Guild Wars 2

I want to excuse for the spelling, as a member of the great white norths of Sweden, english is not my mother-tongue so sorry for that in advance.
If you have any ideas to discuss you can comment or mail me in-game at: Grorge.7812

The builds
The staff build
The Greatsword build
This build is a glamor and manipulation build that works good running in zergs being a support or high single target damage mesmer.

—=The Utilities=—
As a mesmer you are very locked down in what utilities you need have on.

• Veil. You NEED to have Veil on so you can stealth everyone in your zerg and the enemies will not know what to do when 50 FA players pop out of nowhere. Getting used to veil will take some time, but after a while you will learn when the time is right and be ready to use it when the commander calls for it. You will be given a number from the commander, this is the order you will put down veil in, if there are multiple mesmers in your group, you will need to coordinate the veils so you don’t put down 2 at the same time since they don’t stack duration (just like focus 4). And if you want to run stealthed for a longer duration you will have a order to put down your veils.
• Blink. I have used this so long I can no longer run without it. It brings so much, a stunbreaker, a gapcloser, it can bring you to your zerg if you get behind and it will save you so many times fro being in a bad spot or having someone target you.
• Feedback/Nullfield. These two you can switch between depending on what your group has to offer, if you don’t have a guardians running reflect you can get Feedback. But i prefer Nullfield over Feedback since it has a good boonstrip and condition removal, it is also ground-target so it will go where you want it.

• Timewarp. Run Timewarp. Its good for both droping the big bomb and running with smaller groups. Be sure to call it out when you use it so the commander know if its a friendly cause its hard to tell.

—=The Weapons=—
Focus off-hand
Too me, the bread and butter of a mesmers weapons in WvW is the focus off-hand, if you don’t run with it you are doing something wrong. The nr 4 can pull 5 enemies to where you place it and it has my uses.

• It can pull people of their high walls.
• You can pull people to where you drop the bomb. Try to not put it on the bomb but put it between the bomb and the people you want to pull too increase the range of the pull, be careful tho cause this can work against you since it can pull people out as well.
• If you don’t use the activate pull it will cripple EVERYONE that walks through it (It dose not have a 5 people limit).
• With these traits, the wall will reflect but the wall is very low so skills that have a “falling path” (Like the auto-attacks from ele fire staff)
• And a favorite of mine is when there is a fight on a high ledge

Sword
When it comes to the one-handed sword it brings the melee cleave that this build needs. Anyone that has ever used sword knows what it goes for so ill just give you some tips with the skills.

• Nr1 It is just the regular auto-attack but new mesmers seem to forget the boonstrip on the third attack in the chain. when running in the enemy zerg spam that kitten and the enemies boons will be far away in no time. its cleave only hits 3 enemies at a time, instead of the regular 5.

• Nr2 This is your “bomb”, so when the commander calls for the bomb use this skill. Makes you dodge everything so if you get in a bad spot this will give you some extra time to get another dodge up so you can get out of there.

• Nr3 This skill you shouldn’t use when running inside the enemies with the heavys since its not good damage or a reliable leap skill (We have blink for that). A good place to use this is when chasing someone, they think they are at safe distance but blink + nr 3 will close a gap of 1800 and follow it up with nr 2 to lower their hp and morale.

Second set
Now im going into the two different second sets you can run with only switching out a few traits. Ill start with the staff since that is my favorite of the two.

Staff
The staff is a mobile, clonemaking, defensive, supporting and close range weapon. A great weapon to use when running into SMC or tighter spaces where you cant move around more freely as you would with a GS. I would pick up a Staff if you feel that the enemies are so many the only safe place to be is with the heavys, you need to stay alive since you will mostly be the only mesmer running with your zerg so if you die they wont be able to use you great group utilities.
Now, lets get more into the skills.

