Guild Wars 2

How do you do against players who realise your running this build and just decide to disengage, you have some mobility from blink and staff port, but outside of that most players will be able to just disengage at will.

I generally don’t like Condi builds, but I’ll take a break from my PU Power build and give it a whirl.

The disengage at will part is the only unfun thing, otherwise it’s a blast ( ;D ) to play! I love condi mesmer but I never find a good setup I like (regular PU feels nicer as power for me), but I really enjoyed roaming with this one aside from episodes with good ranged rangers and such.

derbaer.1284:

I’d still love to hear if someone tested this in spvp and got good results?

I’ve been dabbling with it. It depends on who you’re going up against, and what’s happening during the entire situation. I’ve taken two players down at the same time, while other times are one vs one or group play. The health of players slowly decay at first, then a few seconds later collapse like nothing happened. The build itself is quite strong if played correctly.

Hollywood.3490:

PU is for people who want to play with one hand and click their skills. In other words. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you go PU. If you know what you’re doing, you pick CI.

Laughable

Oh and it takes so much skill to use immobilise?

sendmark.4731:

So to prove a point in this thread – today I fought someone a couple of times while they were using pretty much this build, and I was using Doiid’s build. As expected could easily keep him at range and wait for eventual mistake to burst him down. He did manage to gank some pve ranger who I couldn’t quite save though.

On TV today:

A blue colour fighter in taekwondo idd win over the red one, this prove the fact that blue is superior to red in taekwondo for ever. No need for any red to try even, blue is just better.

@All, I understand this thread now is more about PU condi be or not be, I’m dine with that I can only talk for my self and in my world I so far eat ppl alive in wvwvw, even builds and classes I struggled with in other builds.

For the q about why not go 4-4-6 instead of 2-4-6-2 it’s al about condition management, the torch traits simply don’t clear enought and even more important, they can’t clear when you cc,d. Heal mantra with condi clear can be used instantly and 2 times in 10 sec, far superior to the torch clear. Also I don’t want to be forced to waste my offensive prestige for a condi clear and use it defensive.

Might be of interest I been roaming with a engineer some lately, this build combined with he’s and he’s magnet pull and immobilize just melt ppl and not really seen a lot escape. I have a feeling some ppl judge everything out of 1vs 1 while this game is a rather team based pvp game.

/Osicat

Just tried this build, it’s basically the same as the old PU Condi build and suffers from the same problem. It’s too slow. You could run this in a duo with someone buffing your speed, but for solo roaming it’s far too slow and lacks the ability to kill runners.

The uptime from burning is nice, but I got outran by a guardian lol, I think I’ll stick to my good old travellers power build, no one gets away then

Pyroathiest.4168:

Khenzy.9348:

I know I’m going to get trash talked by other Mesmer players but… Osicat, can you please stop promoting PU builds or similar like these? Where perma protection, near perma regen, heavy stealth, AI (and other stuff I wont even mention, you know you class already) just outclass everything you encounter? Making these junk builds popular is definetly not good for the game as a whole.

Flame away fellas.

Osi isn’t a scrub. He plays to win, as many of us do. This means he uses the best builds he can make, with no regard to what scrubs think is ‘fair’.

I agree with Pyro. Players seek to play the best build, while also taking a risk at times on builds that are under par and still dominate their enemy with them, because they play to win. Why would you not want to get the most out of your character? It’s not an unfair advantage, when everyone is doing it with their class.

sendmark.4731:

Hollywood.3490:

PU is for people who want to play with one hand and click their skills. In other words. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you go PU. If you know what you’re doing, you pick CI.

Laughable

Oh and it takes so much skill to use immobilise?

