Guild Wars 2

What does everyone think? Honestly im not sure you can play Mesmer with viper and without the hybrid ability I think Mesmer will fall much farther down the list of class tiers.

Any mesmers out there have an idea of what build they are going to run now? I play Mesmer on the side for fun not main, just curious what the mains are going to do to adapt to this.

thanks.

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

Destroyer’s amulet is power/precision/ferocity/condition damage…..fyi…

As chrono U can try to to use Destroyer or Sage. U will be more fragile but still can get some damage from condis.

As core mes U’ll be dead without merc.

pico.6402:

As chrono U can try to to use Destroyer or Sage. U will be more fragile but still can get some damage from condis.

As core mes U’ll be dead without merc.

How about carrion?

Chase.2798:

pico.6402:

As chrono U can try to to use Destroyer or Sage. U will be more fragile but still can get some damage from condis.

As core mes U’ll be dead without merc.

How about carrion?

Health is nice but in general the toughness is what kept them alive. Thfs and Any other pwr spike class will destroy them even faster. And sorry about destroyer didn’t had its stats mixed up in my head. I think that it will have the damage but you will be dead so fast it wont matter.

Wondering if a paladin amulet bunker style play would work.

Wanderers or Sage are clear substitutes. Not Destroyers, Paladin, Carrion, although Viper sounds deadly.

My thought stays the same tho, using any of those you will become so squishy that you will not be able to fight in a group fight.

Chaith.8256:

Wanderers or Sage are clear substitutes. Not Destroyers, Paladin, Carrion, although Viper sounds deadly.

Actually the Healing Power you get from Sages is barely worth the tradeoff. (from our testings so far). Both Ether Feast and the Well heal will heal for slightly more, but the heal you get for shattering seems to scale horrendously badly with healing power.

Vipers is pretty deadly, but also dies super quick, sometimes too quick to even make use of the continuous heals from shatters especially anything more than 1v1 (obviously there may be some bias with getting used to ones own squishiness).

Carrion seems good so far, a pretty decent tradeoff for mercenaries (if not the best). Wanderer’s is good aswell, though arguably Power>Precision (certainly in my eyes). But will have to test more in scrims how either perform.

Obviously, all this is rather speculative since there will also be small balance changes

its really depends how you see your role now

with mercenary you could do some 1v2 till help comes
without it its gonna be much harder to impossible

carrion is my first choice with higher hp bar
anyother amulets give lower hp or no power

we need power to do some dmg to those ele. without power i wont be able to counter them unless in a team fight you will w8 till they take dmg below 75% hp and than shatter burst them

so if no power needed go rabid or wanderer
but i bet on carrion as the pressure it does this what helps you especially versus thief

Ppl won’t know till some popular streamer or well know pvper tests it and slaps it on meta for the majority. Until then it’s just going to be a bunch of speculation. It’s not even that bad simply because the main loss is something like 560 toughness or vital those 2 were the main selling points of that amulet You got moderate def and more hp without giving up raw power or condi damage and sense some condi specs don’t need precision to apply condi pressure or bomb someone it was a win win without any trade offs. Ppl freaking out for the sake of freaking out.

Lalainnia.3598:

Ppl won’t know till some popular streamer or well know pvper tests it and slaps it on meta for the majority. Until then it’s just going to be a bunch of speculation people saying that the mesmer profession is dead and that the sky is falling.

Fixed that for you. =P

Going full condi ham… Wanderer’s

Chaith.8256:

Wanderers or Sage are clear substitutes. Not Destroyers, Paladin, Carrion, although Viper sounds deadly.

Healing power on sage is a waste. Most traits on the Inspiration line do not scale well with healing power.

Unfortunately, mesmers has only 1 viable build left & it’s condi base. Power shatter is gone. Any vids out there are saying otherwise are old vids taken in the days when power shatters was still good.

The TRUTH: The merc amulet is what gives atm the mesmer survivability while keeping anoth power & condi damage to actually affect in the long term it’s opponents. Takes time since every one clens or is either resistant to condies. But well timed, a good mesmer player will down an opponent.

SITUATION: Idk if any of you tested other amulets & runes, but I’ve tried this season every combination possible.

Results is as follows:
Any AMULETS with high toughness, vitality or Armor, leaves the mesmer/chrono class lacking in damage to the point becomes useless vs any opponents. Enemies will take a bit longer to kill the mez/chrono but will finish you in the long run.

Running any high damage Condi or Dps amulets opens up mez/chrono for one shots. Plain & simple! Low on stat defense, skills & utilities are just not up to part to evade an onslaught of attacks such as from thieves & warriors for example. & some of the attacks from these classes cant be dodged or blocked.

The Merc amulet is the best in between of both worlds. It’s what gived the Mez/chrono the abilities to survive & actually giving it a fighting chance by doing anoth condi damage.

