Guild Wars 2

is it possible to cast the prestige in the middle of another channeled spell?

if i cast the prestige and then hit an enemy, will i have my stealth removed and activate the second effect, or will i only lose stealth and the effect activates at the intended time after 3 seconds??

If you cast prestige, and deal damage to another enemy while in stealth, the stealth ends. The AoE fire blast goes off after 3 seconds.

Torch is still worse then any off hand we have and no reason to use it .

Lysico.4906:

Torch is still worse then any off hand we have and no reason to use it .

Lol. No reason to use it huh? You should think out of the box more, like they did when they made Seven Mirrors and FLIMP’s Condition Build.

Lysico.4906:

Torch is still worse then any off hand we have and no reason to use it .

ignorance is bliss

Sorry I was typing fast and should have been clear. I am talking about in Wpvp.

Torch is inferior to our other choices. Maybe off hand sword is closer to how bad torch is.

But pistol and focus are much better then torch and the really crappy damage. I have solid stealth already with two other abilities.

This guy is crazy if he thinks torch and off hand sword are bad lmao

Crazy?

Lets break it down. (using WPvP view)

Focus will give you speed which of course we all know, we are lacking big time unless you 100% run centaur runes. The pull on the curtain is also amazing in control and yanking folks off. Iwarden is really nice for the aoe damage when popped down on the door or someone on siege.

Pistol has great iduelist which will fire thru and create combo fields. Ranged dps so not going to die asap like others. The stun/daze x3 is another great control ability to stop runners , stop healing, etc. Amazing ability.

Sword has a block. Ok, ability but also many players know to just wait it out. iswordsman is solid with the leap and like the iduelist can stay out of harm a little better.

Torch.. crappy damage from blast. combo field, ok give ya that. Stealth? Got that covered with two different abilities. image? holy cow does the dps suck. I mean ALL the other phantasms bring solid to really good dps. image fails. Couple that will really long recast times and torch fails vs all the others.

Is wpvp some new term for wvw?

Kazhiel.8194:

Is wpvp some new term for wvw?

Depends on server. Ours uses Wpvp and Spvp to distinguish between the two types of pvp there is.

Sorry if that term confused you..

Phantasmal mage goes great in a confusion build, especially as it adds retaliation to the mix.

Morfedel.4165:

Phantasmal mage goes great in a confusion build, especially as it adds retaliation to the mix.

It gets no + cond duration from builds. Even assuming you land it on a player in wpvp, AND they are dumb enough to attack during all 3 stacks, it does less dps then the other phantasms..

The problem with the torch is that it is somewhere between 30% and 50% of a weapon.

You have 2 skills on the torch, The Prestige, and the phantasmal mage.

The prestige is a fantastic skill. 2 blast finishers (though those are bugged now?) aoe blind, 3 second stealth, and aoe burn. Unfortunately, the cooldown on this skill is far longer than it should be, and desperately needs to be shortened. All things considered though, it is a very handy skill.

The other skill is phantasmal mage. This skill is useless. The mage casts 3 stacks of confusion for 3 seconds, and allies will get 3 seconds of retaliation if the attack manages to bounce to them. Additionally, the retaliation is not affected by boon duration, and the confusion is not affected by condition duration.
Just looking at that, this is a horrible skill. It deals effectively no direct damage, 3 seconds of retaliation is useless, and 3 seconds of confusion is even more useless. Unfortunately, there’s more (but wait, there’s more!!).
The phantasmal mage has a base cooldown of 30 seconds. This is the longest cooldown of any phantasm skill in the game, on the least useful phantasm in the game. Not only that, but the cooldown trait for the torch is in a strange spot that is difficult for effective confusion bomb builds to take without losing other important traits.
When you add all this together, it quickly becomes obvious that the phantasmal mage is quite possibly the worst skill in the entire game, for any class, for any reason. It has absolutely no uses. It has absolutely no saving grace. It does absolutely nothing on an absurdly long cooldown.

So, the torch has only 1 skill, and that one skill has a bit too long of a cooldown. I’m not willing to use a weapon that only has 1 skill, especially when all of our other choices (including oh sword, which is one of our most powerful offhands, lysico, but I’ll explain that later) are so fantastic with so much damage and so much utility.

Edit: I know flimp and seven mirror both use torch offhand. Flimp uses scepter/torch as sort of a utility set to his main weapon, the staff, which is very evident if you watch his videos. This neatly side-steps the problem of the mage, since he only uses the torch for the utility of the prestige. Seven also uses the torch in a similar way, though he does at least try to use the mage a bit, though it doesn’t do anything useful of course. I still maintain that both of these builds would be better off using a focus instead of the torch (and I think seven has been using a focus recently as well).

love your posts about iMage, will help us getting it boosted <3

While blast finishers are bugged no point in using torch :/

Double blast finisher in Tpvp is godly… especially if you have a ranger or ele on your team who lay down water/Fire fields and call them out..

iMage is terrible It’s not amazing but why would I give up like 4k dps of the duelist for 3 stacks of confusion,

The blast finishers are realllllly strong though… 3k heal or double area might can turn a team fight into team kitten

Also.. lol at rebranding pve+ as wpvp.

I’m surprised people would say The Prestige’s CD is too long, it’s the shortest CD stealth we have. And comments like “we don’t need The Prestige because we already have Decoy!” just bleeds ignorance, use both and you essentially can stealth (and drop targeting twice as often.

In case you don’t know, The Prestige’s CD used to be 20s. There’s a reason why that was extended.

Lysico.4906:

Morfedel.4165:

Phantasmal mage goes great in a confusion build, especially as it adds retaliation to the mix.

It gets no + cond duration from builds. Even assuming you land it on a player in wpvp, AND they are dumb enough to attack during all 3 stacks, it does less dps then the other phantasms..

When combined with Retaliation as well that the thing grants? Are you sure?