Takes slightly more skill to actually recognise a skill animation and interrupt it than it does to use The Prestige and come out with 10 seconds of Protection…

Plus its nothing to do with skill its about whats more useful, you getting some Regen and Aegis or you immobilising your target for 3.5 seconds while your DPS class unloads at will. Ever seen what happens when 4 people get Focus pull interrupted with CI into a glass cannon Necro well bomb and DS burst, 4 red triangles is what happens…. or you could stealth a bit longer, I know which my group would prefer…

Osi when it comes to other classes with burn you need to be careful that you aren’t applying too much, running with an IP Engi and a Guardian there were times when some of my burns weren’t applying as we’d stacked too many individual ones already.

Can I use all exotics instead of ascended? Just seems like too much of a chore to get an ascended set.

@Theblankcalendar, ofc, I wouldn’t reccomend spend al u gold on get acccended weeps on condi build anyway unless u have gold just lying there to use.

/Osicat

Osicat.4139:

@Theblankcalendar, ofc, I wouldn’t reccomend spend al u gold on get acccended weeps on condi build anyway unless u have gold just lying there to use.

/Osicat

Yeah I only have like 6g atm lol. Thanks for the build can’t wait to get my gear so I can use it

Btw if it’s not too much of a burden, can you tell me what upgrade components I should put on my trinkets please?

My guess is chrysocola or coral, but don’t forget that all ascended trinkets are account bound as well now.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

My guess is chrysocola or coral, but don’t forget that all ascended trinkets are account bound as well now.

I know but I only have 2 80’s and they have completely different gear sets.
Thanks for the help I will try out one of those 2

I hate to be that guy, but isn’t this just Blackwater with the Condi removal on the heal? Plenty of Blackwater variants use Balthazar runes…Osicat isn’t exactly breaking the mold here. Even the video is nothing more than a bunch of 1v1s chained together to give some semblance of an outnumbered fight.

I love osicats contributions to the mesmer community, but this one seems kind of weak.

/rant

@Cyric, sure by al means be the guy ,).

Blackwater build link is perplexy, in q about updates post patch he specifyed its still perplexy. Baltazar with aim on 100% + on staff burn have another aim and playstyle.
Condi removal on hela is a rather big improvment for condi management espesialy with a trait change to 0-6-6-2-0 and mantra x 3, al in line with current roaming meta and higher condi preasure.

Video’s 1vs1 focused fights is intentional as I wanted to show how i mean to use the gamestyle and traits, not show off, music is added as its how I like to do stuff and make it more watchable.

About guides, builds, traits etc the only difference btreen a guide or someone test some traits in home is the textguide and videos. Noone can ever take cred for trait in a sertan way, there is always someone tested and played a trait setup before you. A guide the you can take cred for how well you explain for ppl who new to the class/build etc how
to play.

Goal is always to help the messmer community and this is best done when we do it together by condtructive diskussions.

Videos is also helping, some to explain how to use a build (like this) and some more for show what the build is capable off, others are made just for max entertaning value. Sure is, you can nerver please all, even if you get like some of my viss close to 100 likes and 20k wievs there is always some disslike or ppl negative. Not alot to do about.

/Osicat

I think what cyyrix meaning are the reactions on the video where people almost get out of their mind of what they saw, while it’s not impressive at all and still many mistakes were made.

About 20-20-30, you’re using your heal to do burst, thats my problem. This also means you need to activate your condition removal on times where it’s probably not even needed. So yeah, how usefull is it actually?
You got 2 stealths on a fairly short cooldown giving you aegis + you have scepter block + aegis from chaos storm. Do you really need so many condition removals? And how usefull are the runes exactly?

With a 20-20-30 build you will have less condition removal, yes sure, but you do have a shorter stealth. This will balance eachother a bit and will probably increase your survivability a lot. (As its a bit easier to escape from fights with shorter stealths)

The runes seem pretty meh to me. It forces you to stay close to your enemy, while as mesmer, especially with staff, you don’t really want to be close to your enemy when you want to heal.

