Guild Wars 2

The way I see it, it provides too much utility to pass up.

focus has many uses

Focus has very many uses. You’re talking about utility, well how about dragging people off the walls of a tower in WvWvW?

Find the sword to be quite hilarious as well since the swordsman does double the damage of the pistol guy if you’re power specced.

Really suggest you try to move away from the straight cookiecutter builds and try to learn to survive without relying on certain cds. Helps a lot.

Off hand sword and focus.

The sword provides a high damage block (never thought id ever say that) and Phantasmal Swordsman which hits hard and its attack counts as a leap finisher. Get 3 of these swordsmen up in a combo field and watch as they become wreckingballs of madness.

The focus provides the legendary Phantasmal Warden, which is like throwing a lawnmower an your enemy that also absorbs projectiles with its body. According to the wiki, the Warden’s attack also counts as a whirl finisher. The foucs also provides decent control with Temporal Curtain, which gives swiftness to allies and cripples foes. Activating Temporal Curtain again turns it into a skill called Into The Void which flings enemies across the curtain as if it were a mirror. The curtain also acts as an ethereal field. On top of this, the focus can be traited to apply projectile reflection to its abilites, meaning the Warden will reflect projectiles instead of absorbing them and the Curtain will act like a guardian reflection wall while still giving the movement boons/conditions.

Crowley.8761:

Focus has very many uses. You’re talking about utility, well how about dragging people off the walls of a tower in WvWvW?

Oh man, I’m so trying this. No idea why it never occurred to me.

The only OH weapon that’s weaker than the others ATM is the Torch, mainly because of iMage being useless but also the pointless channel of Prestige.

Embolism.8106:

The only OH weapon that’s weaker than the others ATM is the Torch, mainly because of iMage being useless but also the pointless channel of Prestige.

I think it was in BW2 that you could attack while the torch was “channeling” so I think it was a quick fix to prevent literal attacking from stealth. I don’t think they intended us mesmers to attack while stealthed but probably couldn’t get it to break stealth properly and still trigger it’s flame burst effect at the end if you ended the stealth early with an attack (hope that made sense o.o). I imagine there might be some more love to how prestige works later on down the line when all the bug fixes/passes are squared away for all classes. It’s still a clutch stealth get-away but overall I agree with your assessment of the torch in its current iteration.

They also made Veil on the focus more useful with the pull (used to just be a run speed line) but the phantasm on the focus still feels wonky to me. I wish it would place itself between me and my target consistently.

The stun on the pistol is nice, but I’m not feeling the phantasm. Doesn’t seem to be as flexible in its mobility as the staff or greatsword phantasm. Then again I’ll just blame it on the fact that my phantasm is trying to equip two pistols when I myself can’t and blame it on my phantasm being a noob. =P

Try as I might I just can’t get into the sword offhand. I’m sure it’s great for what it’s supposed to do, but it’s not my play style personally.

I use the torch for my PVE confusion build >.>

iMage stacks confusion, prestige stealths you and AoE blinds (and AoE confuses with a trait) and both abilities remove conditions/CD faster with a trait, leaving me a free utility slot that would normally be filled with either null field or mantra of whatsitcalled that removes conditions (i put decoy in there, further increasing my clone production rate).

I will agree, however, that the channel on prestige gets annoying. so I only let it finish if I need the condition removal.

if I’m missing something about the torch being awful (for this specific build at least) please correct me.

iMage applies a single stack of Confusion, even with full condition damage it is extremely weak compared to other Phantasms. iDuelist is far superior for condition damage with Sharper Images.

AFAIK you couldn’t attack through the old Prestige and maintain stealth, it would break it like any stealth move and forfeit the fire attack. Nothing wrong with that. As it is you can’t even use heal abilities in stealth.

Temporal Curtain always pulled, in fact it used to be more powerful with extreme range and auto-proccing when the curtain ends.

I find Pistol to be the weakest offhand.

OH Sword is categorically stronger for raw power builds.

Focus is stronger for utility outside of a duel, and with Warden’s Feedback it is universally stronger.

