Guild Wars 2

Guildwars 2… “Optimal” is relative to your situation… No Mesmer worth his/her salt uses the same build and skill combination for every situation. I’ve got 4 sets of Armor and a variety of weapon combinations that I will swap out in various situations (Zerging vs Roaming vs 1v1 vs GvG). This thread is specifically related to my Mantra Mesmer build (my favorite and primary PvE & PvP build).

To reiterate, literally, the substance inherent in the words of many conquerors… Knowledge and skill will take you further than their counterparts, with confidence and with clarity; however nothing will take you further into despair than misunderstanding variable uncertainty, a counter to both knowledge and skill.

Enough philosophy, Here is a video of me playing my MANTRA Mesmer in Duels:
http://youtu.be/zRktx5rh_Us

If you would like to set up DUELS in WvW please feel free to send me a message (Cylestra), these are tons of fun and you learn a lot about other classes… much more so than zerg-balling. I’m on Blackgate currently but will be migrating to Jade Quarry with The Provoked Guild (Shout out!).

Don’t bother trolling… I’ve not faced any SINGLE opponent that wins consecutively so if you’re here to troll about Mantra’s sucking watch the video and get ready to lie to yourself. Mantra’s are unique in that they are instant cast (once charged) and thus can not be as effectively anticipated… that is the advantage which all Mantra Mesmers must utilize.

Keep in mind Mantra Mesmers are socially taboo and generally scoffed at for being the worst build of Mesmer… That’s why I play it >=). Mantra Mesmers suck? Debatable, I Beg to differ… and so do these results…

Hope you enjoy… you might as well because I don’t kitten care (BRO’s Hardcore like ’Dat) Hahah…

Mantras don’t suck, it’s just that a full mantra build won’t be as strong as most other builds.

They have a lot of inherent problems to them. The traits are all over the place, often in odd lines, they are VERY slow and obvious when charging. This second is the most dangerous problem. If you are facing someone with on-demand interrupts (pistol offhand thief?) you can be in a very dangerous position if they can prevent you from charging them.

So. Like all Mesmer builds, with enough skill you can play them fairly successfully against most opponents, but when you face someone with enough skill to understand what you are doing and the simple counters to it, mantra builds will fail very hard.

Mantra’s have a place, mostly already covered to death elsewhere. You’d do well to take your ‘holier than thou’ attitude elsewhere though. If you take yourself in anyway seriously, i’m embarrassed for you.

Ok, lets see, watching the video.

Overall, you fought very poor opponents. You also made extremely poor use of your daze mantra, I almost never saw you use it effectively. You lost to a rather bad mesmer who was even in your party at the time so their stealth was rendered ineffective. The elementalist was abysmal.

Edit: Watching more. You really have a thing for dueling mesmers while they’re in your party so that stealth doesn’t work don’t you? The mesmers are also abysmal. Anyone in that sort of squishy setup that facetanks your burst is going to die, but there’s no excuse for that, especially on a mesmer.

Mantras are still boring as hell though. Of all skills the game has to offer, they are by far the most one dimensional and simple.

Rofl, id put this post in another window~

It looks like a glass cannon GS build, which you’ve thrown mantras on for the extra damage. Of course you get the daze and Pain shots.

Also your rematch against the shatter mesmer: you shared a group making his stealth obsolete. Unfair advantage there.

@ Pyrohypocrite I’m disappointed. I would think an SOAC Tourney Admin would have a better eye for skill placement than your weak attempt at such, oh well not everyone deserves the titles they inherit. Let’s help you grow from this, you could certainly benefit from a lesson in making less bias assumptions:

-Poor Opponents: how so? Criteria please oh grand wizard of mesmerdom. How would you react to facing a Mesmer for the first time and finding out he hits like a truck and slaps daze in your face to ensure a finish? Mantra Mesmer is extremely uncommon, and I’m certain that if you didn’t already know I make it a point to play this way I’d wreck you in a WvW Duel so hard your kids would be bruised. You claim they are poor players when they fared far better than most I encounter on a daily basis in Tier 1 mind you. You could say Tier doesn’t matter but all the best guilds come here to prove themselves and bring with them highly skilled players. Openmindedness would be very becoming of you, Practice makes perfect.

