Guild Wars 2

With the GS borked and no sign of being fixed it is a problematic weapon to use.

I love the Staff and condition damage but condition damage is the red head stepchild of GW2 currently. Low bleed caps (Why do even have them? Why have they not been upped since it was discovered they were too low?), low damage compared to direct damage, useless versus objects, etc, etc. Red head step-child indeed.

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So, I puzzled around with traits and have assembled something like this:

• 10 in Domination: 15% more damage to illusions.
• 30 in Duelist: Phantasms have Fury, Dodge create Clones, 20% less CD on pistols.
• 0 in Chaos.
• 25 in Inspiration:* 20% more HP for Phantasms, Mantra heals when recharging.
• 5 in Illusion.

Of this spread the Clone on Dodge seems the weakest since the idea is not to shatter but to leave the phantasms up. We do not need extra clones, they serve little use, this has 10/20 points free to be applied where it will do best subject to personal desire. For example picking the 20% faster recharge on Phantasmal skills.

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Utility skills: Subject to personal preference with the exception of Mantra of Pain. I have Decoy and Null Field. Switch according to the fight you will face next.

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Gear: All Berserker. Or Knight, or.. whatever the one playing wants it to be. I went Berserker, all Masterwork since that is what I have available right now and my Duelists were hitting, without Might of Vulnerability, for around 4-5k. All in greens, mind.

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Runes: The sixth bonus from Runes of Water or Flock will add another 700 HP every ten seconds when you heal with the Mantra. *Altruism*’s will do 5 seconds of Fury every ten seconds as well. Otherwise the usual Runes for a Berserker build or, my personal choice, Ruby Orbs.

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How do we play this? Very simply. We pop our iDuelist, we use our Confusion beam, and then instead of auto attacking we spam Mantra of Pain. The damage is about the same as the scepter’s auto-attack but, every five seconds (one discharge per second, two charges, 2.75 recharge time) we heal everyone around us for 2.5k.

That is it. iDuelist out, Confusion beam. Spam that Mantra of Pain, recharge it, heal everyone around you for 2.5k while your Phantasms also provide Regeneration. Keep on spamming until either the iDuelist or Confusing Images has recharged. Repeat.

Doing this fast enough also prevents the Scepter’s third attack from generating a clone and killing one of our Duelists.

Wait, GS is borked? I haven’t played my mesmer much in a week or so…what’d they do?

You can do a full chain of the sword autoattack while spending the two charges from Mantra of Pain. Remember that the Power Spike skill is instant cast and that you can do anything while spending those two charges. Also, you can do two Spatial Surges, recharge your Mantra of Recovery, shoot two or three winds of chaos, blurred frenzy, whatever, while using 2X Power Spike.

Scepter is complete kitten Do not use it.

Yeah I thought the same thing as Emanuel. If you want to play by just spamming MoP and auto attacks… Scepter is the last weapon to use.

Some quick testing with green gear to provide numbers.

Scepter:

• Confusion beam from the scepter does an average of 270 per tick. It does between 1500 to 2000 damage per activation every 15 seconds CD, not counting Confusion ticks which may or may not hit if the mob is being kited.
• Auto attack hit for about 300, and crits of 600-700.
• Pistol Phantasm: about 3.5k damage + 4-6 bleeds.

Staff:

• Autoattack of 200 – crits of 500. Each hit does have a chance for a bleed or a burn which naturally adds to the damage. Plus it gives a boon. We can remove 15 points from Dueling, keep sharper images, lose Clone on Dodge, and put it in Illusions, get the Extra Bounce trait, double the auto attack damage (roughly 400 damage and about 800 damage if both bounces crit, double the incidental Condition damage, double the boons).
• Phantasm: About 3.6k crit. Much more with conditions which will happen in a group. We could add 1k more and not think too hard about it in a group just for the extra conditions.
• Problem: not enough points to go get the -20% Staff CD reduction even if we kill the extra bounce trait. One of the +15% phantasm damage traits would have to go or give up Sharper Images which is an option since we won’t be putting out clones and one Phantasm hit every 7 seconds will not be generating bleeds enough to matter.

Greatsword:

• Autoattack: about 700-900 damage.
• Phantasm: borked as we know. One of the times it was summoned it hit for 500 damage. ’nuff said.
• Mirror Blade: Bounces twice. Average of 500 per hit and 1k crits so if both hits hit it is 2k. Untraited recharge of 6 seconds.

Sword:

• Did not test. Being in full berserker gear and attacking in melee range is not an option for many and that includes me. I have a guardian for melee, and I prefer to play range on my mesmer.

