Guild Wars 2

@Raiz, Looked thru your build and it seem solid, personlay I prefere Shatter Cat heavy for frontline zerg combat with nullfield and feedback. This as I feel i buff and help the mele team around me.

Would be great if you could get a video of you runinng the build tbh.

@PandaBear, Ty alot. Good with ppl who like to spend their time help new players out. 2 thubs up.

/Osicat

Lanny.6987:

Osicat,

I know I’m not sharing any secrets here but your sense of space and tempo are unreal.

In this last vid I saw you get thumped by knockback shield off downed guardians several times. I know you portal stomp on occasion to avoid the big “I’m stomping, light me up” effect. Have you played around with begin-stomp/phase-retreat/blink for a similar effect?

I second this question!

I’ve seen him do it before

@Lanny & Velimere, Yes I doing both portal, staff blink + blink stomp, tbh think I even succseded with a sword leap stomp after (!) clone wkittentered. A realy cool but only show off move is to open a stomp, portal out, se a thief teleport to side of portal then blink in on hes new position to stomp. Mesmers are fatastic

Reality thi is that in alot of those situations when If ight several oponents I save my cd,s and rather juts take the puchback and stomp after. This to have a stunbraker/teleport if I get thiefed.

/Osicat

Osi,

Would love to here your opinion on a good mix for a mesmer group. I have been playing a mesmer from launch but have recently got three other players to begin to learn mesmer who are in the process of training up. All four characters look exactly alike and I wanted your opinion on a good mix for wvw.

@Bretk, Hi. To play mesmer good you bet know not only our strength but also our weaknesses. One of our weaker sides is that our heavy use of active survival make us extremly exposed when ressing ppl. This force you if setting up a roamer team of mesmers to plan 2 things, if somon go down how will you res him? I usualy roam with a team of 1 thief, 1 engi 1 guardian and me, this let guardian res, engi provide groupd aoe and thief stealth if a res is needed.

4 mesmers you need to make sure you not go down easy, use staffs and s+ x alternative scepter/s + s/x (I prefere staff + s/x). Use tanky gear with burst capabilitys. chavalier, valkyre and knight + some berzerker. Also atleas 1 of you should use illusion of life. With 4 mesmers you dont need 4 mass invis, Stick with 2-3 and les 1 use Time warp, also… tbh its not bad idea to let 1 of you have a MOA, its cheesy but in a 4 vs 4 al 4 focus 1 target, moa him and nuke hes kitten off. This leav you in a advatage.

/Osicat

This is a really great but frustrating guide. Frustration stems from the fact that gw2skills.net is blocked here at work, and all the details on your builds are left to hyperlinks to that blocked site. Have you ever tried the Into The Mists character builder ?

Did you change the gears required for the builds ? Or did i just make a mistake?

Also, i really like the original shatter cat build , but it doesnt feel as effective anymore. Are there any nerfs to it?

Hey Osi

Hkittenter cat Heavy 2.0 dissapeared from your uploads or did you never have it? There’s an awesome song I’m looking for, very soothing, and I thought it was in that video. Now I can’t find it anywhere.

I just found it in the Shatter Cat hybrid 2 Could you tell me the name of the first song in that video? There’s no title in description or the end of the video.

@Vinceftw, Its Crystal Castles – Affection Glad you like it.

@Artcules, No real nerfs exept confusion have hit us, its tbh stronger now than it was before december patch. Still the climate in wvwvw changed some and I have a feeling more mele fast moving buolds with high passive defense and direct dmg bursts is alot more effective now. I experementing with a alternative mix of Shatter Cat Heavy and Mist 2.0 atm with new sigils. EXTREMLY effective in group combat, might post a vid of it later on, wery high burst and bleeds tick for 78-80+ at same time.

/Osicat

This part has to be wrong, right?

3.4 – Shatter Cat Mist

…

MH Sword for leap and immunity
OH Focus for pulls, speed and condition clensing.
Staff core of the build,

I don’t recall the focus having any function to remove conditions nor does the traits used in the build have anything related to affecting the focus.