-Poor use of Daze Mantra: first of all, I don’t disagree completely with you here. I’m open to constructive criticism but what you’ve done by naively stating that I generally made poor use of Daze without offering up even one specific instance is just malicious and ultimately lazy, it’s also about as wrong as it is completely untrue. As I watch the videos, expressly for the purpose of bettering my performance, I recognize areas of improvement, yes, 3 in fact from that video alone. If you used or knew anything about daze you’d know it’s very difficult to use to maximum efficiency because it’s got a long CD and only lasts a second, unless you’re specced for it, so you have to make judgment calls as to when it will be the most effective. I’m sure you’ve always perfectly anticipated your opponents moves and never missed an opportunity to capitalize on them right? I know it hurts but bear with me…

Still @Pyrohypocrite
-Mantra traits are all over the place: um… are they? In my experience (I’ve been playing Mantras since release, but what do I know?) You either go for restorative mantras and spec for support or you go dps… 2 roads to fundamentally different goals doesn’t seem very “all over the place” to me… I guess as opposed to Glamour traits where you can effectively nail them all then sure, 2 paths is a lot to comprehend…
-I lost to a “bad” Mesmer: criteria? or do you just get off on making completely baseless and unnaturally idiotic accusations about everyone’s play style but your own? I lost. I learned. I conquered. Oh but that doesn’t matter because according to your hallow general observation they were “just bad” and it should have been expected. Tell me exactly how you would beat me, process and all… You can’t because Duels don’t follow the rules of the chess board you slouched in a corner over in Junior high while everyone else was out there playing football. Theorycraft me some more and I’ll keep breaking the mold, because there is no Ultimate Mesmer build that is always better (if there was, we’d all be using it. Moving on…

-Someone with the “skill” to know what I’m doing: Okay, I shouldn’t even have to comment on how completely devoid of logic this statement is, but I will; SKILL DOESN’T = MIND READING. You can’t fully anticipate when I will use my Mantra, in fact you can’t even see it until it’s too late and it’s either on you, or on me. so please, share with me you’re “simple” counter that will make my mantras “fail hard”. I’ll be eagerly awaiting a chance to break this one right open if all we’re going to do is theory craft. please reread the conquerors quote above; either you missed it or you didn’t get it either way my point is made with exacting clarity.

-Mantras are Very slow when charging: kitten thanks for stating the obvious. How fast do they cast though? Instant you say? and there is no CAST animation? I can CAST them from ANY State other than downed you say!? hmmm well now we’re on to something eh kids? SO I can Daze, Spike, Stabilize, Heal and/or Cleanse from ANY state on the field (say in the middle of a 3-illusion mind-wrack+blurred frenzy+Power Spike combo)?… INSTANTLY… Must I continue? Yes, I recognize and acknowledge the downside is that after you’ve burned your mantras you are left utterly vulnerable for 3-seconds per mantra skill exhausted(this is where we get creative with shatter distortion, Invis, and clones). I never said it didn’t have downsides, but I’ve got a talent for appreciating and exploiting strengths.

