Guild Wars 2

Since I’ve seen a few people running this exciting build, I figured I’d share it!

So you broke into a keep, but that clutch disable bought enough time for defenders to show up, run you over, and seal up the door/wall. Drat! Well, you could hide a mesmer and do the ol’ skipperoo when your zerg comes back, but if the other server is smart, they’ll sweep for mesmers and catch you.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just have 95%+ stealth uptime on your mesmer and not have to put up with that “getting killed” crap?

Good news, your wish is now a reality!

Just bring:
- The Pledge (Illusions), Master of Manipulation (Chaos), Prismatic Understanding (Chaos)
- A torch
- Mimic, Decoy, Veil, and Mass Invisibility on your skill bar

Here’s how to play the new bleeding edge in portal delivery:
1.) Cast The Prestige, and recast it immediately every time it’s off cooldown.
2.) Start by casting Mimic, Decoy, Decoy, Mass Invisibility.
3.) As soon as Decoy’s off cooldown, cast it again.
4.) When your stealth is about to run out, cast Veil and run through it
5.) Wait for Mimic to recharge (don’t cast Decoy yet!)
6.) Return to step 2 and repeat forever.

Turn autotarget off! Don’t target anything when casting Decoy! Don’t be near enemies when The Prestige triggers its burn effect!

The first time you cycle this, you’ll be stealthed for two entire cycles except for that brief gap running through Veil, every time after there will be about a 4 second gap. Assuming anyone sees you in the first place, you can just burn that off with Blurred Frenzy or evades or Dueling traits or whatever so who cares.

Enjoy back-capping keeps, garrisons, and Stonemist forever unless the other team throws down like 10 stealth disruptors and brings a bunch of engineers with Lock On spamming every square inch of the place.

Please note the timers on all these:

1. While you can improve recast through traits, you give up a lot to get that: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Prestige — 30 seconds recharge — gives you 5 seconds invis with PU trait line.

2. Mimic http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mimic .. reduces 10secs off a 90 second elite skill and has a 90 second recharge itself — Mass Invisibility: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mass_Invisibility, lasts 10 seconds.

Decoy: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decoy 40 second recharge, lasts 4 seconds.

3. Did you magically lose 26 seconds while being invis for a whopping 14?

4. Veil: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Veil .. another 90 seconds cooldown for a whopping 8 seconds.

5. Yep, and guess what? During that cooldown, you’re visible!

6. You need to recheck your math. Best you can do is 40-something seconds and anyone patient enough to sweep for mesmers only has to count to 50 and wait for the invis to run out.

What I do, if I’m struggling trying to counter a certain class, is to make and actively play that class until I understand it. That way I don’t make gross generalizations

Did you try it? The most important step is the first one! Every 20 seconds that you’re stealthed is enough to reduce The Prestige’s cooldown by a full cycle, so every 20 seconds of stealth is another 6 you get for free. Of course, that compounds itself, so in reality, every 20 seconds of stealth that you’d get without The Pledge is 8.57 seconds of extra stealth from it.

So, let’s say you didn’t take The Pledge. Every 72 seconds, you’ll have 18 from the from the 3 decoys, 10 from Mass Invisibility, 4 from Veil, and 14.4 from the 2.4 casts of The Prestige. That’s 46.4 seconds. Add in the bonus prestige casts, and you get another ~19.9 seconds, for roughly 66.28 seconds of stealth every 72 seconds. So actually I was wrong, it’s not 95% uptime, it’s 92% uptime, and the gap is about 5.72 seconds, but because of how the cycles work out, you have to run the cycle twice before you get an actual gap.

Anyone chasing you down still has to wait a full minute just to figure out if you waypointed or not, and the short glimpse that they’ll get of you is just long enough to pop Blurred Frenzy, dodge twice, hit Distortion from the Deceptive Evasion clones, and then start over again, assuming anyone is even near you, and assuming they can cleave you after Desperate Decoy triggers, etc.

I didn’t realize the prestige was considered a utility? Unless it’s a bug?

Did you look at the cool down on decoy too?

Jayne.9251:

I didn’t realize the prestige was considered a utility? Unless it’s a bug?

Did you look at the cool down on decoy too?

Decoy is 32 seconds with Illusionist’s Celerity, so you can cast it twice per 72 second cycle, and a third time with Mimic.

Prestige isn’t a utility and doesn’t need to be (mimic is to double-cast Decoy, not Prestige)

OneEightHundred.5689:

Jayne.9251:

I didn’t realize the prestige was considered a utility? Unless it’s a bug?

Did you look at the cool down on decoy too?

Decoy is 32 seconds with Illusionist’s Celerity, so you can cast it twice per 72 second cycle, and a third time with Mimic.

Prestige isn’t a utility and doesn’t need to be (mimic is to double-cast Decoy, not Prestige)

But you just said above the key was a 20-second prestige

There’s no mesmer perma stealth. You just have to be patient … Mesmer is my main btw

It’s all fun and games till a ranger with Sic Em comes along with his gang of engies equipped with Lock On trait. In fact let’s make it extreme next level super ultra mega happy fun time when that ranger and those engies start placing Stealth Disruptor Traps everywhere. For realz.

Zephyra.4709:

It’s all fun and games till a ranger with Sic Em comes along with his gang of engies equipped with Lock On trait. In fact let’s make it extreme next level super ultra mega happy fun time when that ranger and those engies start placing Stealth Disruptor Traps everywhere. For realz.

Scratch the ranger, his gang of engis is far more effective.

As much as I want to say “uhuh with sick/em or engi reveal u’re so screwed!” I know this is completely meta atm^^

Thx for sharing so at least we can look for a counter!

You don’t need stealth at all. I hid in keeps several times yesterday as a Guardian. In this 40vDoor meta zergs don’t care about sweeping since it just slows them down on their journey towards the next door. Besides, they can just melt their way in when it gets flipped anyways.

It’s more trouble than it’s worth to sweep for these mesmers who are usually with a thief so the actual revealed time is close to zero- who wants to spend 5-10 minutes chasing these people around for nothing?

Hence why people just don’t bother any more- flip it back if you want, we’ll be along for our turn on the karma train soon enough.

Until they make defence and defending meaningful (and gates that don’t melt before you can move to defend- or better yet, be able to see the enemy’s movements) people aren’t going to care.

msalakka.4653:

You don’t need stealth at all. I hid in keeps several times yesterday as a Guardian. In this 40vDoor meta zergs don’t care about sweeping since it just slows them down on their journey towards the next door. Besides, they can just melt their way in when it gets flipped anyways.

Sometimes they do sweep though. I just got done back-capping Stonemist yesterday after SBI had 10 people stay around for several minutes trying to flush me out.

I’m getting bored to the point that I’m just letting their zerg see me and then juking them anyway.

Notsoperky.4291:

It’s more trouble than it’s worth to sweep for these mesmers who are usually with a thief so the actual revealed time is close to zero- who wants to spend 5-10 minutes chasing these people around for nothing?

Thief? Pfft. The thief will slow you down! You’re a mesmer, you can stealth for much longer than some crappy thief now, and you won’t drop red circles all over the place giving away your position either.