This leaves the problem whereas you will always lack 1 thing in a fight:
1. condition removal: you’re wasting your heals to do the burst on him. You might be lucky to remove a condition but mainly you’re already casting 1 charge before the enemy even does something to you.
2. Burst: You’re bound to use your healings for hp and condition removal rather than burst. Also, enemy’s who stay ranged (cause most enemy’s will be faster than you) and dodge you around make it impossible for you to come close
3. Healing: same for the condition removal one. You’re using the charges for burst. Also: your healing is lower than ether fast, meaning you will lack some healing in long fights. You can clearly see this at the 1v2 fight of the warriors.

In a perfect situation you will be able to heal, condition removal and burst at the same time, but let’s be honest: How many times did that happen in that video? Maybe once?

I don’t understand the hype on this build. It’s not bad, but far from being the best in roaming. Just because osicat posted this build people go out of their mind cause; ‘’wew, osi made a new build, wew so op!’’

This is not aimed at you osi, but rather at the hype of people here. Anyway, for those who want to believe this build is strong, I wish you good luck cause you will get annoyed by lots of things.

BlackDevil.9268:

. Anyway, for those who want to believe this build is strong, I wish you good luck cause tofu will get annoyed by lots of things.

On phone so cant type loads but short, I do beleave this build is strong, I roamed in group and solo sens game released and in al kinds of shatter, power, tank etc builds. My opinion is that if you can manage out of combat speed this is one of the best roamongbuils atm. This is only my opinion but what I think, power PU is another wery strong setup esp with mightstacking.

Feel free to dissagree but melting faces in wvwvw roaming atm.

/Osicat

At least it won’t get wrecked by the first IP engi who looks at it twice, that rare roaming class….

Lord Jim.3971:

At least it won’t get wrecked by the first IP engi who looks at it twice, that rare roaming class….

How mature.

BlackDevil.9268:

Lord Jim.3971:

At least it won’t get wrecked by the first IP engi who looks at it twice, that rare roaming class….

How mature.

I do agree that it was kinda weird when he used his heal skill at full health for a burn but then again it does only have a 10 second cd and there are 2 uses.

@Osicat

Would you mind having a look at these three variants and lend me your thoughts please?

First is a different take on your build with some minor variations. 10 points moved from Dom V to Insp VII. This gives better coni dmg with scepter. Full rabid gives better crit chance and the extra points in Insp makes up some of the health lost for neglecting dire all together. To further expand the build, Signet of Domination is dropped in favor of Veil for greater PU abuse.

Second is an attempt at a Maim the Disillusioned build. This build boasts far better condi damage in lieu of the passive defenses PU builds utilize. It does however come with two active stuns and a far more aggressive playstyle. A possible variant for this here.

Cheers in advance!

BlackDevil.9268:

I don’t understand the hype on this build. It’s not bad, but far from being the best in roaming. Just because osicat posted this build people go out of their mind cause; ‘’wew, osi made a new build, wew so op!’’

This is not aimed at you osi, but rather at the hype of people here. Anyway, for those who want to believe this build is strong, I wish you good luck cause you will get annoyed by lots of things.

In Osis hands it’s one of the sickest things out there right now, whether you want it or not, and its only true weakness would be the person behind the screen. It’s nothing against you and nothing against poeple in general, but that is my qualified opinion having hundreds of hours roaming with Osi.

/Nims

Hey if something doesn’t work for you with this build then change it to fit your style or simply don’t use it. There is no need to criticize the people who like it.

I gave arguments why it doesnt work. All of them listed above aren’t personal issues. Can people please start learn to read and then comment?

I tried it out of curiosity and it works very well in 1vx, but it’s soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow, it just ruined all the fun for me ( same as blackwater).

I use the build with Sig of Inspiration (other utilities are still the classic Blink and Decoy).
The signet seems to lessen the speed issue and also boosts boon uptime.

As for the concept of condi-burst on heal, I find it suits my counterattack playstyle very well (the reason I play clone-spam builds in the first place). It also introduces a bit more tactics and swift judgement that separates active skilled play from passive spamming.