Still @ Pyrohypocrite
-I have a “thing” for dueling Mesmers in my party: blah blah I can see them when they invis QQ that’s not fair! I agree. Did I force them to be in my party by threatening to like hack their facebook? They knew and didn’t care, it was of no consequence to them. Confidence (you’d say arrogance) is not a sign of a bad player, more often than not it is a sign of a good one.They were invis as a result of decoy which they were primarily utilizing for the illusion or didn’t you notice they came out of invis almost immediately after they went in? Oh but that must have been a secret Mantra hack right? No. Their folly lies in hubris as does yours. You’re not all knowing and the fact that you lazily throw together inconsequential evidence to support your half baked and fundamentally idiotic notion of duel bias preference based on 2 duels with 2 Mesmers is a sure sign of your ignorance. Watch the video again, everyone I fought was in my party, and anyone could have left whenever they wanted. You nit pick aspects of a duel that hold very little truth and even less applicable value by way of their passing on to other users, this behavior is akin to that of a menopausal house mistress twice past her prime grasping at bits and pieces of a high school drama she couldn’t live out when she was of age.
BASICALLY: If you don’t have anything constructive to say, why bother posting? are you trying to assert your dominance over all things Mesmer related? How do you feel now that you look like a complete and utter fool? I highly suggest you edit your post quickly and include hard facts to contradict my claims before people catch on to the fact that you have to post titles under your substance less entries to falsely imply your insight is credible when you merely pick something insignificant to pompously scoff at so you can look like you know what you’re talking about.
I never said Mantras were Supreme over all, in fact I stated the opposite in my original post. I play them because aside from them being extremely hard to anticipate they are a challenge to be good with. Instead of appreciating the entertainment value of the video for what it is and was stated to be, you both take the approach that you need knock it like a bunch of idiotic inbred ego-stroking self serving yuppie critics. If you have something constructive to say, I’ll gladly receive it, and if not, I’ve no more time to make you look like the fools you are.

@ Master of Timespace
If you like pretty skills, Play an Ele. I agree they are not the most exciting; the excitement from Mantras comes in the frantic responses of the opponent when they can’t figure out what’s happening.

I respectfully disagree that they are simple on the grounds that you must be very careful about usage. As Pyroathiest pointed out, the major weakness of Mantras is the Charge time. In my opinion they require a lot more focus and attention than say a shatter cat or Glamour bomber.

@ Ross Biddle
Yes that was an acknowledged oversight on their part, but an advantage nonetheless. Next time I film a set of duels I will be sure to have everyone leave party.

I’m not running full glass though. I’ve not been able to prove so mathematically but I have a theory about diminishing returns and have adjusted my gear as such that I feel I’m maximizing dps output while minimizing my burst risk.

I was coming in here to say nice fights and that it’s great you’re doing so well at your chosen play style…

But then I saw your replies and realized how much of an arrogant jerk you are. If you expect others to have a decent conversation with you about opinions on playstyles you aren’t going to get it with that pretentious attitude. You’re good yes but far from the best I’ve seen, certainly not warranting a high and mighty attitude such as the one you’re flaunting.

Grow up please.

@xXThRaXx: As much as I hate responding to posts as inflammatory and self serving as this, I will.

@Use of daze mantra: You didn’t really use it ever. There were a couple really obvious instances where it would have helped, the only one I remember off the top of my head was when the warrior was chewing on you with something, and you could have interrupted his cast instantly with it.

Mantra builds are not exactly sneaky. I’m not going to be caught off guard by you using mantras. The charged mantras show up on your bar. If I see a mesmer with 4 mantras charged up, I know almost exactly what sort of build they’re running and how to counter it. So, there’s nothing secret about your build, there’s nothing special about it. You are straight damage. There are no tricks to a mantra nuker build.

As for how mantras work, yes, I know the benefits of them. That’s why I use mantras. Mantras are great to sprinkle into a build to shore up the weak points of it. However, using full mantras eliminates any chance of utility, trickery, or complexity that you can put into a build. I know that there’s an art to cycling mantras to keep them charged, etc, but that doesn’t matter to your opponent. The problem is that once you’ve used your charges, you’re out of luck if your opponent is good. Your heal mantra is obvious, interrupt it and you’re in trouble. Same goes for the cleanse mantra.

Whether or not the mesmers worried about being in a party with you, it was still an unfair advantage. At least one of those mesmers was using torch, and they used the prestige as an opener, which failed miserably since you could just see them through the stealth. Trying to argue that this wasn’t an absurd advantage is ludicrous.

