Guild Wars 2

What are everyone’s thoughts about our grandmaster traits?

Personally I think they are horrible and can’t justify putting points into them. I currently use GS and Sword/Pistol as my weapons and focus my build mostly around phantasms. Our utility skills are way better options than running a mantra build. If shatter was better I think the create shatter effect on self would be good. Also the heal/condition removal on shatter would be fine if I could say shatter was worth using.

I’m just curious what everyone else is thinking and what changes could be made to improve them.

The ones you mentioned are great. Shattering is really good. You can get 6k mind wracks with a 4x stack of confusion aoe or 8x stack of confusion aoe with Cry. The inspiration shatter-condition-removal makes mesmer nearly immune to conditions coupled with the heal-condition-removal.

But I will agree, the rest are pretty lacklustre. As for changes, I’d like for more of them to not be mantra related, because I don’t use or like mantras (great reason, right?). Mesmer is a really agile and evasive class, and casting a mantra, even out of combat, feels cumbersome.

So people don’t have to go hunting for them or pretend like they know what they’re talking about I put them all in one place:
(I’ve added my commentary in italics)

• Harmonious Mantras:
  Mantras can be activated three times before needing to be channeled again.
  Mandatory if you’re a mantra build; too bad no one uses mantras.
• Confounding Suggestions:
  50% chance to cause a 1-second stun whenever you daze a target.
  pretty much the epitome of lacklustre. Only a 50% chance to get what’s essentially an immobilize whenever you daze. We have four reliable sources of daze and one unreliable. One of those sources is a mantra so you’d probably want Harmonious Mantras instead and another source only occurs as a secondary effect. This is basically a trait that sometimes makes something you will rarely use slightly better.
• Empowering Mantras:
  4% more damage for each readied mantra.
  Again, only useful for a mantra build only this time you only benefit if you’re not using your mantras.
• Furious Interruption:
  Gain 4 seconds of fury when you interrupt a foe.
  Slightly more useful but still not more useful than other traits in the Dueling tree.
• Bountiful Interruption:
  Apply a random boon to yourself when you interrupt a foe
  It doesn’t specify for how long or if there is an internal cooldown. Still not worth taking if you just get a single stack of might or regeneration for 4 seconds. It certainly wont change your game in a significant way.
• Prismatic Understanding:
  Cloaking skills last 1 second longer.
  Another Grand Master trait that hinges on something most mesmers use rarely. Everyone loves Decoy, but few people use Torch, Veil, or waste their time with Mass Invisibility. One extra second on these skills is nice, but not nice enough to use over some other trait.
• Shattered Conditions:
  Using a shatter skill removes a condition.
  Finally we have a genuinely useful trait. With this puppy you basically don’t even need to bring a condition removal utility in most cases. Conditions will slide off of you like teflon.
• Restorative Illusions:
  Heal a small amount when you shatter illusions.
  Unfortunately, it doesn’t specify how much the heal is and I haven’t tried it myself, but another mesmer friend tells me it’s nothing to sneeze at. Might be worth looking into.
• Illusionary Persona:
  Shattering illusions creates the shatter effect on you as well.
  Pretty much mandatory on most shatter builds. In the right place it can increase your shatter damage by 33%. Very useful; no problems here.
• Imbued Diversion:
  Diversion hits multiple targets.
  It should have hit multiple targets in the first place. Still pretty lacklustre considering daze doesn’t stack duration.

^ This.

Although I too am curious about Restorative Illusions. Does it stack with the earlier trait “Mender’s Purity”? If so that would basically make Shattered Conditions superfluous.

@Aruun
From what I understand, Mender’s Purity only activates when you use your “healing skill,” not whenever you receive healing.

This does however have some interesting implications as you can remove a condition upon charging as well as using Mantra of Restoration as the charge technically counts as a use of your healing skill.