• Nr1 This is a short range and slow moving ranged attack that bounces. The direct damage on this is not high so you wont do much more then tagging stuff with it. will but down conditions after hitting a enemy and boons on hitting allies, this would be good if you where running a condition build since the conditions would be doing some damage.
• Nr2 This is one of the funnier skills there is out there. There are some good spots where you can use it (watch Seven Mirror for some good once). Its is another stunbreaker witch will compensate for the fact you don’t have any stability in this build, you should get into settings and turn of auto-targeting this way you will always go backwards. This way IF you target someone you will go AWAY from them, so if you target someone and they go past you and you activate it when they are BEHIND you, you will go FORWARDS!.
  The coolest thing you can do with this skill tho’. Is to charge a pin (press ‘F’ when standing in front of someone that is downed), press 2 to go away from the one you are downing, you will continue the downing animation, but when its about to finnish you use Blink to get back to your target and you will finnish it on them and kill them. If you do this your target wont see that you are trying to kill them and they wont use interrupts to save time for someone to come and save them.
• Nr3 This phantasm is one of the highest damaging the mesmer have. It has an ok base damage when you build PTV + Zerker. But the high damage comes from the multiplier (+10% per condition on the target), you have 3 different conditions on your auto- attack so that is 30% from just from them. The downside with this phantasm is that when it fires a spell it wont home to the target. This makes it very un-accurate, if the target moves or stop moving the spell wont hit. I usually put it out just for a good shatter since the cast time is pretty low.
• Nr4 This skill is the reason you can run with the heavys. If you get hit, you have a 66% chance to get protection since you have the traits. When you use it in the middle of the zerg, you are guaranteed too get 3 hits on you almost instantly and therefor getting 9,5 seconds of Protection and 3,5 seconds of swiftness and regeneration, this will compensate for the fact that you are a light class with Zerker trinkets running inside the enemys zerg. The conditions that they give attackers are not anything you will notice inside the zerg but in a 1v1 the blindness and cripple will help you get away without nay problems. So use this when you feel that its getting too hot around your heavys.
• Nr5 Chaos Storm is a great defensive skill to put on your group. Use this when your commander tells you to drop the bomb on him, the boons will help your allies to survive and your if there are enemies on the commander you are likely to Daze them witch will prevent them from using skills to get out of there. If you are going to put out range pressure this skill wont necessary kill the enemies but it ill weaken them with daze, poison, weakness and chill witch will make make them stay in the area longer so all those meteors will hit them. Be careful using it this way tho since its one of your survival skills and if you are not having the upper hand in the battle, I would save it and switch into the first set to and just put down a focus nr 4 to cripple them.
  You can use this when you see someone being downed from your team and put it on them you will grant them aegis so they can continue to res, also preventing people to pin them because they will be dazed while channeling. It will work the other way around when a enemy is downed and you want to down them. The aegis will protect you from being interrupted, the poison will make it take longer to revive them and the daze will cancel people from reviving him. But as i said befor its not worth it if you are loosing the battle.

Going from Staff -> Greatsword. The trait I switch out is the Master tier in Chaos, going from 10 to 8 ( X -> VIII ). Im thinking of doing a part about traits later but for now the reason I switch is because you need the CD and thoughness from Chaos VIII when in Staff-mode and since the trait is useless while in Greatsword-mode, Chaos VIII will give you tons of boos when you use nr 5 in the right moments.

Greatsword
The Greatsword is a more stationary, offensive, high damaging and long range weapon. I wold switch into the Greatsword if: You know that you can stay aay from the enemies damage in a very open field battle, in a classic GvG, when you have somewhere you can run to if it gets hectic (Blink up on a cliff or something), if the zerg you are facing is not a megazerg (70+) so you know that there wont be 20 people on your kittenoon as your name-tag goes outside your zerg and lastly (where the Staff is almost useless) when defending a tower or keep. You will be able to run on the wall putting pressure on low targets, the auto-attacks can go through reflection walls and if you run down to the gate you can push people away from the rams from the inside.

