Guild Wars 2

This is completely unrelated to final part and the Vortex parts. I can solve those parts easily (well not really.)

How can you attack that big ice-like boss for mesmer when devs put a big bomb hole on its area? Minions like illusions can’t even do anything even traited with Triumphant distortion to be honest! It just falls within a second and heh, luckily that before I quit this game for a long time ago I purchase bunch of assassin and cavalier set. Can’t imagine what if I still stick with the RP or price solution like stick with Shaman set.

I think they thought that “Hey, just put some puzzle so that those berserker set will not just press 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1….. They have to use some brains!” But yeah, illusions have no brain….That’s utterly bad for them. :/ Also, Mesmer does not have powerful close combat power (this exclude illusion and shattering of course: illusions fall in a second with that “bomb hole” madness.

Guess they thought only the close combat specialist classes will be played the most which is ashamed. The puzzle is somewhat great (I like vortex part idea and the final part…Speaking of final part, warrior ,guardian and elementalist’s invincibility are soooooooooooooooo good in this situation. Forget about Distortion shatter. ) but I think only the specific classes can enjoy them in which I think devs should not make anything like this (class specific fun)!

When you get the protection, you can enter the middle; minions, pets, and illusions should all also get that protection.

Hrrrmn. I haven’t attacked it with my mesmer yet, but she’ll probably be next. But yeah, it looks like illusions might not help much. On the other hand, mesmer teleportation and portal skills with might make up some of the difference, as you can afford to stay within the circle for longer before the protection wears off.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

When you get the protection, you can enter the middle; minions, pets, and illusions should all also get that protection.

I can confirm that in my instance, my summoned illusions died instantly while I had protection and I summoned them inside the circle.

The facet of light is extremely punishing for mesmers since the illusionss die instantly they are inside the big circle next to the boss. I can barely do any damage while inside the circle without my illusions

The Facet of Light is that boss where you have to get to beat it’s minions to get a color and you go to a matching color to disable it’s forcefield, right? If I recall, couldn’t you get protection that would leave you immune to damage and conditions for a few seconds?

It’s not that bad if you’re Power-specced and have a MH sword. Otherwise, I imagine it can be quite painful.

When I did it as Ranger, my pet got the protection when I got it, but switching to a new pet removed the buff for it. Any creature/minion/etc. you summon after you receive the buff doesn’t seem to get it applied to them either.

(Also, yeah, Invulnerabilities really help a lot in that place)

I think you can get rid of the big circle around the boss by killing the smaller vortices that are around the area. When I killed the small mobile crystal creatures – I grabbed the buff and then accidentally destroyed the vortex in the area – bosses’ circle disappeared. With the buff on the small vortex was instantly destroyed. It may only work work if the vortex is in the bosses’ circle. Not 100% certain since it took me to near the end of the fight to notice that I could one-shot the vortex and that broke his circle when I did it.

Or maybe it was just a coincidence – I’ll try it again tomorrow and find out . . .

So here is the issue with the Faucet of Light boss and the Better Red than Dead achievement.

For that achievement, you can only use the red color. The little guy tend to go to the green or blue color beam and give you green or blue buff instead of red 80% of the time. There is a bit of RNG annoyance in there. Sometimes it can take 5 minutes for it to finally give you the red color buff when killed since it is totally random.

This isn’t a big deal for most classes as they can probably kill them in 2-3 cycles. With mesmers though your illusions are killed instantly when summoned even if you have the protection buff. This means you are not doing much damage with the buffs without your illusions and you take much longer.

What end up is an exercise in frustration caused by an achievement that uses RNG to waste your time and probably not designed with mesmers in mind.

Ooh, so you can cycle through them and just not use the blue and green ones when they pop? I was thinking I’d have to bring a friend to burn him down in one go.

Lalocat.6793:

Ooh, so you can cycle through them and just not use the blue and green ones when they pop? I was thinking I’d have to bring a friend to burn him down in one go.

Indeed, just leave him alive and watch him teleport around. If he port to green color beam, he will give a green buff. If he port to red, he will give red etc. Just make sure you kill him after he ports to the red beam for that achievement.

It is much faster than killing it and then wait for respawn if the wrong color buff is provided.

I wasted a lot of time on this boss. I had two major problems:

1) I was basically left with GS3 and close-range auto, or rather sword 2 and sword auto for attacking when attuned. It was slow. It was boring. It was frustrating. It increased the chance of making a mistake and having to start over (which I had to twice).

2) You can’t blink past the beams! If you try, you get bumped mid-way… and thrown into the AoE. And die and start over. So the mobility skill which most mesmers use can become fatal.

This is not the first time when mesmers have been left aside: IIRC, the attunement achievement during fight on the Breachmaker suffered from the same problem, and the Nochtli achievement in Dry Top too. Do ANet developers test these things on mesmers? Are we so few that it’s not worth fixing something in PvE for a single minor class?