Torch is meh in general, but is actually very effective for one of my builds. Wish they would swap the burn/blind on Prestige and have the iMage cast 2 stacks of Confusion, perhaps with a shorter duration (6s?). The iMage casts pretty fast — it is currently underrated.

The only thing Pistol is good for is Sharper Images spamming, which is a highly passive spec.

Definitely preferring the focus over pistol. More utility and and the duelist sounds star driving me nuts…

prefer Focus over pistol which is on par with sword and only torch sees little to no use currently

Embolism.8106:

iMage applies a single stack of Confusion, even with full condition damage it is extremely weak compared to other Phantasms. iDuelist is far superior for condition damage with Sharper Images.

Totally my main issue with the iMage! It feels ‘off’ to me that the the duelist’s auto-attack is so potent and, if you go 15 in Dueling, it easily stacks 4-5 bleeds on a foe. Meanwhile, the iMage strikes so slowly, a single target, has no combo field with it, and does a meager 1-stack of confusion with no traits to improve it. Torch could definitely use some love in PvE.

Agreed here, scepter is pretty horrible and torch seems only useful for the stealth. I mean, a 24 second cooldown on phantasm that applies 1 measly stack of confusion? :S And while confusion builds are pretty fun to play with, we have no way of steadily applying it, as it is more of “burst condition”. Sure we can reach high stacks of it, but anyone that actually watches their conditions and sees 10+ stacks of confusion knows that they should just hang back for a little while until it runs off, as confusion as an extremely low duration considering the effort you go to to stack it up properly.

I love the pistol for stunning players that are about to stomp my downed teammates. Aside from the great sword knock back I don’t think we have another interrupt tool like that.

Torch is amazing if you actually realize what it does. The prestige is…well it has its uses, especially if traited for condition removal. But the clincher in the mage. The reason this is stronger than most people really imagine is they forget what else it does. It casts retaliation on allies and confusion on enemies. While that card is in play, whatever the opponent hits, they take damage.

Phantasmal Duelist has its places in my build when it comes to dealing damage. Aside from the mage, it is the the only ranged phantasm you have, so I can safely cast it and not have to worry about the mobs attacking it. Downside, is it is stationary, unless the opponent runs away.

Phantasmal warden is by far the singular greatest skill ever!! In sPvP is sucks, but in WvW and PvE, it is the best!! I stand near the wall and cast my warden, and pull people off the walls with temporal curtain so my team can rip them apart and I can stand there and do it because those pesky rangers and engi’s can’t touch me. Other mesmers can’t hurt you with ranged skills as well, but you can usually just dodge that stuff anyways, its really easy to just move to the side and avoid that slow moving ball.

Sword…I love Scepter/sword combo for the defensive capablities and their equally offensive capabilities.

Personally i am playing a Great Sword + Staff Might build, i can link the build if your interested but i have a ton of utility and capabilities, i also use signets and it does baffle me why most mesmers i see dont use them they really are quite good…though then again my build is around two of them.

i can get out of almost any situation with this build the damage comes from me (not my phantasms) with a balanced condition/power so the sword hits respectfully and when my warlocks up he deals respectfull amounts too but the combination of direct + condition damage is very fun.

as for other builds i use i do run a Scepter/Torch (or focus) + Great sword build which is all on condition (i just LOVE greatswords…so yeh most of my builds try to include this)

to be honest i havent used a pistol in god knows how long, i always keep one available just incase though.

Any point going anything besides Pistol offhand?

Pistol’s the one off-hand I almost never use.

Is there any point to actually using Pistol?

All the other offhands provide more damage or more utility, or both.

The thing is that Pistol is extremely easy to use, hence people are drawn to it so much.
It has it’s uses, ofc. As far as reliable damage goes, the Duelist is very good (people overstate his combo procs, due to the x0,2 multiplier, but the Sharper Images procrate is very good).

That being said, if you want better defence you use a Sword, if you want better utility you use a Focus, and if you want stealth you’ll be using the Torch anyhow. The Pistol is the “damage” variant of the offhand.
And while yes, Swordsman beat it, as can the Warden against enemies which won’t move away, the Pistol is overall more reliable. And hence, ease of use.