I’m not being sarcastic here, I really haven’t tabulated the effect; but let’s say you are doing a duel against one other character, so you can be sure where the bounces will go; I already use other sources to generate both retaliation AND confusion, and the P.M just adds more to it – are you sure, in that case, that it isn’t worthy? Do you have the math to back it up, or is it speculation?

I’m willing to be convinced, just show me the numbers.

Lysico.4906:

Sorry I was typing fast and should have been clear. I am talking about in Wpvp.

Torch is inferior to our other choices. Maybe off hand sword is closer to how bad torch is.

But pistol and focus are much better then torch and the really crappy damage. I have solid stealth already with two other abilities.

It depends on your build playstyle, I use torch in WvW and have done for a while now. My current build is: 20 Dom, 20 Duelling and 30 chaos, I use hidden veil, decoy, blink and mass invis. I use cleansing conflagration, so my torch skills remove conditions and they are on a shorter cooldown. So this gives me, 4 seconds of stealth that clears conditions, AoE blind and AoE burns if I use it offensively. I also get a defensive boon with Prismatic Understanding.

Yes the iMage sucks, but he give’s me retaliation, confusion on my target which is useful and I also get a condition cleanse. It would be nice if the iMage was swapped form something that does direct damage, like the iRogue when your downed, that would be more in line with the torch as a “stealthy” type weapon.

I think off-hand torch is far, far from useless. Torch has saved me or given me the advantage more times than I can count, I personally think it’s a pretty good off-hand, just let down by the iMage.

Loco.4561:

Lysico.4906:

Sorry I was typing fast and should have been clear. I am talking about in Wpvp.

Torch is inferior to our other choices. Maybe off hand sword is closer to how bad torch is.

But pistol and focus are much better then torch and the really crappy damage. I have solid stealth already with two other abilities.

It depends on your build playstyle, I use torch in WvW and have done for a while now. My current build is: 20 Dom, 20 Duelling and 30 chaos, I use hidden veil, decoy, blink and mass invis. I use cleansing conflagration, so my torch skills remove conditions and they are on a shorter cooldown. So this gives me, 4 seconds of stealth that clears conditions, AoE blind and AoE burns if I use it offensively. I also get a defensive boon with Prismatic Understanding.

Yes the iMage sucks, but he give’s me retaliation, confusion on my target which is useful and I also get a condition cleanse. It would be nice if the iMage was swapped form something that does direct damage, like the iRogue when your downed, that would be more in line with the torch as a “stealthy” type weapon.

I think off-hand torch is far, far from useless. Torch has saved me or given me the advantage more times than I can count, I personally think it’s a pretty good off-hand, just let down by the iMage.

I just checked FLIMP’s build for the first time, and it so happened that I have a very similar build that works wonderfully for me. While I believe it would be even better if Phantasmal Mage’s Confusion was lengthened as well, the fact is that as it is, it’s still useful in tandem with the other sources of confusion. Also, I don’t keep the PM alive for that long usually, since it will most probably get shattered soon enough, and the Staff is indeed my main weapon. But the stealth safety (even better now) of the Torch +additional Phantasm in a pinch is hard to bit. After trying a number of different “good” weapons (and make no mistake, they are also good options), using the “bad” weapons according to extreme min/maxers not only make me more effective, but has proved to be the most fun, which most “DPS math” seldom accounts for.

Extreme survivability AND condition damage? Yes, sign me up for that. With incomplete gear (it’s all Rabid’s), total defense with staff is 2,893, and condition damage can get almost as high as the 1,800s-can only get better when maxed out.

(There’s one weakness with the Torch IME-barring Signet’s of Inspiration’s ocassional Swiftness boon, if you so wish to temporarily equip it, you are forced to be slow, but I won’t sacrifice my build and playstyle to get either Centaur Runes or the Focus. It didn’t seem reasonable to use the focus for me JUST for the speed buff, when The Prestige is way more central to my playstyle.)

I wish people expressed their thoughts with the following added statements: “in my opinion, the Torch hasn’t proved to be a great weapon for my playstyle” rather than the definite (but wrong) “the Torch is THE inferior weapon of all available for the Mesmer.” Personal bias, even when “backed up” with situational math (usually bent towards their already established conclusions), is not the same as facts, and in this game, it’s all about what fits EACH player-I would certainly not claim that Torch is the off-hand to use for everyone out there, and would be foolish, IMHO, to state as much.

i started using it cuz of the awesome glitch. It then been fixed yesterday and i’m still running it not because its better than pistol but because its different and a weapon i ignored since launch. I think anet is ignoring this weapon because no way anyone who cared could leave it that bad. Prestige for example, why doesn’t it stun for 1sec and gives poison for 5-10sec like the Irukandji in fotm? I mean the skill is on 30sec CD, how is 3sec of burning/meh base damage and 3sec of stealth justify this long CD? It doesn’t so decrease CD to 20 or significantly increase its base damage. My pick would be 1sec stun, 3sec burning (not the stupid 3,1/2 of burning it has), same base damage and 5sec of poison. Not gonna bother talking about iMage because its the ultimate worst phantasm in the game…

Nuka Cola.8520:

i started using it cuz of the awesome glitch. It then been fixed yesterday and i’m still running it not because its better than pistol but because its different and a weapon i ignored since launch. I think anet is ignoring this weapon because no way anyone who cared could leave it that bad. Prestige for example, why doesn’t it stun for 1sec and gives poison for 5-10sec like the Irukandji in fotm? I mean the skill is on 30sec CD, how is 3sec of burning/meh base damage and 3sec of stealth justify this long CD? It doesn’t so decrease CD to 20 or significantly increase its base damage. My pick would be 1sec stun, 3sec burning (not the stupid 3,1/2 of burning it has), same base damage and 5sec of poison.

Can’t tell if serious…

People use Decoy and don’t complain about its CD, why do people complain about The Prestige when it actually has a shorter CD?