Yeah, that boss is really annoying.

Your minipets get the shield, however your summoned phantasms do not.

You cannot place them outside to shoot him, since the area shields outside attacks.

Any phantasm inside the AoE get`s instantly destroyed, since it ticks with about 2000 damage every time.

If you stay in too long and die, you will have to start the whole fight over as the boss is regenerating health.

In theory the boss is not hard , however if you are not able to dish out damage (and I as a Mesmer in this situation am very much handicapped and cried in anger more than once there) in close combat you are in for a very long and annoying fight

@Lishtinenbird
The bumping into the beams is not that much of a problem, but it can be annoying. I agree. Some area awareness helps (i bumped into them often enough trying to get out of the cycle)

I do think they test these enemies with the different classes, but I believe they lack in variety. With the berserker meta still being a thing and phantasm mesmer not so much arround (I believe, but I just love that playstyle, even though they get destroyed in too many situations), I believe they simply overlooked this matter.

However my other theory is (and that is because my little mini racoon gets a giant shield bubble), that beings created after you received the buff do not gain it as well.

Can someone who uses another class confirm it? Maybe a summoned elemental?

Yep got the same problem. it’s weird, my useless mini got shield yet my clones don’t. it makes the fight takes forever because i only have 2 available skills that really can do some damage. the ‘take root’ sylvari elite skills also got destroyed in an instant, and i have to cast the skill inside the circle otherwise the skill wont work, but when i did, it’s gone in one second. really frustrating, my main is a mesmer, i don’t really play with other profession too much, hope there will be a fix.

Mesmer can deal good damage with a sword cough *cough
Thats way too much drama and fuss for such a little issue.

EthanLightheart.9168:

Mesmer can deal good damage with a sword cough *cough
Thats way too much drama and fuss for such a little issue.

I use a sword/gun mesmer… That is three skills which i can use.
1,2 and 5, with 3 being a defensive and 4 a phantasm who does a lot of damage, but gets instantly killed.
1 does simple base damage and 2 has a long cooldown for a short burst, so i can use it only one time to attack.
5 does confuse the enemy with pityfull damage.

I am usually using the phantasm warden and gunner to burst down enemies. Both do not work here.

As my build is based on balance, which allows me to survive and do decent amount of damage it is quite disheartening that my most powerful attacks are not available to me.

No status attacks, no shatter.

I survive, but I take the enemie down at snails pace.
I am used to take some extra time thanks to my build, but this is pretty boring and annoying, since It takes me around 10 rounds to get that enemy down. (which I did)

Yeah, I did this with my main mesmer, using sword/focus and staff. The worst of it was the light facet and the end boss. At the end of the light facet fight, my keyboard was sideways on the desk from all the dodging and dashing to and fro. Gotta love all those ha ha you’re dead circles. The end boss, while less frantic, was still very time-consuming and annoying and I’m not entirely sure how I managed to get through it, since whenever a color was involved nothing seemed to work as it seemed it should. My mesmer was down to her undies when it was all over.

Afterwards I told my guildies this was the worst thing anet has ever done – in terms of gimmicky boss fights.

They’re doing great things with character animations, though – loved Marjory’s scene, early on, even if it did pop up unexpectedly in the middle of the fight with the ghostly seraph…

So, I can understand the frustration for mesmers, I haven’t done mine yet, but she’s next on the list. I run phants as well as my primary damage source, so it’ll be interesting seeing if I can adjust to overcome the insta-kill on summons. Perhaps this is just an oversight on Anrt’s part though, we’ll see if they adjust it.

Personally though, I sort of liked the mechanics. They require more than just ‘stand and spam’ to get things done. It’s a nice change of pace.

Hrrrmn. Let’s think about this…

The best combination might actually be a scepter on one swap, sword on the other, using the scepter to fight the little facet. This allows you to use Confusing Images as you run in, then switch to sword and unload (possibly seeing if you can get the Facet of Light to hit you to trigger Illusionary Counter just before you switch).

This does raise the question of the best offhands to use. Torch might be good to go with the scepter – use The Prestige as you go in so that the enemy gets caught in the purple flame burst. Sword might be best coupled with another sword – if you can get an Illusionary Riposte off, that’s another decent chunk of damage, plus a triggering of on-death traits for illusions.

Also, don’t forget Mantra of Pain. I know it’s easy to overlook, but if you need to amplify the damage you can deal in a short time followed by a period where you might not have something to attack at all, then MoP is really your best friend, particularly with Harmonious Mantras.

Definitely won’t say it’s impossible because hey, I did it with my Mesmer. I won’t say it’s almost impossible even, because it just took extra time. But I challenge anyone here to try and tell me it’s not much more irritating than other classes to complete. If it were timed, it really would be impossible.