Groonz.7825:

This part has to be wrong, right?

3.4 – Shatter Cat Mist

…

MH Sword for leap and immunity
OH Focus for pulls, speed and condition clensing.
Staff core of the build,

I don’t recall the focus having any function to remove conditions nor does the traits used in the build have anything related to affecting the focus.

Light Field (Focus #4) plus Whirl Finisher (Focus #5) = Cleansing Bolts. You drop the Phantasm first and then put the field on top of the Phant. It takes a little practice, but isn’t too difficult.

The main problem is that I’m always using Focus #4 for other utility purposes, so it’s often not up.

What build do you recommend for for a 10 man roaming group? I am looking for something adaptable that can deliver huge burst, but able to survive when taking on 20 or 30 players. I assume heavy build? do you use anything else I want to know what build you play in 10 man groups.

matthen.5024:

Groonz.7825:

This part has to be wrong, right?

3.4 – Shatter Cat Mist

…

MH Sword for leap and immunity
OH Focus for pulls, speed and condition clensing.
Staff core of the build,

I don’t recall the focus having any function to remove conditions nor does the traits used in the build have anything related to affecting the focus.

Light Field (Focus #4) plus Whirl Finisher (Focus #5) = Cleansing Bolts. You drop the Phantasm first and then put the field on top of the Phant. It takes a little practice, but isn’t too difficult.

The main problem is that I’m always using Focus #4 for other utility purposes, so it’s often not up.

Ah, I see. Although it looks somewhat tricky to pull off in the heat of the battle considering as you said #4 would be used for other purposes.

@Rasterranger, I use Mist (taking on that numbers focus gets extremly effective to set stomps or interupt resses) or Phantasm hybrid for that setup. The hybrid if group need the dmg (vuln stacks is a tank killer). Heavy I mainly use when I solo versus a healer ranger or tanky d/d, i get range and drop combat, change wep and a trait and go in.

@Groon<, trick is to not use the ability purly for condi removal. Use it as a bonus, see a downed enemy in heat of battle, drop a iWarden on him, then a pull field and start the stomp, now you get new and old conditions cleared, ranged cant mess with the stomp and mele who attack you or try res (even if its a stealty thief) take heavy warden dmg. Same if 1 vs 1, drop a iwarden, move to him and drop a field, now you rather safe, when enemy close pull him to the warden + cripple and burst.

/Osicat

**Update**

Ok sharing what I been working on sens last patch, its a hybrid condition spec and version of Mist. Dmg gear is focused on direct dmg and the burst is heavy, survival is wery good.

Al condition dmg is based on synergy that benefit direct dmg. Sigils that are used stack might and I often have around 12 might, also bounce on staff are used.

Enjoy:

/Osicat

Nice video.

Whenever I try to run Illusionary Elasticity (staff bounce) with Decoy, I seem to get dropped out of decoy stealth a lot. I think the extra staff bounce is doing damage and triggering the “revealed” debuff. I recently decided to drop the extra bounce trait, but I miss having it.

Any tips for using those two together.

Overall decoys biggest part is the target drop so even if you get popped back a little premature you still got of target list.

Update

New guild movie. Some fun moments in there I running my zerg fighting build, as you see I dont take any dmg realy and with 60% less condition uptime I can ignore em most so the time. In first crach my main focus is to get null field time warp, chaos stomr and a temporal curtan down so not alot of numbers but as you se its wery effective as it give alot of combofields and keep your team alive.

/Osicat

New spec, still experement

/Osicat

so what one is your zerg spec, doesn’t directly say in the description. I need something to run in zergs.

@Rasterranger, In big groups I eather run Mist 2.0 with different utilitys or latley more and more the new shatter cat Heavy that I showed first look at in latest vid. Both is good in the way they help they team, you stay alive and can focus on stomps and take vounded targets down fast. A good stomp in mid raid give a rally to downed guildmates etc.

