Fractal Mesmer Build w/ 3 Spec Lines
I think it has always been the case for mesmer, there are so many nice mechanics (interrupts, reflections, shatters, phantasms) and it’s impossible to have them all.
I assume your build was the second one in this link
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Fractal_Phantasm
You can actually have it all with the current system! You take domination for the phantasm damage, but we already got 15% baseline (the one from inspiration minor that you did not have). So accepting to give up the extra 15% you never had allows you to get the dueling line.
As a bonus, you can now get bonus damage from the mantra + some extra supporting abilities (distortion sharing, some healing…)
I’ve been having the same problem. Every other class I play I’m able to hammer out satisfactory builds in 5 minutes, but with the Mesmer it is an exercise in frustration. The way traits are placed are so bad that mesmer actually feels nerfed from pre-patch. Personally, my worry is that Anet will look at the metrics of how often anyone takes a trait, and not realize that they’re all bad and they are taken out of necessity. The only line I actually like is Dueling.
There are two problems with most of the traits. Mesmer’s do a large portion of their damage through phantasms, and so they try to keep phantasms alive as long as possible. Thus, most shatter traits are useless. Likewise, interrupt traits will often ruin the more carefully timed tactics of teams, and are impractical to use. The thing is, so many memser traits are interrupts and shatter skills.
Domination:The entire domination line feels like a bunch of traits you have to pick in order to get Fragility and Empowered Illusions. Otherwise it is full of shatter and interrupt traits.
Chaos: This line completely lacks potency. It has random spots of protection and some minor condi stuff. The only reason people take this line is that it has Prismatic Understanding.
Inspirations: This line has some useful things. The cleanses and Warden’s Feedback is good, but the adept and master tiers are only “meh”.
Illusions: This line is also filled with shatter skills, particularly condi ones. This trait line is taken for Illusionists Celerity and Phantasmal haste, and then you get stuck with everything else.
So, if you want to do maximum damage, you take dueling, illusions, and domination. Illusions and domination do almost nothing but damage, so you end up lacking the the versatility and utility that other classes have by default. If you want those tools, you go into dueling, inspirations, then pick between illusions and domination.
Then it is a toss up. Illusions gives you 20% recharge on non-warden phantasm, 20% attack rate, 9% personal damage + 150 malice that is highly unreliable. Domination gives, among spots of vulnerability, 15% illusion damage, 12.5% personal damage on max vulnerability that is highly unreliable, and a recharge reduction on Signet of the Ether. Little to no utility and potency in either of those.
Right now, I’m experimenting with dom/duel/insp, using mantra of distraction to try and get quickness and vulnerability stacks.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)
Why are you even taking inspiration. You don’t need warden’s feedback, and longer lasting glamours is not even needed with the speed you kill things right now and even before the patch.
You sound like one of those mesmers trying too hard to bring utility and complaining about sacrificing damage in the process.
Dump inspiration, pick up dueling. You can replace power block with mental anguish to burst shatter when a boss is near death or doing trash since your phantasms die immediately on trash anyways.
Inspirations provides much more than that:
AoE condi cleanse on heal
AoE invulnerability in emergencies (and sometimes on signet use)
Rampant reflects (which many times are needed, and are useful as they do damage, whereas warden would normally take projectile damage away)
More Durable Phantasms
And then the choice of boon duplication or enhanced glamors. Synergizes with domination to make yet another AoE invulnerability.
Essentially, inspirations provides you all those sorts of little bits and bobs that help deal with whatever random crap that fractals will throw at you.
But I do agree that duelist is almost a must-have trait line. Perma vigor, nigh perma fury on yourself, perma fury on phantasms, up to 150 ferocity fairly reliably, and more potent mantras with a temp damage boost. While most other lines have a trait or two you can use, dueling is chock full of them, whether you are running a power or condi build.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
Inspirations provides much more than that:
AoE condi cleanse on heal
AoE invulnerability in emergencies (and sometimes on signet use)
Rampant reflects (which many times are needed, and are useful as they do damage, whereas warden would normally take projectile damage away)
More Durable Phantasms
And then the choice of boon duplication or enhanced glamors. Synergizes with domination to make yet another AoE invulnerability.Essentially, inspirations provides you all those sorts of little bits and bobs that help deal with whatever random crap that fractals will throw at you.
But I do agree that duelist is almost a must-have trait line. Perma vigor, nigh perma fury on yourself, perma fury on phantasms, up to 150 ferocity fairly reliably, and more potent mantras with a temp damage boost. While most other lines have a trait or two you can use, dueling is chock full of them, whether you are running a power or condi build.
You don’t need the aoe condi clear. That’s why you got staff eles with healing rain. Or Null field/Mantra instead.
AoE invulnerability is just a perk. We haven’t had it in fractal 50’s and yet they are still easily cleared.
The rampant reflects are extraneous. You got Feedback, that’s really all you need in most circumstances.
I don’t think people realize how quickly the eles/thieves/warriors in your group are killing mobs/bosses that an iwarden reflect is really just a luxury.
Maybe in HoT we’ll have actually intense content that may demand these support items, but in the meantime the OP does not get room to complain.
You got your damage options in dom/dueling/illusions. No, you do not need inspiration even for fractal 50.
