Guild Wars 2

Ok, I’ve been trying for the last week to be a better Mesmer. I’ve read the guides (some multiple times, since they were being updated while I was reading through it!), watched tons of videos, and have been practicing nearly daily. I even went with what is known as an easier build with PU Condi! The only tweaks I’ve made are using Rabid instead of Dire (I had Rabid Ascended already, and liked the idea of cover conditions) and Undead instead of Perplexity (less costly, and they add a huge amount of condition damage to the build with additional survival).

Yet I can’t flip a single camp. Not one. Players I do alright against; certainly not pro but improving and putting up a fight in 1v2s, winning most 1v1s, and I feel alright in group battles, but the second I’m in a zerg or soloing a camp I feel like I’m running screaming with a club and my pants around my ankles. Not the embodiment of grace I should be.

Now, before the trolls set in: I don’t expect to be the best Butterfly Mage after a week on the class. I didn’t roll Mesmer to be the most powerful entity in existence. I did it to give my server access to Mesmer utilities like Portal, Veil, Mass Invis, and to wall-pull using Into the Void (Side note: I’ve not been able to get this to work, and all the info I’ve found on doing it is rather old. Does it no longer work?).

I’m looking to be better outside of being a tools-bot; flipping camps and standing my ground in fights. Please, help to to not only float like a butterfly but to also sting like a bee!

I only play power shatter in WVW, so I’m probably not the best source of advice (I personally think condi Mesmer is very very lazy and cheap) but I can tell you what I’ve learned, personally;

Greed kills.

Just that. It’s very easy to overcommit, lock yourself out of your defensive utilities in your desire to apply more damage to the target, and then you end up going “I have nothing to press, and there is a 100b heading my way”.

You have to play to your strengths, and those are confusing the enemy and repositioning.

Don’t be afraid to disengage because of the burning desire in your gut to kill that guy RIGHT NOW.

Additionally, I don’t think condi Mesmer it at it’s best near zergs. The main zerg will shrug off your condis and it’s not the ideal spec for picking off backliners due to the extended time needed to kill things with conditions.

Before everyone falls on me, I’m not saying you -can’t-, I just think power is better for that.

Soloing camps shouldn’t be too hard, the main thing you want to do here is get all the npcs in one spot (pull and go around a corner) and make sure you always have images/phantasms around to distract them from hitting you. Don’t be afraid to kite the dumb npcs around a building either!

Helicity.3416:

snip

Thanks for the feedback! I have a full set of power gear and build, but considering how bad I’m doing at Condi roaming, you can probably imagine how poorly power goes for me. I don’t think I’ve actually managed a kill on it yet, but I’ve seen PLENTY of my mistform (vampiric runes).

A lot of my zerging is chilling in stealth, dropping clones to draw some fire from opposing players off my main group, and using Sig of Inspiration to flings copious amounts of boons to my commandeer and squad. I know I’m not turning tides, it’d just be nice not to be dead as much/more than I’m alive.

On flipping camps, I’ll have to try LoSing the ranged ones and clumping them together. I’d gotten too used to my ranger where I could axe-pull one in and ignore the other while my traps and pet dispatched the whole group. My biggest problem on Mes seems to be getting any of my clones to survive long enough to shatter. As soon as I summon them, one of the guards sneezes and I’m kiting the whole pack with no illusions up!

I partly agree with Helicity except on the “lazy and cheap” part (not after the patch). Certainly more forgiving, but not lazy.
If you run PU, disengaging when things look bad is indeed a good idea. Try to come progressively, single out enemies as much as you can, focus on archers first because their blind can really destroy mesmers. Running a bit of reflect can actually help (see below).

I personally play shatter condi PU. To start, try to avoid upgraded camps or camps with mercenaries (their number can easily be overwhelming). Ether feast instead of signet of ether may be easier thanks to the burst healing (but a well managed signet can be very strong). Since you have already 2 manipulations in the build, I would actually recommend using mirror and traiting manipulation to get the reflects I mentioned above.

Silverkey.2078:

I partly agree with Helicity except on the “lazy and cheap” part (not after the patch). Certainly more forgiving, but not lazy.
If you run PU, disengaging when things look bad is indeed a good idea. Try to come progressively, single out enemies as much as you can, focus on archers first because their blind can really destroy mesmers. Running a bit of reflect can actually help (see below).

