Update - Friday, May 21, 2010

Lightning Strike is too weak to be viable. The main reason that it doesn't get buffed is that ANet doesn't want to repeat the mistake they made with Wastrel's Demise, which was creating a monster spike follow-up skill.

No one used the 3s recharge version of Overload that lacked AoE.

Nerf Wrack and Overload becomes just a viable pressure option. At most it needs a mild recharge hit to 5s. It's the sheer volume of single-target damage the bar pumps while denying energy that's the problem. Wrack is the engine that makes it go; you get constant pressure damage as you spam and then big pressure spikes when you cast Energy Surge.

Lightning Strike you mean?
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_pase_i.php?id=23

Or if you'd prefer a slightly more recent example,
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=73
http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=44

Both skills were underpowered, to be sure, but the current version of Overload is on the same level of stupid as prenerf Lamentation and Wastrel's Demise as spike skills.

Lemming, you want to cite 2007-2008 data when there's been two years of power creep?

Come on. The previous version of Overload was not viable. If it was such a powerful spike skill before, why weren't people spiking midline casters and Monks with it?

All that's happened here is the addition of adjacent damage and the addition of the ability to hit frontline. Those changes make it playable. They don't break it. The only format where Overload might be problematic post-Wrack nerf would be HA, where holding hands is somewhat inevitable.

Just for the sake of argument. Overload's closest counterpart is Lightning Strike, after all.

We had rather overpowered 1/4s spike skills in 06-07, and they were nerfed for good reason. What sense does it make to buff a spammable small damage skill into something that's almost as good as either of those?

Note that I'm not disagreeing with your point that synergy with Mind Wrack is a factor in Overload being too good.

The current Wastrel's Demise is probably a closer comparison, and there's little question that Overload is superior due to lower recharge and instantaneous damage. You'd rather have damage now than a cover hex 98% of the time, and the conditions for extra damage are easy to land for both.

The risk with 1/4 second skills has always been creating follow-ups for caster spikes that result in impossible-to-catch spikes. However, ANet has ruthlessly expunged every viable pure caster spike since 2007. Show me an Obs Flame spike following with Overload that wins, and I'll concede the point that Overload is broken and needs either a revert or a 3/4-1s cast.

One midliner in a balanced adding 35 or 80 to a pressure spike isn't a huge deal. The current problem with Overload as a follow-up is that teams are incentivized to run many copies. Kill Wrack, and running a ton of Dom midliners should be a lot less attractive, which in turn sorts out the problem with Overload as a spike assist.

The current version of Demise is its own can of worms - in principle, 1/4s cover hexes shouldn't exist either, and certainly not ones that actually have a useful side effect.

The problem with the current version of Overload is that even if Mind Wrack were nerfed, it'd have a spot in a template that's usable in a pressure spike build, which wasn't the case for either Lamentation or old Wastrel's Demise.

Obviously, if "normal" dom mesmers don't come back into fashion, this won't be the case, but I'd prefer to not have something potentially stupid staying around.

Besides, just because two years of power creep have gone by doesn't mean that every skill needs to go along with it. Do you think we should be buffing Lightning Strike and Flare next?

There's an obvious problem with buffing Lightning Strike or Flare: redundancy.

You can't get a big damage spike from a team of of Domination Magic casters. Spiritual Pain is still too weak, and six copies of Energy Surge and Energy Burn doesn't work out very well. What that means is that you have to spread attributes pretty thin to get a working spike using Overload as an assist. By contrast, buffing a Flare or a Lightning Strike increases the potency of associated attribute line caster spikes dramatically. That lets you run six copies of the assist without having to gimp the magnitude of the primary spike.

Wastrel's Demise did not see play before this update, and it was not updated. It's not the problem. It's not an entirely reliable 1/4 second cover hex. You can't cover something if the target has started to remove it, so it's not like you can cast Wrack and then sneak in a Wastrel's Demise before the rip resolves. Yes, it compares very favorably to Enduring Toxin (which isn't playable). But the only reason that the skill entered the meta was the insanely poorly thought out buffs to other Domination skills. It's low recharge, single-target damage, which wasn't a problem in an attribute line with modest unconditional damage output until Wrack buffed the rewards for spamming low recharge damage and energy denial.

The reason I raised out power creep was to point out that just because something was viable in 2007-2008 doesn't mean it was viable last week. I'm not suggesting that we should go around buffing things like mad. That usually just results in further imbalance due to unintended consequences. Nerfing the absurd skills in the present meta would be far preferable to wholesale buffs intended to restore playability to obsoleted skills.