• Nr1 High damage at long range (900+) around 80% stronger then when in close range (lower then 300). The attack will hit the first 5 people between you and your target, so targeting someone inside the enemies zerg rather then someone on the out side will make you do much more damage. Remember that you have a long attack range so use it!
• Nr2 There isn’t much to say about this skill, moderate damage witch you could finnish of enemies at far by using the F1 shatter after it spawns next to your target. If there are allies near your target that can have use of the 6 stacks of might). If you are at close range using this and switch to the first set you could set of a burst with the 6 stacks.
• Nr3 What some people seem to forget about his skill is that it will strip a boon from the target, so saving this skill is key if you want to screw a warrior over that think he is save after using balance stance, the downside being that it has a cast time and what boon it takes is random, but it can hit up to 5 people so using it on the enemies when the are stacked will make it much more efficient.
• Nr4 Pretty strait forward this skill as well, a high damage phantasm that will put out loads of damage if you send it into the the enemies group. If you use when your target is next to a wall and your phantasm spin into the wall it will do more damage because it wont spin away as it usally dose therefor doing all the damage to your target.
  The phantasm will cripple the targets it hits and because you can cast it behind you while running you can cripple the chasers.
• Nr5 A powerful pushback that can push up to 5 people of siege, your allies and cliffs. When you switch to the VII in chaos trait, you will get 5 stacks of might and a random boon for each enemy you interrupt, so you can pretty much get all the boons + 25 might stacks from this skill if you use it in the right moment.
  Something to notice is that the push will usually not work in up-hill but in down-hill it work better but can sometimes miss depending on the slope. For a quick getaway when people start attacking you in the field would be to use nr 4 first to damage and cripple them, then pushing them back with nr 5, then going into the first set and drop a focus nr 4 for swiftness and reflection wall from range CC coming your way and finnish it of with a blink away from the enemies.

—=The Shatters=—

• F1 Your highest damage shatter, even stronger with the trait. Try to spam this whenever you have 3 clones up in the middle of the zerg, but having 3 clones up is hard since they will often die off from AOE. When you get in a situation where you are going to burst someone down (not in a zerg fight, you should try to stay with the group), getting 2 clones up from other attacks or dodging before you use the 1H sword nr 3, then lock them down with the second activation. You will then be able to land a nr 2 on 1H and use the shatter, getting some really high damage burst off.
• F2 This shatter is much like the first one. But it has a much lower damage then the first one if you go with a power build, therefor it has little to no use for you. I use this only for tagging in a battle where we are crushing them and i just want to tag everyone before they go down.
• F3 It took me to long before i started using this at all, I used to use this to kill my clones without going into combat.
  But has I started to get more into how i could better my mesmer skills, I stated to use the interrupts you have as a mesmer. The good thing about this shatter is the fact that it will remove 1 stack of defiance for each clone, but that wont do any good in WvW.
  In WvW You can use this shatter to interrupt enemies from pining your allies, a good way is to send nr 3 on 1H sword on them and then pop shatter 3 to interrupt them fast. Another good place to use this shatter is also when a NPC is trying to use their heal skill, they will raise their hand in the air and you will have about 2 seconds to interrupt them so they cant heal.
• F4 “F***ing Mesmer!” is what people will think when you start getting good on this shatter. A invulnerability that you can use even while channeling a skill. There are hundreds of places where you can use this. Some good ways is: When you are downing someone and they can interrupt your channeling, when you are on low hp and don’t think you will be able to to heal before you go down, then you can dodge roll to get one clone up and then start the heal channel and shatter your clone for the invulnerability and the last tip is to use the shatter to be able to tank a lot of damage, say you are going to run through a lot of arrowcarts to port your group over then using the shatter to get the full 3 seconds to get to your goal without even getting crippled.

—=The Traits=—
Im a big fan of flexible builds where you don’t need to go to the trainer each time you want to switch weapon. Whit that thought in mind, I came with the 10/20/20/20/0 build.
Domination: I (1) Adds some damage to these otherwise very defensive traits.
Dueling: I (1) The increased range is pretty substantial and you will need it for all the cool kitten blink can do. X (10) Clones on dodge for more clonespamming.
Chaos: III (3) Since the build has no stability you need to have blink ready as often as you can to be able to survive the heavy CC in the frontline. X (10)/ VIII (8) This is the trait you can switch between when going either GS or Staff (I talked about this between the Staff and Greatsword part under The Weapons).
Inspiration: II (2) The main reason for getting this is because of veil, I hate to say it but that is 60% of why you want a mesmer in the group, and having it up 18 seconds earlier wont hurt you when you go in for the third push and you got it up again. VIII (8) You pick this for the 20% reduced CD but the reflect will give you some new tricks.