To bad… Mesmer/chrno is after this knocked off the meta or any viability play.

I was using carrion + scavenging runes before merc anyway so I’ll probably just switch back to that.

Part of me wants to run viper, but everytime I experiment with it I don’t like being extreme glass.

Curunen.8729:

I was using carrion + scavenging runes before merc anyway so I’ll probably just switch back to that.

Part of me wants to run viper, but everytime I experiment with it I don’t like being extreme glass.

Yeah it still works, but with all the changes since the last few patches, i dare you to survive with that build. I double dare you to survive especially vs a Revenant.

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.

Archon.6480:

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.

Depends how good you are, how good your opponent is & what your opponent is really.

Some of the classes with less mobility & or less AOE are still decently easy to beat as a mesmer assuming your a decent player using sage or carrion.

The high mobility & high AOE classes are just the rock to the mesmers scissors as the mesmer is the scissors to the others paper.

In the end you also have to realize that it is very easy for a mesmer to disengage and roam somewhere else. (something only a few can actually do)
If you find yourself coming up against a build your weak against & your not sure you can outplay the person it may be best to do so. (at least you have the option)

It was easy to take condichrono down on berserker before. It’ll be even easier now.

Good thieves will be able to burst them down with far more ease if they don’t take carrion (the high hp will allow a few hits). If they go a toughness ammy, everything else will smash though that and burn em down good and dead XD.

It’ll be more of the same.

Archon.6480:

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.

and why wont it work? You’re telling me destroyer amulet wont work when mercenary did? Destroyer should be far superior in dps potential compared to mercenary in the long run anyway, sorry you wont be able to condi dump and almost instantly remove someones hp bar by mashing shatters among other tools but how is that any fun anyway? Destroyer is like using zerker but instead of vitality you take condition damage, its freaking amazing, compensate for the lack of vit and or toughness(mainly toughness in the case of a mesmer) by using a rune with such stats. If you actually land a big wombo combo with destroyer amulet you should be able to put in some SERIOUS dps.

Katoh.4069:

What does everyone think? Honestly im not sure you can play Mesmer with viper and without the hybrid ability I think Mesmer will fall much farther down the list of class tiers.

I sure hope it does fall a bit. Mesmer was the best class of S1, and was the best carry class of S2. It deserves to be more middle of the pack after that. Same with Rev.

Holy kitten , how delusional are some of the Mesmer players,
Honestly, you should reevaluate your knowledge about Mes, since it appears you got no idea what you are talking about…

Power Shatter dead? … Please.
Are we even playing the same game?

I mean …. Do you even have any faith in the class you play?
Or just follow blindly after Meta…

Mesmer is dead now trust me. Constant evasion, mobility, teleports, high damage whilst evading, clone spam and the ability to double use all skills is terrible without the amulets. That is obvious. Mesmer is conceptually so weak that it needs amulets to prop it up

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mesmer is dead now trust me. Constant evasion, mobility, teleports, high damage whilst evading, clone spam and the ability to double use all skills is terrible without the amulets. That is obvious. Mesmer is conceptually so weak that it needs amulets to prop it up

The sadder thing is that it needs all that survivability just to live. A single ranger bow 2 can carve off 75% of our health.

Ananeos.4587:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mesmer is dead now trust me. Constant evasion, mobility, teleports, high damage whilst evading, clone spam and the ability to double use all skills is terrible without the amulets. That is obvious. Mesmer is conceptually so weak that it needs amulets to prop it up

The sadder thing is that it needs all that survivability just to live. A single ranger bow 2 can carve off 75% of our health.

I was messing around on my P/P thf yesterday. Fought a Mesmer off node, ended up hitting him for 10,500 on an unload followed by a daze + Basilisk venom and another 9,400 unload. He was running Viper amulet.

Its gonna be fun 2 shotting mesmers next season.

Incase no one has noticed, Carrion is virtually the same thing as Mercenary.
In a mostly condi meta, the Carrion is debatably better than Mercenary anyway.

Katoh.4069:

Ananeos.4587:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mesmer is dead now trust me. Constant evasion, mobility, teleports, high damage whilst evading, clone spam and the ability to double use all skills is terrible without the amulets. That is obvious. Mesmer is conceptually so weak that it needs amulets to prop it up

The sadder thing is that it needs all that survivability just to live. A single ranger bow 2 can carve off 75% of our health.

I was messing around on my P/P thf yesterday. Fought a Mesmer off node, ended up hitting him for 10,500 on an unload followed by a daze + Basilisk venom and another 9,400 unload. He was running Viper amulet.

Its gonna be fun 2 shotting mesmers next season.

