Vigor -> Shatter -> More Vigor:
You gain vigor from crits and shatters, allowing you to create more on-dodge clones which then allows you to shatter for even more vigor. Shatters can crit too.
Heals:
Shatters are not only giving you vigor, but you are also healing each time you shatter. On top of this, you gain regen from your phantasms and heal when you recharge your mantras. With Mantra of Recovery and Mantra of Pain you can constantly cycle between the two if needed.
Support:
Your shatters are providing vigor for allies as well, your phantasms provide that regen to nearby allies to, and your mantra healing heals nearby allies too.
You’re also providing support for your allies as your shatters are providing them vigor and recharging mantras is providing heals.
I left most of the skills unselected as you can be quite flexible with them, but, since it is a shatter build, decoy and mirror images are logical choices as your other two utilities, but you could also take Phantasmal Defender or Phantasmal Disenchanter to summon other phantasms instead. These skills have lower cooldowns, provide phantasms instead of clones (so more regen). and have their own unique skills such as boon+condition removal (disenchanter) and 50% damage mitigation (defender).
If you feel you don’t need Protected Mantras and want to use swords, swapping out Protected Mantras for Sword Mastery is more than fine. Lower cooldowns and more precision is welcome, especially since it ups your illusion generation.
When it comes to whether or not to take +healing gear (Apothecary) with this, I think it’d be better with Rabid (more condition damage). Precision gives you more direct damage, get more vigor from crits, inflict more bleeds from illusion crits, and can leverage on-crit sigils. If you look at the coefficients for Restorative Mantras and Restorative Illusions, they appear to have a 0.5 coefficient on the wiki, so having +1,000 healing would only make these two traits heal for only about +500 more healing each. Compare this to +1000 precision which would give about +47.61% crit chance. Either way, you need toughness since this has 0 points in Chaos, otherwise you’ll be too squishy to leverage your heals very effectively.
With this build, you should be able to apply constant pressure on your opponent via shatters as you are healed each time and apply confusion (+ the shatter’s effect(s)) on your foe with each shatter.
I played around with this for a bit in sPvP last night and was never taken down 1v1 and able to hold and take points quite successfully (took longer to take than with shattercat, of course, since you have less burst)
sPvP Gear Used
Skills
Amusingly, I ran into another Mesmer running a similar build and our fights kept being draws until one of us received reinforcements … in which case that Mesmer generally escaped.
Being able to confuse people (i.e. being a Mesmer), heal up quite a bit from mantras/ shatters/regen, having good mobility, and constantly applying conditions via staff and shatters makes you a tough nut to crack.
I was taking to Fay a bit about it while in-game ankittenhinking I’ll have to try it with Shaman’s (Apothecary) gear. Before I was only thinking of the +healing in relation to the Mantra and Shatter heals, but it does affect the regen as well.
I’d love to hear from anyone else trying this or similar. I think there are still several good builds utilizing mantras that we have yet to discover. It’s just quite odd going from no mantras to 2+ :-p
Looks good, but on the wiki it says 0.2 x Healing Power. It’d take a lot of healing power for any noticeable difference, and I think you’re right that Rabid gear would be a better bet for the added toughness.
I have an odd relationship with Mantras. My build has +Healing Power as the main stat, so Restorative Mantras heals pretty well, but the heal radius is so kitten small.. and Mantra of Recovery is the easiest to use to proc “on heal” Runes, such as Altuism. Yet Mirror, Blink, Null Field, iDefender, and iDisenchanter are also such tempting choices.
As for sPvP, were you in hotjoin or tournaments? You really don’t need the Centaur runes since the maps are so small and would be much better served with 5x Runes of the Nightmare/1x rune of the Necromancer for greater condition damage/duration.
One thing I’m really curious about.. The 250 toughness from Protected Mantras seem pretty nice aswell. Everytime you channel Mantra of Pain, you’re adding a nice chunk of defense to yourself and your illusions. Have you noticed any considerable defensive difference with the trait?