I see you’re using soldiers gear and berserker trinkets in your build… can you tell us more about these choices.

PVT gear over zerker so i can take more hits if you take dmg while in the zerg. The toughtness will make your health go down slower → you heal will become stronger.
With the vitality you will be able to stay in the zerg longer.
But the main reason is that it has good deffensive stats while still having high dmg due to power beeing the main stat.

First of all: what is this build good for? It has no real damage potential, then yet again no real extra support compared to shatter specs and the reflects are barely usefull since 90% of the attacks aren’t projectiles or are not really worth reflecting cause of the retal damage you get.

2nd of all:
‘’Nr3 This skill you shouldn’t use when running inside the enemies with the heavys since its not good damage or a reliable leap skill (We have blink for that). A good place to use this is when chasing someone, they think they are at safe distance but blink + nr 3 will close a gap of 1800 and follow it up with nr 2 to lower their hp and morale.’’

Lol sorry but… you serious? This might be one of the shortest aoe (yes aoe) immobilizes in game and you prefer spamming 1k damage instead of your ’’zerg’’ killing up to 5 ppl you just immobilized instead? This is one of the reasons what makes mesmer a little bit usefull against blobs.

3rd: You’re dedicating about 1/3rd of your post to shatters, yet you say #2 greatsword isnt that good damage while that might be your most reliable way of even landing a shatter.

4: How are you supposed to stay frontline with this build? It’s not like you can spam your blurred frenzy enough to stay alive. You will need some kind of stability, so I guess you must be running this with at least 2 guardians?
You also mentioned chaos armor is the reason why you could run with the front line, but I don’t really see why you would run with the fronline while using a staff. Sure you get boons, they get a few conditions, but you also get kittenload of damage which can cause you to die.

BlackDevil.9268:

Lol sorry but… you serious? This might be one of the shortest aoe (yes aoe) immobilizes in game and you prefer spamming 1k damage instead of your ’’zerg’’ killing up to 5 ppl you just immobilized instead? This is one of the reasons what makes mesmer a little bit usefull against blobs.

Just wanted to mention, I’m pretty sure it acts as a cleave, not a full aoe. 3 targets, not 5.

Hm guess I’m also learning something new everyday, still 3 ppl is ’’aoe’’. :p

BlackDevil.9268:

Hm guess I’m also learning something new everyday, still 3 ppl is ’’aoe’’. :p

Oh yeah, for sure. Just thought I’d mention that since aoe often refers to 5 targets, with cleave aoe referring to 3.

Sorry to say this, but its not an optimized build.

First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.

Then, for zergs is pretty useless to spend points into Chaos. Its a line that grants personal buffs and survivability, but in big groups, buffs are given by guards and blasts, and mobility is much more determinant to survive. You can have as much toughness as you want, but they wont save you from spike damage, or melee trains.

And finally, as Blackdevil said, this is a jack of all trades, master of none build. You should priorize and focus on what role you want to do.

Ansau.7326:

First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.

This is incredibly false. As has been discussed before, the dueling GM trait will only be useful if you’re already winning, and then you don’t need it

Pyroathiest.4168:

Ansau.7326:

First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.

This is incredibly false. As has been discussed before, the dueling GM trait will only be useful if you’re already winning, and then you don’t need it

Not to mention, it’s so ridiculously easy to survive without it now, making one wonder why they’d ever want to take it in the first place. It just has no practical value for a mesmer.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Ansau.7326:

First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.