I personally play shatter condi PU. To start, try to avoid upgraded camps or camps with mercenaries (their number can easily be overwhelming). Ether feast instead of signet of ether may be easier thanks to the burst healing (but a well managed signet can be very strong). Since you have already 2 manipulations in the build, I would actually recommend using mirror and traiting manipulation to get the reflects I mentioned above.

It was certainly not a dig at people playing condi, just my personal opinion (which as we know, are like certain bodily orifices)

I wanted to add that withdrawing slowly is a strategy that is very strong on condi Mesmer, if you can bait an enemy into overcommitting resources in order to stick with you, you will almost always end up killing them. Why? because moving and using skills against condi mesmers really hurts!

There are a few exceptions to this rule of course, but I know I’ve died more than once on my warrior because I over-chased a Mesmer I realistically was never going to catch.

Silverkey.2078:

snip

This raises a question I need to ask, but before I do I have to explain.
As I mentioned earlier I also have a Condi Ranger that I used before swapping to Mes for the utilities. With it, I can flip any camp any time. I’ve flipped Dredge-enforced, upgraded, with guarded supply dolyaks ready to head out solo and did it with no issues.

From what I’m understanding, this isn’t going to be doable on Mes with disengage/reengage tactics? So I’d need to pick off the ranged targets, reset, then come back in for the lords and such?

Or is this just to get the hang of flipping, and the greater potential is there once I’m no longer a bad?

You can definitely flip a camp at any time solo. I was just suggesting going for easy target as a training. It took me some time to pick up the shattering philosophy. At first, I was trying hard to make phantasm build work because I couldn’t get the shattering

Nachyochez.9758:

Silverkey.2078:

snip

This raises a question I need to ask, but before I do I have to explain.
As I mentioned earlier I also have a Condi Ranger that I used before swapping to Mes for the utilities. With it, I can flip any camp any time. I’ve flipped Dredge-enforced, upgraded, with guarded supply dolyaks ready to head out solo and did it with no issues.

From what I’m understanding, this isn’t going to be doable on Mes with disengage/reengage tactics? So I’d need to pick off the ranged targets, reset, then come back in for the lords and such?

Or is this just to get the hang of flipping, and the greater potential is there once I’m no longer a bad?

Generally camp flipping has kind of a “method” which is a little different for every class/build. Just keep doing it and it’ll reveal itself automagically in my experience (eventually you’ll notice what works and what doesn’t for your particular build)

Whew!

Thank you both; that makes perfect sense and is solid advice I’ll start putting to use next time I’m on.

Do you think a gear swap would be advised/necessary, or am I just needing to practice the unique style of this class before investing more gold?

I personally play rabid + undead, it works fine

Nachyochez.9758:

Whew!

Thank you both; that makes perfect sense and is solid advice I’ll start putting to use next time I’m on.

Do you think a gear swap would be advised/necessary, or am I just needing to practice the unique style of this class before investing more gold?

I am personally of the opinion that starting with a “cookie cutter” build and then tweaking as you go along is the best approach (while there is definitely a theorycraft “best” loadout for any build, I’d rather run something slightly less theoretically optimal if it feels better how I play it).

For example, my Mesmer has a few bits of Valkyrie, and my stacking sigil is on my Sw+T set. This is both because I like to get stuck in and finish my targets close range (which I certainly do not HAVE to do). So a bit more health and stacking is worth it for me.

Just keep at it, give it some more time!

How important is the food/utility?

When just futzing around I tend to leave them off since I’m starting to run low on gold (saving up mats for Ascended back piece), but I’m starting to think that might be a large part of my problem if things are taking too long to die.

Nachyochez.9758:

How important is the food/utility?

When just futzing around I tend to leave them off since I’m starting to run low on gold (saving up mats for Ascended back piece), but I’m starting to think that might be a large part of my problem if things are taking too long to die.

Food and Oil/Crystal/Stones are HUGE. Never not use them.
If you’re low on cash just grab the second-best variety (which is not a whole lot worse, but often 1/10th the price) just use something!

@Nachyochez
Food can be a sizable improvement (especially on condition duration) but I would argue still not needed for a camp flip!

Ok, so a couple things.

Firstly, the build. The metabattle build as given is pretty bad. It’s generally right, but missing a lot of the key elements that make the build work well. In general, take metabattle builds with several grains of salt.

Ether signet is the worst possible heal you could ever use. Every single other heal outperforms it spectacularly. Personally, I prefer mirror for the high uptime on reflects, but ether feast is burstier and will outperform mirror if you always use it with 2+ illusions.

Arcane thievery is a really poor choice. It’s on an very long cooldown and really doesn’t do very much. A much better choice is the condition removal mantra.

