Guild Wars 2

Pyroatheist.9031:

Note: path 3 is bugged, the npc doesn’t work properly, so avoid that unless you are really experienced with it.

How is it bugging? I ran it right after they changed the dung and it was fine for me.

Kazhiel.8194:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Note: path 3 is bugged, the npc doesn’t work properly, so avoid that unless you are really experienced with it.

How is it bugging? I ran it right after they changed the dung and it was fine for me.

The ghost npc has an excruciatingly long charge up attack on his hammer that he spams. Because of that, more than 9/10 times, when rumbles starts his attack, the npc is charging up the hammer, gets knocked down and killed, and fails to ever provide the protective bubble.

Oh lmao, didn’t even know there was supposed to be a protective bubble. The couple times we did it we didn’t have and tho the one run was a struggle we made it thru eventually. We found you can kinda stand in between those pillars to the left side in the little nook and not get knocked down so much/at all if you have someone that can give the group stability. Rumbles stops in one spot and stays there and you can just range him.

Kazhiel.8194:

Oh lmao, didn’t even know there was supposed to be a protective bubble. The couple times we did it we didn’t have and tho the one run was a struggle we made it thru eventually. We found you can kinda stand in between those pillars to the left side in the little nook and not get knocked down so much/at all if you have someone that can give the group stability. Rumbles stops in one spot and stays there and you can just range him.

Yep, that’s a buggy spot that allows you to complete it, looks like you managed to find it real quick.

Pyro… This build has gotten me kicked from fight clubs in wvw. :/ And the people that get mad say its cuz I am a confusion bomber… and Im like uhhh… I only stack confusion for 3 seconds at long intervals… :/ But yeah …. Just something funny… Noone wants to fight me… lol

Were you running Pyro’s build last night? Because the amount of illusion generation and all the shattering you were doing, and I assumed SoI to recharge shatters, didn’t look like it lol

Yup… I was… And I only have mirror images/phantasmal defender/SOI for the greater health to illusions not the recharge…

Didn’t use deceptive evasion… And wasn’t doing anything outside of how the build is run really.

Were you one of the mesmers I fought on yaks?

With how I play the build I will open with a COF and then proceed to pop up the phantasms… Once defender is off C/D I will do another COF and if I have mirror images.. I will follow it up with mindwrack… So the shatters really don’t happen very often.

Yup, guess I was lagging more than I thought since I was pretty sure I had a hundred million illusions chasing and blowing up around me lol and I don’t really recall actually landing much of any hits on you to even get any retaliation to die from. I hurt myself at one point dodging with 6 stacks of confusion on.

Kazhiel.8194:

Yup, guess I was lagging more than I thought since I was pretty sure I had a hundred million illusions chasing and blowing up around me lol

Maybe… But whoever that ranger was on your guys team… He was a real jerk. he was saying I was running confusion bombs… and I am just like noooo… I have a bunch of retal. And you guys are killing yourselves from AOE’s

The one with the legendary from AI? I don’t know who he was, that was the first time I’ve seen him. I can say that some of the other people that were there from Yaks probably fall into the jerk category.

yeah the one with the legendary… Honestly the only reason I showed up was because a guildie asked me to come beat one of the guardians there that no one was winning against…And this build just kinda eats GS guardians for breakfast… And then once I beat the ranger… (who was winning against everyone else there) no one would duel me anymore except for two of the mesmers. Which he said they both almost killed me and yeah no…

The last memser you fought was me in the cream and blue outfit. The other mesmer was Joker who was very likely the GS guardian you’re talking about also since I know guard is his main and I can imagine he was quite kitten to lose. I wouldn’t pay much attention to those guys lol

lol ahhh… I see yeah he said they were trying to prove a point that Mesmer was too OP and I just sucked for playing it… Good fight with you tho man!

jportell.2197:

lol ahhh… I see yeah he said they were trying to prove a point that Mesmer was too OP and I just sucked for playing it… Good fight with you tho man!

Not a man! But yeah, see you around sometime, and I’ll try and remember to bring a phantasm build next time hahaha ;D

Kazhiel.8194:

jportell.2197:

lol ahhh… I see yeah he said they were trying to prove a point that Mesmer was too OP and I just sucked for playing it… Good fight with you tho man!