We've been living with the consequences of the buff approach for some time now, and they aren't very desirable.

You're vastly underestimating how frequently Wastrel's Demise saw play before Friday. A significant proportion of VoR mesmers (higher in top Euro GvG) have been running it since mid-March as a cover hex.

Your explanation of how Demise isn't a perfect cover for Mind Wrack is unrealistic. For one, the odds are pretty good that the monk won't have enough energy to start casting a hex removal. Mind Wrack also recharges twice as fast as a hex removal.

My mention of Lightning Strike and Flare wasn't meant to compare them to Overload as spike assists, but as the 5e spammy direct damage skill for their respective line.

VoR's another problem entirely. You are correct that Wastrel's Demise synergizes too well with skills on that bar (Backfire/Empathy), and I wasn't aware that the Euros were using it heavily as I am never online then.

But VoR's been a problem skill for ages. It dominated 4v4 from its introduction in its present form until this even less sensible Mesmer buff, and the frequency of its use in GvG suggests that this isn't just a 4v4 balance problem. (Obviously, people run PD instead in HA due to the Halls win mechanics.) If VoR players have been using Wastrel's Demise, that's suggestive that WD is a problem, but not conclusive.

You can look at that data in one of two ways: WD makes overpowered hexes better, or WD is useless without overpowered hexes. Would Enduring Toxin be good if the duration were buffed to 10s? I doubt it.

Is the problem Wastrel's Demise if the Monk can't swap as Wrack casts to start pulling it before Wastrel's Demise can cast? That still sounds to me like a problem with Wrack's functionality, casting time or recharge.

You can't compare skills in Elementalist lines to Overload directly. The possibility of running six copies of Flare or Lightning Strike in a spike ensures that spammable, low cost skills in those attribute lines have to be weak. Otherwise, they enable potent caster spikes. I don't think that's necessarily such a bad thing, but the devs to hate pure caster spikes with a passion.

Domination Magic doesn't have the same problem. It's not a viable caster spike line and it doesn't have a lot of ways to unconditionally deal damage. If the meta is such that it's not desirable to take more than one Mesmer specced into Domination, a skill like Overload isn't a problem.

It's when you start rewarding teams for taking three or four of them that you have an issue. Even two would probably be manageable. Again, the damage dealt by Overload to the primary target did not increase. All that's happened is you can spike physical damage with it and you get punished for holding hands. But you don't pressure spike frontline and Rangers often due to armor (the exception being overextension). So if Overload wasn't a viable spike assist and pressure skill at 3s recharge when the condition only worked on casters, why is it viable at 4s? The answer is that other things in the Domination line are out of whack.

EDIT:
A non-elite Mirror of Ice that denies energy in Domination Magic? PvE/PvP split it, fine. But it's a terrible RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing idea in PvP, and this should have been obvious.

Demise is too good as a cover. That isn't complicated. It doesn't even need to be VoR - my guild ran an echo hexer that month. If Enduring Toxin were full-range and 10s and a mesmer skill, people might run it.

I think we're both agreed that Mind Wrack is broken, and that Demise synergizes with it extremely well. I was merely trying to point out that your claim regarding its reliability is wrong.

The potential of Overload proccing on a physical build makes spikes in these dom mesmer builds significantly more lethal. I don't have any reference matches, so you'll have to take my word for it.

You're right about Overload not being directly comparable to Lightning Strike, but the fact remains that they're rather similar skills with extremely different power levels.

The problem isn't necessarily that WD is the problem. It could be that the skills WD is covering are the problem. Show me non-Mesmers speccing 4 into Dom just to get WD as a 10s cover at -2, and I'll agree that WD is too good as a cover. Otherwise, I'll still tell you that the problems are the functionality of Wrack and the recharges on VoR, Backfire and Empathy. WD is being used to cover OP skills, but it doesn't follow that WD is OP. WD just makes a bad situation worse.

I've conceded the point on WD reliability. I'm just not convinced that WD is causal.

Finally, I agree that the Overload change makes spikes on physicals more potent. I'm just not convinced that this is a problem. The observation "the Overload change made pressure spikes stronger" does not prove that reverting Overload is the way to bring those builds into line. Hex and condition pressure have been out of line again for a variety of reasons. Strengthening Overload (so that pressure spikes are stronger) would permit nerfing the overall pressure of those builds without killing the builds off.

You argued that Overload is inherently too good by comparing it to the original WD and Lamentation, but the reason those skills were nerfed is not the reason you want to nerf Overload. So that comparison falls apart.