You’re already doing this, but dire armor is an awful choice. You should run full rabid armor/weapons, though I prefer to use the dire/rabid mix trinket type. That rounds your hp out around 20k, but keeps your good crit chance.

Perplexity are great runes, but undead are also great and like 50g cheaper, no problem there.

The sigils in the build are horrid. You should have an energy sigil on both sets, at least they got that right. You also need doom on at least one set. I like to put it on my staff. I used to run double doom, but now I take a corruption sigil because the +250 condition damage it provides is so strong.

The last thing to note is that I always avoid taking desperate decoy. It can and will get you killed, by proccing as you use an attack and causing you to get revealed at a really awkward moment. I always take phantasmal fury instead, purely because desperate decoy will kill you.

Ok, so now you’ve got an actually usable build. Let’s look at actually playing it.

Firstly, don’t bother trying to use this in a Zerg. It’s not worth the time and effort. If you want to Zerg, go for a power based setup, as glassy as you feel comfortable with, and use that instead. Better yet, hop onto a staff ele and be actually useful, it’s a nice feeling.

This build works great for roaming, both solo and in a party, so use it for that only.

Regarding camps, you really shouldn’t be having trouble with them. You’ve got enough toughness and healing that they won’t do a whole lot of damage to you as long as you don’t eat hits from a supervisor with flames. Flipping them quickly requires a bit of technique though.

Badically, you’ll want to LoS them all into a tight pack, then hit them with torch 4, a full shatter or two, and chaos storm. That’ll mostly kill the 4 minor guards, then you can kill the supervisor. Keep in mind that once you engage the scouts, they’ll cast a pulsing pbaoe blind that will make you completely useless if you stand in it, so don’t stand in it and focus on killing them first. Clones for shatters should not be put out slowly. You don’t have to worry about getting all your shatters to 3 clones. Instead, aim to make one clone from a skill, then a dodge clone, then shatter immediately. Doing that allows you to do shatters without any setup time.

I mentioned LoSing the guards. Every camp has a best spot to do this in, except NW camp which is just annoying. For SE, pull the guards behind the supply hut, and pull them around the corners of the hut for a tight pack. In SW, use the little house that’s in front of the camp and to the left of the path as you’re coming in, and do the same thing. In NE, you can pull all the guards except the supervisor around the left corner of the big rock as you’re entering the camp, then do the supervisor alone. North camp can be pulled easily when you enter it from the east, and LoS the guards to the left corner of the house just behind the supply hut. For NW camp, just sorta try to LoS alongside the walls a bit, but you’ll have to spread out a little more for that camp.

Thanks Fay, for two things. The first, the excellent advise (which I’m going to discuss below) and the second for giving me the chance to do a breakdown of this level!

Fay.2357:

Ok, so a couple things.

Firstly, the build. The metabattle build as given is pretty bad. It’s generally right, but missing a lot of the key elements that make the build work well. In general, take metabattle builds with several grains of salt.

I’m always seasoned the meta’s to taste, but since I am so unfamiliar with Mes I didn’t want to stray too far from the original. Thanks to your suggestions, I at least have an idea on some of what was going so horribly wrong.

Fay.2357:

Ether signet is the worst possible heal you could ever use. Every single other heal outperforms it spectacularly. Personally, I prefer mirror for the high uptime on reflects, but ether feast is burstier and will outperform mirror if you always use it with 2+ illusions.

I’ll toy with the other heals to see what ends up working for me. I’d enjoyed Mantra while leveling my human, but with the CD ‘fix’ I’m not sure I’ll enjoy it as much, so I’ll probably end up with Mirror as well since it’s traited. From my understanding I’ll get the reflect the entire cast time, then proc from trait for 2 seconds after use?

Fay.2357:

Arcane thievery is a really poor choice. It’s on an very long cooldown and really doesn’t do very much. A much better choice is the condition removal mantra.

Haha, you know I’ve never actually used thievery. I use the third utility as a swap-out. Portal/Inspiration/Domination have all held the spot for their fair share the past week. I’ll have to give Resolve a go!

Fay.2357:

You’re already doing this, but dire armor is an awful choice. You should run full rabid armor/weapons, though I prefer to use the dire/rabid mix trinket type. That rounds your hp out around 20k, but keeps your good crit chance.

As much as I want to try this, laurels take too long to gather and I very very rarely have time to do Fractals. Maybe with the big changes coming I could farm a set of the hybrid jewels; otherwise it’ll be a loooooong time before I can afford a third set of trinks to pickup Dire.

