Poor Chaos Storm

Oh, the poor Chaos Storm. It's so underused, if used at all.
So just for fun a suggestion to change it so that instead of draining energy each cycle it causes a random condition IF the target standing in Chaos Storm is suffering from a hex.
The recharge, energy, casting time would be tweaked of course to balance.

Currently if I want to drain energy from a caster, I'd use power leak over Chaos Storm. Power Leak is precision in a box. Chaos Storm is negligible damage masking easy to avoid DOT e-denial on casters.

Hopefully at some point Chaos Storm gets tweaked.
It once was PVE useful when AI didn't scatter. Not sure if many people bother with it in PVP now.
Changing the spell to something similar to the suggestion at the top would get Chaos Storm to see some creative action again.
It would synergize well with epidemic and hypochondriac.
It would suit it's uber name better. What an uber name! LOL

I agree, chaos storm used to be a PVE standby for me, back when my mez could get into groups. Gale mentoined Mez will get some PVE love so maybe we will see a return of CS.

There have been many suggestions posted over the while about how to change Chaos Storm to be useful.
I was hoping that adding random conditions to the mix was fitting and really useful, because mesmers have 3 spells that affect conditions, yet have very few spells that cause conditions.
I know a secondary could be used or another group member to inflict conditions, but for skill synergy within the memser skillset I was hoping that a less used skill could be tweaked to fill that needed role.
I hope others feel the same way.

What it really needs is a larger AoE.


Not that the changes are going to do much help... it's a DoT so enemies will flee it.

in ideal world, Chaos storm would be fixed not to cause AOE scatter ...

with that "buff" alone, it would suddenly be viable pve skill

Larger AoE would be better.
The main point of using this skill is finding an ele casting a long spell, and "interupt" them by chaos storm. They're left with 2 choice, keep casting and lose a ton of energy, or cancel the spell and move away. Either way, chaos storm is way underpowered for those purposes.

No it wouldn't... if you think the fact it causes AoE fleeing is the reason nobody uses you are very mistaken. Nobody uses it because its a shit skill. At lvl16 Domination is does 15 damage a hit. Thats 150 damage over the whole 10 seconds with the possibility of maybe 2-3 hits that actually cause E-denial. It is also 15e cost and 30s recharge.

Unless its AoE is increased to all enemies within Earshot i still wouldn't consider using it. There are about 50 other things a mesmer can do with that skillslot that would be more beneficial. Even bringing Otughys Cry would be more helpful if your team ran a Beastmaster...

I usually stay with my Ele when inside chaos storms. The energy is recovered quickly, and with a Signet of Energy I just need 10 energy out of 100 to cast again a nother spell, so it is not a problem for Energy-magaer elementalists. It is a bit for Echo nukers with no energy managemet.

Corrently, to combine the skill with snares is a must.
And it is a good way to nullify a crowd of non-adrenaline attackers.

First of all Chaos Storm should deal 'armor ignoring' chaos damage, and it could be dependant of current energy. The more % of total energy you have, the more damage deals (not energy ammount, energy %)

Anobjetive with 100% energy maybe won't scape the efect, thinking whe will have enough eergy and won't be hardmed much.
Instead of 5..12, it could be (5...12)*([% of nergy]/50)
12*100/50= 24 damage per hit with 100% energy, for a total of 240.
Not so bad. Three mesmers could crush a bunch of elementalists in 10 seconds when the start they first long casting spells.

They could either make it so if you have more than 50% energy, your spells, get interrupted.

Or maybe random disabling of skills inside the chaos storm, the skillbar inside a haos storm could look like a disco floor, with a random skill getting dark and bright, blinking the whole skillbar.

Or they could make it so it removes stances, signets, habilities, shouts, weapon spells, and any other 'unremovable' effect on targets with energy =< 0.

If it doesn't make enemies scatter, it'd have to be balanced accordingly (=making its effect weaker). Since in PvP enemies DO scatter, this would mean it would never be used in PvP because its effect would be too weak.
The AoE scatter AI is a good thing. It allowed a lot of DoTAoE's to be buffed, making them sort-of viable in PvP.