/Osicat

Will add a full update for Shatter Cat Heavy 2.0 tomorow evening, after 3 weeks of testing its ready.

/Osicat

Masterful.

So you’ve already mentioned the sigil switch to might. You no longer swift on heal. Conditions seem to slide off you. And you’ve also mentioned extra bounce on staff. I’m guessing

- Traits and Skills from SC Mist 2.0 with…
– Less damage for each clone (from SC Heavy)
– Illusionary Elasticity in place of more damage for each clone
– Melandru runes
– Battle/Strength + Battle sigils

Update: It is Battle/Accuracy + Battle and Hoelbrak instead of Melandru so… yeah. I wasn’t very close at all since Osicat had already told us everything else.

Osicat.4139:

New spec, still experement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrWWc_kIvFg

/Osicat

Osicat.4139:

New spec, still experement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrWWc_kIvFg

/Osicat

Wow. That was really impressive.

Big Update: 2013-06-03

- Updated intruduction and index
- Updated movies, deleted old
- Added the Raidleader and frontline combat spec Shatter Cat 2.0
- Added new video Shatter Cat Heavy 2.0 intruduction video

Enjoy.

PS, I do spend alot of time on this guide and keep it updated, would not be able to do this if it was not for al tips, mails, pm,s and wiseprs I get you you ppl. Ty alot for al feedback, keep it comming

Ty Zumi for help with spelling for shatter cat heavy 2.0

/Yours Osicat

Glad to help!

I’d be interested to hear your findings with Illusionary Elasticity over your testing. It always intrigued me, but I couldn’t justify it seeing how the only bounce spell I used was 1 skill on the staff. I was running a build with a similar idea (although a bit different gear wise) and I’ve been using the +3% damage per illusion since I heard about the “nerf” that IE took recently now that clones can take the buff from you.

Do you find it works for you a lot? What are your general feelings about how the trait performs?

@Zumi, I generaly simply try to hug my target, also often I fight several enemys and feel the IE keep hit two enemys. Seems like the IE dont target shattered clones aswell (those sent as torpedos) so by constantly shatter you not only keep might high but also avoid unwanted buffs on clones. This is bad for pure condition spec, but for hybrid spec like S C Heavy 2.0 its not a worry in my opionon.

Important is that when you are in sword setup and swap to staff, before start generate clones in staff you hit shatter, as al reward effects and might its ok to send a serie of daze,s clones at him. Also you confusion do ok dmg in this setup.

/Osicat

Hey Osi, looking at the Heavy 2.0 Build and the Mist 2.0 build, does that 20% Critical Damage Reduction really affect your damage output that much? I’m asking because if not, then I may want to give the Heavy 2.0 build a try, as I’d like to have a little more survivability.

@NerdyMike, The dmg output between HEavy 2.0 and Mist 2.o is about same. Difference is not in dmg, its in mobility and incombat survival. Il explain:

Mist 20.0

Have 100% swiftness uptime, perfect for raoming.
Extreme incombat mobility.
A mesmer rogue build.
Base defense on high controll and incombat mobility, have ok passive defense.
Deal dmg in bursts, no real ramp up time.

Heavy 2.0

Have ~60% swiftness uptime, same incombat mobility as Mist thu.
Perfect for frontline combat, group combat or raidleading.
A mesmer warrior build
Wery good passive defense combined with the acctive defense from Mist
Deal dmg both in condition and burst, deal more dmg the longer the fight is due to might stacking.

So you do same dmg, just thakittens not Smal-smal-smal-HUGE-smal-medium-Huge, its more like Smal-smal-medium-big-medium-medium-big-medium.

So question is not:

Do I want to trade my dmg for survival?

Its more:

Do I want to trade some out of combat mobility for survival?

/Osicat

Hi Osicat,

First I will like to say thanks for posting such great videos on mesmer and sharing your built with us! Your videos spurred me to play a mesmer.