Fay.2357:

Perplexity are great runes, but undead are also great and like 50g cheaper, no problem there.

This is one of the changes I made to the Meta build I was most concerned was killing me. I’m glad to hear it wasn’t.

(continues below)

(part 2 due to char count)

The sigils in the build are horrid. You should have an energy sigil on both sets, at least they got that right. You also need doom on at least one set. I like to put it on my staff. I used to run double doom, but now I take a corruption sigil because the +250 condition damage it provides is so strong.

I actually replaced cleansing with Bursting right off the bat (guess I changed more then I realized in OP!).

The changes your suggesting leave me with 2 questions:
1) What is Doom giving me? Am I misunderstanding that it only gives 1 stack of poison to the first target hit?
2) For some reason, I thought sigils like corruption ended on weapon swap unless you have it on the second weapon. From your suggestion, it seems I can swap freely w/o giving up my condition damage. Is this correct? If so, could I even replace the weapon (putting the sigil on something like a Focus then replace it with torch) once I’m stacked?

Fay.2357:

The last thing to note is that I always avoid taking desperate decoy. It can and will get you killed, by proccing as you use an attack and causing you to get revealed at a really awkward moment. I always take phantasmal fury instead, purely because desperate decoy will kill you.

I have a feeling this explains a LOT of the shenanigans I’ve had going on. 16k HP hits 50% often enough that it breaking my casts and knocking be back a step probably is one of my biggest issues. Thank you!

Fay.2357:

Ok, so now you’ve got an actually usable build. Let’s look at actually playing it.

Firstly, don’t bother trying to use this in a Zerg. It’s not worth the time and effort. If you want to Zerg, go for a power based setup, as glassy as you feel comfortable with, and use that instead. Better yet, hop onto a staff ele and be actually useful, it’s a nice feeling.

I played ele once for a few days, back when you had to unlock each weapon skill on each attunement for each weapon by gaining XP in that attunement/weapon. It was one of the worst experiences in my GW career. That said, I do have a power build, but I’m terrible at it. I suppose I’ll just keep at it when zerging and hope I can get better over time; running Valk Armor with Assassin weapons and Zerk trinks. (another situation where I’d rather run Assassin trinks, but already have Zerk ascended)

Fay.2357:

This build works great for roaming, both solo and in a party, so use it for that only.
Regarding camps, you really shouldn’t be having trouble with them. You’ve got enough toughness and healing that they won’t do a whole lot of damage to you as long as you don’t eat hits from a supervisor with flames. Flipping them quickly requires a bit of technique though.

Badically, you’ll want to LoS them all into a tight pack, then hit them with torch 4, a full shatter or two, and chaos storm. That’ll mostly kill the 4 minor guards, then you can kill the supervisor. Keep in mind that once you engage the scouts, they’ll cast a pulsing pbaoe blind that will make you completely useless if you stand in it, so don’t stand in it and focus on killing them first. Clones for shatters should not be put out slowly. You don’t have to worry about getting all your shatters to 3 clones. Instead, aim to make one clone from a skill, then a dodge clone, then shatter immediately. Doing that allows you to do shatters without any setup time.

I mentioned LoSing the guards. Every camp has a best spot to do this in, except NW camp which is just annoying. For SE, pull the guards behind the supply hut, and pull them around the corners of the hut for a tight pack. In SW, use the little house that’s in front of the camp and to the left of the path as you’re coming in, and do the same thing. In NE, you can pull all the guards except the supervisor around the left corner of the big rock as you’re entering the camp, then do the supervisor alone. North camp can be pulled easily when you enter it from the east, and LoS the guards to the left corner of the house just behind the supply hut. For NW camp, just sorta try to LoS alongside the walls a bit, but you’ll have to spread out a little more for that camp.

This was a great read, and I’m looking forward to putting it to practice. I think you spotted and corrected a lot of the issues I was having, and combined with Silver and Hel’s tips this will go a long way to making my learning curve less frustrating. I’ll craft up some Fine Nourishment and give the changes a go over the next few days and see how it feels.