I seriously wonder how the heck he managed to eat all that damage. Distortion for the first unload→blurred frenzy on the second would have been enough. Guess it was another condi mes straight out of PvE O.O

Katoh.4069:

Ananeos.4587:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mesmer is dead now trust me. Constant evasion, mobility, teleports, high damage whilst evading, clone spam and the ability to double use all skills is terrible without the amulets. That is obvious. Mesmer is conceptually so weak that it needs amulets to prop it up

The sadder thing is that it needs all that survivability just to live. A single ranger bow 2 can carve off 75% of our health.

I was messing around on my P/P thf yesterday. Fought a Mesmer off node, ended up hitting him for 10,500 on an unload followed by a daze + Basilisk venom and another 9,400 unload. He was running Viper amulet.

Its gonna be fun 2 shotting mesmers next season.

Yeah, sounds like you were playing a really experienced, high ranked Mesmer who made no attempt to press any buttons. You’ll surely fly your way up the ladder this season. Good luck!

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Incase no one has noticed, Carrion is virtually the same thing as Mercenary.
In a mostly condi meta, the Carrion is debatably better than Mercenary anyway.

Except its not even mostly a condi meta..even less with bunker ele

Archon.6480:

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.

LOL condis stopped being “Damage Over TIME” (in the traditional sense) ever since ANET made condis stackable. Why do you think there is the term “Condi Burst”?

Mercenary just made it so that you had a huge amount of safety to throw your condis on the enemy.

But to say Condis in GW2 is classic Damage over Time is pretty far from current reality.

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.

LOL condis stopped being “Damage Over TIME” (in the traditional sense) ever since ANET made condis stackable. Why do you think there is the term “Condi Burst”?

Mercenary just made it so that you had a huge amount of safety to throw your condis on the enemy.

But to say Condis in GW2 is classic Damage over Time is pretty far from current reality.

condi is still dot and will ever be

the stacking refer more in pve when couple of ppl can put 35 torment, confusion and bleed. in pvp you hardly see above 10-15 torment usually comes from the mesmer. thus dot

the burst means that we do our combo to put as much stacks as possible when we see our enemy used his cleanse.

i run with condi mesmer to try to stacks. it was funny we did 20 confusion and 25 torment on one guy. he got to 5% hp and cleanse . he died after that but still funny.

messiah.1908:

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.

LOL condis stopped being “Damage Over TIME” (in the traditional sense) ever since ANET made condis stackable. Why do you think there is the term “Condi Burst”?

Mercenary just made it so that you had a huge amount of safety to throw your condis on the enemy.

But to say Condis in GW2 is classic Damage over Time is pretty far from current reality.

condi is still dot and will ever be

the stacking refer more in pve when couple of ppl can put 35 torment, confusion and bleed. in pvp you hardly see above 10-15 torment usually comes from the mesmer. thus dot

the burst means that we do our combo to put as much stacks as possible when we see our enemy used his cleanse.

i run with condi mesmer to try to stacks. it was funny we did 20 confusion and 25 torment on one guy. he got to 5% hp and cleanse . he died after that but still funny.

Any condition that can do at least 1-2k HP damage per second is not what i would call DOT. Add to that the fact people can do multiple conditions on someone and that person is dead in 5 seconds.

15 stacks of Confusion does approx 1700+ damage per skill use on a condition amulet user

15 stacks of Torment does approx 1800+ damage per sec on a moving target on a condition amulet user.

Although I am in favor of seeing the ammy removed, if at the very least just to see how things evolve.

Being locked to illusions for condi spec is what kills condi chrono if it does not have the superior stats covering it imo.

No vigor, no blinds, little to no stealth, no stability while being glass as per the suggested use of destroyer. Honestly it would be better to reroll pre HoT specs and not take chrono.

But since chrono is the only thing that doesn’t make mes bad well lol.

The plus here though is the potential for less incoming condi preassure.

Likely we’ll see power builds returning, but being countered by many other power specs and being very difficult to pressure vs the plethora of passive and active defenses built into every class since HoT (not to mention how easy it is to avoid a shatter disproportionate to how long it takes and risk associated to set) mes will be back to the way it was 2 years ago. But everyone will say “mes is fine it was picked for major tournaments!” Ignoring the fact it’s taken for utility of portal due to being unable to stack classes.

I don’t mind going back to power, but the nerfs to Chrono bunk should have ended at well of precog, slight changes to shield, energy rune nerf, and meta shift from how quickness/slow affected matches. Alacrity should have been left alone, and the recent flat cooldown reductions to wells should have remained their default.

Base Mes interrupt might stack with Chaotic interruption….
Or Bunk o mancer.

Id like to see burst shatters come back but I know that wont happen. In all likelihood it’ll be carion or viper’s, no real change

In my opinion carrion and sage will not be the way. The only viable way , imho will be rabid or warander . The reason is simple : there are many classes with huge spike damage ( for example thieves, marauder engineer , some necros ) and if you want to last you have to have toughness. Only with vitality is not so simple to stay alive even becose mesmer has not the absurd ele regen

I foresee another long period of Mesmer being underpowered. In a couple years it will become such an embarrassment that Mesmer will be buffed through the roof to compensate and the cycle will repeat.