As far as toughness both Rabid and Shamans(Apothecary) have toughness. It’s really more of a toss-up between precision and healing with Rabid also having more condition damage.
I am curious about replacing my usual blink and decoy with iDefender and iDisenchanter. Their cooldowns are not that long so the fact that this build shatters wouldn’t be much of an issue … in fact, iDisenchanter has the best clone-per-sec of all the utilities with iDefender being only worse than Mirror Images. The issue here would be a lack of a real stunbreaker so it’d be much more reliant on Phase Retreat on the staff.
Given the utilities I was using, the biggest weakness I ran into was a lack of condition removal. iDisenchanter could be beneficial for this, but it isn’t as reliable as Null Field (which could provide more chaos armor w/ staff) or Mantra of Resolve. I could also change the scepter+pistol out for sword+focus. This would provide more condition removal via curtain+warden as well as retaliation via curtain+illusionary leap+swap.
The 250 toughness from Protected Mantras did seem to make quite a nice difference. When I had to go quite defensive, constantly using Mantra of Recovery and Mantra of Pain, I was taking quite a bit less damage. Looking at gw2buildcraft.com, +247 toughness gives you 11.86% damage reduction.
My current thoughts on playing around with this are weapon changes (i.e. sword+focus) as well as the whole shatter vs not.
With shatters you get more pressure on your foe(s), vigor, and heals.
Without shatters you can focus on per-illusion bonuses, regen from phantasms, etc.
A mantra shatter build definitely requires high APM to be effective. However, it’s somewhat weird in that while having high APM, there are times where you are somewhat biding your time as well. It’s definitely taking some getting used to … especially since the builds I usually rotate through don’t leverage mantras.
Ah, it completely slipped my mind that Apothecary’s also gave toughness. Still, for a build like this I wouldn’t main healing power. I think you’d be more effective with the additional damage from Rabid, especially if you use a staff. Definitely keep at least Blink OR Decoy. Not only is a stunbreak important, but both skills allow you to get nearer to allies to apply your Vigor/Heal when needed; especially Blink. (Agony, Torment Teleport Pain!)
The iWarden is, unfortunately, probably our most unreliable condition remover. It gets killed too easily and would take up both focus skills for only one effect (assuming you’re summoning both to remove some conditions). Of course, this can be worked around. I’d opt for a traited Null Field, which recharges deceptively quickly for it’s profound effect. In PvP, ripping away Stability from transformed Necros/Eles/Guardians/Warriors and being immune to conditions for 5 secs can be downright devastating. Not to mention this also saves allies, and its combo field offers more confusion/Chaos Armor.
The dual nature takes some getting used to, I had the same issue in my support build. But overtime it all begins to feel natural once you reflexively know what works in what situations.
I don’t have much trouble with my warden getting killed except in large cluster fights.
I also make use of the temporal curtain to pull people to my warden and usually follow that up with immobilize from the sword. It’s a wonderful way to inflict the warden’s “pain train” on people.
I do think Rabid would probably still be better than Apoth. For +healing to be truly useful I think you need at least 3 sources of healing. Rangers with regen + signet heal + trait heal + troll unguent are a good example of what I’m talking about.
I think there are several utility options that could work for this, though mantra of pain + mantra of recovery are must haves for their use with restorative mantras.
Please let me know if you play around with this build or a derivative. It’s always nice to get feedback from others playing the same thing. You often learn more from the discussions that then ensue :-)
Your theme of the build is similar to mine, but
- The range of Inspiration III (vigor on shatter) is too small. Most bosses require a bit range or even “going around with the boss” is too much for its AoE.
- Better use Inspiration IV (condition removal on heal). It’s awesome with Healing mantra. You’ll rarely face serious condition problems (probably in wvw/ pvp). If necessary, try Inspiration XI (condition removal on shatter)
- Inspiration XII (heal on shatter) isn’t bad, but not good either. It’s <1k heal per shatter. I use this trait when no other makes sense.