Embolism.8106:

Nuka Cola.8520:

i started using it cuz of the awesome glitch. It then been fixed yesterday and i’m still running it not because its better than pistol but because its different and a weapon i ignored since launch. I think anet is ignoring this weapon because no way anyone who cared could leave it that bad. Prestige for example, why doesn’t it stun for 1sec and gives poison for 5-10sec like the Irukandji in fotm? I mean the skill is on 30sec CD, how is 3sec of burning/meh base damage and 3sec of stealth justify this long CD? It doesn’t so decrease CD to 20 or significantly increase its base damage. My pick would be 1sec stun, 3sec burning (not the stupid 3,1/2 of burning it has), same base damage and 5sec of poison.

Can’t tell if serious…

People use Decoy and don’t complain about its CD, why do people complain about The Prestige when it actually has a shorter CD?

Because Decoy is a stun breaker, summons a clone and most importantly an utility which you can change if you don’t like. You can’t change Prestige if you’re running Torch and as is its not good enough. I don’t expect anet to care or do anything to this weapon in the next 6+ months neither.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Because Decoy is a stun breaker, summons a clone and most importantly an utility which you can change if you don’t like. You can’t change Prestige if you’re running Torch and as is its not good enough and i don’t expect anet to care or do anything to this weapon in the next 6+ months.

We have so many stun breakers it really doesn’t seem to matter, plus the stealth and target dropping is far more important (if I want to stun break I’d generally use a teleport to get out of whatever combo they’re using).

Conjuring a Clone is good for deceiving new players but to any experienced player it’s quite obvious what happened; and the typical Mesmer can roll out so many Clones an extra one from a 32s CD skill makes little difference.

You can change Utilities, but why can’t you… change the Torch? The only difference is it’s two skills together instead of just one…

Using a Torch more or less doubles your stealth and target dropping capability. Obviously this is a niche weapon, it’s not going to work with every build; but for builds that benefit from it it is excellent. Well, The Prestige is, iMage is still crap; but for condition builds that are more interested in Clones than Phantasms in general that’s not really a big issue.

I’m a condition mesmer, and while I’d love to use a torch, I can’t afford to use it because I actually NEED an useful weapon in that offhand. I use focus when in groups, and pistol when I’m alone. The pistol phantasm does more damage, does it faster, and does it reliable; and that on a shorter cooldown than the torch-phantasm. So why would I ever use a torch then? Now, if they would decrease the base cooldown of iMage by around 10 seconds and/or increase the duration of the retaliation it gives and/or increase its base-damage by a good amount… well, then I’d actually consider using a torch instead. I’d really love to.

Saturn.6591:

I’m a condition mesmer, and while I’d love to use a torch, I can’t afford to use it because I actually NEED an useful weapon in that offhand. I use focus when in groups, and pistol when I’m alone. The pistol phantasm does more damage, does it faster, and does it reliable; and that on a shorter cooldown than the torch-phantasm. So why would I ever use a torch then? Now, if they would decrease the base cooldown of iMage by around 10 seconds and/or increase the duration of the retaliation it gives and/or increase its base-damage by a good amount… well, then I’d actually consider using a torch instead. I’d really love to.

But in your case, your phantasms deliver a substantial amount of your total damage, whereas the kind of condition Mesmer some of us seem to be running readily shatters them for more Confusion stacks as needed, and we depend more on the bleeds our clones provide rather than any direct damage our phantasms can dish out (it’s a nice bonus damage, but not essential.) In short, the Torch is not a “bad weapon” just because it’s No.5 Phantasm deals less direct damage than the Pistolier-it depends on your particular builds and playstyle (evidently enough, it does nothing for you, and that’s OK.)

The Torch is QUITE useful; it’s just not for you.

Star Ace.5207:

Saturn.6591:

I’m a condition mesmer, and while I’d love to use a torch, I can’t afford to use it because I actually NEED an useful weapon in that offhand. I use focus when in groups, and pistol when I’m alone. The pistol phantasm does more damage, does it faster, and does it reliable; and that on a shorter cooldown than the torch-phantasm. So why would I ever use a torch then? Now, if they would decrease the base cooldown of iMage by around 10 seconds and/or increase the duration of the retaliation it gives and/or increase its base-damage by a good amount… well, then I’d actually consider using a torch instead. I’d really love to.

But in your case, your phantasms deliver a substantial amount of your total damage, whereas the kind of condition Mesmer some of us seem to be running readily shatters them for more Confusion stacks as needed, and we depend more on the bleeds our clones provide rather than any direct damage our phantasms can dish out (it’s a nice bonus damage, but not essential.) In short, the Torch is not a “bad weapon” just because it’s No.5 Phantasm deals less direct damage than the Pistolier-it depends on your particular builds and playstyle (evidently enough, it does nothing for you, and that’s OK.)

The Torch is QUITE useful; it’s just not for you.

Even if you just use it for shattering, the pistol would be better because it has a much shorter cooldown. And with crits, it can also apply a nice stack of bleeds. One of the main reasons why I need a phantasm like the iDuelist, are thieves which are almost constantly in stealth. I’ve fought one of those a few times before I was using a pistol, and I didn’t stand a chance, simply because they would be in stealth almost all the time, and if I actually managed to put some conditions on them, they’d nearly instantly remove them during their normal rotation… meaning when they stealth next time, which happens once every few seconds. So the only thing I can do is to put something up that does damage as soon as they unstealth, and that’s the iDuelist in this case. Some nice direct-dmg (even if you don’t have any extra power in your build) and a couple of bleed-stacks. If you cast an ethereal field over it, add some stacks of confusion (with a bit of luck you could end up with more stacks than from the iMage). Depending on the build of the thief, it’s still going to be a long fight, but you might actually win. Now, same scenario with the torch. You cast an iMage on the thief (and you can do it less often than you can cast iDuelist) and then it shoots an orb at him, which he can dodge because it’s not nearly as fast as pistol shots and it’s a single shot. If he doesn’t dodge it and gets hit, he will get a tiny little bit of damage from it and 3 stacks of confusion along with me getting a bit of retaliation (if I’m in range, that is). If the thief hits you like that, he’ll get a bit of additional damage. IF he hits you like that. He might as well not. And again; good luck trying to shatter on a nearly perma-stealthed thief. Even if you actually hit him with a CoF, he will just cleanse the confusion again and again. IF you hit him. The second pistol-skill actually increases your chances of doing so, but the second torch-skill doesn’t.

tl;dr:

torch: if, and if not, and if then, maybe a little bit of damage with a quite long cooldown
pistol: some nice almost guaranteed damage on a reasonable cooldown

Oh, and in group-situations I’d prefer the focus over the torch as well. You can use the warden to shoot some confusing bolts, it does some damage too (and also adds bleeds with crits), and temporal curtain/into the void pretty much explain themself. You can also use it to cure conditions, without even needing to trait for it.

