time to any warrior. Only Bunny Thumpers and Assassins can use this as thier spikes come from energy not adrenaline.

The 10% of the time where it actually is useful is on the very first attack, stances are activated the moment they see you about to attack them. This way, you're not losing the adrenaline that you never had.

Quote:

Like I said earlier its not just a simple case of spamming your bar with anti evade/block skills. If you do you have no room for your spike combo which means far less damage. And this is all besides the point, as soon as you start your spike and get your colorfull animation, bam distortion, spike killed. Because its a stance its completely instant and you can even activate it while knocked down which is a major LOL.

The sentence that i've Italicized doesn't make sense. Elaborate.

We're still talking about adrenaline spike... right? spike killed just because of distortion. You have to understand that the Mesmer is penalised for cancelling your spike, Distortion isn't cheap regardless of the fact that it has a 5 second cooldown, the Mesmer loses a minimal of 7-8 energy if their illusion isnt at rank 13 or higher, otherwise they generally lose energy upwards of 10, which is a good counter regardless.

Warriors can totally smash out every other class with their spike, but suddenly its like "oh noes we need to nerf distortion because they're the only class we can't spike" ...??? ...??? Mesmer's are designed to be the "counter build" Mesmers can use Diversion to kill casters, but you don't hear us asking for nerfs when a ranger uses Savage shot?? (Annoying little skill, but does the fact of annoyance make it imbalanced? No.)

Quote:

Ill give you a close approximation you can understand. Think all of your nice hexes, with long cooldowns and high costs but really powerfull.

Play a mesmer and rephase your statement.

Quote:

But what if there was a cheap fast skill that kept countering all your expensive hexes >repeatedly<.

It's called interrupts. Ranger interrupts to be more specific. Savage shot to be precise. Of course you can use distortion, but is that going to stop the ranger? No. He still has a 25% chance to hit you, and the Mesmer is stressing out over the amount of energy they are losing. Of course, warriors don't know this... don't tell them or they'll catch on. And don't tell them not to attack through Empathy either, or they'll win.

Quote:

You would have to downgrade to cheaper hexes with shorter cooldowns so that when your first wave is nullified off the bat you're [sic] not standing around like a gimp with nothing to do execpt wait on cooldowns.

Anyone who has played a Mesmer properly should know not to spam all of their skils in one go, cheap or not, as you will waste your energy reserves. One should also know that if you're standing around for any reason other than casting spells or when you're not fighting, then you should watch some observation matches and get a few pointers...

Quote:

your suggesting warriors to downgrade to lower damage skill sets to counter 1 single ability.

Ohhh I get it now, you're one of those warriors that thinks that doing high amounts of damage will get their targets killed. Excuse me, damage prevention is another area of battle. Read number 4 of the above, and remove your statement.

Your solution to distortion is to downgrade your whole skillbar? With relevance to what I have already said above - since when did it become the warriors sole job to kill a Mesmer or Mesmer secondary? If the mesmer throws on distortion, either pick another target, or just keep attacking.

Go and attack the ritualist that has Vengeful was Kahnhei, or attack a monk while you're running frenzy, that'll give him a good excuse to wand you a couple of times. Oh Oh, attack through blurred vision, thats the only hex that grants a "50%" chance to "miss" with attacks. Warriors do have skills that can counter distortion, but as you have stated that's not the point. Touch Rangers are reputably the most annoying class in the game, but one term.... one SINGLE term called "snare" will render them useless. To make this relevant to your post... distortion vs spike... Crippling Anguish vs Touch Ranger. If you even mention that Crippling anguish is an elite and shouldn't be compared, then I'm not giving you a cookie.

My suggestion would be to have everyone ignore this thread, but I can't do that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LuxA

To add to this, just because a skill can be countered, it doesn't mean that the skill is balanced. Look at what's been nerfed - smite, thumpers, etc. - they all have counters, and yet they were still arguably overpowered.

That's partially true, but that also doesnt warrant the conditions of it being imbalanced either. We're currently arguing over whether distortion is overpowered or not, we haven't reached the possibility that it is. The comparisons you've made are therefore irrelevant to this topic.

Did you realise what Anet had done during the last skill update? All they had done was tipped the entire set of scales to lean the other way. The most common builds got nerfed, and builds that noone uses got a buff. Take Rit Lord vs Chanelling Rit, the ChRit was fine before they got their buff, and now they have a higher DPS than an ele. They're already running chanelling builds in HA, no problem to them. Before they got buffed, almost everyone thought that the chaneller was completely useless.

____________

I forgot to re-quote these. Either make a rebuttle or everyone will agree to disagree with this thread.

Quote:

Go ahead and try to use Distortion while getting beat down by 2+ warriors, and try to tank. You'll see that it's not imbalanced at all.

Quote:

It's used by mesmers and monk/mesmers because it's the only defensive stance they've got.

Quote:

Tell you what, change to W/Me and go to random arena, and try Distortion out. You'll get a whole new perspective on it, and will stop posting silly threads on GWGuru.

Quote:

But with Spirit of Failure (or whatever that mesmer inspiration hex is) skill its a constant +4 energy. and shuts down any warriors attacking me, while i can eat away at their casters. These people just didnt bring counters.

... or at least can't think of any.

Quote:

If Distortion was nerfed, many Mesmers would throw temper tantrums.

I play a Mesmer btw :P

Quote:

Fact is unless you have some way to maintain a high energy ratio to balance out the loss. Your options for using distortion are limited.

Quote:

hes just anoyed because he cant kill fleeing mesmers wusing distortion

My lord, a Mesmer can bring "Charge!" and just kite your attacks, then you can't do anything let alone sac energy from them.