- I usually treat Inspiration 30 as wildcard for different situations. Reflect bubble while reviving (I), less glamour CD (II), focus reflect (VIII) and on some bosses even faster movement for each illusion (VI) are my choices.
- do you really need 20 points in Illusions? Do you shatter that often and fall below 50% HP that often?
- Is Illusions 15 (confusion on shatter) really better than Dueling 25 (confusion on illusion kill)?
My build is a 0/30/5/30/5 version. Dueling for more crits (for vigor, sigils and bleedings) and -20% mantra CD. And in Dueling 10, I usually use [I] for increasing blink range. 900 and 1200 does make a difference.
My runes are those of water. Additional ~1k aoe heal every healing mantra cycle (8+1s CD, 3.25s charge).
Ah, I didn’t mention before, but I’m looking at this build for PvX, not just PvE.
Thanks for the feedback Nretep, let me address my thoughts on each point you made:
Since I’m still testing this build a good bit, I’m still looking for other people’s thoughts, experiences, feedback.
Thanks :-)
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
Ah, I didn’t mention before, but I’m looking at this build for PvX, not just PvE.
well, I’m PvE only. And confusion is pretty much useless there. I previously had some points in Illusions too, but I changed to be more the supporter mesmer.
I live on being alive while healing/ ressing others, “tanking” bosses and such. If I’d not constantly try to ress my party (thank ANet for mantra healing while ressing), I’d probably live twice as long as anyone else. Meaning, I only get downed while ressing others in enemies’ aoes.
- Vigor on Shatter is primarily for me. The fact that is can give vigor to allies is a bonus. That said, I’m still testing, so if I find I don’t need the extra source of vigor, then I’d definitely swap out this trait.
as I said, its aoe is horrible. As mesmer with 60~75% crit and GS’ 3 hits per second, I have like 95% uptime of vigor. While being busy (ressing, casting, etc.) I can still use MoP for other crit sources. Vigor on shatter is only useful for your party on certain bosses. But here again, out of 4 Shatters only one grants vigor to like 2 of the party. To be frank, for melee"d" bosses, you don’t need endurance; for range"d" bosses, vigor on shatter isn’t wide enough; for personal vigor, dueling 5 should be enough.
- Heal on Shatter. I don’t see each individual shatter as being a great heal. It’s more along the idea of shattering so often that it adds up to something meaningful. But, as I said, I’m still testing this.
as I said, I usually use this when I don’t need special traits (like projectile reflection)
- Condition Removal on Shatter. Definitely in my sites if I deem Heal on Shatter to not be “good enough”.
just test Inspiration IV with healing mantra.
- Your 0/30/5/30/5 build seems to be less of a shatter oriented build (which is fine). If not shattering much, I’d be tempted to move 5 points in it from Dueling to Chaos for 3% less damage per clone.
I usually keep my clones for bleeding, damage or aoe heal. I shatter when the mob is almost deal, when I need the AoE to hit/tag mobs or when the summoning skills are recharged (or I need to get rid of my illusions).
- I’ve been quite curious about the potential of rune sets with “on heal” effects. is that ~1k from just one on heal effect from the Water runes? I’ve never taken the full set of 6. There is that whole 10 sec internal cooldown for on heal effects.
all “on heal” effects trigger on your #6 skill.
As for my “heal-ability”, I have 465 healing power. 300 from inspiration, 165 from water runes, nothing else and I’d gladly exchange those with any other stat, if possible.
Me restorative mantras (Inspiration X) heals like 2700 after each mantra chast. My healing mantra charge heals like 2800 (each). And on either of those I can add ~1k (980 or so) AoE heal. So a full cycle of healing mantra grants me (2700 + 2 * 2800 + 1k =) 9300 and 3700 for others, with a (8s + 1s + 3.25s =) 12.25s cycle time.