Another interesting trait combination is Restorative Illusions with Illusionary Persona. The mesmer friend I had mentioned earlier made a build that centered around this combo.

I agree, IMO grandmaster traits should be powerful enough to influence your tactics or at least be considerably better than any lesser ones. For instance, the ranger trait that allows spirits to follow you around. Those are the type of traits worth being grandmaster.

Mesmers are by far the worst from what I have seen. Aside from illusory persona and maybe shattered conditions, there are none that I see that are worth the investment.

@Hildebert If I remember correctly right after the game released I tested out Restorative Illusions but it was complete and utter kitten(and bugged too, in a good way).

It seemed to heal me for about 1.2k back then on using any of the shatters. It also didn’t increase the heal per illusion so it would heal the same whether you used 1(0)-3 (4) illusions. I believe back then you could also use a shatter skill without having any illusions or the illusionary persona trait and still get heal and the shatter skills only going on a really short cooldown. I’ll do some testing in a bit to see if anything has changed.

EDIT: Tested again, heals for 1136 with 360 Healing Power(300 from Trait line and 60 from Divinity runes). I tried using the clerics amulet and got it up to about 1.4kish with an increase of about 900 healing power. It also only heals you once no matter how many illusions are shattered so I’d go as far as to say that it’s one more of our not so awesome grandmaster traits.

I am not getting a single grandmaster trait, the most I am spending in one line is the vit line with 25 in it.

EsLafiel

I am not getting a single grandmaster trait, the most I am spending in one line is the vit line with 25 in it.

You don’t have to use a grandmaster trait in a grandmaster slot. We have plenty of other decent traits, its just that the traits that unlock at the 30 point grandmaster level in any tree are godawful.

@shenhua
I was just going off secondhand information. Good to know we can mark another trait on the “Pitifully Bad” side.

I only go to 30 in illusion. In every other line the minor grandmaster trait and the major traits are too bad to go that high in a single line, when there’s very useful traits on minor level in almost every line, that I need to take.

For instance +1 sec invis could be nice. But I could go 10 into domination and pick Clones cripple on death or +15% phantasm damage.
Or I could go 10 into inspiration and pick vigor on shatter. Or I could go into 10 illusion and pick Recharge shatters at 50% or whatever else.

But 30 illusions is nice. Illusionary persona is just great. Longer distortion, distortion with no clones out, daze with no clones out. Free might stacks on shatter isn’t too shabby either. I love AoE daze trait, but unfortunately I can have both Illusionary persona and that trait.

0/20/10/20/20 build
nuff said, I guess.

The GM traits look good for only two types of builds: mantras and shatters If you are going conditions or power I don’t see a lot of reason to push a trait line into 30 pts.

That’s probably my main complaint — two build options really.

I’m running a 0/0/25/25/20 build that’s easily reconfigured between conditions, phantasms, staff/scepter/focus, glamours, etc. It’s very durable and feels powerful in that things die quickly.

I could possibly drop the 5% of toughness goes to condition damage and run with a 0/0/20/30/20 with Shattered Conditions or Restorative Illusions. It may be worth trying but survivability is not a weak area so I think it would just be a DPS hit and not much else.

Harmonious Mantras:

This is a cornerstone of a 30/30 max burst build, mostly because you get EM and have lots of Mantras. In order to not suck, Harmonious Mantras is usually taken as well.

Confounding Suggestions:

This one is pretty depressing. You can actually build for a kittenon of Daze, and the trait itself is not completely bad. The problem is that RNG is RNG, and no one likes RNG when a Daze iskittennear good enough. On the flip side, it turns Diversion into basically a guaranteed stun in most cases. That is neat, but short of “WORTH IT” for a GM trait.

Empowering Mantras:

Again, this is the cornerstone of a 30/30 max burst build. If you haven’t tried the build, it does a lot of damage. Downside is you basically have to sacrifice most utility stuff like Blink/Decoy/Feedback, which is a major hit.