Not a man! But yeah, see you around sometime, and I’ll try and remember to bring a phantasm build next time hahaha ;D

LOLOLOL Sorry… your char was (I think) and that’s what I go off of… Another tough cookie in this build is a condition heavy thief lol… It’s doable… but not a walk in the park like say… guardian

Glad to hear the QQ is rolling on in, always fun to have that. If I recall correctly, our last meeting with yaks people (no offense Kazhiel) ended with them killing me once, and then getting promptly getting smeared across the grass for the next 30 minutes or so by jportell, myself, and a few other talented individuals.

I don’t know if you’ve fought any condition heavy thieves since you switched to the -condie duration runeset and food, but theyre honestly a snoozefest with it. They can be sorta annoying to kill (P/D) but they really pose absolutely 0 threat in any way. For the most part, the small and fast hits that apply the conditions (pistol stealth skill, death blossom, caltrops) will absolutely destroy a thief via retaliation damage.

I will say this about phantasm builds though. Since my first encounter with that guy, I’ve fought several other phantasm build mesmers, and none have really given me any trouble at all. I’m starting to think that he was just uncommonly talented with that one particular build. He also used a weird incarnation of it, being sword/pistol and sword/sword.

HI!
I have question about this fragment of guide:

“The playstyle utilizes leap combo finishers to keep most of the buffs up. Illusionary leap and swap are a total of 2 leap combo finishers. Dropping temporal curtain then using both skills on top of it generates around 14 seconds retaliation. A full 3 clone (illusionary persona won’t increase the time here) cry of frustration will generate around 15 seconds of retaliation. Between these 2 skills and the token retaliation from chaos storm, you can easily have 100% uptime, even against someone stripping the boons.”

I understand that when i use COF on 3 clones i get 15sec Retialation, but how i cen get next 15s by leap and swap??
Sory for my english…:]

Leap finisher (leap and swap both are) in a light combo field (time veil is) give 7s of retaliation. Put Time Veil on you, iLeap, swap, and voilà.

jportell.2197:

LOLOLOL Sorry… your char was (I think) and that’s what I go off of… Another tough cookie in this build is a condition heavy thief lol… It’s doable… but not a walk in the park like say… guardian

Was it a big fat hairy norn male in BS? That one wasn’t me and if so I didn’t realize you fought him, I must have missed that. That was Celtika’s mesmer which is a male but it has a girl name “Emmelou” for which we are always making fun of him for. I think he’s running Seven’s staff build.

Kazhiel.8194:

jportell.2197:

LOLOLOL Sorry… your char was (I think) and that’s what I go off of… Another tough cookie in this build is a condition heavy thief lol… It’s doable… but not a walk in the park like say… guardian

Was it a big fat hairy norn male in BS? That one wasn’t me and if so I didn’t realize you fought him, I must have missed that. That was Celtika’s mesmer which is a male but it has a girl name “Emmelou” for which we are always making fun of him for. I think he’s running Seven’s staff build.

Ahh… lol I see yeah I only fought two mesmers that day… But both fights ended rather quick… And then that ranger still came back at me to say how terrible I was. (After I won.)

Meh, some people are sore losers. I’m used to dying in video games at this point, respawn and try again!

On another note, there’s a mesmer in BS who runs what he calls a shatter/daze build, he’s got the boon strip on shatter trait, wonder how that would fare against this build since as long as he could land his shatters he could keep retaliation off you?

Kazhiel.8194:

On another note, there’s a mesmer in BS who runs what he calls a shatter/daze build, he’s got the boon strip on shatter trait, wonder how that would fare against this build since as long as he could land his shatters he could keep retaliation off you?

When I notice a sharp boon removal, such as on shatter, there’s a few steps I’ll take. First thing is mitigation. Shatters are dodgeable, by various means, so dodging them as much as possible is healthy (for more reasons than one). You do have to be more careful though, that’s for sure. It’s a good idea to try and use leap/swap over temporal curtain to keep retal up as much as possible, that way you can burst up instant retaliation +confusion with a cry at the right moment.

It also depends on what weapons that Mesmer is using. When I run a shatter build, I tend to use staff and sword/sword. I always run with boon strip on shatter in a shatter build—it would be foolish not to, even if you have a greatsword. However, if they seem to be nuking with the greatsword a lot, keeping retal and chaos armor up is really important because the greatsword does lots of small hits. Staying at range and dodging shatters as they come is a good strategy here.

If they use a staff, they will be doing a faster, close range game. This is a bit tougher, as well done close range shatters are almost impossible to dodge. You have to try to control this fight from the start. Eat their opening burst combo with a blurred frenzy or well timed dodges, and then put the pressure on hard. Blow any cooldowns you can, between chaos storm with a few 3 clone shatters if you can. Putting the shatter Mesmer on defensive means they can’t control the timing, and that means you can anticipate and nullify their shatters.