Technically speaking the rune of dwayna is stronger. It grants aoe regeneration on heal (with 10~15s CD) and regeneration on hit. This heals for more than 1k (like 1.2k), but is a heal over time and doesn’t stack in intensity. This was a personal choice for me.
Last but not least, I usually use the Sigil of Blood granting me another (egoistic) heal by ~500 HP every 2s … and +450 dmg every 2s (said by wiki, but I don’t believe it). A supportive sigil would be the Water version, but it only heals 370 (wiki).
I’m not sure Dwayna would be better than Water for a 15+ inspiration mesmer. You are already gaining regeneration from phantasms as long as you’re near at least one.
this seems like the kind of build I tried to get to work in between rocking pickups with my ranger and testing out stuff with my thief… Tried a couple mantra builds but they were all too control centered for my build, tried something of my own which came pretty close to this but didn’t get it to work…
Maybe gonna give it a shot later on. I so love mantras but getting builds around them to work is a tough piece of work… maybe, with this build, it’s finally time to roll a mesmer for good.
Gonna give it a shot, sounds promising. Tho I feel like it either needs menders purity or shattered conditions… Or at the least some cond remove utility.
Excellent, naphack. Please let me know how it works for you … including any derivations. I’m sure there are areas to be improved upon (as seen in Nretep, ChaosAngel, I’s discussion).
I was talking to a guildmate last night about Mesmer playstyle. He loves Mesmer but felt it was a bit too demanding. I got to thinking about this, especially in the light of me testing this new build and the various other builds I’ve played with on my Mesmer.
I think with Mesmers there are two playstyles that drastically increases the minimum APM (actions per minute) required for the build to be successful.
As this is current a shatter+mantra build, the APM is high, which makes it hard for me to fully quantify how good/bad it is as I believe the current limiting factor is myself :-p (which makes it very exciting because I’m doing so well with it!)
I need to lure Osicat, SevenMirror, etc. into trying it ;-)
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
From the look it seems easier than a purely mantra based control build…
If you gotta time your dazes and interrupts in between recharging your mantras, while generating illusions and phantasms with your weapon skills and keeping track of potential openings to get shatters in(especially the daze shatter, as you trait heavily into interrupts) this one seems comparably tame.
At least, it seems possible to manage without 1k+ hours of mesmer gameplay experience. The only thing, you gotta be wary of with this build(or lets say, the similar prototype, I built) is being too spammy with mantra of pain and forgetting about other skills.
That’s fine, naphack. My point was that it currently felt like my uncommon use of mantras and the higher APM it appears to require seemed to be the current limitation on the build and that, as such, I/we might learn more about how good/bad it is from a better Mesmer than myself … such as Osicat, SevenMirror, etc.
I spent an evening back when you first posted the build playing around with it in wvw. I used staff, sword/focus, rabid armor w/runes of lyssa. So not exactly the same setup as you. My main problem with it I felt like I was doing very little damage, the shatters didn’t hit very hard, not enough condition damage for confusion to hurt much. It didn’t feel very effective against players. What it was really good at was soloing camps, just run around to get all the npc in one spot and then whittle away their hp. I like the general idea of the build but think it could use some tweaking. I’ll try and sit dowkittenome point and come up with some suggestions
Thank you very much for the feedback, Kazhiel!
The damage has been one thing I’ve been concerned about. Condition damage can be rather lackluster, especially on a Mesmer given a hearty opponent.
Do please keep us informed of any findings you make related to this. I have yet to try it in WvW, just sticking to sPvP first like I do with most builds when initially testing, so the additional perspective is very welcome.
I don’t really do sPvP mainly stick to WvW and pve. Maybe something like this would work better, ditch the whole condition damage thing: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.0|6.1p.h14|c.1p.h19.a.1p.h1h|1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73.1n.73|4s.0.2v.0.3v.0.21k.0.31k.0.3v.0|0.k4a.0.u34c.k61|39.7|31.35.34.3d.0|e
I already have pretty much all of that gear minus some of the ascended trinkets, I’ll try it out when I get home tonight x)
Ah, going the power route. If going that route, why not move 10 points from Illusions over to Domination to get +20% Mind Wrack damage.