Your opponents were very bad. The mesmers failed to ever use any of the massive amounts of active defense they have to avoid your burst. The elementalist was woefully inaccurate with their attacks, and also decided to facetank much of your burst when it was unnecessary.

I bother posting when I have nothing constructive to say because the tone of your original post was rather inflammatory and rubbed me the wrong way. I felt it necessary to correct any misconceptions you were attempting to peddle before others less experienced than myself mislearned them.

Small edit: Being the SOAC tourney admin, and having therefor watched my share of tournaments populated by extremely skilled players, I do have somewhat of a good perspective on what builds are effective, and how well people are playing. You are reasonably good at this build, I won’t dispute that. You do have room to improve, but I feel that your success against significantly weaker opponents has made you think that your build is much more effective than it actually is.

Double Edit: I remember you now, haha. You posted that atrocious mantra nuker video a few months ago. You’ve definitely gotten better since then, and your taste in music has improved slightly. The build isn’t any more effective though.

for someone who claims not to care, the OP sure writes a lot a kitten kid-like posts and even disables comments on his vid so someone doesn’t say that it’s actually bad. cute.

@xXThRaXx

buht hurt much?

I can’t say much for WvW duels mostly on the concept of consumable buffs + crazy levels of varying stats though I think it’s kinda cool having more options, but I find it rather silly.

How do you even do that unless they are on another server that happens to be one of the two your fighting?

But I digress.

I agree with Pyro in terms of mantra builds and yes your play could use some work, but I’m of the mindset that you always need practice no matter who you are anyways. That being said there is no real reason to deviate from what you do, mastery will come from your ability to find solutions to your problems and if your most comfortable with what you do and can sync with your character better, I hope you can achieve a level of skill to balance out over all viability, so even though you make me “lol” I do have to give you props.

Also try not to take things others say so harshly and try to learn from it instead of getting defensive.

On another note… I’d love to see a video of you dueling pyro, not because I think he’s super crazy gtfo good or anything like that, but because I think your build would not have enough damage or survivability to kill anyone using proper use of his “immortal mesmer build” and being the creator of his build would most likely run it best.

Essentially I think that build hard counters you, and though we all must understand the game is not built for 1v1 I am curious to se how you would react to such things.

nice vid. I enjoyed it. And I like to see people branching out to play their characters differently from the masses. I like to think I play my mesmer differently and I sometimes I get a lot of hate from it. But, if you can make it work and it compliments your playstyle, then that’s awesome. Keep it up.

Kudos for playing a different build, some of your opponents were not the greatest, most noticeably, that Ele was pretty terrible. Netherless, you do have some skill on your Mesmer, but I still see to many drawbacks with Mantra builds to think they would be viable for what I do, which is solo/small group roaming.

A bit of humility might go a long way, there will always be someone who will be better than you or knows more about something than you, learn from others, everyone has something you can learn from. I used to think the build I used to run was pretty top-notch, quite happily run around WvW beating nearly every player I came across, then I duelled a phantasm/retal Mesmer and lost every single fight, he was simply better than me, but taught some really valuable lessons.

playing without stunbreak against good burster is foolish imo. good lock-down enemy can destroy this build quickly.
guard/warrior enemy cant have good duel setup. so they not a indicator

xXThRaXx.6158:

@ Master of Timespace
If you like pretty skills, Play an Ele. I agree they are not the most exciting; the excitement from Mantras comes in the frantic responses of the opponent when they can’t figure out what’s happening.

I respectfully disagree that they are simple on the grounds that you must be very careful about usage. As Pyroathiest pointed out, the major weakness of Mantras is the Charge time. In my opinion they require a lot more focus and attention than say a shatter cat or Glamour bomber.

They are still simple and one dimensional even if they are clumsy due to the charge time. You know, like a club. It’s difficult to beat anyone with a club because it’s so slow and clumsy, but that doesn’t somehow make the club an interesting and smart weapon.