So, my statement is still the same. Unless they improve iMage, it simply doesn’t make much sense to use the torch. Which is a shame, because I’d prefer the torch style-wise over the pistol. Oh well.

@Everyone: Go back and read my post earlier in the thread, you seem to have ignored what I wrote about the Mage, but I’ll address a few things here.

The Mage doesn’t perform any better in confusion bomb builds, or condie builds. It is still useless. 3 seconds of confusion is completely worthless. Most confusion builds have at least +70% confusion duration so that the confusion actually lasts a reasonable time. The Mage ignores that, staying at 3 seconds of confusion. Completely worthless.

As far as the retaliation damage, 3 seconds is more than worthless. In 3 seconds, your enemy is unlikely to do more than 3 hits. The total damage from retal in a condie build will be around 600-700 damage. Worthless. Additionally, you can’t control when that retal is applied, and since it is applied with confusion, that makes it even less likely that you will get any benefit out of it. On top of that, using sword/focus gives you highly reliable 14 seconds of retaliation from the leap combo. Anyone who uses the torch for retaliation needs to get their head examined.

Overall, the Mage is worthless. It’s not better in certain builds. If anything, it shows how bad it is even more in confusion builds. It’s on the longest cooldown of any phantasm with a horribly placed cd trait so almost no one takes it, so it is completely useless even for shatter fodder. It is the worst skill of any weapon on any class in the entire game, with no competition.

Pyroatheist.9031:

@Everyone: Go back and read my post earlier in the thread, you seem to have ignored what I wrote about the Mage, but I’ll address a few things here.

The Mage doesn’t perform any better in confusion bomb builds, or condie builds. It is still useless. 3 seconds of confusion is completely worthless. Most confusion builds have at least +70% confusion duration so that the confusion actually lasts a reasonable time. The Mage ignores that, staying at 3 seconds of confusion. Completely worthless.

As far as the retaliation damage, 3 seconds is more than worthless. In 3 seconds, your enemy is unlikely to do more than 3 hits. The total damage from retal in a condie build will be around 600-700 damage. Worthless. Additionally, you can’t control when that retal is applied, and since it is applied with confusion, that makes it even less likely that you will get any benefit out of it. On top of that, using sword/focus gives you highly reliable 14 seconds of retaliation from the leap combo. Anyone who uses the torch for retaliation needs to get their head examined.

Overall, the Mage is worthless. It’s not better in certain builds. If anything, it shows how bad it is even more in confusion builds. It’s on the longest cooldown of any phantasm with a horribly placed cd trait so almost no one takes it, so it is completely useless even for shatter fodder. It is the worst skill of any weapon on any class in the entire game, with no competition.

So because it doesn’t work for you, Torch must really suck, huh? To each their own. With all due respect, I would never tell you your builds are useless just because I have no use for them.

@Star Ace: If you had read my original post, you would be a bit better informed about my opinion on the torch.

The prestige is an awesome skill, even if the cooldown is a tad long. No arguments here, this is a great skill in every way (once they re-fix it again, and probably fix the fixed skill since they’ll probabl break something else with the second fix).

However, the Mage is completely useless. That is an indisputable fact. Any arguments to the contrary made I will gladly tear apart.

The problem is that the torch only has 1 viable skill on it. It’s a great skill, but it’s not so great as to carry the weight that should be shares between 2 skills on a weapon. For that reason, I won’t use the torch. Now, for some people, the prestige is good enough to ignore the Mage and just work with the one skill. I think they’re mistaken, but now we get more into the realm of opinions, and away from facts.

Not using the torch is my choice and my opinion. That the Mage is the worst weapon skill of any class of any weapon in the game is fact.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I think they’re mistaken, but now we get more into the realm of opinions, and away from facts.

Opinions must not be mutually exclusive with facts. Otherwise, you would always be “right” (and others “wrong”) because you have “checked your facts.” No, it’s still your own opinion. Your facts are not my own. In short, you come accross as "I am right, and everybody else is wrong, because I know the facts, while others choose to ignore them for whichever “non-factual” reason."

Note that you shouldn’t use the Torch if it doesn’t work for you, but others are not “mistaken” in using it just because you wouldn’t-that’s all. I have my own personal reasons to avoid using Focus (probably “non-factual” and “wrong” to you), but I would be really silly to tell people the weapon is bad or that they would be mistaken in using it.

(BTW, the Focus would work well with perhaps other builds, but no the one I am currently running. The weapon is good, but I dislike its gameplay-as I am sure you dislike Torch playstyle as well, “facts” or otherwise.)

I am sorry if I offended you, though-I just don’t like people being told how to or not to play. It’s like why people care so much about being “right?” Just play your own way and don’t mind what others do.

@Star Ace: Again, you seem to be ignoring what I write. As I said, it is my opinion that people who use torch could do better with another offhand. That is not a fact. There are no facts that support it, and no facts that contradict it because of the nature if the statement. It is simply my opinion, and is also the reason I will not use torch.

The only times I cited facts was with relation to the worthlessness of the Mage. If you really want to get into that, by all means try to prove what I said is wrong, but you’ll have a hard time of it.