I was sticking with the condition route because you can cause all shatters to inflict confusion so all of them can benefit from being a condition build. Unfortunately you can’t do this with a power version (at least I"m not aware … anyone up for this challenge? :-p)
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
Ok. My current build:
0-25-0-30-15
The trait point allocation is the same I used for my previous build. Didn’t respec, just swapped out some traits as I didn’t feel the need for traiting auto-renewal on shatters.
Right now, I have the same traits, you picked, except, I run Dueling III for retaliation. As the power of this build is quite low, I might drop it for protected mantras or phantasmal fury later on…
Weapons:
Scepter/sword, Staff
Utility:
Mantra of Restoration, Mantra of Resolve(!), Decoy, Disenchanter, Mass invis
I solved the problem of having no condition remove by dropping in a Mantra of Resolve, which allows us to remove 4 conditions, in packs of 2, every 20 seconds. To top it off, I run a disenchanter. I do not have that much experience with this specific utility allocation yet. Cond remove on heal prove to be worthless, so I ditched it in favor of getting the vigor on shatter back while switching out blink for a cond removal. Time will tell whether this trade was worth it.
The build plays fluent and natural. I never had that much fun with mesmer, might also be because I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Contrary to what you were saying earlier, I’d actually recommend this build to beginners. It’s certainly not the easiest build around but it’s sturdy and unifies almost every aspect of the mesmer without being too reliant on the player getting one particular thing right. In fact, it’s very forgiving(for a mesmer build). So if you want to learn mesmer as a whole, this build got it all in one package while not going too deep into things.
If I could squeeze out another 5 points somewhere, I might try going 10-20-0-x-x, incorporating a cripple on illusion death into the build. As it is now, the build is rather group focussed(for heavy group action, drop mantra of resolve for a null field) and can not kill stuff on its own. That is, it can. It deals good damage, the cond stacks do wonders, but as soon as your opponent starts to run, you got nothing to stop them. Might try swapping the mh scepter for a sword to try and fix that issue but I don’t really wanna miss out on the confusion and block.
Maybe, I am asking too much of the build. It has great group support, great heal, good but not overwhelming damage, good but not overwhelming survivability, can hold its own in a duel(well, duh, it’s a mesmer after all), does not self-destruct at the first mistake you make and plays fluent and natural. It does, what it is designed for and it does it good. It might just need some tweaks to squeeze in an interrupt or 2. I dislike the pistol, so that’s not an option for me. It just doesn’t have that much of a visible impact. It slowly stacks the odds into your favor, the longer the fight goes. That’s a good thing, but sometimes, you are pressed for time. The build clearly has limits to its viability outside the stuff it was designed for. To get the most out of this build, you’d need an organized group. In such a group, I can see it rip stuff to shreds pretty fast. In such a group, maybe Mantra of Resolve will not be needed and can be dropped for a feedback bubble or a null field.
As I could write on and on, I’m just gonna make it short.
Verdict: Viable, sturdy, not too demanding. Would certainly suggest this build for a beginner. Problems lie in catching escapees and being unable to do anything against opponents channeling big spells in plain sight(except for preparing a block to counter it).
Confusion is good in any build, confusion doesn’t kill people unless they’re stupid, it does however allow you to control a fight and add extra damage if someone tries to burst you while under confusion.
My power build with almost the same layout was built around retaliation(retaliation on block, retaliation on cry of frustration, phantasms got retaliation)
Just wanted to throw this in here in case someone wants to pick up the idea. I scratched it mainly cause my own experience with the Mesmer did not live up to the challenge at hand. I simply died too often.
Next I’m gonna try is Dwayna Runes btw. They would guarantee good regeneration uptime even when the phantasms are down.