I saw it but still don’t believe it! Other than the last mesmer you fought -the one who just about insta died- you played against really good players they look like top class tourny players…I loved how the Guardian changed his spec -I think- and went sceptre burst and just blew you up! hehe

In any case, will you be sharing how you gear?

3 points:

This just in: some people like mantras and some don’t.

I didn’t watch the video but thanks for sharing. I appreciate the time and effort you put into it.

Why people seek validation for something that doesn’t pay you money or gets you laid I’ll never understand. The act of proclaiming you don’t care about other peoples opinions while presenting an item for people to have an opinion on is….well it puts people off. If you truly did not care you would not have spent so many bytes attempting to illustrate your own superior thought process and approach. In the future I suggest maximizing the effort you put forth when making a video displaying a mantra build thusly:

(Link to mantra build video)

Hi mesmers! I really enjoy playing a mantra build. I feel I’m pretty good at it but certainly could use some improvement. The video above is myself playing. If you’d like any tips or have one for me I’d love to discuss it.

Thanks

xXThRaXx

…my opinion

@xXThRaXx I applaud you for showing a build you truly love to play. Just keep playing it through whatever shortcoming you have now until you master it. I myself play unconventionally but after dipping my finger in trying to feel out this community and getting scolded and scalded. I now choose encourage those with unconventional builds to keep playing & keep practicing and one day we will embarrass one of these talking heads who will never show their fan-boys what we did to them on their video.

My advice to you is: don’t stop improving, don’t stop innovating!

Pre-patch fights are pretty meaningless given how much the meta shifted, to be honest. You also really, really shouldn’t have fought those mesmers while partied with them since it actually made their stealth worse than helpful (you could easily differentiate their stealthed forms from their clones).

xXThRaXx.6158:

Hope you enjoy… you might as well because I don’t kitten care (BRO’s Hardcore like ’Dat) Hahah…

You edited a video of your duels and then posted it on YouTube and the forums with a length preamble. You clearly care.

ITT: OP thinks he’s awesome and special, plays like a noob against noobs, gets called out on in and flames everyone who thinks he isn’t a mesmer god. Also, reported.

The problem is who here in this community has the right to judge anyone for their playstyle or what level they are playing it? Just a bunch of hypocrites measuring ego’s…

No one falls and in this category more than the “Talking Heads” of the Mesmer community. It’s super hard to get good footage in WvW. What is good footage? Not you just winning but demonstrating all the facets of a build GOOD and BAD! Do you think it’s easy to take up a build no one plays frequently or for that matter has mastered? and then go as far to try to demonstrate it on Video? Maybe you have maybe not but honestly you blame individuals like this of some self righteous crusade to support their build when all they are trying to do is debunk the hypocritical foolishness this mesmer forums have become… /rant

Revelations.3154:

The problem is who here in this community has the right to judge anyone for their playstyle or what level they are playing it? Just a bunch of hypocrites measuring ego’s…

No one falls and in this category more than the “Talking Heads” of the Mesmer community. It’s super hard to get good footage in WvW. What is good footage? Not you just winning but demonstrating all the facets of a build GOOD and BAD! Do you think it’s easy to take up a build no one plays frequently or for that matter has mastered? and then go as far to try to demonstrate it on Video? Maybe you have maybe not but honestly you blame individuals like this of some self righteous crusade to support their build when all they are trying to do is debunk the hypocritical foolishness this mesmer forums have become… /rant

wow. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I totally agree. I felt the same way, but I couldn’t find the words so I didn’t talk about it. But this is all 100% true.

I’m getting flashbacks of the ‘secret scepter message to mesmers’ thread.