This is incredibly false. As has been discussed before, the dueling GM trait will only be useful if you’re already winning, and then you don’t need it

Not to mention, it’s so ridiculously easy to survive without it now, making one wonder why they’d ever want to take it in the first place. It just has no practical value for a mesmer.

I still don’t agree on this. Try surviving when running (nearly) full zerker shatter. The thing that kills you atm is not the damage of the enemy but the retaliation. The distortion will most likely cause you to be immune against that as it does already now with F4.
You’re not winning a 20vs 50/60 when you killed 5 guys or 10 guys. You’re winning when they are down to 25-30. Also not to mention everlasting tower/keep fights. You want them dead as fast as possible. You’re not really helping yourself by going full tank that way. Having that 3 sec distortion every now and then can be pretty usefull.

But yeah, will gameplay be much different? No, not really. Maybe it will be more risky to run but I guess also more rewarding.

BlackDevil.9268:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Ansau.7326:

First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.

This is incredibly false. As has been discussed before, the dueling GM trait will only be useful if you’re already winning, and then you don’t need it

Not to mention, it’s so ridiculously easy to survive without it now, making one wonder why they’d ever want to take it in the first place. It just has no practical value for a mesmer.

I still don’t agree on this. Try surviving when running (nearly) full zerker shatter. The thing that kills you atm is not the damage of the enemy but the retaliation. The distortion will most likely cause you to be immune against that as it does already now with F4.
You’re not winning a 20vs 50/60 when you killed 5 guys or 10 guys. You’re winning when they are down to 25-30. Also not to mention everlasting tower/keep fights. You want them dead as fast as possible. You’re not really helping yourself by going full tank that way. Having that 3 sec distortion every now and then can be pretty usefull.

In theory? Maybe. In practice? Not really. Go back and look at your own videos. Actually watch them carefully. I did this back when the trait was first released, and you posted a video as proof of how it would be effective. I watched your video and counted the number of times you got a kill in a situation that would have mattered. If I recall correctly the number was something around 5 times. 5 kills out of the multiple hundreds shown in your video that would have been useful. The rest would have been you just running around permanently invulnerable as RG mopped up another pug group.

Pyroathiest.4168:

BlackDevil.9268:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Ansau.7326:

First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.

This is incredibly false. As has been discussed before, the dueling GM trait will only be useful if you’re already winning, and then you don’t need it

Not to mention, it’s so ridiculously easy to survive without it now, making one wonder why they’d ever want to take it in the first place. It just has no practical value for a mesmer.

I still don’t agree on this. Try surviving when running (nearly) full zerker shatter. The thing that kills you atm is not the damage of the enemy but the retaliation. The distortion will most likely cause you to be immune against that as it does already now with F4.
You’re not winning a 20vs 50/60 when you killed 5 guys or 10 guys. You’re winning when they are down to 25-30. Also not to mention everlasting tower/keep fights. You want them dead as fast as possible. You’re not really helping yourself by going full tank that way. Having that 3 sec distortion every now and then can be pretty usefull.

In theory? Maybe. In practice? Not really. Go back and look at your own videos. Actually watch them carefully. I did this back when the trait was first released, and you posted a video as proof of how it would be effective. I watched your video and counted the number of times you got a kill in a situation that would have mattered. If I recall correctly the number was something around 5 times. 5 kills out of the multiple hundreds shown in your video that would have been useful. The rest would have been you just running around permanently invulnerable as RG mopped up another pug group.

Mesmer is not even in a strong position for the effect to trigger.

For the past month I’ve been playing a full zerk staff ele while raiding with my guild. Coming from Mesmer I found it very easy to utilize the ele’s skills/utilities to survive even in the full map blob tier 1 fights we were taking part in. The thing is, even if I went down which can happen often when things get crazy, after dropping the crazy AoE power of the ele, and tagging everything in sight, I was quick to rally off the back of it.

Functionally this is the very similar to what the new grandmaster trait is going to do. However unlike the ele, the mesmer has nowhere near the tagging power (or supporting, widespread dps) in order to make the effects happen. I know distortion is a mesmer thing, but the trait just feels weak, and would synergism better mechanically with other classes (such as ele).

