Guild Wars 2

So post patch.. looks like mes for raid content is still viable (thankfully). Even though boon sharing nerf by 50% or so from what I understand, the only change is now either no mes, or 2 mes in group. Also rev as the go-to complementary class got sidelined, so no place for them anymore in raid meta. That’s kinda sad since I play a rev as well, I hope this will change in an upcoming patch.

Anyway, I decide to repost here and just to share I am still working on unlocking chrono on my mes, kinda left it incomplete for a while as I was focusing on other things. I think I am pretty decently geared at this point, have ascended armor set with assassins and mostly berserker trinkets. The build site does mention commanders set but again not sure how viable that is post patch.. I am not against changing stats on armor but I understand it would be expensive. If it helps I got some soldiers trinkets in bank from fractal drops, and others that are stacking toughness. I’m looking for a solid build for raids that won’t require me to swap builds or change traits a lot. I get panicky when asked to change my build.. so would like to avoid this if possible. If tank is needed, I can learn to tank. I guess I just wanna be most useful to raid groups, not sure how sites like metabattle are reliable anymore. I would appreciate any build info and tips as well, thanks

It is slightly time consuming to get gears for 100% boon duration (time-gated charged quartz) , but not dead expensive (other than bountiful utility ofc). You may also need to farm DS for leadership runes, but that rune set will most likely stay useful for a long period of time so its a time worth investing. Other than that, having platinum doubloon filled in some exotic accessories (yeah I know) should be easy to achieve 90-100% boon uptime.

From there it isn’t too complicated to maintain perma quickness just by yourself. Slot SoI and shield, run domination/inspiration and time warp or well of action, and you should be able to cycle through to achieve that. As for perma alacrity, just keep 3 iAvengers alive and you should be sweet.

I think you don’t need to change your zerker/assa pieces, but you should try to get a rune with boon duration plus a bit additional duration.

http://qtfy.enjin.com/mesmer

The build/guide is already being updated to reflect the patch changes.
Above linked optimized version has legs as commander and 1 berserker exo-backpiece with platinum dubloon, rest full asc zerker.

Farming for leadership rune (30% boon duration) could take a while, so meanwhile getting 20% could be an option, for example through 4x traveler, 2x water (costs: 3g overall).
Other than that sigil of concentration gives 33% (use weaponswap to proc boon duration).
For tanking you just change 1-3 zerker trinkets to knight’s.

You can play around with this editor, for example if you want to keep as many of your current gearpieces as possible to see the differences or if you want to take more boon duration via platinum dubloon etc: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Ok I think I got my mes geared now, exotic comm trinkets and full ascended for rest of them, my toughness is at 1560 or so with food, I’m just wondering abt the recent change to mes that cause you to slot diff skills like for the elite.

Basically my 1st question was in regards to traits. Was there a reason to use Domination instead of illusions or whatever? I haven’t looked at the traitlines that closely so I might be missing something obvious

I’m more concerned with rotations tho, if I go to a site like metabattle it still doesn’t seem to be updated to reflect the new changes since patch. I get that I should probably be swapping weps as often as possible, using all my wells off cd and keep shattering my illusions when I can. I’m having trouble with the specifics though, things like is it worth it to bother using continuum split or whatever without slotting time warp? If so how does this figure into the rotations, as well as basic questions like how can I cast 3 phantasms in one set (sword/x) so quickly before I swap to shield as I need to do for rotations?

Sorry for asking so many questions or if many of them seem obvious.. I haven’t played my mes in many months but I’m looking to try it out again

nagr.1593:

Ok I think I got my mes geared now, exotic comm trinkets and full ascended for rest of them, my toughness is at 1560 or so with food, I’m just wondering abt the recent change to mes that cause you to slot diff skills like for the elite.

Basically my 1st question was in regards to traits. Was there a reason to use Domination instead of illusions or whatever? I haven’t looked at the traitlines that closely so I might be missing something obvious

I’m more concerned with rotations tho, if I go to a site like metabattle it still doesn’t seem to be updated to reflect the new changes since patch. I get that I should probably be swapping weps as often as possible, using all my wells off cd and keep shattering my illusions when I can. I’m having trouble with the specifics though, things like is it worth it to bother using continuum split or whatever without slotting time warp? If so how does this figure into the rotations, as well as basic questions like how can I cast 3 phantasms in one set (sword/x) so quickly before I swap to shield as I need to do for rotations?