Revelations.3154:

and then go as far to try to demonstrate it on Video? Maybe you have maybe not but honestly you blame individuals like this of some self righteous crusade to support their build when all they are trying to do is debunk the hypocritical foolishness this mesmer forums have become… /rant

It’s mainly this guy’s attitude that’s drawing so much ire. For example, I’d imagine he’d have seen a lot more positive responses if he’d said something like the following:

“Hey guys, I know Manta builds are looked down upon but I like the spec, so here’s a video of my dueling people with it in WvW. I won some, I lost some, but overall I’ve had good success with it. If anyone has any suggestions for how to play the spec better or how to shoot videos better I’d be happy to hear them!”

You know, rather than the puerile nonsense he actually posted.

A few questions to the original poster

1- Why do you have the comments disabled on your video? Are you that afraid of the feedback you might get?

2- I’m not really too sure about you but if your so confident about your build then how come you don’t challenge the Spvp community? Personally Spvp has the highest class of top notch players, as compared to world v world “which is more towards zerg tactics, taking points, etc”

3- And last and not least, I’ve played mesmer just as long as you, and I can pretty much guarantee that if you do not run a stun breaker vs high level players as far as a 1v1 build for dueling then you are going to be killed every single time. Which pretty much means everyone in the video you posted is not even footage worthy.

I’m sorry to break it to you, but somebody had to let you know. If you honestly think my words are false, run the same exact build, and message me in game, and duel me in Spvp. I will be glad to tone down that ego trip of yours.

Your Pal

Countless

Other mesmer builds can just as easily win 1vs1 or even 1vs2, and yet still be useful in group fights through their utilities. Aside from running around and looking for solo enemies, how does your build benefit your server?

Blaine Tog.8304:

Revelations.3154:

and then go as far to try to demonstrate it on Video? Maybe you have maybe not but honestly you blame individuals like this of some self righteous crusade to support their build when all they are trying to do is debunk the hypocritical foolishness this mesmer forums have become… /rant

It’s mainly this guy’s attitude that’s drawing so much ire. For example, I’d imagine he’d have seen a lot more positive responses if he’d said something like the following:

“Hey guys, I know Manta builds are looked down upon but I like the spec, so here’s a video of my dueling people with it in WvW. I won some, I lost some, but overall I’ve had good success with it. If anyone has any suggestions for how to play the spec better or how to shoot videos better I’d be happy to hear them!”

You know, rather than the puerile nonsense he actually posted.

What attitude is everyone talking about? I re-read his post and I don’t sense a big ego or bad attitude coming from him. This is the internet I guess. People come here and look for any reason to bash people.

And OP, I’d love to duel you for fun. I don’t think I’ve ever faced off against a mantra mesmer before in 1v1. I don’t think my server is facing yours this week though.

Hot Boy.7138:

What attitude is everyone talking about? I re-read his post and I don’t sense a big ego or bad attitude coming from him.

If you didn’t sense it, I’m not sure what I can say to convince you that we sensed it. That last paragraph was particularly obvious. His responses throughout the rest of the thread pounded this further into certainty.

xXThRaXx.6158:

@ Master of Timespace
If you like pretty skills, Play an Ele. I agree they are not the most exciting; the excitement from Mantras comes in the frantic responses of the opponent when they can’t figure out what’s happening.

I’m sorry, but if your opponents can’t figure out that you’re hitting them with Mantras, they are very bad indeed. Practically the first thing I do upon assessing an opponent is glancing at their buffs (this often solidifies their profession, if nothing else). A Mesmer with a bunch of Mantras up means I need to keep my interrupts up and use them whenever I see him channeling. As near as I can tell, you didn’t face foes who did that.

Good to see you revisitng the Matra path, have you had a chance to listen to the questions from Chaos Archangel Podcast that SOAC put out last week, we talk in depth about builds, and do a piece on the difficulties with Mantra builds, especailly around trait choices and how ANet has set it up so that it forces the inability for a truely focused Matra build
I like what you’ve done here, just feel that your build needs a bit more direction to be a really noteworthy build that ANet will one day nerf ;D

Could you break down your opinion on which matra’s to use when, depending on the opponents playstyle, build and traits, I would love to get an insight into your thoughts on each of the Matra uses versus specific opponent styles.