BlackDevil.9268:

First of all: what is this build good for? It has no real damage potential, then yet again no real extra support compared to shatter specs and the reflects are barely usefull since 90% of the attacks aren’t projectiles or are not really worth reflecting cause of the retal damage you get.

2nd of all:
‘’Nr3 This skill you shouldn’t use when running inside the enemies with the heavys since its not good damage or a reliable leap skill (We have blink for that). A good place to use this is when chasing someone, they think they are at safe distance but blink + nr 3 will close a gap of 1800 and follow it up with nr 2 to lower their hp and morale.’’

Lol sorry but… you serious? This might be one of the shortest aoe (yes aoe) immobilizes in game and you prefer spamming 1k damage instead of your ’’zerg’’ killing up to 5 ppl you just immobilized instead? This is one of the reasons what makes mesmer a little bit usefull against blobs.

3rd: You’re dedicating about 1/3rd of your post to shatters, yet you say #2 greatsword isnt that good damage while that might be your most reliable way of even landing a shatter.

4: How are you supposed to stay frontline with this build? It’s not like you can spam your blurred frenzy enough to stay alive. You will need some kind of stability, so I guess you must be running this with at least 2 guardians?
You also mentioned chaos armor is the reason why you could run with the front line, but I don’t really see why you would run with the fronline while using a staff. Sure you get boons, they get a few conditions, but you also get kittenload of damage which can cause you to die.

First: I made the build since my group ran one maybe two mesmers so if one die the utilities would die as well. So I was thinking staying alive over dmg. The staff bringed CC, survivability and clones. I have to agree with you that the reflects is not a good source of damage but it was something that came with, when I took the trait for lower cd on focus.

2nd: “or a reliable leap skill” The risk of the clone beeing pushed away and you ending up in the middle of the red, did not compensate for the ability to immobilize 3 people. There isnt a good moment where its “safe” to use it other then when you are winning the fight.

3rd: That is true thanks for the feedback I’ll add that.

4th: Yes when you are fighting against the odds you want a guardian in your party. But blink usally compensates for not having stability, and when you learn how to use staff2 the right way that is another blink right there. And if your group dosnt have guardians you will have more problems then a mesmer stoping once cause it was out blinks and evadesBlurred frenzy is more of a panic defence then the reason you can stay in the middle like I do.
I run with the hammertrain to be able to stay with the commander at all times. Beeing able to veil mid fight, stripping boons from the enemies and pulling people into the hammertrain (I wrote more in the guide). If i feel that more damage is beeing directed at us I switch to staff and pop chaos armor to get, protection, regen + blinding and crippling enemies. Then using chaos feild on the enemies caster to daze them.
Aaah yes, using my dodge seems to help quiet a lot and you should have next to perma vigor due to dueling 5.

BTW sorry for the slow respond, sleeping oyu know

Ansau.7326:

Sorry to say this, but its not an optimized build.

First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.

Then, for zergs is pretty useless to spend points into Chaos. Its a line that grants personal buffs and survivability, but in big groups, buffs are given by guards and blasts, and mobility is much more determinant to survive. You can have as much toughness as you want, but they wont save you from spike damage, or melee trains.

And finally, as Blackdevil said, this is a jack of all trades, master of none build. You should priorize and focus on what role you want to do.

I promise ill update the build when the new traits are out.
Is there any information how this trait will work? Will it reset after each kill or will you need to kill someone after the duratoin is down for it to start again?

This is a mainly supportive build with damage potential (not near a well necro or staff ele). I just thought I whould give to light to a diffrent way of playing a mesmer other then a semi-strong backliner, have you see any good staff mesmer build out there? Cause the reason I took my build from our guild fourms to the offical was so i can get more feedback on how to make it better.

@Grorge, we don’t know how this trait will work exactly, but it seems it will reset the distortion duration with every kill, as distortion can not stack. So if you kill one enemy in second 0 and another in second 2, you will have distortion from second 0 till 5.