Ultimately, any really well played Mesmer build (other than pure confusion, sorry Kylia, that ain’t gonna fly in a 1v1) is a tough fight with a lot of nuances that you really have to learn by trial and error. Play a shatter build, get good with it. You’ll see how a shatter Mesmer usually controls a fight through timing and kiting, and you’ll see ways to break that rhythm.

But hey shatters are getting nerfed after they “buff” confusing images LMAO. And everyone and their mom is still whining about mesmers in sPvP and even saying our condition removal is too good. lol

“Might be "

pahldus.1678:

Anacopoulus.1539:

I got a question would grabbing (Chaotic Transference) +5% toughness converted to cond damage be worth dropping the (Confusing Cry) cry of frustration grants retaliation trait?

Seeing as the key to the damage the build does comes largely from retaliation, I doubt that would be a good choice. The main damage dealer for this build is retaliation and it being up 100% of the time. If you drop Confusing cry, you drop nearly half your damage output for a small gain in condition damage. Don’t confuse this for a confusion build.

Thank you very much for your insight. Appreciate the help. keep the good work going guys this thread has helped me a bunch.

How do you deal with full condition damage mesmers? Those absulutely destroy everyone 1v1 with the exception of necros me thinks? Also, how do you deal against minion master power necros? Their minions alone rip your retaliation in no time, have very decent ‘tankability’ and high AoE preassure meaning your illusions don’t last long at all. I think you don’t stand much of a chance against a full condi boon stripping necro, so that’s besides MMs.

Kazhiel.8194:

jportell.2197:

LOLOLOL Sorry… your char was (I think) and that’s what I go off of… Another tough cookie in this build is a condition heavy thief lol… It’s doable… but not a walk in the park like say… guardian

Was it a big fat hairy norn male in BS? That one wasn’t me and if so I didn’t realize you fought him, I must have missed that. That was Celtika’s mesmer which is a male but it has a girl name “Emmelou” for which we are always making fun of him for. I think he’s running Seven’s staff build.

I didn`t verse a mesmer that day :-\ Must of been When in rome

Khenzy.9348:

How do you deal with full condition damage mesmers? Those absulutely destroy everyone 1v1 with the exception of necros me thinks? Also, how do you deal against minion master power necros? Their minions alone rip your retaliation in no time, have very decent ‘tankability’ and high AoE preassure meaning your illusions don’t last long at all. I think you don’t stand much of a chance against a full condi boon stripping necro, so that’s besides MMs.

Guess you didn’t read the build?

Conditions aren’t a real problem thanks to the -60% duration on them, so less then 2 seconds and the condition does no damage(Burn), less than 5 seconds and no more than one to two ticks(A lot of bleeds, confusion, etc.) The only long lasting condition is poison.

As to the minion/power necro, I guess you don’t understand how retaliation works. His minions will be dead after one or two hits and most minions have fairly long recharge times. Necro power builds rely on dagger for most of their damage as well, and this is a fast attack that will chew them up with retaliation.

Now to boon stripping, I will leave that to Pyro to answer, as I don’t have any experience against a serious boon stripper aside from Mesmer who are far and away the best boon stripping profession with Arcane Thievery, Null Field, Phan Disenchanter, Sword #1, and strip on Shatter trait.

So is this still viable with the retalliation nerf?

What retaliation nerf?

Yup still works amazingly well with the retal nerf. The retal nerf was more for insane group scenarios.

Oh that, yeah you can’t use it to down a whole zerg, but it still works great for skirmishing.

Alright and how is this for dungeons?

It’s pretty good… Just the added toughness makes you able to face tank bosses and outlast most guardians… I don’t think pyro uses it in dungeons but I get demands for it regularly from my guild.

With regards to condition mesmers, there’s actually 2 key things that make the fight vey easy. First is the innate condition resistance. However, a condition Mesmer uses staff, and staff is projectiles. With enough use of the focus, they’ll end up hitting themselves more than they hit you.

Minion master necros are laughably easy. Minions have low hp, extremely low damage, and minimal utility. When traited, they have a 10% chance to remove a boon on hit, and since they don’t really attack fast, this is nothing more than a minor annoyance. Once dead, they have a long cooldown time. Also, power necros in general are weak against this build, because they rely on flat non-crit damage the majority of the time. This simply won’t do enough damage to hurt. Daggers do a lot of hits and proc retal and chaos armor a lot.
Necros can spec for some boon stripping, but they can’t do it regularly. They can manipulate boons and conditions more than a Mesmer can, but nothing even aproaches what a Mesmer can do for boon stripping. A boon stripping necro is no more than a minor annoyance.