However I got some query about the equipment u use for your built. For example, u are using a knights ascended earring but berserker helm. From what I know, this arrangement is inefficient as the critical damage % tradeoff for an ascended earring and a exotic helm is different.

As a guideline (copied from strife025 guides), for each critical damage %

5 stat points – upgrade slot of trinkets and backpack
7 points – Ascended Back Piece
8.5 stat points – Ascended Rings
8.7 stat points – Ascended Earrings
9.4 stat points – Ascended Amulet
10 stat points- traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
12 stat points – glove, shoulder and boots
12.8 stat points – 1H weapons and amulet
13.33 stat points – Earring
14 stat points – Backpack (rare version from guild armorsmith)
14.22 stat points – 2H weapons
14.4 stat points – Coat (Chest)
16 stat points – Ring, helm and legging

So theoretically, u should go for a critical damage earring (eg cavalier/berserker or any other critical damage earring) before using a berserker helm due to ascended earring losing less statpoints for the critical damage than helm (8.5 <16).

However i think there may be other reason for your choice of allocation of equipment. Thanks for taking your time to read this!

@Sutcliffe, Its basicly due to the fact I swap alot between builds, for this I often feel out a stats hole with the knight earring. As they do kitten expensive I cant atm have a backup set earrings, so what I do from most builds I use 4/5 accended accesorys with crit dmg. Could in theory win some stat points in swap the Gorilla for a zerker + 18hp and do a total swap of glowes, legs and boots. This would in the end thu drop my hp, buff my toughness and drop some crit dmg, I tryed some times but not fully happy with the stats. Also dont feel its worth the mess for change 1 gearpart.

Alot of this is due to the simple fact there is no pure valkyre accended gear, if you keep % dmg on al your accesorys you cant avoid see your hp drop as the best you can get is 18 from zerker/valk.

Personaly I hope accended armour get intruduced to make the mix a bit easier.

Ty for point it out thu

/Osicat

Osicat.4139:

@NerdyMike, The dmg output between HEavy 2.0 and Mist 2.o is about same. Difference is not in dmg, its in mobility and incombat survival. Il explain:

Mist 20.0

Have 100% swiftness uptime, perfect for raoming.
Extreme incombat mobility.
A mesmer rogue build.
Base defense on high controll and incombat mobility, have ok passive defense.
Deal dmg in bursts, no real ramp up time.

Heavy 2.0

Have ~60% swiftness uptime, same incombat mobility as Mist thu.
Perfect for frontline combat, group combat or raidleading.
A mesmer warrior build
Wery good passive defense combined with the acctive defense from Mist
Deal dmg both in condition and burst, deal more dmg the longer the fight is due to might stacking.

So you do same dmg, just thakittens not Smal-smal-smal-HUGE-smal-medium-Huge, its more like Smal-smal-medium-big-medium-medium-big-medium.

So question is not:

Do I want to trade my dmg for survival?

Its more:

Do I want to trade some out of combat mobility for survival?

/Osicat

Ah, thank you.

I was able to get the build constructed (I cannot believe I had all the mats for a whole new set!) and I took it into WvW for about 3 hours last night – and you are right in what you just told me.

Thank you again for doing such a great job in helping us Mesmers.

Osicat, thanks for the respond!

I actually played around with the equip of shattercat heavy 2.0 and was able to come up with an arrangement that i feel is slightly more efficient. The secret to retaining the vitality you want is swapping a piece of gear for sentinel stats(like 8g for the gossamer insignia now -_-)
The build is here : http://goo.gl/eeasv

Admittedly there was a tradeoff of lowering 2% critical damage for an increase of 3% critical chance(not sure whether this is actually bad), but I was able to retain most of the stats at the level you want them to be.

I just wanted to share this with you since I already took the effort to make it. I think the difference between your built and my built is not that significant, but since this is going to be my first lvl 80 mesmer set(still lvl 38 now though), I just wanted to optimize it.

Once again, thanks for reading!