Thank you all so much!

hi and thanks for the interesting discussion. Could anyone be so kind to flag the main and most used Mes builds? I’m aware of metabattle but i’d rather have some opinions here on the forum

Here’s the build I go into WvW on right now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAW7fnsICVohNoBOqBcrhlXDysDDfEoBInNpcC9OaA-T1SAABYoEUhDCgQq/QxFAow9HEw0n0HBgZ0NImyAAeAARp0TQAKC-w

Things I’m planning to change sometime soon:
-> actually get off my lazy butt and buy some tuning crystals
Sigil of Earth -> Sigil of Bursting
Sigil of Agony -> Sigil of Malice
Crests of the Rabid -> Carrion jewels

Things I change frequently:
Signet of Ether -> Ether Feast. I keep the signet because I get more/lazier healing in most content, but if I know I’m gonna get in a big fight I’ll switch to Ether Feast.
Signet of Domination -> Blink -> Feedback -> Null Field. This one is easy, sometimes you just need something else, but decoy is too useful to swap it out when roaming. If I find myself with a zerg for a while, I might swap decoy to Feedback or Null Field, but I’m not usually there for long, and the Signet of Domination is easiest to forgo, imo. Frankly, when I had blink, I found I didn’t need it all that much. I bet that’ll change when they fix The Pledge.

I haven’t had any problem soloing camps of any kind.

As far as killing npcs, my first key to stay in staff. Chaos armor, phase retreat, and chaos storm are your lifeline, but Winds of Chaos just adds a lot more condi damage to the mix. I usually start in torch just to get the iMage out, and drop into The Prestige for the blind/confusion and burn, but then I switch to staff and stay there, leaving the scepter/torch goodies for emergencies (read: enemy players, or need to reset).

Second, keep an eye on your clone hp. Pyro’s right, a 2x shatter when you can get it is just gonna outperform a 3x shatter that you have to set up for, because you’ll get more of them, and won’t have to work around that setup.

Simply put, Staff clones > npcs, shatters = aoe, but don’t waste the staff clones if you can’t get them back up in a decent amount of time.

Regarding trinkets:

Yeah, if you don’t do fractals much nor have many laurels, this can be tough. You can buy the accessories for 12 guild comms each if you do guild missions. Rings and amulet can be obtained for less laurels than normal at the wvw vendors, where you split the cost between wvw badges and laurels.

The stat combo is itself a hybrid dire/rabid mix. I don’t actually mix trinkets, that’s just one of the built in combos.

Regarding ele in a Zerg:

Yeah, unlocking all the skills was a chore for sure. The thing is that staff ele is just so effortlessly effective in a Zerg, there’s really no comparison. Having tried for years to get Mesmer to work and then more recently gearing an ele for it, there’s really no comparison (this will get a bit better with hot though).

Regarding doom:

Even 1 stack of poison is the full healing debuff. It lasts a long time with the 40% food, and provides another cover condition for the rest of your burst. It’s not particularly useful for camps, that one is more for people.

Regarding corruption:

You may not stack up and then swap the weapon off; you need to have the sigil equipped on one of your sets. You used to be able to do that, then it got nerfed. If you take corruption, make sure you put a sigil on one of your underwater weapons too, otherwise you’ll lose the stacks if you take a swim.

Fay.2357:

You may not stack up and then swap the weapon off; you need to have the sigil equipped on one of your sets. You used to be able to do that, then it got nerfed. If you take corruption, make sure you put a sigil on one of your underwater weapons too, otherwise you’ll lose the stacks if you take a swim.

For clarification, he means you must have the weapon equipped, but you may weapon-swap without losing stacks.
I keep my sigil of corruption on my scepter, so I don’t lose stacks when I swap pistol for torch and vice versa, and so I can have full stacks when I’m on my staff. But that’s partly because this is also my pve build, so I usually stay on staff most of the time.

Fay.2357:

The last thing to note is that I always avoid taking desperate decoy. It can and will get you killed, by proccing as you use an attack and causing you to get revealed at a really awkward moment. I always take phantasmal fury instead, purely because desperate decoy will kill you.

Had similar problems. After patch seems any illusion summoning skill (both weapon and utility) except decoy force you to start auto attack (if aa is switched on at your skill bar). So after I switched off aa and accustomed to go defensive at low HP desperate decoy helps me much in outnumbered situations (not always ofc). Though this decision has minuses too: when you manually use 1st gs attack you should wait its’s whole duration before you start cast gs2 or gs4. Though you can stow weapon before use of these skills to stop gs1 channeling.

Nachyochez.9758:

I have a feeling this explains a LOT of the shenanigans I’ve had going on. 16k HP hits 50% often enough that it breaking my casts and knocking be back a step probably is one of my biggest issues. Thank you!