Many players would rather scream for nerfs than learn to play against a Mesmer.

Grimreaper.5370:

Archon.6480:

Spartacus.3192:

Archon.6480:

Katoh.4069:

Grimreaper.5370:

use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.

No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.

No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.

Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.

Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.

and why wont it work? You’re telling me destroyer amulet wont work when mercenary did? …

Sorry, I am coming from a Druid perspective. Mercenary worked wonderfully well on ADST Condi Bruiser. I tried Destroyer last night and it is a useless replacement. Sage still works allright, but looses some DPS because too much time spent in CA.

So, to stay on topic, I think the same will be true for Mesmer. Why waste survivability for measly low dot. Better to switch to Demolisher and shatter, which will get slaughtered by teef and rev. Current rev is weak to mesmer condi, but will eat shatter mesmer alive.

Katoh.4069:

My thought stays the same tho, using any of those you will become so squishy that you will not be able to fight in a group fight.

Then don’t get involved in group fights. Do what thief has done for the last year. Avoid any form of group fight. Complain about it enough and anet will buff your auto attack damage to compensate for your overall lack of sustain.

Been running Paladin for a while in unranked. I’d run marauder if I was a better player. I play more power shatter though. Still use the meta, but based upon the arena I use GS or Sc/Sw as secondary weapon. Sc2 is insanely powerful provided dodges are used up, but the GS 1 and 4 are so useful when someone tries to run. Other than confusion (and who can’t clear 1 condi), condi is just so weak for chrono that I don’t understand why merc amulet is in the meta. Unless Rune of Perplexity is available I just don’t see the point, and that would only force me to use Sc/Sw not staff, which is only great for escaping. Without the rune Sc2 still gets most of it’s power from DD. The spreadsheets may not agree, but it feels like the extra crit on shatter1 is a lot more powerful than the added damage from confusion on all 5 shatters combined (unless you have perplexity). In that case I feel I would rather have Carrion anyhow.

I think some of you guys are reading far too many meta guides and doing too little testing.

How much damage do you think you put out if say, you run gs+s/s power with chrono traits and you got your gs phanta and sword phanta out, you land a swap into blurred frenzy while double shattering after additional phanta hits while your target is standing in well of calamity?

I found out today. Not disappointed. Add some fun use of ContiSplit on top of that and good times were had by all.

Crowley.8761:

I think some of you guys are reading far too many meta guides and doing too little testing.

How much damage do you think you put out if say, you run gs+s/s power with chrono traits and you got your gs phanta and sword phanta out, you land a swap into blurred frenzy while double shattering after additional phanta hits while your target is standing in well of calamity?

I found out today. Not disappointed. Add some fun use of ContiSplit on top of that and good times were had by all.

Then a full power thief/rev discovers you’re as soft as an overly plump school boy with a pension for lollypops, and they instagib you mid first phantasm cast XD

Full yolo power chrono might pack a heavy punch, but there’s a huge cost. Especially when you compare them to ammy’s like mercs.

I’ve been using carrion with Sw/Sh and S/T and it works really well. Trying lots of different runes atm, I like scrapper runes for a little extra power and toughness plus the extra damage reduction. Really liking the feel of the build though, a little more powerful than merc…you just have to actually use your blocks and active defenses well and its not as faceroll easy baha

Ross Biddle.2367:

Then a full power thief/rev discovers you’re as soft as an overly plump school boy with a pension for lollypops, and they instagib you mid first phantasm cast XD

Full yolo power chrono might pack a heavy punch, but there’s a huge cost. Especially when you compare them to ammy’s like mercs.

Ok, I understand now. You want a build that is strong against everyone and weak against no one

I think that mesmer is really strong even without mercenary. you lose 560 toughness but you gain in vitality with carrion amulet or sage and mesmer has really many tools for mitigate damage. In my opinion it is not in a bad spot. I don’t know if mesmer will be meta in top tier tournament, but i think it will be great again for soloing the 3rd season . It can be different for high level pvp but i am not at that level and i don’t do tournaments so it is not so important for me . For casual players it is more than strong .

Crowley.8761:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Then a full power thief/rev discovers you’re as soft as an overly plump school boy with a pension for lollypops, and they instagib you mid first phantasm cast XD

Full yolo power chrono might pack a heavy punch, but there’s a huge cost. Especially when you compare them to ammy’s like mercs.

Ok, I understand now. You want a build that is strong against everyone and weak against no one

Context Crowley. You were arguing there’s power in power chrono. I’m merely pointing out the difference between running what you’re saying is “oh so great” and what merc provided. It’s the difference between viability and not