I bet this has been asked 9000 times (but I haven’t seen it in this thread, punch me if I missed it) but I’m surprised that in a build so focused on shatters and burst that you don’t seem to entertain using Mental Torment. (20% more damage on Mind Wrack)

Is it just that you don’t feel the extra damage is necessary or that putting the 10 points up there causes you to give up too much survivability?

@Bovinity, Dw for ask. Its easy to look at the most recently added of my build and miss the fact the shatter cat guide have 5 different builds. Of this builds:

2 use Mental and focus on burs shatter dmg, Shatter cat original and S C Phantasm Hybrid

2 is more mobility and cooldown focused, S C Mist 2.0 and S C Heavy 2.0

1 is a pure group build for ranged combat S C Dmg&support

So infact I do use this trait, just kot for al my builds depending on what they created for. If al buids looked the same it would be hard to be flexible and fill al areas we operate in.

/Osicat

I think it’s time for me to update my mesmer a little… I think I still run one of the early hybrid builds. But it still works, as I usually have a zerg behind me now

But the problem is I have no idea to what I am going to change/update to. Both mist and heavy looks nice.. is it possible to merge them to a “new” hybrid?

UnknownFreak.2805:

I think it’s time for me to update my mesmer a little… I think I still run one of the early hybrid builds. But it still works, as I usually have a zerg behind me now

But the problem is I have no idea to what I am going to change/update to. Both mist and heavy looks nice.. is it possible to merge them to a “new” hybrid?

That is exactly what I have done. I typically run a hybridization of Mist + Heavy + Seven Mirror. I always felt too squishy in one or not bursty enough in another, so I’ve found a happy medium between all that I am comfortable with and seems to still be fairly effective.

That’s the thing with the various guides out there. It seems to me that it’s best to take them as a starting point and make them your own and tailor them to your needs/abilities/play-style.

I am currently looking for some inspiration for my own hybrid build mainly oriented PVE.
The "shatter cat hybrid ‘seems to be a good base … but how to change it to be optimal in PVE ?
Mesmer is not my main spec, so I’m a little hard to achieve.
A little help will be welcome

@mginn, impressive. This is exactly how I want my guides to be used, not a copy and paste but a fundarion and inspiration for own experementing.

@kaptainka. Phantasm hybrid with sword focus or pistol and greatsword seems omptimal for pve.

/osicat

@Osicat : Thx for quick reply.
Here’s what I’m going for :
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1|c.1g.h8.a.1g.h1|6.1g.h8|1g.a1.1n.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1p.a1|2t.0.2w.0.3w.0.2t.0.3v.0.2w.0|k13.k5a.0.0.u136|0.0|31.3d.34.0.3q|e

Note that I already got Rabid pink trinkets and then include them into the build
I dropped Illusionnary Persona cause mobs don’t care about it.
And choose Beryl orbs instead of rune of air cause I don’t need swiftness for PVE solo or dungeon.

@KaptainKa, Semms solid, you should consider have a backup set op weps for the 2 precision stackers. In pve you will wery fast gain 25 stacks and after that they give nothing extra. Battle, Fire, force are al good pve alternatives

/Osicat

Hi Osicat,

I’ve been following your guides for a while now and they’ve been extremely helpful so thank you. I’ve been using something similar to your mist build for roaming/havoc squad play but with centaur runes (just for convenience really). Given I have perma swiftness from my runes, would I benefit more from the damage of the pistol or sword than then utility of the focus?

I’d like to have the superior phantasm from sword or pistol but the pull from focus is my only counter to shadow refuge (and thieves are everywhere these days!)

Thanks!

Hi Osicat, I’ve been watching lots of your youtube video’s. It got me to create a mesmer (lvl 80 since a few weeks). It’s astonishing how easy you make it look to own with the mesmer. I really wonder how you do it, how you make the exact right choice at the right moment. In WvW I seem to hit panic mode pretty fast, can’t think straight anymore… Keep bashing the buttons to unleash all my skills, but unfortunately I can’t reproduce what you’re doing…

I guess I need way more practice!