Description of this trait is wrong now. It procs only if you have been hitted by non-lethal blow while under 25% of max HP

North camp has a good spot behind bench (bench near supply boxes, it counts as obstacle). At NE you can gather all npc by kiting behind east log piles. For NW there is a ltl tricky place at wooden pillar (usually I run/jump around it to lure veteran scouts). Sometimes I port directly spot to prevent dodge clone generation.

I hope it helps.

I’m going to be honest. When I first wrote this thread, I was terrified it was going to be filled with people accusing all new Mesmers of being band wagoners, diatribes and insults, and general poor sportsmanship. However, having read through these replies, looked over my options, and seeing the overwhelmingly positive feedback I’m getting, I sincerely wish I’d asked sooner!

I’m now torn on Sigils.
On one hand, corruption sounds VERY sexy in the way it works, but I’m not sure if it’s worth giving up Bursting (+ ~110 perma Condition damage vs +250 w/setup)… maybe if I just drop it onto the scepter, I can see what it does. Dilemmas dilemmas!

I think my biggest overall issue was over-reliance on Scepter. Due to the amount of focus on the Torch (PU/Pledge/Prestige are constantly mentioned as major part of the build) and the fact it’s always placed as weapon set #1 on the build calculators, I assumed it was the primary setup for the build. What I’m seeing in discussion, though, is it looks more to be the set I use when Staff is on full CD and I want an Energy proc to setup for Shattering.

My guess would be: Start in Sc/T to stealth in, open with a little torment and a lot of confusion to kite to LoS and clump. Dodge clone, swap, dodge-shatter, #5, #2, dodge-shatter, #4. Blink/Decoy as needed to stun break/gain mobility/reset, and toss in a few more dodge-&-#2-shatters. Swap back to Sc/T for reset, when on full CD or need more energy for clones?

Am I on the right track?

You shouldn’t be focusing on either of your weaponsets. The general idea is that each set does some particular things, and you use them as you need them. Staff has aoe, movement from phase retreat, prot and defense and such, aoe interrupts too from chaos storm. Scepter has potent confusion, and the strongest single torment application in the game with the block. Torch has the all important stealth, but can also burn and removes conditions too.

You combine all that utility into your build. You need all of it and will use all of it. Don’t worry about focusing on one or the other. Worry instead about learning exactly what each weapon can do for you, and try to figure out how to put all that utility together into use for your playstyle.

I’m mostly suggesting to focus on staff for npc-killing…ie, the PvE part of WvW.
The conditions you get out of scepter are torment and confusion, which are the weakest of the conditions as far as npcs are concerned.
Staff, meanwhile, provides lots of bleed, more aoe, and better kiting ability in general…all of which are good for camp clearing. Bleed is the weakest condition for pvp in terms of strict characteristics (stacking more bleed > stacking more poison, tho), while torment and confusion are the strongest conditions as far as players are concerned (except for lots of burn stacks, but we don’t get to have that toy).

In short, Pyro’s perspective is the best one for killing players. But, imo, you’ll kill npcs easier if you spend more time in staff than scepter :P

Now, I am just like you starting my adventure with PU Condi Mesmer, but I can share one advice that I haven’t noticed above:
If you have problems with flipping the camp, instead of rushing in and doing huge aoe try pulling bit away from the camp. Yes, all guards will rush at you but… I’ve noticed a weird thing: quite a few of them will reset after killing your clones and slowly walk back to their normal spots! I’m not sure is it a bug or a feature but it definitely helps your survivability to fight with 1-2 guards at the time instead with whole camp.
On the downside this of course will make capturing the camp last longer so you are more at risk of being jumped by other players but it will help you in learning your moves.
And whatever they say about PU Condi build – it is fun to play.

Mirmil.5074:

I’ve noticed a weird thing: quite a few of them will reset after killing your clones and slowly walk back to their normal spots! I’m not sure is it a bug or a feature but it definitely helps your survivability to fight with 1-2 guards at the time instead with whole camp.

Every camp npc have max “allowed to travel” distance that calculated from their initial spawn position. If npc should exceed this max distance in order to hit nearest target – it starts regenerate and goes back to initial position. Advice for you – don’t fight 1-2 gurds (mb only while learning), but aggro them all and pack them by kiting at narrow places and start burst (condi or/and direct dps) hard. Just stps back from blinding fields.

Every camp npc have max “allowed to travel” distance that calculated from their initial spawn position. If npc should exceed this max distance in order to hit nearest target – it starts regenerate and goes back to initial position. Advice for you – don’t fight 1-2 gurds (mb only while learning), but aggro them all and pack them by kiting at narrow places and start burst (condi or/and direct dps) hard. Just stps back from blinding fields.