Osicat, I love the videos and they are part of the inspiration that keeps me trying. Please give a text description of playing this build. The videos leave me wondering at points what the rotation was and what the reasoning was.

2 things.

Imho, although the 2 or 3 heal mantra (depending on whether you take HM) synergize well with MP, it kind of wastes the rune proc becuase of its internal CD. Because of its poor healing per activation, activating mantra twice or three times within 10 sec from each other should be fairly normal, if focused. Ok, you will cleanse from 2 to 6 conditions in the process but rune bonus will not proc.

Also, because of the channeling required when using mantra, you may want to stay far and safe rather than closed to the target and subject to interrupts: being interrupted while using mantras can be devastating. But staying ranged will waste the eventual runes bonus. Ok, stealth and PU will play a major role here by giving you the shelter needed for recharging mantras, but it ain’t always working

I found mirror to be a good alternative becuase:

1. short CD
2. reflecting projectiles

Second. I am one of those complaining about the lack of speed. I tried to drop a sigil (chose the one you prefer) in favour to s.s.o.speed. A nice speed boost of 2-3 minutes can be quickly achieved while farming your sigil stacks or while following zergs. While roaming I just stop by to quickly aoe kill a group of 3-4 mobs and here you go to the next camp where I can refresh the boon.
I see myself sticking with it because it works. The only thing is that it can be boon stripped like all other boons. But it helped me chasing some people down and I wasn’t the last one while roaming with little groups.

I prefer to drop a sigil than wasting a set of runes or to be forced to change a weapon. A very cheap solution to all our problems

Intersting fact about Balthazar Runes:
The aoe burn not only procs when you use a mantra charge to heal, but also when you recharge your healing mantra
(many other “on heal” effects don’t trigger from that)

@Tropper, might be in order for me to explain how I often use the mantra charge for offence.

1 start mantra (in stealth or out of mele range)
2 just when mantra is about to chargé ready use blink to target,
3 mantra will instly be ready and you blink bomb target with aoe burn.
4 use mantra heal 1-2 times if u not 100% hp, save 1 charge.
5 when on target use torch prestige to blind target and restealth
6 let torch burn hit (many ppl cleared first burn)
7 when 10 s gone use last mantra if situation allowe as a instans burn.
8 chargé mantra agaim if possible in stealth and let burn hit.

This is how I try and often do, change stuff after situation

/Osicat

I know what you mean. I was just highlighting a situation where the rune bonus could get “wasted”. You’d also agree with me that staying in melee range while recharging mantras isn’t always safe and if runes proc while running away stealthed, it can give away your position. Other than that it works as intended.

Any thoughts on sigil of speed?

Just want a confirmation here, does the rune proc reveal u when u heal in stealth? It doesn’t seem to happen to me.

@Keenlam, Ssssss we dont talk about this thing here, nothing to see, walk along.

I’ve always loved Balthazar runes. The quickness means a near-instant cast of Mass Invis on low hp, and with same cooldown to boot. So if you see your Mass Invis ready, you can be sure that quickness is ready behind it. When paired with Desperate Decoy and PU, that’s insta-10 seconds of invisibility which should slip you out of any situation.

Also works great for those kamikaze “death from above” situations, which is extremely fun to do. Works especially well with Chaotic+Bountiful Interruption:

1. Start mantra healing charge while in Torch#4
2. Jump off, landing for Chaos Storm, by that time Prestige and Balthazar goes off
3. Blurred Frenzy, trigger Torment Sigil
4. Swap with Geomancy to Staff#5 for a second Chaos Storm, pop shatters

8 area attacks. Burn, chill, poison, weakness, bleed, torment, confusion, (and on interrupt from 2x Chaos Storms) also apply cripple, blind (+more confusion if traited), immobilize, and most possibly 25 stacks of might. The actually time they see you is 1/2 cast time for Blurred Frenzy, the weapon swap to staff, then 1/4 cast time for Chaos Storm. You’re in and out at literally about less than 1 second, maybe 1.5.