My suggestion? Get rid of the X dmg per second - the only thing that does is let the caster know they are in a chaos storm and to move 2 feet to the right before attempting a cast.

Do this and maybe it will land a -7 en hit before everyone runs out of that monstrous AOE damage

... wha? Are we even talking about the same skill?

Chaos Storm DOES do armour ignoring damage... just very little. It also has no use with a snare... because it does naff all damage. If somethings running its not casting. Its not worth using against anything. Even if you cast it against an Ele who stupidly continued to cast a Meteor Shower it would only drain a max of 28 energy... when it'd be much easier to just use the 15e to cast Power Leak and drain slightly less but not have the skill cast at all.

Having good energy management is the most idiotic reason for not moving out of a Chaos Storm... However pathetic it still does damage your monk has to heal and could still drain massive amounts of energy that could be avoided by taking 3 steps.

Edit: DNC, i like that idea actually. Quite ironic that possibly the best method of saving a skill would be to stop it dealing damage. Problem is it would probably still appear in the damage bar or appear as -0 (Chaos Storm).

Location based DoTs don't get much love, do they?

I think of Chaos Storm to be a twin to the much beloved Fire Storm. If they made Fire Storm cast in 1 second and recharge in 2, I still would not use it. It's worse than the old Power Attack, in the sense that the Power Attack had sort of an effect.

Sandstorm had about (obviously a little more than) the correct area, damage, and recharge time for a non-elite Area DoT from a single caster perspective. But it was bombed due to HA.

These things need to be a serious threat to be worth taking. I don't think I've bothered even moving out of a fire storm as a monk - the damage to the team would have been greater on average by moving.

At least Chaos Storms make me use up those 2 seconds to step to the left. Or right.

To make any serious threat with these things you need to focus them with the team. And if ya're going to do that, you might as well spike with Searing Flames or something.

Area DoT requires a mass cluster or an opponent with bad positioning to shine.

Whee.

Edit: I really think Searing Flames killed any reason to try to use the old Deep Freeze/Maelstrom/Meteor Shower/Invocation team builds. It has less frontloaded rage, but has more endurance and does it's function with a single skill slot...

I like DNC's idea. Instead of a damage spell, maybe the effect could be similar to a well, showing up alongside your enchants and hexes.
Then buff the energy draining and AoE.

28 energy? That thing casted by Centaurs in Crystal Desser deals 5 energy damage per second to my characters, that is -50 damage, and I don't think they have more than 12 or 16 set to that skill attribute.

Anyhoo. Please for the love of god, developers out there, no more e-denial skills for mesmers. We have enough!
Seriously!
If the next campaign has any more e-denial skills I'm going to eat me hands!

You'd all like to see that too. >

there is nothing chaotic about chaos storm. make it fit its name. the random blackout of skills for say 5 secs would cause havock to people trying to attack. Sins would be eaten alive if they lost an attack skill from their set. monks would have a hell of a time healing. a "buff" like that makes CS elite and way more fun. you could even drop the damage and just keep a small amount of the energy denial. Then Chaos Storm would fit its name. Anet please save the storm!


~the rat~

I like legion rat's thinking. Make it chaotic! When you get caught in the chaos storm, make it so that you randomly cast a spell on your bar and it costs 2...20 more energy to cast. Since some spells can't be cast without meeting certain conditions, just cycle the skill (like if it was used... a mini-blackout of sorts) and minus the energy.

They probably need one or two. Like an enchantment that steals 1...2 energy every hit or a version of backfire that does some damage+energy loss every time an opponent casts a spell. Another idea is a version of energy surge that does 10 damage + 3 energy damage for every pip of regen the other guy has.

Nooooooooo!
Winterclaw why fill their heads with more e-denial ideas?!
You are evil!

I normally have Choas Storm in my mesmer skill bar while i PvE. I find it useful at getting critters away when they swarm and for helping take em down when using health degens with it.
That said, it would be far more useful if its energy cost was reduced and/or its area of effect increased.