How Effective are Mantra Builds for PvE
They have no place in PvE. Individual Mantras may be useful: Mantra of Recovery is a strong heal, Mantra of Resolve is a reliable condition cleanser and Mantra of Pain works wonders with Restorative Mantras; but as a whole build? Nuh uh.
I completely disagree, a lot of PvE stuff has tons of knockdown, stun and such… having instant casts is quite helpful especially instant cast heal. They also recently reduced the cast time of Mantras so most info you see on them is old.
Mantra of Distraction is one of my favorites with 15+ points in Domination because you get 5-8 stacks of vulnerability for 8-10 seconds(depending on if you interrupt their action, which is easy to do in PvE) in the middle of another action like Blurred Flurry or Confusing Images.
Restorative Mantras is really nice for additional heals for long fights, though if you get this I wouldn’t bother with the 3 cast trait, instead go with 30 in Dueling because you can get faster cooldown, 250 armor when casting a mantra and up to 16% more damage for just having all your mantras with at least one charge left.
Personally I run Recovery, Distraction and Pain for 12% damage and cycle Pain for healing with one other utility. I also run Torch and Mass Invis so I can recharge a couple when I’m in a crowd or CC heavy mob.
Resolve and Concentration are ok, but there are better things like Decoy, Mirrored Images and Phantasmal Disenchanter, so I find little use for them personally unless you are doing the daily condition stripping or trying to move through several traps rapidly(Swamp in Fractals).
“We are the makers of the music, we are the dreamers of the dream”
-Willy Wonka(Gene Wilder)
-Willy Wonka(Gene Wilder)
Why you would run any interrupt in PvE is beyond me. Mobs that are actually worth interrupting almost always generate Defiant. If Vulnerability is all you want then Diversion is king, there are better Utilities to take.
Concentration is almost completely useless outside of very specific situations like knockback JP traps or whatever.
As embolism said, Individual mantras have their uses. Additionally, a mantra healing build is viable.
Also, check out the support builds listed in the build post…You can set it up so that even without extra healing power, you can heal your party for 2.6k every time you channel mantra of pain. That’s some useful spammable party healing. It does kill your dps pretty quick, so I’d save it for when it is needed, and not just mindlessly spam it. I wouldn’t bother with the trait giving you 3 mantra casts though…not really worth it in that sort of build anyway.
The pvp mantra builds that use mantras to do extra damage dont seem like a great idea…although, I guess if you’re in a situation where you don’t really use utilities that often, you could have mantras be your utilities, and use the fact that they’re charged to up your dps.
An MoP spamming RM build could easily work within a Phantasm build, allowing you to sacrifice relatively little DPS. Healing Power doesn’t really boost RM that much, IIRC the base heal is around 2.6k and with Cleric’s it’s about 2.9k, not a huge difference.
‘Mantra’ builds are viable in that there are builds that use and, sometimes, spam one or two different Mantras – nearly always MoR and MoP.
Mantra traits outside of Restorative Mantras and Protected Mantras are all pretty weak for the points to get to them, though, and trying to make a build entirely out of Mantras is just not a good idea.
I, personally, run a build with a mix of berserker, knight, cavalier and valkyrie gear for PvE. Damage is split between phants and shatters, but I also usually grab Protected and Restorative Mantras and run MoR and MoP. Works pretty well, overall.
(edited by Fuschia.6573)
Also, check out the support builds listed in the build post…You can set it up so that even without extra healing power, you can heal your party for 2.6k every time you channel mantra of pain. That’s some useful spammable party healing. It does kill your dps pretty quick, so I’d save it for when it is needed, and not just mindlessly spam it.
It doesn’t really kill it that badly. Each charge of MoP does around 700 damage (1500 crits) as I am right now. Considering it does not stop your auto-attack (or using any other skills) it means you’re using the charges at the same time. You then stop auto-attacking for three seconds to charge up MoP, but those three seconds not auto-attacking are compensated by those two charges we just used at the same time we were attacking.
Why you would run any interrupt in PvE is beyond me. Mobs that are actually worth interrupting almost always generate Defiant. If Vulnerability is all you want then Diversion is king, there are better Utilities to take.