@Ross Biddle, yes it’s super easy if you’re in the background doing pew pew and using MI when enemies go for you, but in a frontline situation, there’s a lot of stress, and a bad move, or using a skill by mistake means immediately you death.

@Pyro. You arguments work for pug zergs, but in dedicated guilds or GvG, even a mesmer dying can mean your team losing.
Of course this trait wont makes us unkillable, but not only will be useful to not to die, the moment you see a yellow number you’re free to do whatever you want, it will prevent CC, spike damage, condi spam…

Ansau.7326:

@Pyro. You arguments work for pug zergs, but in dedicated guilds or GvG, even a mesmer dying can mean your team losing.
Of course this trait wont makes us unkillable, but not only will be useful to not to die, the moment you see a yellow number you’re free to do whatever you want, it will prevent CC, spike damage, condi spam…

I currently run with an organized guild, both in zergsmashing and GvG. My survivability will not be enhanced by this trait. Win or lose, I survive based on other factors. If I’m running my Zergmower build, I survive because that’s what it’s designed to do. If I’m running a glassy pick group spec in a GvG, then I survive based on good positioning and smart bursting.

Basically, here’s the issue. If people you’ve tagged, as a mesmer, are dying, it means one of 2 things. Thing 1 is they have a ton of downs, and you’re applying cleave damage to keep them down, and they die. In this case, the trait is unnecessary. Thing 2 is you’re using Zergmower, because that’s the only build I’ve ever encountered that is capable of tagging mass numbers of people without being up close and personal, and in that case the trait is once again useless.

Well any shatter build is capable of tagging. You could drop a chaos storm or just spam 1 on those ppl and then jump in the moment you get the buff. If you can harras their regroup or w/e, hell why not? You’re immune anyway.

Also in that video I futured 0 keep/tower fights and 2 of those fights were against guilds whereas this trait has no use. Also the times you counted in the video of being usefull would be pretty false since that video was before the BF nerfs. The retal damage you get now would come down to me being on much lower hp most of the time, whereas the trait would actually come usefull many more times.

I get what you’re trying to say, but just because the trait is not usefull with your playstyle now, doesn’t mean it isn’t when you try to make it work. (nearly) full zerker shatter can come down to some nice numbers. Probably almost equal to a 80% of a 100b dps warrior.

First, I was referring about facing pug zergs or guilds, not being in them.

Maybe for that zergmower build it wont be that necessary, as you already have lots of blocks. I personally dont like that build. In EU gold league you receive tons of damage before a projectile hits you, so mimic lost quite of its power.

Anyway, this new trait wont only get you less killed, it will also allow you to go around without to worry about being killed. When I will see a yellow number, it’ll mean I’m free to do whatever I want, so sometimes I wont need to use blink to get somewhere or use BF to avoid a damage spike. Shatter builds will take a lot of credit of it.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Ansau.7326:

@Pyro. You arguments work for pug zergs, but in dedicated guilds or GvG, even a mesmer dying can mean your team losing.
Of course this trait wont makes us unkillable, but not only will be useful to not to die, the moment you see a yellow number you’re free to do whatever you want, it will prevent CC, spike damage, condi spam…

I currently run with an organized guild, both in zergsmashing and GvG. My survivability will not be enhanced by this trait. Win or lose, I survive based on other factors. If I’m running my Zergmower build, I survive because that’s what it’s designed to do. If I’m running a glassy pick group spec in a GvG, then I survive based on good positioning and smart bursting.

Basically, here’s the issue. If people you’ve tagged, as a mesmer, are dying, it means one of 2 things. Thing 1 is they have a ton of downs, and you’re applying cleave damage to keep them down, and they die. In this case, the trait is unnecessary. Thing 2 is you’re using Zergmower, because that’s the only build I’ve ever encountered that is capable of tagging mass numbers of people without being up close and personal, and in that case the trait is once again useless.

Exactly this. My experience is the same.

If I’m going full zerk, id never put myself in the frontline to begin with. I’f im using an actual front line zerg build, I’m built to survive without distortion (I rarely use my F4 and im in control of that distortion).