Saturn.6591:

Star Ace.5207:

Saturn.6591:

I’m a condition mesmer, and while I’d love to use a torch, I can’t afford to use it because I actually NEED an useful weapon in that offhand. I use focus when in groups, and pistol when I’m alone. The pistol phantasm does more damage, does it faster, and does it reliable; and that on a shorter cooldown than the torch-phantasm. So why would I ever use a torch then? Now, if they would decrease the base cooldown of iMage by around 10 seconds and/or increase the duration of the retaliation it gives and/or increase its base-damage by a good amount… well, then I’d actually consider using a torch instead. I’d really love to.

But in your case, your phantasms deliver a substantial amount of your total damage, whereas the kind of condition Mesmer some of us seem to be running readily shatters them for more Confusion stacks as needed, and we depend more on the bleeds our clones provide rather than any direct damage our phantasms can dish out (it’s a nice bonus damage, but not essential.) In short, the Torch is not a “bad weapon” just because it’s No.5 Phantasm deals less direct damage than the Pistolier-it depends on your particular builds and playstyle (evidently enough, it does nothing for you, and that’s OK.)

The Torch is QUITE useful; it’s just not for you.

Even if you just use it for shattering, the pistol would be better because it has a much shorter cooldown. And with crits, it can also apply a nice stack of bleeds. One of the main reasons why I need a phantasm like the iDuelist, are thieves which are almost constantly in stealth. I’ve fought one of those a few times before I was using a pistol, and I didn’t stand a chance, simply because they would be in stealth almost all the time, and if I actually managed to put some conditions on them, they’d nearly instantly remove them during their normal rotation… meaning when they stealth next time, which happens once every few seconds. So the only thing I can do is to put something up that does damage as soon as they unstealth, and that’s the iDuelist in this case. Some nice direct-dmg (even if you don’t have any extra power in your build) and a couple of bleed-stacks. If you cast an ethereal field over it, add some stacks of confusion (with a bit of luck you could end up with more stacks than from the iMage). Depending on the build of the thief, it’s still going to be a long fight, but you might actually win. Now, same scenario with the torch. You cast an iMage on the thief (and you can do it less often than you can cast iDuelist) and then it shoots an orb at him, which he can dodge because it’s not nearly as fast as pistol shots and it’s a single shot. If he doesn’t dodge it and gets hit, he will get a tiny little bit of damage from it and 3 stacks of confusion along with me getting a bit of retaliation (if I’m in range, that is). If the thief hits you like that, he’ll get a bit of additional damage. IF he hits you like that. He might as well not. And again; good luck trying to shatter on a nearly perma-stealthed thief. Even if you actually hit him with a CoF, he will just cleanse the confusion again and again. IF you hit him. The second pistol-skill actually increases your chances of doing so, but the second torch-skill doesn’t.

tl;dr:

torch: if, and if not, and if then, maybe a little bit of damage with a quite long cooldown
pistol: some nice almost guaranteed damage on a reasonable cooldown

Oh, and in group-situations I’d prefer the focus over the torch as well. You can use the warden to shoot some confusing bolts, it does some damage too (and also adds bleeds with crits), and temporal curtain/into the void pretty much explain themself. You can also use it to cure conditions, without even needing to trait for it.

So, my statement is still the same. Unless they improve iMage, it simply doesn’t make much sense to use the torch. Which is a shame, because I’d prefer the torch style-wise over the pistol. Oh well.

To translate: "I failed at killing a heavy stealth thief with a torch. Therefore torch is rubbish, despite the fact that you guys can not only own a thief with a pistol, but can own a thief with a torch too.

Here’s the error in your argument: It doesn’t follow that because you suck with a torch, that torch therefore sucks.

Pyroatheist.9031:

@Star Ace: Again, you seem to be ignoring what I write. As I said, it is my opinion that people who use torch could do better with another offhand. That is not a fact. There are no facts that support it, and no facts that contradict it because of the nature if the statement. It is simply my opinion, and is also the reason I will not use torch.

The only times I cited facts was with relation to the worthlessness of the Mage. If you really want to get into that, by all means try to prove what I said is wrong, but you’ll have a hard time of it.

I am sorry, for I did take it to mean you were dismissing others as mistaken just for using the Torch, while you seem to focus on the Phantasmal Mage. I don’t like debates (honestly), but I do like the Pistol’s Phantasm a lot more as well-it is just that I would hardly have it unload that much damage anyway, since I would probably shatter it soon enough. For that purpose, the seemingly trivial 3 seconds of added confusion can be more useful in my case, because after that one attack, I will probably get rid of the Phantasmal Mage anyway. One additional illusion to shatter while the great survivability overall of The Prestige sell the Torch for me, especially since I’ve played enough with it so it feels “natural” to me (in truth, I originally wanted to play with the Scepter/Focus together, ala classic GW1, but found such playstyle to be quite clumsy, though I know there must be a a few players that make that combo work for them.) I know you won’t use Torch due to the relatively “uselessness” of No. 5 skill, but in my case that hardly poses a problem.

In short, I don’t use the Torch because the Phantasmal Mage brings a lot of direct damage-I use it because it adds up (however slightly) to the “confusing barrage” of my condition build. In fact, I switch to the Scepter/Torch for emergency situations, to use the scepter 3 after two combo shatters, and to increase my Corruption stacks so I can be even more effective with Staff. I go back to Staff as soon as I can barring special situations. You know all of these things, though, so we should leave it at that.

In my humble opinion, Master of Misdirection should work with the Phantasmal Mage, and it’s a pity it doesn’t-it’s not as if that would make the Torch overpowered, or would make all players use Torch all of the sudden. I don’t see how it would be game-breaking to add that minimal confusion extension to the Phantasmal Mage, but who knows, I may be wrong in my assesment.

Scepter/focus is actually really bad, they have almost no synergy at all.