Its not the “allowed to travel” reset that you can achieve by simply running out – it is genuine slow walk towards the camp (without even resetting the health) after killing a clone.

Look at the NE camp: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Foghaven_map.jpg
I’ve manage to achieve that while fighting on the east side of the camp between the building and the lumber mill (somewhere close to the letter “a” on the picture), while it is possible to kite the guards much further.

So how much condition damage should you have in a PU condi build?

Flipping a camp on mesmer is super easy. There are a few things to keep in mind I suppose. I’m just going to write some out..

The Scout is your primary target at first because the blinds and cripples will screw you over the most. So pick a Scout, call target on it and kill it till its dead, then the next scout. When fighting the scouts stay as close as you can to them while avoiding the black powder radius from the scout. This is because you want all the melee npcs on top of your aoe.

Keep in mind there are 2 guards and you will be in melee range usually for the aoe, so use your dodges/blind/scepter2/phase retreat etc to avoid their 2 attacks – first the bolas- next the bulls rush. . Don’t stealth without clone or phant’s out or you risk resetting.

Mind your phants and clones, shatter regularly because aoe is your best friend here but make sure to be able to have 1 of any out at all times to draw aggro and keep from resetting on your stealths. Dodge clones are well used to cover stealths and prevent resets. Also remember you can cast phants from stealth without breaking it.

You should in no way need* to stack the camp though it does make it easier. You should easily be able to just jump right into the middle of a camp and start in on those scouts. The most important parts imo are killing the scouts quick and avoiding the guards 2 very predictable attacks. Once the scouts are done it’s pretty much easy mode since without cripple its very easy to kite melee, just dodge that bola..

Your runes choice is totally scary for me. May well be that one or another rune brings a little more damage. But is it worth it for the price of zero mobility? Not to me, I always use traveler runes, whether I’m on the road with power or Condi. The only exception would be the focus with Pack runes, that’s ok too.

Dirtyrascal.1023:

So how much condition damage should you have in a PU condi build?

I think I usually end up with ~2100 when fully stacked.

Mirmil.5074:

Its not the “allowed to travel” reset that you can achieve by simply running out – it is genuine slow walk towards the camp (without even resetting the health) after killing a clone.

Hmm. Tryed to do as you described, but npc behavior still same: when nearest target is out of distance (it is you after clone death) npc turns towards camp and walking slowly only few sec, then running back + regenerating health. Mb I should play with jumps in and out of distance.
They all have same aggro distance, but because scouts have ranged attacks you can kite them little further. All npc have different initial spots, thus while you are inside of max aggro distance of certain npc, you could be out of max distance of other npc. That is why you are able lure only 1-2 by kiting away from camp.

Anyway everybody choose most suitable and comfortable play style. I personally prefer to lure all npcs to spot and burst them down, focusing on supervisor and interrupting npc heals. Usually it takes 30-50s on my hybrid. I think it would be even faster on full power with sword.

Nachyochez.9758:

and to wall-pull using Into the Void (Side note: I’ve not been able to get this to work, and all the info I’ve found on doing it is rather old. Does it no longer work?)!

I don’t think anyone has answered this part of your question yet. Yes it does work. The pull only has a range of 600 which is a lot shorter then you would think. If you are chasing someone you really need to be able to drop it pretty close to them as by the time you can get it dropped and activated they will have generally run that distance. So it isn’t great for catching up with someone, it is really better just for interrupting people and stalling them in a specific spot for a second so you can dump damage on them. It is also of course really effective for pulling people out of towers if they come to the edge or if you have two Mesmers to chain pull. You also have to remember that if they have stability they won’t get pulled.

I love the feel of focus and the sheer troll potential of pulling people off towers and such but I rarely find it equipped as torch (better survivability/repositioning) or pistol (more easily applied interrupt/better phantasm damage) are generally more practical. I keep one on hand to quickly switch to when approaching an enemy tower though. Even if you can’t pull them over the lip of a tower a few mesmers cycling pulls can often keep people off well placed siege that can’t be hit with a ele meteor storm.

This is all great information guys, thanks so much!

Didn’t have a chance to go camping last night, but I did try to help on porting some allies back into the tower which failed miserably. The reason it failed, I think is the reason I might be having some trouble with camps: When I went stealth from Prestige, by scepter locked onto a guard and took a swing. I have “target on attack” turned on (I use it to grab things the second they pop out of stealth on Ranger) – is this causing me to grab a target from the blind on Prestige, and then auto attacking?