And if that kamikaze almost kills you, you get quickness+Mass Invis for the getaway. Mid-channel you can pop off your healing mantras, so I guess it’s not really a kamikaze hah.

mambastik.8735:

I’ve always loved Balthazar runes. The quickness means a near-instant cast of Mass Invis on low hp, and with same cooldown to boot. So if you see your Mass Invis ready, you can be sure that quickness is ready behind it. When paired with Desperate Decoy and PU, that’s insta-10 seconds of invisibility which should slip you out of any situation.

Also works great for those kamikaze “death from above” situations, which is extremely fun to do. Works especially well with Chaotic+Bountiful Interruption:

1. Start mantra healing charge while in Torch#4
2. Jump off, landing for Chaos Storm, by that time Prestige and Balthazar goes off
3. Blurred Frenzy, trigger Torment Sigil
4. Swap with Geomancy to Staff#5 for a second Chaos Storm, pop shatters

8 area attacks. Burn, chill, poison, weakness, bleed, torment, confusion, (and on interrupt from 2x Chaos Storms) also apply cripple, blind (+more confusion if traited), immobilize, and most possibly 25 stacks of might. The actually time they see you is 1/2 cast time for Blurred Frenzy, the weapon swap to staff, then 1/4 cast time for Chaos Storm. You’re in and out at literally about less than 1 second, maybe 1.5.

And if that kamikaze almost kills you, you get quickness+Mass Invis for the getaway. Mid-channel you can pop off your healing mantras, so I guess it’s not really a kamikaze hah.

Sounds like a D/D Elementalist. Can’t wait to try this out.

BlackDevil.9268:

I gave arguments why it doesnt work. All of them listed above aren’t personal issues. Can people please start learn to read and then comment?

But my point is that recent evidence proves that it does work, and if it doesn’t for you take a look at how you play it.

bump,bump,nudge,nudge

Snoxx.7943:

Intersting fact about Balthazar Runes:
The aoe burn not only procs when you use a mantra charge to heal, but also when you recharge your healing mantra
(many other “on heal” effects don’t trigger from that)

Not a fan of this on a Mesmer but it should also be unblockable, dodgeable, and unblindable. Grenth runes have the same heal bonus with chill instead of burn and I was running them on my Engi a few days post patch so balth should probably be the same. Still not a fan of this setup on a mesmer especially with that heal type but to each his own.

I agree with BlackDevil, this build isn’t as good, it doesn’t deserve the hype.

Did quite a bit of WvW roaming with the napalm build today, and yeah it’s a fun idea, offers a new playstyle but it performs almost always subpar compared to a 0 6 6 2 0 build with clone-death traits, PU and mantra heal.

It might be useful if you want to run a condition build in WvW zerg fights. Mesmers lack AoE damage, the burn proc from the balthazar runes helps a lot in that case. I’ll try to combine it with a bit of interrupt build, thinking about Bountiful Interruption, Chaotic Interruption and the interrupt mantra. At least it’s worth carrying my second equipment set with the balthazar runes around, because when I stop roaming for a moment to join a zerg, I just have to switch my armor and change two traits to become a viable “zergling”.

Osi already said he often runs a 0/6/6/2/0 HM+PU+MP and balthazr so, nothing new there.
If, by 0/6/6/2/0 you mean HM+BI+CI with MoD nothing stops you from doing so and mainteining the core of the napalm build. This is something I actually tried and it’s fun/effective. It combines the strength of the burning and the cc of lockdown. You will loose aegis from PU but gain boons by interrupting ppl and add more conditions when doing so.
The only thing is that your stealths will be a tad shorter (needed?) and you will have to dedicate a utility slot to MoD, which isn’t always as easy as it sounds since you will want decoy/blink and 1 more condi removal is always welcome

Gamgee.8612:

BlackDevil.9268:

I gave arguments why it doesnt work. All of them listed above aren’t personal issues. Can people please start learn to read and then comment?