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After testing I agree that you are right. The Staff seems the better choice. No destroying the phantasms with auto-spawn clones, harder hitting phantasms (though the bleeds of the iDuelist narrow the distance assuming the cap has not already been reached), Chaos Storm is both defense or offense. While the GS is still a strong contender despite being borked the iBerserker will spawn in melee range and move where ever it wills, killing the Regen usefulness.

It is not the build for pure damage (despite full Berserker) but the party wide heal from the Mantra of Pain works pretty well, plus doing good damage (700 hits, 1500 crits. Keeping in mind it is all green gear) to add to the auto-attacking.

I would thus change the build to:

• 10 in Domination: 15% more damage for Illusions.
• 10 in Duelist: Fury for Phantasms.
• 20 in Chaos: 3% less damage (nothing really useful here, pick what you’d like), -20% CD on Staff.
• 25 in Inspiration: Remove a Condition when we heal (considering we heal every 5 seconds. It frees Null Field, possibly, giving room for the Signet of Illusions), Heal when recharging Mantras.
• 5 in Illusions.

Kanto.1659:

Sword:

• Did not test. Being in full berserker gear and attacking in melee range is not an option for many and that includes me. I have a guardian for melee, and I prefer to play range on my mesmer.

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you are missing out; sword+focus is beastly in pve (dungeons specifically) and has enough mitigation (blurred) and projectile control (all focus skills if traited and feedback) to survive easily in most encounters (whilst wearing full zerk; i have no trouble)

ileap+blurred frenzy makes sword+x i good choice in pvp/wvw too

I find it interesting how the only reactions were negative. My guild is like WTF! Full berserker gear, wearing greens and doing 5-8k crits with phantasms and you’re AoE healing 2.6k every five seconds?!

The more I play the more I like it. As it turns out any weapon is viable. I go with the GS for trash and use the Staff for the boss and neither stops me from it working as meant to.

Where it shines is not being conservative. Not ‘Oh, my health is getting low, I need to use my Mantra of Pain to get my HP up.’ but just start spamming right away.

2.6k will not save someone from a direct hit, but it makes a mockery out of those bosses with Retaliation or Conditions which eat our HP. And our Phantasm’s HP. If they are not killed straight away I can force them back up.

All the more than the Mantra is not a useless waste of time. I have it doing crits of 2k with some Vulnerability and Might stacks.

Actually, one of the points above made me think about phantasms vs clones. It’s a bit off thepoint, but how do good mesmers know how to keep phantasms out while maintinaing a rotation of clones? And is there any way to run a Shatter build while maintaining decent phantasm longevity?

Thanks!

Linguistically Inept.6583:

you are missing out; sword+focus is beastly in pve (dungeons specifically) and has enough mitigation (blurred) and projectile control (all focus skills if traited and feedback) to survive easily in most encounters (whilst wearing full zerk; i have no trouble)

traiting focus is the best way to make your skill useless.

For some reason anet feels that any utility/cc skill should not work against bosses.
So in most cases absorb works and reflect does not.

Thus (tested) untraited iWarden works, Traited don t!

Well possibly the same reason why post patch most bosses are considered trebouchets…

Midnightjade.3520:

And is there any way to run a Shatter build while maintaining decent phantasm longevity?

I can answer this specific part. You do two things:

• One, you always shatter when you can resummon the Phantasm, giving you only minimal downtime on the Phantasm itself.
• Two, and much more important, you need to get a “feel” for the attack cycle of the Phantasm. When it just used it’s ability, shatter it, then you got ~5 seconds to get it back up until it would have fired the next time, anyway.

Midnightjade.3520:

Actually, one of the points above made me think about phantasms vs clones. It’s a bit off thepoint, but how do good mesmers know how to keep phantasms out while maintinaing a rotation of clones? And is there any way to run a Shatter build while maintaining decent phantasm longevity?

Thanks!

I do it like this…

Start off combat, make 3 clones (not phantasms) and blow them.

Then you make your phantasm, swap weapons and make another. And then one of the following happens.

Your phantasms die. In this case, make 3 more clones and blow them again. Then make a new phantasm, swap and make another.

If your phantasms didn’t die, make a new one after cooldown is done and swap. Wait until one dies, and make a new one. If you’re using one of the utility ones, having 3 out becomes even easier.

Basically if you have 2 or 3 phantasms, don’t shatter them except maybe in emergencies. If you don’t, throw a few extra clones out and shatter them before you summon your phantasm load again.