Inspirations provides much more than that:
AoE condi cleanse on heal
AoE invulnerability in emergencies (and sometimes on signet use)
Rampant reflects (which many times are needed, and are useful as they do damage, whereas warden would normally take projectile damage away)
More Durable Phantasms
And then the choice of boon duplication or enhanced glamors. Synergizes with domination to make yet another AoE invulnerability.Essentially, inspirations provides you all those sorts of little bits and bobs that help deal with whatever random crap that fractals will throw at you.
But I do agree that duelist is almost a must-have trait line. Perma vigor, nigh perma fury on yourself, perma fury on phantasms, up to 150 ferocity fairly reliably, and more potent mantras with a temp damage boost. While most other lines have a trait or two you can use, dueling is chock full of them, whether you are running a power or condi build.
You don’t need the aoe condi clear. That’s why you got staff eles with healing rain. Or Null field/Mantra instead.
AoE invulnerability is just a perk. We haven’t had it in fractal 50’s and yet they are still easily cleared.
The rampant reflects are extraneous. You got Feedback, that’s really all you need in most circumstances.
I don’t think people realize how quickly the eles/thieves/warriors in your group are killing mobs/bosses that an iwarden reflect is really just a luxury.
Maybe in HoT we’ll have actually intense content that may demand these support items, but in the meantime the OP does not get room to complain.
You got your damage options in dom/dueling/illusions. No, you do not need inspiration even for fractal 50.
If a staff ele switches out of fire to clear conditions, your group DPS will tank and might rotations will go out the window. Even pre-patch, the role of condition cleanse has long been the responsibility of the Guard/Mesmer. With AoE “Mender’s Purity” being included automatically with Inspiration, it makes a lot of sense to use mantra of restoration, especially when you consider the 2×4% damage modifier from mantra use. With Healing Prism, there is synergy with MoR to keep your party member’s Scholar bonuses active. And if that wasn’t enough to convince you, you can always swap off-hand weapons before you get in combat to get that third phantasm!
I agree. Since IP is baseline, we can also provide AoE distortion to our party now via F4 in case of emergency.
IMO when reflects are needed in fractals, they’re usually needed in great quantities. Examples include all portions of the Grawl fractal, the first half of the Dredge fractal, and especially Uncategorized. Simply destroying those projectiles with untrained warden feels like a DPS loss.
PvE difficulty needs to be ramped up. My WvW havoc team has been completing level 50s in ~25-30m post-patch. Fights against trash mobs don’t last long enough for me to benefit from compounding power (which doesn’t affect illusion damage), illusionists celerity, or phantasmal haste. With the exception of Snowblind & dualists, bosses that last longer than 15-20s will usually cleave down my phantasms anyways.
In my opinion, you don’t need Illusions even for fractal 50! :P
Anyways, here’s my build that I’m using for 50s: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMBvAJ0BJw~
Warrior, Ele, Ele, Ele, Mesmer
Mantra of resolve, null field/stab mantra/portal, Mantra of distraction, feedback, timewarp
Halting Strike damage is insane against trash mobs, and baseline IP makes defiance stripping a joke. Hard CCs in general from F3, MoD, riposte, and curtain synergizes well with ele Tempest Defense. Considered using Illusionary Inspiration but the long CD and timing of the boon share is trumped by the glamour duration and resistance from Temporal Enchanter.
(edited by expandas.7051)
And Guardians now have “Feel My Wrath” for an elite that gives fury and quickness for 5s every 30s. Compared to Time Warp which gives quickness for 10s every 180s.
Why bother having a mesmer in a group any more when the previous best PvE elite in the game is now completely overshadowed. Everything a mesmer does in PvE is better accomplished by a guardian now.
(edited by Fiennis.4387)
And Guardians now have “Feel My Wrath” for an elite that gives fury and quickness for 5s every 30s. Compared to Time Warp which gives quickness for 10s every 180s.
Why bother having a mesmer in a group any more when the previous best PvE elite in the game is now completely overshadowed. Everything a mesmer does in PvE is better accomplished by a guardian now.
Because you only need the quickness in burst for the boss anyways. You don’t need the quickness for trash they die within a single attack cycle.
For bosses the mesmer can keep up quickness longer for the entire burst chain, and it slows the boss to boot, trivializing bosses like Lupicus even more.
What’s more, when Chronomancer is in you’ll get double time warp, so 20 seconds of aoe quickness and slow.
Now, in WvW it’s where the guardian shout is an issue, since guardians can now effectively keep up quickness on their group for very long times and unlike Time Warp it’s not stationary.
(edited by Zenith.7301)
For fractals I use these traits atm:
Domination: 2 | 4 or 6 | 9
Duelling: 1 | 6 | 7
Inspiration: 2 | 4 | 9
I’ve never felt so strong in fotm b4 as I do now. Insane damage numbers thanks to Harmonious Mantras and Mantra of Pain, aswell those interrupts <3. Shattering a clone and my persona alone does 10k per target. It’s great, it’s really really great. You got everything you need and more. Wouldn’t want no Mes in fotm anymore.
Ziggs Ironeye – Engineer | Madame Le Blanc – Mesmer | Mentor (PvE) | EU
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
For fractals I use these traits atm:
Domination: 2 | 4 or 6 | 9
Duelling: 1 | 6 | 7
Inspiration: 2 | 4 | 9
I think the way you formatted it is confusing. There’s only 3 “traits” per tier but you’re pulling out 4s, 6s, 9s…