By the way, I’m running your Shatter Cat Mist 2.0 build. Although lately I’m swapping the Staff for a Berserker GS with Sup. Sigil of Perception.
For some reason I have a feeling that the staff is not doing significant damage. The reason is probably that I am doing it wrong :-)

Thanks for the information you (and everyone who responds) provide! I’ve been reading and keeping up since a few months. I thought It was time to thank you :-)

@Shadowraith, Hard to say, I keep find new usages for the focus al the time and we dont have any other weap who offers that kind of utility. Pistol is wery good in a wery narrow window. Its not flexible and in a big number situation its almost usless. Sword is a extremly strong defensive oh and a lovley smal number weapon. probobly our best 1 vs1 wep facing tanks. I say test them all, personaly I feel focsu is outsanding in flexibility.

@Tom van Leeuwen, cheers mate.

/Osicat

@Tom van Leeuwen:

you don’t need to be doing anything wrong mate, Osi really has amazing mobility skills, especially considering targeting with blinks. I think i’ll never manage to preform his way…

As for your dmg with staff… are you talking about zerg fights or smaller scale fights in WvW?
In large blobs staff might seem less useful, besides chaos storm, but that one has a massive CD for big zerg fights.
In those situations i found Osi’s DMG&Support build to be excellent. I only swap sigil of Rage for sigil od Fire on my GS for extra AoE dmg. As a matter of fact, it suits my playstyle excellently so i’m running that one now as my permanent build WvW and PvE <3

as for smaller scale fights, staff is amazing weapon. it’s not used purely for dmg but for survival and utility.

Hi Estarioll,

When facing a small group or only a few enemies, I seem to panic. I don’t recall ever winning in a one-to-one fight. I mostly run with zergs and there I seem to be able to do a lot of dmg with the sword and greatsword.

I guess I need way more WvW experience.

Hey Osicat,

First off I would like to say thanks for putting out awesome guides and videos. I recently started playing my 80 mesmer and you really helped me get into the swing of shatter.

I was wondering what your opinion of torch was, since you never seem to use it. I use it a lot instead of pistol (in the 10/30/0/0/30 build) and it works pretty well. I can stealth with torch 4 and then sword 3 while instealth so the enemy doesn’t see it coming, then while i burst with blurred frenzy the fire dmg procs from torch 4 too, adding a little bit more dmg. the phantasm is pretty meh but then again, since im running a shatter build my phantasms dont do much dmg anyway… so yeah.

I don’t think you should ignore your phantasm damage just because they’re not traited for. Osicat himself uses a sword OH in one of his builds and he always mentions how much he loves the swordsman damage (again without phantasm dmg trait).
The extra stealth in torch is definitely nice, and if it suits your playstyle then definitely go with it. As for me I enjoy using the focus because of it’s pulling properties. Great to throw people around, interrupt or when chasing.

@ Tom van Leeuwen, if you panic the enemy gets you, try stay calm, and focus staying at longer ranges, if it’s the close combats that you panic at, also timings are the key, once you have learned them you will do better. Yes I’m a commander, but I’ll also panic sometimes and I know how it feels. Your clones are for the confusion and damage (phantasm), also try finding enemies weak spot, either DD (Direct damage), or smaller bursts(against condi cleansing), it may be hard to plan a burst, but the burst is supposed to come at surprise, and or on low health enemies, if you play with a small party focus enemies, force them to split, alternative ress downed ally, when that comes, place burst, and with that you can force them to downed state, or force them to stop ressing cause they have to heal. All about timings, and time to learn them.
You also mention you join zergs, a tip, sometimes it works and sometimes not, but when it does, you crush your enemy real hard. A small group flank their zerg, if not organized they will spread out and be easy zerg targets. ^^

@ Reckless, phantasms are high damage dealers, enemy are afraid of them even if they do little damage (cause of all zerker mesmers), use them in your burst, and shatter them after they attacked, it’s a thing you’ll learn, when to shatter and when to not.