That’s great, thanks to you both! So clone burst followed by phantasm sustain, and shatter them when can resummon, or if they die clone burst #2 before resummoning phantasms again.

Going to work on this – much appreciated! I’ve been playing guardian for months but my mesmer is still pretty new.

Midnightjade.3520:

Actually, one of the points above made me think about phantasms vs clones. It’s a bit off thepoint, but how do good mesmers know how to keep phantasms out while maintinaing a rotation of clones? And is there any way to run a Shatter build while maintaining decent phantasm longevity?

Thanks!

Phantasms don’t get overwritten by clones and vice-versa…once you have 3 illusions out, they kind of just stay there doing damage (or not in the case of clones) until your target dies or you detonate them in whichever way you choose…so there’s no real worry about having your iDuelist disappear and a useless clone replace it.

As for a shatter build with phantasm longevity…that is all down to your Phantasm CD and your timing…detonating just before your phantasm is available I suppose and then re-upping them?

EDIT: The ultimate question is:- when a clone is overwritten by the creation of another clone, ie; Scepter Auto-attack part 3 [Ether Clone] – is that classed as the clone dying,? As in; would that mean that an ability which activates on clone death activate when you replace the clone?

This is a phantasm build, so invest fully into it. Taking clones on dodge roll really serves no purpose.

I would highly recommend dropping scepter and taking sword and the associated sword cooldown trait. Blurred frenzy offers significantly higher damage than anything the scepter can do while at the same time providing a 2 second invulnerability that can be abused to avoid damage from any number of powerful attacks.

Whether or not you decide to take sword, I highly recommend taking 10 points out of dueling, putting 5 into inspiration, and 5 into illusions, the ones into illusions mainly for lack of a better place to put them. Putting those extra 5 into inspiration gives you access 3 traits in the inspiration line, which can be really important in some encounters. I recommend taking mender’s purity for the condition removal, phantasm hp, and then mantra heals of course.

You didn’t mention what heal you were using. If you aren’t using mantra of healing, then use it. This will provide you with 2 condition removals every 10 seconds through mender’s purity as well as proccing the aoe heal from restorative mantras. A small note though: all runes with an ‘on-heal’ effect ONLY work with your main heal, and additionally the cooldown for all of them is 15 seconds, not 10.

There are a few more things to note, as this is a PvE build. You absolutely need to carry a greatsword with you, you absolutely need to carry a focus with you, and you absolutely need to carry a (2nd) sword with you.

• The offhand sword and greatsword are for encounters where there are lots of projectile reflects. The duelists will instakill themselves in this situation, and your staff/scepter will do absolutely nothing.
• The focus is because there are many encounters in this game where either a traited or untraited focus will more or less trivialize it. Many bosses use extremely strong projectile attacks, which when reflected will do many times more damage than you could actually produce on your own. Some bosses do require an untraited warden to block projectiles that can’t be reflected. One way or another, a focus is absolutely necessary.

You will find that decoy is generally not necessary in PvE encounters, although there are some that it will significantly help with. Taking signet of illusions instead can be a strong choice, as if your phantasms survive long enough, it will triple their health. Another choice is to combine using the phantasmal defender with the signet of illusions (but not without). With the signet of illusions and the 20% hp trait, the defender will clock in at about 17.5k hp, which is obviously massive.

Remember, don’t shy away from unequipping mantra of pain and restorative mantras in some situations. Sometimes you are better served with other utilities and/or traits for various reasons. While the mantra heals are fantastic, they aren’t a 100% useful tactic, so always keep an open mind towards on-the-spot modifications of your weapons, traits, and utilities to make your build more effective against your current content.

yes after last Patches they made so that either trtaited or untraited focus doesn t work XD

Same with elementalist and guardian…

So cc don t cc due to defiant, reflect don t reflect and absorb don t absorb……..
What are people supposed to do in PvE?
DPS

Nerfenerfenerf….

LordByron.8369:

yes after last Patches they made so that either trtaited or untraited focus doesn t work XD

I recommend actually testing functionality before saying things regarding said functionality.

Sword/Focus + Staff is a really great combination xD I use it with Knight’s in both PvE and PvP, it’s excellent.

Especially when combined with a high-DPS Shatters spec, it nails everything in the area for such massive crit damage that PvE is a cakewalk and PvP is… getting there.

If you’re going to be spamming Mantra of Pain as a large part of your damage, why not trait for 3 charges? You’re not building a healer, so it’s not like you need to fast spam the charge-up portion for heals. Besides, it’s only 1s you’re losing anyhow if you recharge MoP on CD.