Concentration is almost completely useless outside of very specific situations like knockback JP traps or whatever.
Well of course you can do Diversion too, duh, you can stack 25 vulnerablity and for champs that generate defiant, if you have time you can switch to a different Mantra/Utility but even against defiant, you may not get get the daze but you still get the vulnerability(that might be a bug, but at least for once it’s in our favor).
“We are the makers of the music, we are the dreamers of the dream”
-Willy Wonka(Gene Wilder)
-Willy Wonka(Gene Wilder)
Why you would run any interrupt in PvE is beyond me. Mobs that are actually worth interrupting almost always generate Defiant. If Vulnerability is all you want then Diversion is king, there are better Utilities to take.
Concentration is almost completely useless outside of very specific situations like knockback JP traps or whatever.
Well of course you can do Diversion too, duh, you can stack 25 vulnerablity and for champs that generate defiant, if you have time you can switch to a different Mantra/Utility but even against defiant, you may not get get the daze but you still get the vulnerability(that might be a bug, but at least for once it’s in our favor).
I know Vulnerability on Daze works through Defiant, that’s why I said “even if all you want is the Vulnerability”. The point is Diversion is 20 stacks, or 24 stacks with Rending Shatter. Wasting a Utility slot for an extra 5 stacks (which is just one stack if you do take Rending Shatter) is, well, a waste. There are better Utilities.
with awesome pve skills such as feedback/null field there’s no point of even considering of running a mantra build.
Fact: every Thief tells you to “l2p” when the subject is to nerf stealth.
with awesome pve skills such as feedback/null field there’s no point of even considering of running a mantra build.
And with Mender’s Purity/Restorative Mantras we also get arguably the game’s best healing spell, in addition to a mountain of AoE healing if we also bring MoP.
Mantras are useful, but you can’t run a PvE build with just Mantras. There are also plenty of times when you’ll want to slot them out for something more useful to the situation, just like with almost any other utility/weapon/trait.
I’m running a 30/10/0/25/5 Phantasm/Mantra build and I like it. Use Sword/Sword and GSword with MoRec, MoP and switch in two other utilities as needed. MoP is a DPS increase from GSword Auto so Charge>Auto. I like it for that little extra kick when you’re phantasms have a tough time staying up. The heals are nice and noticeable but I went Knights/Zerker and it works good.
Blood~
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance”
Any build you put some thought into is useful for pve. The only bad builds really are ones that work at counter purposes, and ones that are too inflexible in their design.
I tend to run mantras because I like them. I liked them before they got buffed and so like them even better now. I prefer 30/30/0/0/10. That gives room for Harmonious Mantras so they are charged more often than not, empowering mantras for up to 16% damage and Compounding Power for up to another 9%, along with weapon recharge traits for sword, greatsword and/or pistol.
If you just played that way its ok, but gets a little boring. And clearly sometimes you’re better off taking one or more utilities other than just mantras. That’s where flexibility comes in. The same build can flip to focus more on interrupts (Halting Strike, Furious Interruption, Confounding Suggestions along with Domination Minors), phantasms (Empowered Illusions, Phanstasmal Fury), shattering, clone death, signets . . . there are many ways you can trait out this sort of build when mantras aren’t ideal.
So yes, a mantra build can be great for pve. Also, the stats provided by a mantra build lend themselves beautifully to a lot of other builds you can switch to on the fly, so don’t feel like its mantras or everything else. They’re just one trick in your tool box, don’t forget the rest.
I was thinking this for a sec. Why do mantras have long kitten casting time AND CD with most of them poor on activation effects? Like what are mantras trying to be for mesmer, compete with racial skills? All of them but mantra of resolve has no use in this game and if they were delete AND not even replaced by anything else i’d be happy. As i see it, i think they ran out of ideas and just created random kitten to fill up the 22 utilities available to Mez and what does that remind me? Of freaking worthless racial skills. This is so nice!
Fact: every Thief tells you to “l2p” when the subject is to nerf stealth.