Sounds like you’re using flimps build, which actually gets away with using the torch because its not a main weapon. In that build, you use staff, and then switch to scepter and torch as a utility set for some confusion that might do something, and a target drop while your enemies are taking condition damage, and the torch is really only useful for the target drop.

Edit: to fix the Mage, it needs to be changed massively. Just letting one trait apply to it will change nothing. Only applying confusion is one of the big problems, because confusion is useless on its own, it needs backup or additional pressure to really function properly. The Mage should be a condition damage phantasm. It should have a 20s cd like all the others. It should apply multiple conditions, confusion, sever stacks of bleed, and burning. Alternatively you could have it function as sort of a debuffer, stacking up chill, cripple, and weakness. Whatever it does, condition duration needs to apply, and the cooldown needs to be normalized with respect to the other phantasms.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Scepter/focus is actually really bad, they have almost no synergy at all.

Sounds like you’re using flimps build, which actually gets away with using the torch because its not a main weapon. In that build, you use staff, and then switch to scepter and torch as a utility set for some confusion that might do something, and a target drop while your enemies are taking condition damage, and the torch is really only useful for the target drop.

Edit: to fix the Mage, it needs to be changed massively. Just letting one trait apply to it will change nothing. Only applying confusion is one of the big problems, because confusion is useless on its own, it needs backup or additional pressure to really function properly. The Mage should be a condition damage phantasm. It should have a 20s cd like all the others. It should apply multiple conditions, confusion, sever stacks of bleed, and burning. Alternatively you could have it function as sort of a debuffer, stacking up chill, cripple, and weakness. Whatever it does, condition duration needs to apply, and the cooldown needs to be normalized with respect to the other phantasms.

I admittedly am using FLIMP’s build “by accident” as it were, as I didn’t know of it until recently, and I do use a few different traits, but where it counts it’s very similar. 0/20/30/0/20. I didn’t realize it was a named, popular build, though-I just went for a variation to a condition build that is theoretically safe to play (and usually, it is) while piling up extreme condition damage (I don’t use his runes, going for Undead, but that’s OK.)

Yes, Scepter/Focus are-weirdly enough-very hard to put together… which is strange, but I guess this isn’t GW1 after all. Whenever I think of Focus, I never think “melee” given my GW1 background, yet I have used it melee on my Guardian (works both melee and ranged with it actually)-I just don’t think of Mesmer Focus as a “melee weapon” but it does work better with sword, as far as I am concerned.

I would advocate a shorter cooldown, but wouldn’t Phantasmal Mage be too powerful if it inflicted all of those conditions? In that case, it may become OU rather than UU as it is now. I am not saying I wouldn’t welcome those changes, but rather that I feel ANet will probably deem it a much too extreme change (whether you’d agree or not is another thing.) It WOULD suit my build, but I can imagine many players complaining about how Torch is “OP.”

@Star Ace: It all depends on durations and cooldowns. A warlock in a full damage setup will do an average of 7k-8k crits on a target. In order to match that sort of damage in a full condition damage setup, you’d need something like 5 seconds of burning and a few stacks of bleeding for about 5 seconds, noting that the conditions can also be removed, negating significant portions of their damage. Looking at it that way, something like what I proposed wouldn’t be overpowered at all.

Now, if the mage was not a damaging phantasm at all, and took the debuffing role, it becomes much harder to quantify its relative strength, since the effects of things like weakness, chill, and cripple change drastically depending on the situation. If this were the case, it would have to be balanced with playtesting, because there are really no analagous skills or phantasms to compare it to.

I hope that people keep complaining about torch so that ANet never realizes how OP it is. If you can’t kill a thief with torch in your offhand the only problem is you. L2P. (Hint: Try popping torch 4 when they C&D for a blind and a bunch of wasted initiative on their part).

Hey guys. Since I’ve been mentioned a few times (kitten flex), I thought I’d pop by and say the mage sucks as a phantasm and pretty much shatter fodder. Having said that, I wouldn’t summon it to shatter but I would never hesitate to shatter it if I wanted to shatter.

Prestige is the only reason I use torch and that’s to drop target and escape against large numbers. After the new update, it’s perfect for stomping downed people.

If I knew I was going to be fighting small numbers though, I’d probably switch to pistol which is great even if you’re a condition mesmer.

I can’t believe how ignorant some people can be. Of course it’s possible to beat thieves with a torch, but don’t expect to kill a skilled thief with it who uses a build with lots of stealth. Avoiding their CnD with The Prestige is something you can only do every 30 seconds. On the other hand, Magic Bullet has a cooldown of 25 seconds and lets you apply some damage while they can’t move. Just because they fail to apply a CnD every 30 seconds, they won’t run out of initiative. And then again, I’ve never questioned The Prestige. It’s the phantasm, which is almost completely useless for anything. The reasons for that were already explained well enough many times in this thread.

Also, even IF I’d just suck and you would be able to kill a skilled “perma-stealth” thief with a torch, it would still not change the fact that other weapon-choices are much more useful than the torch. Because with that other weapon, even I who apparently suck so much can kill this specific thief, while it needs a real kitten-pr0-torch-expert to kill him while using torch instead.

The phantasm really is what makes the torch a worse choice than other off-hands in most scenarios. As Pyroatheist already said, The Prestige is a nice skill, but it can’t outweigh the suckyness of the phantasm. So for the torch to be equal with other off-hands, they need to either buff the phantasm to make it worth using, or lower the cooldown of The Prestige to something like 10-15 seconds, because then it would outweigh the sucky phantasm. ^^

Saturn.6591:

I can’t believe how ignorant some people can be. Of course it’s possible to beat thieves with a torch, but don’t expect to kill a skilled thief with it who uses a build with lots of stealth. Avoiding their CnD with The Prestige is something you can only do every 30 seconds. On the other hand, Magic Bullet has a cooldown of 25 seconds and lets you apply some damage while they can’t move. Just because they fail to apply a CnD every 30 seconds, they won’t run out of initiative. And then again, I’ve never questioned The Prestige. It’s the phantasm, which is almost completely useless for anything. The reasons for that were already explained well enough many times in this thread.