Finally, it's OK for different attribute lines to have skills with different power levels. If you dropped a half-strength Power Drain into Fire Magic, it would be a game-changer. Why? Because what you can do with that energy in Fire is different than what you can do with it in Inspiration, or in another attribute line given that you dumped a bunch of points into Inspiration for Power Drain.

Domination isn't a damage line per se; it's a disruption line where some skills deal damage on disruption rather than return energy (as Inspiration does). It's OK for the line to have a comparatively OP damage skill or two, so long as you can't stuff the bar full of energy efficient, low recharge sources of pressure. The problem right now is that you can do exactly that.

Even without the point of energy denied per cast, Wrack would still remain badly OP in PvP. The extra energy denial is a bonus, but it only accelerates the inevitable. You should not be able to get that functionality without burning an elite slot, and it's a lot harder to remove a hex like Mind Wrack than it is to strip an elite Enchantment like Mirror of Ice.

Domination and Water are directly comparable. Both are disruption lines with modest overall damage capabilities. If Water has to burn an elite skill to get that functionality, and the skill is balanced, it follows that a non-elite version in Domination will be OP.

You're right that the domination hexes in question are powerful enough that it merits going to lengths to make them stick. Even the cases of other strong hexes (Insidious, Spoil), however, doesn't it make sense that hexers would rather use cover hexes in whatever line they're specced in?

Before the friday update, it'd have been unfeasible for a triple dom build to spike warriors - there'd only be 10 or so energy to burn on the target, so any spike would be lacking in damage. The buffed Overload gives spikes a random chance to do enough damage to push it way over the top. Being required to watch over an additional three spike targets is a big deal.

Also, this update makes Dom look like a damage line. The energy denial component on Esurge and the enchant removal on Shatter are barely even relevant anymore - they function as spike skills with conditions on the damage. In that light, is a supercharged 1/4s follow not worrisome?

I see your point that Parasitic is just too bad by comparison to see play. Blood lacks anything even resembling a decent cover and always has. Still, if WD is that strong I'd expect to start seeing current bars boot a skill for WD. The current Blood bar could do that easily enough. The Curses bar doesn't need it due to Suffering.

Again you refer to redundancy (triple Dom). I wonder if a triple Dom would put out enough pressure to survive against current hexways if Wrack and Energy Surge were reverted. If that proves to be the case, then I would agree that Overload is a problem. However, I suspect that the denial bars would not be strong enough to justify running three.

Didn't Energy Surge, Energy Burn and Shatter more or less function that way years ago? ANet dialed the damage on those skills back a bit then, and has dialed it back up in response to the power creep to get people to use them. If we see a VoR, a traditional Dom, and an Energy Surge in teams after a Wrack nerf, then I'll concede that Overload is OP. But I don't think Overload will be hugely lethal in balanced teams that only pack a single Mesmer, and I don't think that dual or triple Dom is likely to be viable once ANet returns some sanity by fixing Wrack (and perhaps other issues).

Gotta love these "threads of doom" that always show up after a buff.

"OMG this is so OP that it's gonna blow!" - but nothing really happens... or not really. It's just he alarmists that see the "potential problems" with anything and have a wild imagination.

Now I have to admit they have a slightly different theme than the "threads of doom" after nerfs, but in essence kind of the same thing.

So how about people worry less and enjoy the game more? My two cents.

yes this was a nice change. now if they would dump the power creep additude towards skill updates and fix the other problem, mob makeup in alot of areas, we wouldnt need to buff skills like they have been doing, but i guess since its started its too late to go back.

Do you play PvP?

Let's just say that the meta changed rather dramatically.

At the risk of being histrionic, this is the second-worst buff in the history of Guild Wars. The only buff that was more absurd was the one that enabled R/As to win a monthly.

Even the Mark of Insecurity buff wasn't this ridiculous. Hell, the 1/2 second Decapitate bug was both fun and badly OP, and it wasn't this ridiculous.

A PvE split would be fine. But in PvP, it needs to GTFO unless you're going to replace an existing elite and increase the recharge of some other skills.

So far, I have been loving this update. It has really breathed life into the mesmer profession. There are now so many more viable skills, so many more viable skill combinations, and so many more viable builds. What makes it even better in my opinion is that Anet didn't leave the original roll of a mesmer behind. Rather than turning the mesmer into a strait up damage profession, this update made it so mesmers can use what they are inherintly good at, like interuption and e-denial, to do more damage. Skills like Panic and Psychic instability are really fun to use and although active energy management wasn't really buffed much, it is far easier to manage energy as a mesmer now that signets have become far more viable and many of the skills have been reduced in energy cost.

I certainly hope to see updates like this in the future for the other underpowered professions.