Edit: Dwayna Runes make the build perfect. It’s so broken, I can’t even put it into words.
(edited by naphack.9346)
Dwayna runes on what build? The one you listed the traits for a couple posts above or the ‘power build’ you referenced in your last post?
the one I listed a couple posts back.
It’s nice, cause you have reg up all the time. Every time, you cast mantra of Restoration, you give you and all allies around reg for 6 seconds(10 sec cd)
Basically, as long as your phantasms have as much as a 30% uptime, you got 100% reg uptime.
Granted, in WvWvW, the way to go is obviously centaur runes, but in spvp, full reg and vigor uptime, while spamming clones left and right and healing with shatters and mantras is pretty strong. Haven’t encountered a good thief yet, so I don’t know whether another stun breaker would be needed(in that case, switch the disenchanter out for mirror image) but basically, the whole build is
Scepter(energy)/Sword(Earth), Staff(Earth) //For dual block and evade+good condition uptime
Rabid Gear (7xDwayna)
0
25 (III, X)(might swap out III For protected mantras)
0
30(III, X, XII)
15(II)
Mantra of Restoration, Mantra of Resolve(Arcane thievery???), Decoy, Disenchanter(Mirror Image/Blink), Mass Invis
@naphack
- I wonder why you call your build “broken” with Dwayna runes without using MoPain. I mean … it’s healing AoE for far more than dwayna.
- Dueling III; depending on how often and on which situation you use blink, you might try “far-reaching manipulations” ( I ) here. Since I rarely use scepter or OH sword, I don’t know how effective “on block” traits are.
- Inspiration III; you said “condition removal on heal” doesn’t fit you, so it’s ok to not use it. But it forced you to use another utility slot. But are you that much in melee range to get vigor on shatter. Or isn’t the aoe vigor centered at where your illusions shatter? As I said before, it’s a pointless source for self-vigor when you have dueling 5.
- As for the sigils, I’d probably not use two sigils with cooldown, they share it. So when you swap weapons, you can’t bleed on crit with the off-hand sword.
About the cond remove on heal: I found it was lacking, cause it removed only one condition per pop. If opponents cover their conditions, it’s pretty much useless. Mantra of resolve clears 2 conditions where mantra of Restoration would clear one condition.
I just found myself spamming mantra of restoration while poisoned to get rid of some really nasty bleed stacks, throwing half the heal into the gutter. Mantra of resolve can remove2 conditions a pop which makes it incredibly useful.
As stated earlier, a noteworthy alternative might be Arcane thievery. Then probably slotting something like blink, arcane thievery, decoy and skilling dueling ( I ).
As for Mantra of Pain: In a power build, I’d take it. This build is so heavily specced on conditions, it’s simply not worth channeling a mantra for 4 seconds to get some AoE heal, only to shoot 2 bolts at negligible damage, where even a single stack of confusion would deal more damage. Sure, the mantra can crit and proc the bleed sigils… Still not worth it. My mezz has anywhere around 900 power. Mantra of pain hits like a wet tissue while eating up time, I could use to cast phantasms or get in some scepter autoattacks to get clones rolling.
Also, the Dwayna runes seem to proc reg in a way larger area than the MoP does heal. Mantra heal has around the area where phantasms grant reg… Means, you need to be almost within sword range of your allies.
About the sigils: Ye, my bad, forgot about the mini cd on bleed sigils.
(edited by naphack.9346)
Woot. I’m glad I could lead you to a derivative you found to be better :-)
When it comes to Mantra of Recovery + Mender’s Purity versus Mantra of Resolve, I look at it this way:
MoRecovery+MP:
MoResolve:
Both are viable, so it comes down to preference to me (like most things involving the Mesmer).
Any more thoughts on this given the mantra changes? Can essentially get more healing per second with the “tighter loop” of MoR and MoP given the faster channel times on mantras. However, it is now weaker offensively in WvW given the confusion nerf there.
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