A good pistol-user is very deadly, but not necessarily more so than someone using another offhand would be.
A bad pistol-user is however much more deadly than a bad player with one of the other offhands.

I find iD unreliable for damage because:

1. Anything can block the projectiles.
2. It has a long channel and anyone that isn’t a monkeykittenkitten will dodge roll over half the damage.

They can do the same, in theory, for other phantasms, but they have to be very quick. iD has a bigass “dodge me anytime thx” sign (and sound effect).

Edit:

And ironically, GS is as good or better for Sharper Image damage, and iSwordsman just does like 15-20% more DPS in a power build.

The thing is that Pistol is extremely easy to use, hence people are drawn to it so much.

It has it’s uses, ofc. As far as reliable damage goes, the Duelist is very good (people overstate his combo procs, due to the x0,2 multiplier, but the Sharper Images procrate is very good).

That being said, if you want better defence you use a Sword, if you want better utility you use a Focus, and if you want stealth you’ll be using the Torch anyhow. The Pistol is the “damage” variant of the offhand.

Yes and no. The pistol is a great weapon for Sharper Image builds because of how fast it can stack bleeds, but its true that the swordman will beat it in raw damage.

That being said, the attraction in that weapon has nothing to do with the ease of using it: it gives you a ranged AoE stun. That alone is invaluable in sPvP on a slow moving sword mesmer. As for PvE, I also use the pistol (I use SI) for another reason: its a ranged DPS.

The swordman is great and all, but very often I’ll see him leap in, deal the damage, then get oneshot because of the delay on signet of illusions. When that is fixed he’ll be amazing, but till then I can safely cast my duelist at range where he is mostly safe.

That being said, the attraction in that weapon has nothing to do with the ease of using it: it gives you a ranged AoE stun. That alone is invaluable in sPvP on a slow moving sword mesmer.

Only 1 target is Stunned. Second is Dazed. Forgot what the third target picked up, Confusion I think?

Also, Focus is godlike ownage compared to that silliness. Curtain/Void is like 50x the chasedown of Magic Bullet, and it yanks them back into the Warden. One second of Warden faceroll is about as good as most of the Duelist’s volley. And bonus points for Warden’s Feedback complete domination of any range spec.

@ teviko:

Retaliation damage scales off Power while Confusion damage scales off Malice. Either you have good Confusion damage or good Retaliation damage, you cannot have both. Plus iMage’s Retaliation only lasts 3s and the maximum damage it can deal is about 380.

iMage is weak, plain and simple. Its damage potential is much lower than other damaging Phantasms, and it has the longest CD.

No reason you can’t have both with Carrion gear.

Don’t know why people are so “POWER VERSUS COND DAMAGE” as if they were exclusive.

Edit: Rampager is pretty broad on stat investment too and augments both well assuming you have SI.

EasymodeX.4062:

No reason you can’t have both with Carrion gear.

Don’t know why people are so “POWER VERSUS COND DAMAGE” as if they were exclusive.

Because then you’re sacrificing defensive stats like Toughness and Vitality for very little gain. Most skills scale off either Power or Malice, rarely do they scale off both (iMage scales off Malice far better than it does Power), meaning only one of your offensive stats is really contributing at any one time. It is suboptimal.

It is why Rabid gear (Malice Precision Toughness) is so coveted by condition damage lovers, it doesn’t waste stats in Power.

LOL.

You’re going to have an uphill battle explaining how, say, Staff doesn’t have a major power scaling (iWarlock), or that half of iDuelist’s damage isn’t power-scaling …

Torch is about the only weapon that offers pure condition damage. Lulz.

Edit:

Also, Mesmers don’t need Vit or Toughness. Mesmer OP always live never die #1 huehue.

EasymodeX.4062:

LOL.

You’re going to have an uphill battle explaining how, say, Staff doesn’t have a major power scaling (iWarlock), or that half of iDuelist’s damage isn’t power-scaling …

Torch is about the only weapon that offers pure condition damage. Lulz.