As far as dungeons go, this build works fine in dungeons. I ran fotm up to around 15 with it, and I’ve done many dungeons with it. I just feel that it really lacks the oomph in dungeon pve to be a great choice. You won’t die ever, but sometimes it’s difficult to maintain aggro on things you want, and your damage really is horrifically low. For pve, I prefer using my phantasm build, because that one can do damage while still being durable and providing healing/Mesmer support.

Just went kittens deep into this build and got me back into playing mesmer in WvW. Put my thief on the bench for now.

I was a full exotic berserker gs/s+s build but managed to get a full soldier set for under 500k karma and some badges of honor. @Grenth I got head/chest/feet/accessories/rings/amulet, @tempest wp in malchor got shoulder/hands. For badges I got legs, staff, sword, focus.

I’m starting to get used to the build and already having some fun with it. Hitting cry with 3 clones and got the illusionary leap + swap on the temporal curtain going for retaliation. I’m a little lost on keeping phantasms up for extra retatiliation damage and healing. How close to the phantasms do I need to get for these effects? How important is the timing of cry for fights? I usually hit it right away to get retal up. Am I better off trying to anticipate my opponents burst?

Maybe some simple skill rotations to get a noob started would help. Trying to get better at playing this build although already having a lot of fun.

Kabuki.9103:

Just went kittens deep into this build and got me back into playing mesmer in WvW. Put my thief on the bench for now.

I was a full exotic berserker gs/s+s build but managed to get a full soldier set for under 500k karma and some badges of honor. @Grenth I got head/chest/feet/accessories/rings/amulet, @tempest wp in malchor got shoulder/hands. For badges I got legs, staff, sword, focus.

I’m starting to get used to the build and already having some fun with it. Hitting cry with 3 clones and got the illusionary leap + swap on the temporal curtain going for retaliation. I’m a little lost on keeping phantasms up for extra retatiliation damage and healing. How close to the phantasms do I need to get for these effects? How important is the timing of cry for fights? I usually hit it right away to get retal up. Am I better off trying to anticipate my opponents burst?

Maybe some simple skill rotations to get a noob started would help. Trying to get better at playing this build although already having a lot of fun.

Great to hear you’re having fun.

Phantasms always have retaliation on them. No range on that, if they get hit, they return damage. The iDefender is the one that needs to be sorta close. I’m not really sure of the exact range, but it seems to be around 600-900ish when it casts its skill, so that’s not usually too hard to arrange. For the regen, you have to be fairly close, within around 300. However, you also get tons of regen from chaos armor and chaos storm, the phantasms are only 1 of the sources.

I generally use a 3 (4) clone cry at the start of a fight. This bursts up a nice duration of retaliation, and also will catch anyone that feels like opening with a quickness combo or something similar. The cooldown on cry is only about 20 seconds, which isn’t too long. However, I will often hold out on a second cry for a while, keeping retaliation up through chaos storm and the leap combo as much as possible. Once people start getting lower, they get desperate. If you can utilize a 3 clone mind wrack into a 3 clone cry (blowing mirror images and decoy to do this) on someone that is below 40%ish hp, they will often instakill themselves on the resulting 12 stacks of confusion as they press buttons to try to get away.

Finally obtained my leggings and final Melandru insert. Love this build. I still need much more practice to get my character good at using it, but I am definitely surviving much longer.
One thing I get tickled about is when I am defending a tower or the walls of a keep, Dumping an iWarden in the middle of a group of attackers then dropping chaos storm right on top of it.
Or when attacking a gate, doing the same on top of the oil cauldron or wall defenders.
Chaos bolts just fly everywhere.

Pyroatheist.9031:

As far as dungeons go, this build works fine in dungeons. I ran fotm up to around 15 with it, and I’ve done many dungeons with it. I just feel that it really lacks the oomph in dungeon pve to be a great choice. You won’t die ever, but sometimes it’s difficult to maintain aggro on things you want, and your damage really is horrifically low. For pve, I prefer using my phantasm build, because that one can do damage while still being durable and providing healing/Mesmer support.

dont know if anyone else asked, but what is your phantasm build?

Schroedingercat.7065:

Pyroatheist.9031:

As far as dungeons go, this build works fine in dungeons. I ran fotm up to around 15 with it, and I’ve done many dungeons with it. I just feel that it really lacks the oomph in dungeon pve to be a great choice. You won’t die ever, but sometimes it’s difficult to maintain aggro on things you want, and your damage really is horrifically low. For pve, I prefer using my phantasm build, because that one can do damage while still being durable and providing healing/Mesmer support.

dont know if anyone else asked, but what is your phantasm build?