Has anyone tried raising the phantasms before getting the shield? I don’t see that mentioned here and I’m not about to play a mesmer to find out(it was my least favorite in GW1 and will be here as well, eventually I’ll have one just because I like to have 1 of each profession).

Phantasms can only be summoned on a target, unfortunately, so it doesn’t work that way.

I did Better Red than Dead on mes with 3 cycles. Bad rng between the first and second meant I had time warp up for the first two. But I just used empowering mantras and autoattacked with sword. (I had three mantras plus blink so I could hit the boss for the full duration of the protection and then blink out.)

I do agree that it’s stupid to have fights where phantasms are useless (well, pretty close to useless—if you use triumphant diversion, some of them can get off one attack, which I only figured out when I was doing the last boss for the second time, after I’d gotten better red than dead…), but in the grand scheme of things this one wasn’t too bad.

Putting it all together, I guess my suggestion is: empowering mantras + triumphant distortion. Three mantras + blink. As you run to melee the boss summon izerker—it’ll get an attack off before it dies. Swap to sword/whatever (maybe torch for the burn like draxynnic suggested, or maybe iduelist can also get off a few shots with triumphant distortion, or maybe iswordsman can get off one attack, I’m not sure), time warp, swing your sword again and again, blink out as the protection wears off. Maybe mantra of pain for more burst towards the end of the protection (like draxynnic suggested).

I’m glad this issue was brought up. I had a hard time with my mesmer as illusions were completely useless. And now that I’m reading what is here, I too had my mini pet protected but illusions were instantly killed.

Like others, I was stuck with just my non-illusion weapon skills and Mantra of Pain (and traited with Harmonious Mantras). So very slow, and painful not to be able to use most of my skills. If Ranger pets are getting protected, illusions should as well.

I’m glad there are people here to recommending Mesmers to use sword. What would we ever do without them?

Cmon … not that hard as mesmer. I realized quickly that my illusions die instant. Anyway … get ur protection bubble … go short range GS 1,2,3 and/or Sword 1,2 – a couple of times and the boss is gone.

Not really a problem.

Yeah even in full zerker, without illusions it was kind of annoying fight. This isn’t the first time this has happened, so I retraited for Empowering Mantras. Also swapped in my pistol off-hand with Duellist’s Discipline so I could summon Phantasmal Duellists that could unload outside of the range of the enemy AoE.

Jaken.6801:

However my other theory is (and that is because my little mini racoon gets a giant shield bubble), that beings created after you received the buff do not gain it as well.

Can someone who uses another class confirm it? Maybe a summoned elemental?

Confirmed. Minions/summons created before getting shield will get the shield as well. Those created after won’t. For mesmer this generally doesn’t matter though (unless you are really good with timing it).

Simonoly.4352:

Also swapped in my pistol off-hand with Duellist’s Discipline so I could summon Phantasmal Duellists that could unload outside of the range of the enemy AoE.

Did that work? Fo me, any range attacks from outside AoE field simply bounced on the field border, regardless if i was shielded or not.

Nope. Any long range attack outside the bubble is being neglected.
Tried that as well and I just saw the shielding pop up

Jaken.6801:

In theory the boss is not hard , however if you are not able to dish out damage (and I as a Mesmer in this situation am very much handicapped and cried in anger more than once there) in close combat you are in for a very long and annoying fight

As an ascended wearing zerker mesmer throwing out phantasms I have the same feelings others have mentioned above. During the fight I found myself thinking that the boss was basically a sponge for dmg because of the mechanics involved.

This again shows that nobody at ANet is playing a mesmer during their testing.

I did the entire LS on my Mesmer (Sw/SW + GS, Zerk Armor 6/6/0/2/0, Daze and power brake Mantras) and did not have a single issue.

The hardest part was waiting for the Facet’s to spawn while avoiding all the AOE circles.

But completely doable on a Mesmer, if played correctly.

I’ve done this with a Necro, Thief, and Mesmer so far. While the phantasms issue made the facet of light a bit slower, using sword (great weapon!), time warp, mantra of pain made it not much different than my Necro’s time. When I started, I hit with mind stab (GS) while I ran up on him then used the above mentioned sword and utility skills to take him out.

As a side note, clones and phantasms did very well in the other two fights by keeping the facets distracted while I went about the mechanics to kill them.

Chrispy.5641:

When I did it as Ranger, my pet got the protection when I got it, but switching to a new pet removed the buff for it. Any creature/minion/etc. you summon after you receive the buff doesn’t seem to get it applied to them either.

(Also, yeah, Invulnerabilities really help a lot in that place)

Well, more bugs for me. My pet did not got the protection and died instantly every time. I found Hidden Arcane very unfriendly for my Ranger, but now I think of it my Mesmer would hate it even more. And the last boss was just bugged for me. I killed it, but it took soooo long it wasn’t fun any more.