Also, even IF I’d just suck and you would be able to kill a skilled “perma-stealth” thief with a torch, it would still not change the fact that other weapon-choices are much more useful than the torch. Because with that other weapon, even I who apparently suck so much can kill this specific thief, while it needs a real kitten-pr0-torch-expert to kill him while using torch instead.

The phantasm really is what makes the torch a worse choice than other off-hands in most scenarios. As Pyroatheist already said, The Prestige is a nice skill, but it can’t outweigh the suckyness of the phantasm. So for the torch to be equal with other off-hands, they need to either buff the phantasm to make it worth using, or lower the cooldown of The Prestige to something like 10-15 seconds, because then it would outweigh the sucky phantasm. ^^

In your own words, what you’ve just stated is that you dislike Torch playstyle, not that it’s really bad. The Phantasmal Mage doesn’t invalidate the whole weapon for what I do with it. It’s just that you play differently, are probably used to “the better alternatives,” and that’s OK-but don’t blame the Torch because it doesn’t apply to your builds/playstyle.

The best weapons will always be those that works best for each player under this or that circumstance-not solely a math equation.

Saturn.6591:

I can’t believe how ignorant some people can be. Of course it’s possible to beat thieves with a torch, but don’t expect to kill a skilled thief with it who uses a build with lots of stealth. Avoiding their CnD with The Prestige is something you can only do every 30 seconds. On the other hand, Magic Bullet has a cooldown of 25 seconds and lets you apply some damage while they can’t move. Just because they fail to apply a CnD every 30 seconds, they won’t run out of initiative. And then again, I’ve never questioned The Prestige. It’s the phantasm, which is almost completely useless for anything. The reasons for that were already explained well enough many times in this thread.

Also, even IF I’d just suck and you would be able to kill a skilled “perma-stealth” thief with a torch, it would still not change the fact that other weapon-choices are much more useful than the torch. Because with that other weapon, even I who apparently suck so much can kill this specific thief, while it needs a real kitten-pr0-torch-expert to kill him while using torch instead.

The phantasm really is what makes the torch a worse choice than other off-hands in most scenarios. As Pyroatheist already said, The Prestige is a nice skill, but it can’t outweigh the suckyness of the phantasm. So for the torch to be equal with other off-hands, they need to either buff the phantasm to make it worth using, or lower the cooldown of The Prestige to something like 10-15 seconds, because then it would outweigh the sucky phantasm. ^^

I kill skilled perma-stealth and c&d thieves all day with torch offhand. torch 4 gives you one c&d buster, f3 shatter gives you another. Between those you have everything you need to burst them to death. If you miss, you have enough stealth to hold out until both get up again.

Alright, I think we can all agree the iMage is bad. I think we can also agree that The Prestige brings something to the table that no other off-hand could even come close to offer. Now, here’s the part that Torch skeptics don’t seem to understand: some builds don’t care about Phantasms, and therefore don’t really care that iMage sucks.

Yes, it is true that in condition builds iDuelist is stronger, but here’s the thing: it isn’t really that much stronger than a Staff Clone (which attacks more often and provides you with Might and Fury to fuel yours and all other Illusions’ damage), so the actual benefit you gain from maintaining iDuelist is not that high. Plus, unless you switch back to the Staff, you will start losing DPS as your Staff Clone are lost/Shattered. As for the lower CD of iDuelist compared to iMage in terms of Shattering, you shouldn’t have problems maintaining Shatters with Clones alone, Phantasms are just a minor boost; so it matters little.

Also, I would like to point out again that The Prestige used to have a 20s CD, and there is a good reason why they nerfed it.

Embolism.8106:

Yes, it is true that in condition builds iDuelist is stronger, but here’s the thing: it isn’t really that much stronger than a Staff Clone (which attacks more often and provides you with Might and Fury to fuel yours and all other Illusions’ damage), so the actual benefit you gain from maintaining iDuelist is not that high.

This might be true against opponents which stay visible and don’t cleanse 1-2 conditions every second. However, against a well-played stealth-build, the attacks of your staff-clones are just too slow. They might hit once each (maybe not even that), which would lead to 2-6 stacks of bleeding and maybe a second of burning in total. Two iDuelists on the other hand will (even with no power in your build) nearly instantly inflict around 2×700 direct damage (probably more) and around 4-6 bleeds each (8-12 both). If you time your ethereal combo-field right, you can add some confusion.

Staff clones make more sense if they can constantly hit your target, but if the target is permanently stealthed unless its attacking you, you need to apply as much damage as fast as possible, before it goes into stealth again (which will also remove conditions).

Since we seem to agree that iMage isn’t capable of doing so, I’ll throw in that The Prestige also doesn’t help you with that (Magic Bullet does, btw). Sure the burn is nice, but you need to be next to the target to apply it… and if your target is invisible most of the time, that’s only gonna happen if you’re lucky.

The only other option in a staff & torch setup would then be the iWarlock; but it only can crit once and the direct damage is also not nearly enough with no or low power in your build and no conditions on the target.

Regarding the iMage, I haven’t ever traited this, but have yall ever used Illusionary Elasticity with the iMage? If so, wouldn’t that put 6 stacks of confusion on someone relatively often? More if you have 2 out of course and assuming the extra bounce goes to the same person.

This phantasm is like any other: summon it, let it attack once, then shatter it. For confusion builds, it ups the sources of confusion that you can rotate on a target to keep a constant stack on someone.

Saturn.6591:

This might be true against opponents which stay visible and don’t cleanse 1-2 conditions every second. However, against a well-played stealth-build, the attacks of your staff-clones are just too slow. They might hit once each (maybe not even that), which would lead to 2-6 stacks of bleeding and maybe a second of burning in total. Two iDuelists on the other hand will (even with no power in your build) nearly instantly inflict around 2×700 direct damage (probably more) and around 4-6 bleeds each (8-12 both). If you time your ethereal combo-field right, you can add some confusion.