@Tofu, glad to know I’m not wasting time with the positioning practice. Getting the rangers on the lip is the goal of the pull, so I’ll keep on it. Good idea about chaining interrupts though; have to keep it in mind next time. Can it also be used on a door to pull people off of siege and just be a pest?

Nachyochez.9758:

Can it also be used on a door to pull people off of siege and just be a pest?

I don’t actually know for sure. I would imagine so but I’ve never tried it from the inside. You aren’t pulling them any distance since the door is in the way so it wouldn’t delay them more then 1 second and there would most likely be others stacked on the door that the pull might target instead or would just hop on the ram immediately.

It works better in the offensive sense when a few defenders inside a tower are being annoying with well placed arrow carts because you know who it is going to pull and you can time it up with another mesmer to pull them all the way out, or with an ele or other aoe to try to down them. Then hopefully there isn’t someone else to take their place on the siege.

A good way to benchmark your mesmer traits/skill set is to solo tackle one of the big vet karkas. How fast you get them down vs. survivability will really show you what’s good.

Tofu.1978:

Nachyochez.9758:

Can it also be used on a door to pull people off of siege and just be a pest?

I don’t actually know for sure. I would imagine so but I’ve never tried it from the inside. You aren’t pulling them any distance since the door is in the way so it wouldn’t delay them more then 1 second and there would most likely be others stacked on the door that the pull might target instead or would just hop on the ram immediately.

It works better in the offensive sense when a few defenders inside a tower are being annoying with well placed arrow carts because you know who it is going to pull and you can time it up with another mesmer to pull them all the way out, or with an ele or other aoe to try to down them. Then hopefully there isn’t someone else to take their place on the siege.

By itself, 1 second is nothing. But, if used to pull an enemy from building siege while Necros and Eles blast their work down it starts to matter. Add in 2 or 3 more mesmers each timing to do the same thing, and suddenly a small group of 10 can hold a wall long enough to turn the tide. In theory, anyway.

An option worth exploring!

Whelp, thank you all so much for helping me be less bad.

Made the suggested changes to traits and skills, adjusted my play style to the strengths of the class, and was able to take a camp all by my lonesome and with no trouble.

Much appreciated!

@Fay, thanks for all of the great advice. As a returning player this is a huge help. I wish I had read it before I followed the meta build to a T. I have full dire gear (armor, weapons, accessories). Since ruined it out with perplexity runes I am loath to replace the armor due to the cost of the runes, would it be more effective to change my accessories out to all rabid? Another question I have seen an answer to, is it better to leave the clones up as long as possible to deal more condition damage or is it better to shatter them once I have 2 or 3 up? I will make the changes to the traits you recommended from the meta put condition roamed.

Not to derail the thread but would you change anything from the meta build for the power shatter build?

Ironbars.9123:

@Fay, thanks for all of the great advice. As a returning player this is a huge help. I wish I had read it before I followed the meta build to a T. I have full dire gear (armor, weapons, accessories). Since ruined it out with perplexity runes I am loath to replace the armor due to the cost of the runes, would it be more effective to change my accessories out to all rabid?

Well, is your armor ascended/WvW badge gear? If not, you can just salvage it. If so, then your best bet would be full rabid accessories, you’re correct in this.

Ironbars.9123:

Another question I have seen an answer to, is it better to leave the clones up as long as possible to deal more condition damage or is it better to shatter them once I have 2 or 3 up?

Clones generally aren’t going to do very much damage to players. They’re just too slow, and don’t apply much pressure to moving targets. However, shattering isn’t as simple as once you have 2 or 3 up. You want to shatter when your shatter will hit. This means positioning your clones properly (take a look at the youtube video from vashury ‘shatter tactics’ for more on this) around your target, and trying to bait out dodges. If you only have 1 clone up but are sure your shatter will hit, then shatter.

Ironbars.9123:

Not to derail the thread but would you change anything from the meta build for the power shatter build?

For power shatter, I assume you’re referring to ‘burst shatter (GvG)’? If so, then just a couple things. Veil is for GvG only. If you’re not doing GvG, don’t waste a spot on your bar for veil. Take the daze mantra or cleanse mantra instead. I also (personal preference) never take desperate decoy because it can kill you if it procs at an awkward time, giving you revealed. That’s just my preference though, it’s not a bad trait unless it kills you.

Thanks a lot, Fay, you have been very helpful.