/edit: I think part of the problem is that this story part seems to be very buggy for some players and not at all for others. Some members of my guild told me it was very easy and it took me 2 hours. And I am a much better player than most of them. When they explained to me in chat what to do I had to tell them several times it simply didn’t work for me. I am not certain about the first three bosses, but the last boss was bugged for me.
I can’t say I liked the fights. Maybe in a few days I will try it again and see if it works better for me and I was just very unlucky taday or that some of the mechanics are just lame.

Jaken.6801:

Nope. Any long range attack outside the bubble is being neglected.
Tried that as well and I just saw the shielding pop up

This is correct. I could have sworn that my Duellist’s projectiles were able to hit yesterday, but trying the fight again this morning it wasn’t working at all. Probably tunnel visioning on my end.

Probably best to go down the mantra dps build until Anet perhaps addresses this. It sure is tedious and slow on Mesmer without illusions. Shatter is probably worth a shot too.

I believe it is just a technical limitation.

The protection gets spread when we trigger it and gets only spread to every friendly character that is active at this moment.

Everything created afterwards won`t get the protection.

As mesmer phantasm only appear close to the enemy and by that in the damaging AoE they will get instantly desolved, as they can only be used to attack.

Hrrrmn…

It does strike me, also, that this mechanic may mean that ranged phantasms and clones do have a use, as long as you make sure they’re targeting the boss and not the little facet – pop them up before you get the protection, then activate the shatter.

I wish I’d read this thread before I did this on my mesmer yesterday.

My usual PvE build is the old meta phantasm one, so my damage was next to nothing here in zerker gear with no phantasms. Really wish I’d swapped to Empowering Mantras/clone death traits to make it easier, because as it was, it was an incredibly slow and boring 15-20 minutes. Couldn’t even use iDuelist to attack from outside that AoE.

I’d really recommend doing this on any other class if you have one. I’ll be doing it on my thief if I run it again. Honestly surprised that they didn’t realize what an impact this would have on mesmers.

Probably best to go down the mantra dps build until Anet perhaps addresses this. It sure is tedious and slow on Mesmer without illusions. Shatter is probably worth a shot too.

I tried shatter too…and as I mention, the clones/phantasms must be created first and I swear that when ANY clones and phantasms (after triumphant distortion effect ends) they’re gone within a second so shatter is useless (no illusion is created because it gone already).

And I forgot to mention that during that part YOU will get damage all the time so you can’t swap traits or weapons unless you decide to commit seppuku (by entering that bomb hole or whatever.)

dekou.6012:

It’s not that bad if you’re Power-specced and have a MH sword. Otherwise, I imagine it can be quite painful.

Yeah. I already include in my first post. Before I have bunch of gold, I use shaman set or any vitality set to at least extend the time before I down. I fear that Arenanet will force people to use berserker set + brain. Brain is not a big problem. The bigger problem is not everyone can afford berserker set and the biggest problem is input most of damage source into only one thing (phantasm) and it will be really frustrating if that kind of a damage source is being nullify by mechanic.

I don’t think MH sword auto attack has that nice damage (unless that people who say so has full berserker set and go for high power and high ferocity) .

And someone mention about summoning phantasms at that boss before getting bomb hole protection boon, I don’t think it will do any damage because I tried that from afar, it still suffering EXTREMELY low damage. Both normal attack and phantasms alike. (And worse, any phantasms that target from afar does not damaging the boss even I get bomb hole protection. So weird. )

Also other classes have some serious power that does not rely on anything too much. Look. An Engineer can spam grenades and he/she can do it within melee range. (1 2 3 4 5 F1/F2/F3/F4 and stuff.)
A ranger has better melee power. At least ranger can apply most of attack skills on that boss. So the other classes can finish that boss faster. And I’m not trying to do time attack but with the Mesmer having to rely on illusions too much (and that’s its core too!) and any misstep you make or the AIs fault will force you to do it all over.

And mesmer’s power without illusions are utterly low and that’s pretty shame that the devs think about full berserker set to use some brain tissues but they forgot to think about mesmer that even players use most of there brain tissue they still get frustrating really hard! Unless the players have bunch of time and no emergency job response to finish that bomb hole dependent boss. Not even mention the story semi-boring part in the library and the final boss that require to get both light attunement and fragile to that stone.

I don’t know if the devs will read this topic or not (which I don’t think they will…..Or they already read it but pretend to not posting or accept the problem?) but hope that the next LS content will less likely depend on full berserker set but rely more on brain AND profession core mechanics (Yeah. A monster in Dry top requires you to attack in front of it that’s nice design but illusions summon in the unpredictable way unlike necromancer minions and all minion types AIs can’t even figure that!)