My phantasm build can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Supporting-Phantasm-Build/first#post1505805

Called support phantasm build in Fay’s build list.

Pyro, don’t know if i missed this question anywhere in here but, with the Melandru x6 and food buff, how attached are you to Mender’s Purity in Inspiration?

Daemonne.5018:

Pyro, don’t know if i missed this question anywhere in here but, with the Melandru x6 and food buff, how attached are you to Mender’s Purity in Inspiration?

I’ve never experimented with removing it. The trait you would switch to would be vigor on shatter of course. It’s entirely possible that the condition removal isn’t necessary. I’ll have to try it out.

Love this build and the play style. Thanks for sharing all of it.

Been running it for about a month now and finally getting it figured out.

Question about a major tweak. I have realized that the dexterity of my fingers are not what they use to be and maintaining melee range is frustrating for me. I have found that landing blurred frenzy is almost 50/50.

How much of a synergy hit would this build take if I swapped out sword with scepter? I feel like I won’t miss losing the dps and invulnerably of Sword 3, it’s losing two leap finishers which would be tough.

While it’s no where near as effective as the leap finishers I’m hoping Scepter 3’s confusion makes up enough to warrant the switch when added with the block and blind and a bit better clone generation through ether clone and not having to be in melee range.

Would swapping in scepter wreck this build?

wabashcannonball.8391:

Love this build and the play style. Thanks for sharing all of it.

Been running it for about a month now and finally getting it figured out.

Question about a major tweak. I have realized that the dexterity of my fingers are not what they use to be and maintaining melee range is frustrating for me. I have found that landing blurred frenzy is almost 50/50.

How much of a synergy hit would this build take if I swapped out sword with scepter? I feel like I won’t miss losing the dps and invulnerably of Sword 3, it’s losing two leap finishers which would be tough.

While it’s no where near as effective as the leap finishers I’m hoping Scepter 3’s confusion makes up enough to warrant the switch when added with the block and blind and a bit better clone generation through ether clone and not having to be in melee range.

Would swapping in scepter wreck this build?

Short answer: Yes, swapping sword for scepter would horribly wreck the build.

Long answer: The most important change is you completely lose 2 leap combo finishers, which are a good 50% of the retaliation generation. In addition to retaliation, the leap combo allows reliable landing of shatters and overall battle control.

You lose a 2 second invulnerability for a block. This is massive. The unvulnerability allows you to stall for cooldowns, allows you to dodge large bursts such as HB or shatters that do more than 1 hit.

You lost vulnerability stacking on the autoattack chain, but more importantly, you lose boon stripping. With sword, you and all your clones can strip a boon with an aoe cleave every few seconds. This can be really important, especially with guardians and elementalists.

Additionally, this is a highly active, highly aggressive build. The mobility and crowd control that sword offers fits perfectly for this build. Scepter literally provides absolutely nothin other than a ranged autoattack, and you don’t want to be at range. You need to be in their faces causing panic and controlling the fight, not kiting around with a scepter.

While there are several flexible aspects of my build, the weaponset is not one of them. All 3 of the weapons are absolutely vital, and the build will absolutely not work without all 3 of them.

On another note, barring random stealth nerfs, the patch changed nothing for this build. Business as usual here.

Question – how much retaliation damage do you inflict on average? I know with the defender it’s doubled but am wondering approximately how much of your damage is done via retaliation (like 25% etc) with this build?

skcamow.3527:

Question – how much retaliation damage do you inflict on average? I know with the defender it’s doubled but am wondering approximately how much of your damage is done via retaliation (like 25% etc) with this build?

It really varies greatly based on the class and build. However, the only situation where it would be under ~60% of my damage is a thief suiciding on confusion after a 4 clone cry.

Against a greatsword guardian, it will generally be over 90% of my damage. Same for a p/d or d/d death blossom thief, and even more so for a s/p thief.

Rangers and engies are usually more split between retal and confusion. Warriors can swing either way, either towards tons of retal or tons of confusion. Eles are usually split pretty evenly.

50% is definitely more than I expected. In watching your first video, I can see the retaliation inflicting ~325-450/tick which doesn’t sound like much but yeah that guardian went down quick with whirling wrath. Good stuff.

325 isn’t much until you realize that you dish out 70+ attacks during the fight.