Sorry for asking so many questions or if many of them seem obvious.. I haven’t played my mes in many months but I’m looking to try it out again

I’m keen to see what they have to say as well.

nagr.1593:

Ok I think I got my mes geared now, exotic comm trinkets and full ascended for rest of them, my toughness is at 1560 or so with food, I’m just wondering abt the recent change to mes that cause you to slot diff skills like for the elite.

Basically my 1st question was in regards to traits. Was there a reason to use Domination instead of illusions or whatever? I haven’t looked at the traitlines that closely so I might be missing something obvious

I’m more concerned with rotations tho, if I go to a site like metabattle it still doesn’t seem to be updated to reflect the new changes since patch. I get that I should probably be swapping weps as often as possible, using all my wells off cd and keep shattering my illusions when I can. I’m having trouble with the specifics though, things like is it worth it to bother using continuum split or whatever without slotting time warp? If so how does this figure into the rotations, as well as basic questions like how can I cast 3 phantasms in one set (sword/x) so quickly before I swap to shield as I need to do for rotations?

Sorry for asking so many questions or if many of them seem obvious.. I haven’t played my mes in many months but I’m looking to try it out again

The main reason for domination is that it lowers both your SoI on utility slot but your passive SoI proc with Phantasmal Inspiration trait as well. Basically your passive SoI gives u the quickness to bridge the gap between rotations and thats how perma quickness is achieved. Having distortions on signet use is an amazing bonus.

If u run Illusions/Chaos intead of domination the higher cd on SoI will leave u with a few seconds without quickness at some point.
In a practical sense it’s not that bad but it leaves barely any margin for error especially when under pressure.

Waaaait… the ICD of the passive proc-trait is affected by the CD-trait for the signet?

Really? Who programs this?!

All traits that use a skill that already exists (like SoI proc, iDefender proc, etc), regardless of Profession, are affected by cdr of other traits and Alacrity.

I see no issue with that, in fact it’s great that one of them programmed it like this, so the whole rotations won’t kitten up when you gain cdr from traits or Alacrity.

Carighan.6758:

Waaaait… the ICD of the passive proc-trait is affected by the CD-trait for the signet?

Really? Who programs this?!

This was actually a great QoL change for all classes, imo. Even more so Alacrity also affected passive traits like this. The gotcha is that the trait has to activate a skill of sort. So things like Vigour on Crit from dueling won’t be affected, but things like Passive SoI or Phant Defender are affected by CD reducing items since they toggle an actual skill.

Carighan.6758:

Waaaait… the ICD of the passive proc-trait is affected by the CD-trait for the signet?

Really? Who programs this?!

This was made incredibly clear when they caused this change. I’ll spell it out for you:

Traits that produce an effect by proccing a normally active skill are affected by all traits affecting that normally active skill.

Oh, it does make sense, of sorts. Just never realized it, despite actively using it in raids (otherwise how could my SoI and the proc ever line up, granted).

Djeraya.4379:

I think you don’t need to change your zerker/assa pieces, but you should try to get a rune with boon duration plus a bit additional duration.

http://qtfy.enjin.com/mesmer

The build/guide is already being updated to reflect the patch changes.
Above linked optimized version has legs as commander and 1 berserker exo-backpiece with platinum dubloon, rest full asc zerker.

Farming for leadership rune (30% boon duration) could take a while, so meanwhile getting 20% could be an option, for example through 4x traveler, 2x water (costs: 3g overall).
Other than that sigil of concentration gives 33% (use weaponswap to proc boon duration).
For tanking you just change 1-3 zerker trinkets to knight’s.

You can play around with this editor, for example if you want to keep as many of your current gearpieces as possible to see the differences or if you want to take more boon duration via platinum dubloon etc: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

That link is exactly what I’ve been looking for, thanks a lot!

guis can we pls focus on my real issue here, I got maybe a half an answer on a simple ‘Whats up with this..?’ question that ppl unanimously decide to change topic to for some reason. Like it seems y’all are waffling and talking in circles when I’d appreciate a straight answer pls, it’s a simple thing I’m asking too

To recap, u don’t have to read up but what I’m asking for assistance with:

• confirmation abt traits again. Is one significantly better than the other, than I absolutely would have to change to Dom in pugs? My reasoning is that Illusions seems like it would better help my survivability, shatter traits and all
• Rotations to use at all times, and rotations to use in a pinch when ur worried about surviving as tank or not getting downed. Again, not sure that metabattle is that accurate anymore
• I will post my build info later if needed, but right now it’s all comm trinkets, one asc comm backpiece and assassins armor with water runes. I’m at ~1620 toughness with food using this setup

