Mass Confusion (74 Mana, Cooldown 60 Seconds): Each enemy in the target area, which has a roughly 10 yard radius, has a chance of becoming confused for 12 seconds.
This is one of the skills that appears to have one purpose, but really has another. While confusing enemies sounds like a great way to borrow their damage, as it causes them to attack other enemies instead of you and your allies, the real point of the skill is that if they’re attacking each other, they’re not attacking -you-, and you can carve into them with impunity for the duration of their confusion. Not to say it isn’t possible for the confusion to make your enemies kill one another, because it is quite possible, but you should be considering that a bonus, not the main point of the skill’s effect. At any rate, while the area of effect is significant, it’s not particularly stellar- this is best used on either clusters of enemies that haven’t started advancing on you yet, or enemies who an ally has clustered up but not commenced killing for whatever reason. You’re more likely to use this when you’re alone though.
Unstable Realm (74 Mana, Cooldown 45 Seconds): Each enemy in the target area, which has a roughly 10 yard radius, has a chance of becoming confused for 12 seconds.
The entire purpose of Unstable Realm is to make Mass Confusion more reliable, letting you use it practically every fight by shortening the cooldown. This is fairly nice, but really doesn’t change much about the skill itself.
Devolution (74 Mana, Cooldown 60 Seconds): Each enemy in the target area, which has a roughly 10 yard radius, has a chance of becoming confused for 12 seconds. Enemies killed while under this confusion effect have a 50% chance each to spawn a Zombie Dog when they die.
If Zombie Dogs were really worth something, this rune would be really interesting and effective. As things stand, though, it’s just more fun on the fun of watching your enemies beat each other up while you throw sharp and/or poisonous things at them.
Mass Hysteria (74 Mana, Cooldown 60 Seconds): Each enemy in the target area, which has a roughly 10 yard radius, has a chance of becoming confused for 12 seconds. Up to 6 enemies in the area of effect that aren’t confused are instead Stunned for 3 seconds.
Mass Hysteria exists to make Mass Confusion more reliable. As the confusion effect only has a chance to strike any given enemy, the stun from Mass Hysteria makes it far more likely that you’ll stop everything in the target area from attacking you for a time, and anything that’s not distracted for the full 12 seconds is instead standing there like a particularly braindead post, pretty much inviting you to kill it first. Not a bad improvement at all.
Paranoia (74 Mana, Cooldown 60 Seconds): Each enemy in the target area, which has a roughly 10 yard radius, has a chance of becoming confused for 12 seconds. Each enemy in the target area, whether or not it becomes Confused, takes 20% more damage for 12 seconds.
This rune is very strong, turning Mass Confusion into a much more powerful effect for disabling a group of enemies long enough to kill them. While it still won’t confuse all the enemies in its area on a regular basis, Paranoia makes it far easier to take out those who do not start attacking their allies- and still weakens those as well. Expect to see a lot of enemies kill each other while you are using this rune.
Mass Hallucination (74 Mana, Cooldown 60 Seconds): Each enemy in the target area, which has a roughly 10 yard radius, has a chance of becoming confused for 12 seconds. A huge spirit wanders around the area for 12 seconds, dealing 22% weapon damage per second to each enemy that it touches or runs over.
While very fun to watch, as the large spirit staggers through the enemy formations (or lack thereof) caused by the confusion effect, the fact that the spirit meanders at random makes its damage fairly unreliable. If you’re really interested in dealing damage, you’re generally going to be better off with Paranoia boosting the damage your skills deal while the enemies are confused. Then again, half the point of Confusion is the fun of semi-random stuff happening, so you may find you just prefer the feeling of Mass Hallucination- and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not as though it’s actually a bad rune.