Edit:

Also, Mesmers don’t need Vit or Toughness. Mesmer OP always live never die #1 huehue.

Warlock is entirely Power-scaling, which proves my point. Duelist is entirely Power-scaling too until you get Sharper Images, in which case it is a rare case where both Power and Malice contribute about equally.

Let me explain this another way. Power and Malice are both stats that increase your DPS. Using Power and Malice together however rarely increases your DPS by more than using Power or Malice alone: the benefit of using them together, therefore, is quite minimal.

The only benefit of using Power and Malice together is if you want versatility: to use Power for enemies with lots of condition cleansers and Malice against enemies with lots of armour. The problem with this is that there are no hard counters either way: a Power build can do fine against heavily armoured opponents and Malice builds can eventually break through condition cleansers, so the benefits of versatility is questionable.

So you don’t use iWarlock in a condition build with Staff?

EasymodeX.4062:

So you don’t use iWarlock in a condition build with Staff?

I only conjure iWarlock in a condition build for Shatter fodder, or if a boss mob has so many people hitting it it has full stacks of Bleeding and perma-Burn already. In my build iWarlock deals only ~500 damage per hit (~1000 crit), which is considerably less than what a Staff Clone can do; even with the condition damage bonus.

(In case you don’t know, iWarlock’s condition damage bonus is for unique conditions only: 25 stacks of Bleed is exactly the same as 1 stack.)

I thought it was virtually impossible for iWarlock to do as little damage as 500.

EasymodeX.4062:

I thought it was virtually impossible for iWarlock to do as little damage as 500.

It is when you have no Power investment at all.

But even if it did 2000 damage, it is still about equal to a Staff Clone in my build after considering all factors.

I like the torch for the blast finisher.
iMage does way too little damage and attacks way too slow to be viable.

Just gave Warden a shot.
Going to use Focus now.
I thought they did LESS damage then Duelist, as would make sense, because they are trading DPS for the utility of projectile protection.

But nope, they do more.

And with Phantasmal Haste they seem to do it more often.

They do it considerably more often with Phantasmal Haste. Warden’s tradeoff is that it’s stationary, except it isn’t much of a tradeoff in PvE as mobs are generally stationary too.

EasymodeX.4062:

So you don’t use iWarlock in a condition build with Staff?

I was going staff for a long time till I found the mobs always bleed capped when paired up with other people making it pretty pointless all around. Great for soloing cause you can shatter cap yourself (have more illusions available than the first two shatters can reset) but man in any kind of group all it takes is a few people doing bleeds (pretty common) before you wonder why you aren’t doing something else.

Torch=Four second CD AoE Blind+Confusion

ToxicToothpick.4396:

Just gave Warden a shot.
Going to use Focus now.
I thought they did LESS damage then Duelist, as would make sense, because they are trading DPS for the utility of projectile protection.

But nope, they do more.

And with Phantasmal Haste they seem to do it more often.

The trade off is that the Warden stands still making it useless against moving targets beyond a couple hits, and it has no range making it crumble to Melee.

Warden is anti ranged. Duelist is more reliable and Anti Melee.

Warden is better where you can use it. Duelist is just more reliable, you should have both weapons on you anyway.

Conncept.7638:

Torch=Four second CD AoE Blind+Confusion

That’s a bug that will eventually be fixed, though.

Sacrificial Toast.7248:

Conncept.7638:

Torch=Four second CD AoE Blind+Confusion

That’s a bug that will eventually be fixed, though.

Still have never heard an arenanet employee confirm that, everybody just assumes, and it was that way all through the beta. If you aren’t getting full use of the skill, why should it go on full CD?

Now I know, the four seconds is probably going to go away in favor of a scaling CD because it is imbalanced, but the torch will be utterly useless if it just always goes on a 30 second CD, and the mesmer already has enough useless weapons/skills.

Crowley.8761:

Focus has very many uses. You’re talking about utility, well how about dragging people off the walls of a tower in WvWvW?