I joined for vg training a few days ago to learn how to tank.. not sure if was my group or not like not getting much heals, but I downed a lot that whole fight too. I’d like to avoid this if possible in future cases. I was kinda getting used to my build as well and I didn’t use any dodges most of the time, perhaps I can fix this

I watched vids of how to do it beforehand too, thot I was prepared but man even for a training run that was hard. that guy hits rly hard, plus those circles tele me out if I mistime a dodge and the boss gets displaced. Any tips on surviving on this boss or even in similar cases?

nagr.1593:

guis can we pls focus on my real issue here, I got maybe a half an answer on a simple ‘Whats up with this..?’ question that ppl unanimously decide to change topic to for some reason. Like it seems y’all are waffling and talking in circles when I’d appreciate a straight answer pls, it’s a simple thing I’m asking too

To recap, u don’t have to read up but what I’m asking for assistance with:

• confirmation abt traits again. Is one significantly better than the other, than I absolutely would have to change to Dom in pugs? My reasoning is that Illusions seems like it would better help my survivability, shatter traits and all
• Rotations to use at all times, and rotations to use in a pinch when ur worried about surviving as tank or not getting downed. Again, not sure that metabattle is that accurate anymore
• I will post my build info later if needed, but right now it’s all comm trinkets, one asc comm backpiece and assassins armor with water runes. I’m at ~1620 toughness with food using this setup

I joined for vg training a few days ago to learn how to tank.. not sure if was my group or not like not getting much heals, but I downed a lot that whole fight too. I’d like to avoid this if possible in future cases. I was kinda getting used to my build as well and I didn’t use any dodges most of the time, perhaps I can fix this

I watched vids of how to do it beforehand too, thot I was prepared but man even for a training run that was hard. that guy hits rly hard, plus those circles tele me out if I mistime a dodge and the boss gets displaced. Any tips on surviving on this boss or even in similar cases?

Goodness, get off your high horse! Literally the second reply linked an extremely detailed guide on how to play Chronomancer in raids. We’re not explicitly answering your questions because that guide answers everything you asked plus a lot of questions you didn’t think to ask.

Tips for surviving on VG: you have blocks and evasion on your weapon skills on top of invuln from class skills and normal dodges. Use them. you won’t take much damage if you just cycle through those cooldowns in a reasonable manner.

Edit: Plus, anyone who frequents the PvE subforum has lost more than enough time reading your threads. I think I speak for multiple people when I say my patience with your threads is…limited.

i would recommend going domination over illusions. If you look at the rotation from qt (http://qtfy.enjin.com/mesmer) you can see that the rotation with illusions has 3 tides of times, 3 well of actions, 3 signets of inspiration and 2 signets of inspiration from the the trait. Assuming sigil of concentration procs on everything you have 11 sources of 6 seconds of quickness 11*6 is 66 seconds of quickness. With permanent alacrity your continuum split (and for that reason your rotation) is on a ~57.5 second CD + up to 6 seconds from the continuum split rotation itself . So illusions barely guarentees 100% quickness uptime.
The Domination traitline offers 15 sources of 6 seconds of quickness totaling 90 seconds of quickness. Your continuum split is on a 67.5s+6s=73.5s cooldown leaving you with 16.5 seconds for errors or compensate for times where you can’t proc sigil of concentration. Domination also has the benefit of distortion on signet casts and illusions offers better alacrity generation.

Bonus Note since Tides of times can hit all 10 group members you also have quickness from the other mesmer leaving you more room for error in the illusion rotation

nagr.1593:

guis can we pls focus on my real issue here, I got maybe a half an answer on a simple ‘Whats up with this..?’ question that ppl unanimously decide to change topic to for some reason. Like it seems y’all are waffling and talking in circles when I’d appreciate a straight answer pls, it’s a simple thing I’m asking too

To recap, u don’t have to read up but what I’m asking for assistance with:

• confirmation abt traits again. Is one significantly better than the other, than I absolutely would have to change to Dom in pugs? My reasoning is that Illusions seems like it would better help my survivability, shatter traits and all
• Rotations to use at all times, and rotations to use in a pinch when ur worried about surviving as tank or not getting downed. Again, not sure that metabattle is that accurate anymore
• I will post my build info later if needed, but right now it’s all comm trinkets, one asc comm backpiece and assassins armor with water runes. I’m at ~1620 toughness with food using this setup

Besides what Fay said about your horse….It is important to know how builds work rather than just copy-pasta them. So yeah, someone asking about “trait skills” being affected by cd mechanics (traits and Alacrity) we had to address that because a critical factor in most of the rotations in most (if not all) meta builds.