Staff clones make more sense if they can constantly hit your target, but if the target is permanently stealthed unless its attacking you, you need to apply as much damage as fast as possible, before it goes into stealth again (which will also remove conditions).

Since we seem to agree that iMage isn’t capable of doing so, I’ll throw in that The Prestige also doesn’t help you with that (Magic Bullet does, btw). Sure the burn is nice, but you need to be next to the target to apply it… and if your target is invisible most of the time, that’s only gonna happen if you’re lucky.

The only other option in a staff & torch setup would then be the iWarlock; but it only can crit once and the direct damage is also not nearly enough with no or low power in your build and no conditions on the target.

I find it slightly amusing that you deliberately avoid mentioning the word “Thief”, as though you are trying to obscure the fact that only one profession out of eight is actually potentially capable of what you describe, and therefore how situational your iDuelist “advantage” really is.

In any case, Thieves do not in any way require iDuelist to defeat with a condition build, I deal with them just fine without using any Phantasms. Confusion is the key, even in sPvP: their low HP means they can spam themselves down in an instant with a well-timed Confusion burst.

The Prestige is first and foremost a powerful defensive skill, it is essentially another casting of Decoy. Trying to compare it to Magic Bullet is apples and oranges. I might also add that Mesmer stealth is one of the best counters to Thief stealth.

Soyboy.3548:

Regarding the iMage, I haven’t ever traited this, but have yall ever used Illusionary Elasticity with the iMage? If so, wouldn’t that put 6 stacks of confusion on someone relatively often? More if you have 2 out of course and assuming the extra bounce goes to the same person.

This phantasm is like any other: summon it, let it attack once, then shatter it. For confusion builds, it ups the sources of confusion that you can rotate on a target to keep a constant stack on someone.

Illusionary Elasticity doesn’t work with iMage. Besides, I believe iMage has two bounces by default, but it does enemy-enemy-ally instead of enemy-ally-enemy.

Confusion builds never count on iMage as part of their Confusion repertoire. It is too slow, too short and too unreliable.

If +CondDuration works on Illusions the iMage may be viable. But it still needs a CD reduction.

Regardless of all of our feelings about the current torch, the fact is that anet just broke it really badly, and have yet to give an acknowledgement of this fact. I found this small thread in the bug forum trying to get an anet response.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mesmer-Torch-Skill-The-Prestige-1/first#post1560946

Embolism.8106:

I find it slightly amusing that you deliberately avoid mentioning the word “Thief”, as though you are trying to obscure the fact that only one profession out of eight is actually potentially capable of what you describe, and therefore how situational your iDuelist “advantage” really is.

So, let’s say that torch and pistol are equal against any profession other than thief. Against a thief, the torch is inferior to the pistol. So, why should I chose an offhand which lets me deal better with 7 out of 8 professions if I can use one which is good against all eight of them?

Embolism.8106:

In any case, Thieves do not in any way require iDuelist to defeat with a condition build, I deal with them just fine without using any Phantasms. Confusion is the key, even in sPvP: their low HP means they can spam themselves down in an instant with a well-timed Confusion burst.

I think you are confusing a bad skillspamming thief with a thief who actually thinks while playing and is in stealth a lot. It’s hard to burst confusion on them, because it’s not that easy to actually hit them with a shatter (because they are in stealth most of the time). And if you do (I did a few times), you do that AFTER they attack out of stealth, so the only confusion damage they get is from using one skill to stealth again, which removes confusion and maybe also heals them. At this rate, you’ll end up losing the fight because you can’t heal enough to outheal all the damage you get from the thief, while the thief has less of a problem to outheal anything that you manage to throw at him. That’s why I figured I need to do more damage in a shorter timeframe. Kinda obvious, imo.

Embolism.8106:

Trying to compare it to Magic Bullet is apples and oranges.

Not if you compare the usefulness in specific situations.

Embolism.8106:

I might also add that Mesmer stealth is one of the best counters to Thief stealth.

You do realize that a Mesmer doesn’t even have half the stealth-uptime of a Thief, right? I’m not talking about a Thief who stealths one or two times during the entire fight, but about a Thief who stealths after every 1-2 hits.

Notice I put “advantage” in brackets, implying I do not agree with your situational “advantage”. I personally find that the Torch is superior than the Pistol with my playstyle.

The keyword is “well-timed”. You want to hit them with Confusion just before or during their attacks, you don’t want to hit them while they’ve disengaged. To achieve this you should try to bait the Thief out while you’re ready to counter their burst.

Again, well-timed use of your own stealth is the key. Stealth a bit after the Thief stealths, so they are unable to do anything for the duration of that stealth. Decoy is particularly good because if you do it at the right time they might burst on your Clone, opening them up to you.

Overall it’s all about timing and, to some extent, having a “feel” of when a stealthed Thief might try to pounce.

Embolism.8106:

Soyboy.3548:

Regarding the iMage, I haven’t ever traited this, but have yall ever used Illusionary Elasticity with the iMage? If so, wouldn’t that put 6 stacks of confusion on someone relatively often? More if you have 2 out of course and assuming the extra bounce goes to the same person.

This phantasm is like any other: summon it, let it attack once, then shatter it. For confusion builds, it ups the sources of confusion that you can rotate on a target to keep a constant stack on someone.

Illusionary Elasticity doesn’t work with iMage. Besides, I believe iMage has two bounces by default, but it does enemy-enemy-ally instead of enemy-ally-enemy.

Confusion builds never count on iMage as part of their Confusion repertoire. It is too slow, too short and too unreliable.

If +CondDuration works on Illusions the iMage may be viable. But it still needs a CD reduction.

Don’t tell me what my confusion build can rely on. Not everyone copypastas builds from the forums. My build uses the mage and it is nice for what it does. God. People are so controlling on this forum. Excuuuuse me! Other people who don’t post as much as you can have opinions too that are less vocal because we don’t sit around and read this forum all day.