Furious Interruption:

Yeah this I would basically never take. While Fury is nice, it’s not WORTH IT for a GM trait, especially when it’s based on something that is semi-unreliable like interrupts (where half the time you are using the CC effect to stop them from acting, prior to their action, so no interrupt).

Bountiful Interruption:

If this gave a pretty heavy load of boons, then it would be worth it. As is, yeah it’s depressing.

Prismatic Understanding:

Agree, pretty lacklust unless you intend to stealthkitten. Then it’s pretty awesome. However, no one does 30 Chaos because that’s such a waste of points.

Imbued Diversion:
Diversion hits multiple targets.
It should have hit multiple targets in the first place. Still pretty lacklustre considering daze doesn’t stack duration.

Imbued Diversion is worth the GM slot for specific group-focused Daze / CC builds.

The one thing in general that deserves note is that GM traits, much like other traits, are niche. I think it’s unreasonable to expect that GM traits should be “useful for most builds”. Traits like HM and EM I think are fine. They are highly effective for Mantra-heavy builds. Sure, there are almost no Mantra-heavy builds. But, they are “WORTH IT” for those builds.

The real issue is stuff like Furious Interruption or Bountiful Interruption, where no one in their right mind would actually invest and pick up those traits for any reasonable build, ever.

It also only heals you once no matter how many illusions are shattered so I’d go as far as to say that it’s one more of our not so awesome grandmaster traits.

Depends entirely on how much you’re shattering.

I pretty much Shatter on cooldown, so that’s a trait I’ve always been interested in.

The issue is that I always have to balance that against Deceptive Evasion and other highly useful Dom traits (+20% Mind Wrack, cough, lols).

Hildebert.4196:

EsLafiel

I am not getting a single grandmaster trait, the most I am spending in one line is the vit line with 25 in it.

You don’t have to use a grandmaster trait in a grandmaster slot. We have plenty of other decent traits, its just that the traits that unlock at the 30 point grandmaster level in any tree are godawful.

@shenhua
I was just going off secondhand information. Good to know we can mark another trait on the “Pitifully Bad” side.

Someone miss my point completely.

Guess I spell it out for you, the grandmaster skills are so bad, that it better for me to spread out my point instead of going for one.

EsLafiel

Someone miss my point completely.

It wasn’t obvious it was meant to be a joke. For all I knew, you could have been some newbie who thought grandmaster slots were reserved for grandmaster traits.

Mantra of Recovery > all other healing spells imo.

The instant heal is really just too good in dungeons

I found Grandmaster traits not enough “game breaking”. They should have more impact on one’s gameplay as said. It is not about numbers but about the changement they can offer : I woud like them to add a serious effect to skills just like Restorative Mantra or something like this.
Personnally I don’t use any of them in sPvP. Concerning PvE : I spent 30 points in Inspiration but the purpose is to use two traits from Master (tier2).

@Tigger : this trait is tier2, not tier3. But yeah it is great.

I’m a fan of Shattered Conditions so I’m going to be picking that up when I hit level 60. Restorative Illusions would be very tempting if it gave the heal per illusion, but as it is now, yeah, not going to bother. I wonder if they changed it so that if it was 1.2k heal per illusion when you hit Distortion. That way, you’d only be able to do it every 60 seconds or so and it’d be a decent additional Heal.

Meh, in any case the Condition Remove on shatter occupies same slot as Heal on shatter, and is way more useful. Just like AoE daze on diversion – not a bad trait, but it’s in grandmaster slot with another better trait.

I said if it gave the Heal per Illusion it would be tempting to take…but I’d probably still stick with Shattered Conditions. I mean, combine that with Deceptive Illusions & a Sigil of Stamina and you’ve got 4 Shatters all the time…and if you’ve got Signet of Illusions you get them all over again.

That’s just WAY too much utility to pass up imo.

IMO shattered conditions is the corner stone of my build.

It’s a must have.