-Trait selection is based on your comfort with the class as well as comfort with the rotation. Currently there are multiple go-to trait set-ups that each have their pros and cons so we can’t give you an absolute answer to “this trait is better than the other” because it all comes down to the group that you are playing with and how well you’re landing things. E.G. It’s a case of the goldilocks rotation you gotta find the one that is just right for you/your team.
-Again, it’s a Goldilocks situation, the qtfy link that was provided to you goes into detail of when/why to use said rotation and potential difficulties.
-Ideally your goal is to shoot for +100% boon duration, and some of the stuff is very time consuming to get so work with what you got and have a goal to shoot for.

Sorry to be blunt, but again as Fay mentioned, a lot of your questions were answered right away and even more so with the qtfy link. And, I can’t say we’re sorry for going into depth about Alacrity and CD-reducing items also affecting traits as things like that are important to the whole Mesmer community even if you don’t find them important yourself. If anything as a Mesmer I would say impact of CD reducing items should be under every Mesmer’s skillset.

Look here, it was linked in a thread I posted yesterday and contains a tonne of helpful info

http://dulfy.net/2014/07/21/gw2-mesmer-pve-class-guide-by-sanderinoa/

nagr.1593:

To recap, u don’t have to read up but what I’m asking for assistance with:

• confirmation abt traits again. Is one significantly better than the other, than I absolutely would have to change to Dom in pugs? My reasoning is that Illusions seems like it would better help my survivability, shatter traits and all
• Rotations to use at all times, and rotations to use in a pinch when ur worried about surviving as tank or not getting downed. Again, not sure that metabattle is that accurate anymore
• I will post my build info later if needed, but right now it’s all comm trinkets, one asc comm backpiece and assassins armor with water runes. I’m at ~1620 toughness with food using this setup

I joined for vg training a few days ago to learn how to tank.. not sure if was my group or not like not getting much heals, but I downed a lot that whole fight too. I’d like to avoid this if possible in future cases. I was kinda getting used to my build as well and I didn’t use any dodges most of the time, perhaps I can fix this

First things first… if tanking is your job, then focus on that (especially if you’re still learning).
For example Well of Eternity may be the most useful heal (giving alacrity and removing conditions while healing you), but Signet of Ether can safe your life by resetting your shield block’s cooldown. So take it if you’re not sure about how much damage/healing you get. You will learn from experience when you need it and when not…

Vale Guardian actually is one of the most difficult bosses in terms of damage you get. Most other bosses are much more about positioning and avoiding key abilities, while their normal “autoattack” damage is lower. Only at Vale Guardian you need to avoid most of the basic attacks too, while your healer may be away caring for the guys running green circles.
But you have enough skills to do it, once you get used to rotating through all of them.

Let’s take a normal VG pull for example:
You pull him, position yourself near the edge of the battlefield and wait for him to come to you. The first attack you evade with Blurred Frenzy, the second one you just take (as your healer has nothing to do at the moment). Now the wall has come up behind you, so you just press your dodge to roll backward on the spot for the next hit. You can block the next one with Echo of Memory, then use Deja Vu for the blue circles (and another VG hit). Now switch to offhand Sword for Illusionary Riposte. You’re endurance is full again, so you can dodge the next hit (or use Blurred Frenzy again), then switch back to shield and so on… and on…

Basically just learn to react to the boss: Vale Guardian stands very still if you keep him stationary. He only moves when trying to hit you, or when turning away from you to cast blue circles. Just rotate through your blocks and dodges, always keeping one skill (or one endurance bar) for the blues to not get teleported. Don’t be afraid to just take a hit once in a while, even you getting downed costs your team less damage than running after Vale Guardian because he follows you to the other side of the platform.

If everything else fails, use Distortion or stay with the shield after 2 blocks and reset the cd with Signet of Ether.
You can even use Distortion inside Continuum Split; for example if blue circles appear while you cast your quickness rotation. Yes, it will cost you some phantasm uptime. But as i said before, focus on tanking properly first. You can optimize your rotations later, when you have more experience.