Find the sword to be quite hilarious as well since the swordsman does double the damage of the pistol guy if you’re power specced.

Really suggest you try to move away from the straight cookiecutter builds and try to learn to survive without relying on certain cds. Helps a lot.

the swordsman misses more, stacks less bleeds, has a shorter range, and overall has less potential damage than the duelist depending on crits.

also WvW doesnt count towards anything, and they are cookie cutter because they are the best.

Conncept.7638:

Sacrificial Toast.7248:

Conncept.7638:

Torch=Four second CD AoE Blind+Confusion

That’s a bug that will eventually be fixed, though.

Still have never heard an arenanet employee confirm that, everybody just assumes, and it was that way all through the beta. If you aren’t getting full use of the skill, why should it go on full CD?

Now I know, the four seconds is probably going to go away in favor of a scaling CD because it is imbalanced, but the torch will be utterly useless if it just always goes on a 30 second CD, and the mesmer already has enough useless weapons/skills.

You can get the full skill though. You can cancel it the moment the burn goes off and it still only goes on 4s CD.

Sacrificial Toast.7248:

Conncept.7638:

Sacrificial Toast.7248:

Conncept.7638:

Torch=Four second CD AoE Blind+Confusion

That’s a bug that will eventually be fixed, though.

Still have never heard an arenanet employee confirm that, everybody just assumes, and it was that way all through the beta. If you aren’t getting full use of the skill, why should it go on full CD?

Now I know, the four seconds is probably going to go away in favor of a scaling CD because it is imbalanced, but the torch will be utterly useless if it just always goes on a 30 second CD, and the mesmer already has enough useless weapons/skills.

You can get the full skill though. You can cancel it the moment the burn goes off and it still only goes on 4s CD.

Huh, didn’t even know that, I usually spam it to get as many blinds as possible, the amount of frequent damage reduction is well worth losing the blast damage anyway. I know it’s going to be changed, but I don’t think it’s a bug. I think it was just a mistake because they didn’t see any benefit to canceling it early, and the shorter CD was placed to make interrupts more forgiving. I just hope they don’t completely destroy the torch in the process of ‘fixing’ it…

lol, I’ve never used pistol more than once, and that once time I found it useless. Nothing can beat focus imo. The speed buff/debuff is the most valuable skill in offhand we have, especially since people have so many ridiculous ways to escape in wvwvw. Phantasmal warden is also, in my mind, unarguably the best phantasm.

Ofc WvW doesn’t count for anything, who’d want to balance things for both halves of the PvP gameplay after all? Preposterous!

Kelthien.8593:

Embolism.8106:

iMage applies a single stack of Confusion, even with full condition damage it is extremely weak compared to other Phantasms. iDuelist is far superior for condition damage with Sharper Images.

Totally my main issue with the iMage! It feels ‘off’ to me that the the duelist’s auto-attack is so potent and, if you go 15 in Dueling, it easily stacks 4-5 bleeds on a foe. Meanwhile, the iMage strikes so slowly, a single target, has no combo field with it, and does a meager 1-stack of confusion with no traits to improve it. Torch could definitely use some love in PvE.

The advantage of the iMage is that it does a 10second stack of confusion. In the world of confusion, thats huge. Especially in PvP, not so much in PvE.
Leading with the Mage confusion, you can push your confusion stacks that extra bit higher before using him for that extra shattering confusion

Agreed that the attack is slow, but <3 the 10sec duration.

Just to point out for you guys.

Spawning the iMage removes a condition on you with the trait, but will also remove conditions on each bounce when it hits you or allies. Makes a decent replacement for the iDisenchanter.

The more the know.

OH Sword has a good phantasm and AOE Daze(!!!!!)
Focus has AOE speed, AOE snare, AOE interupt/reposition, and the highest damage phantasm
Torch also has a good phantasm, and gives you a free disengage (e.g., in sPVP you can force a weapon swap to melee with Illusionary Leap and Blurred Frenzy, then disengage back to range, etc etc).

The sadness of mesmer is there are actually 4 good off-hands, but only one good main hand.