After the first split phase the real “tanking” part actually gets easier, because you spend half your time running away from him (while not getting hit) and can keep all your blocks and dodges for the few seconds in melee range before running again.

As for traits/trait line selection, let’s take a look at the possible traitline combinations and some key traits (basically choosing 2 lines out of Domination/Illusions/Inspiration):

While tanking your main job (beside staying alive^^) is to keep your group buffed with quickness and alacrity (even more so because your personal damage is even lower than the damage of a full zerker chrono). With that in mind, let’s take a look at possible trait combinations and go from there…

Start with Domination/Inspiration:

You have ~100% boon duration (after each weapon swap) and more than 1400 thoughness to keep the aggro even when a PS warrior starts to rezz someone (+400 thoughness while rezzing is a minor trait they have to live with when playing Phalanx Strength^^).

With Tides of Time, Well of Action and Signet of Inspiration used 2 times with Continuum Split, then again once when they are off cooldown and additional Signet of Inspiration procs through Illusionary Inspiration (both signet and proc traited for lower CD through Blurred Inscriptions) you can easily keep 100% quickness uptime on your group.
Well of Recall, All’s Well That Ends Well and keeping up 2 shield phantasms ensure 100% alacrity uptime.
(Bonus: Combining Blurred Inscriptions and Inspiring Distortion can safe your group in a lot of situations if used correctly…)

=> The go-to build with the biggest margin for (smaller) errors in your rotation.

You can switch out Domination for Illusion (see here)

Things you get:
- personal dps increase through Compounding Power
- phantasms attack more often (Phantasmal Haste), which means a) more damage from your sword phantasm and b) more alacrity from shield phantasms, so you can replace one of the 2 with an additional “dps phantasm” for short durations without losing alacrity uptime
- lower Illusion-skill cooldown, which doesn’t do much for your damage but can help you block more often

Things you lose:
- phantasm dps (Empowered Illusions)
- reduced Signet of Inspiration cooldown (cast and inspiration proc)
- ability to distort your group through signet use (see above)

=> Inspiration/Illusions has slightly higher damage, but without the cd reduction for Signet of Inspiration the rotation most be spot-on or you lose your 100% quickness uptime. It may be worth it for less demanding bosses (and the not-tanking chrono especially) but makes it more difficult to properly buff your group while having to look for other stuff (like tanking^^) at the same time.

Or you could play Domination/Illusions (klick)

Things you get:
- dps increases from Phantasmal Haste, Empowered Illusions and Compounding Power, making this one the highest dps build

Things you lose:
- no group distortion at all without Inspiring Distortion
- no Restorative Illusions… it’s not much but can really help you while tanking
- to keep 100% quickness uptime without Illusionary Inspiration procs you need to replace Well of Recall with Mimic, which in turn reduces your alacrity uptime

=> Only use Domination/Illusions with a group that doesn’t benefit much from alacrity (daredevils are the best example) and focus on dps phantasms over shield phantasms for even more damage (something that gets more difficult if you tank and actually use your shield to block attacks^^).

Long story short: Domination/Inspiration/Chrono really is the easiest build to play.

Don’t forget that Domination inspiration Has the Trait “fragility” which increases personal Dps by 12.5 percent instead of the 9% damage increase from Compounding Power so Domination should deal more damage than illusions and illusions gives more alacrity

Thanks, take me some time to read thru every thing but it helps for now. I’m actually doing better with rotations and stuff, I’m not teled out at start phase anymore and don’t down as much. I try to dodge sideways when I see blue sometimes but boss isn’t that displaced, I can get him back. Last run I tanked him till 20% or so then grp wiped to greens or something idk.

My only problem is that at start phase I tank him a little to side of pylon, I do fine but ppl say they have trouble with grns so they want me to stack on top of pylon itself. It’s harder for me to see there like when the blues are, plus I’d have to dodge back which is harder for me. So I dunno how to practice this, since only time I get is with groups and ppl get frustrated with me even for 1st wipe in training runs.. so yeah dunno

People can easily get frustrated with pug, but its often a collection of problems rather than one mistake. Personally I find stacking on pylon is actually similar to stacking by pylon, since it doesn’t take more than a second to reach that speed mushroom.

As for wipe at green AoE in phase 5, you do need to be careful about your tanking. If not careful the green AoE may spawn inside area where floor is about to charge up. That’s when someone responsible for green need to speak up to brace for impact and you need to evaluate your timing. Ofc a lot of time its also because range group is downed as well.