But my point is that recent evidence proves that it does work, and if it doesn’t for you take a look at how you play it.

Shatter builds work too. Interrupt builds also do, but do they get the same hype? What if someone posted a random build with nearly the same traits of a shatter build? Will he get massive hypes?
The only reason this build gets hyped so much is because osicat posted it. I’m pretty sure that if any other random dude would post this, people would go like ‘’whats different? This is just blackwater build with different runes’‘. And that’s pretty much exactly what this is, blackwater with different runes.
While not only that but I believe perplexity runes are probably as good as balthazar runes for this build. Funny how much qq perplexity gets and how much hype this rune is getting.
The build is decent, but lacks in so many ways in roaming. People forget roaming is not only about fighting, but also chasing enemies, disengaging fights and, for the ppt under us, being mobile around the map.
Another thing, this build is horrible with shatters. It has no purpose to use any of the shatters besides distortion or maybe sometimes diversion. This takes away a huge part of your gameplay and we all know how boring it can become to fight builds that rely’s on facerolling skills and spamming 1 staff. I don’t really see much combo’s possible either with this build and the ones that are there seem to be rather bad as it forces you to use your healing. None of the skills really work together like how i-leap does with phantasm or how mirror blade does with mind wrack.

p.s.: which ‘’recent evidence’’ are you talking about? A video about 1v1 against people with no idea with a pu build says nothing. 1v3/1v4 gameplay would prove a bit more.

Mix of different favorite moments in ths build last days

Judge normaly never run bigger than 5-6 man, our normal team is 6 but often 1 or 2 is absent

/Osicat

BlackDevil.9268:

p.s.: which ‘’recent evidence’’ are you talking about? A video about 1v1 against people with no idea with a pu build says nothing. 1v3/1v4 gameplay would prove a bit more.

I absolutely get your point, but at the same time I reject it because I’ve seen Osi regularly punch 4-5 guys to death with it, and it doesn’t lack for anything in his hands and absolutely not in combat movement. That is what I mean with recent evidence. Ofcourse you have not seen it so you have to take my word on it :P

BlackDevil.9268:

Just because osicat posted this build people go out of their mind cause; ‘’wew, osi made a new build, wew so op!’’

BlackDevil.9268:

I gave arguments why it doesnt work. All of them listed above aren’t personal issues. Can people please start learn to read and then comment?

Saying people like the build only because Osi made it is a personal criticism. Also asking people to learn to read.

Malakin.2809:

BlackDevil.9268:

Just because osicat posted this build people go out of their mind cause; ‘’wew, osi made a new build, wew so op!’’

BlackDevil.9268:

I gave arguments why it doesnt work. All of them listed above aren’t personal issues. Can people please start learn to read and then comment?

Saying people like the build only because Osi made it is a personal criticism. Also asking people to learn to read.

And now let’s read the rest of the post shall we? And yes, people do only like the build just because osi turned up with it. It’s nothing else than a blackwater build with balthazar runes. I’m 100% sure that if someone else would post it, he would only get the critisism of ‘’oh another pu build’’ or ‘’ehm… isnt this just blackwater?’’.

Anyway, still like 5/6 questions unanswered and I don’t think its actually possible to answer them propperly cause it has the same problem as blackwater.

Also lol, sorry osi but really, how many ’’personal’’ kills did you make there? Or in what way were you usefull in your group against that pug group before you run of idk, 1.5 times your numbers? You can clearly see the massive condition removal just disabling all your damage output and that leaves you to a stealthing dog running around tickling people. Maybe you had 1 burst on 1 dude which got you to a kill, the rest of the damage output was caused by your allies.

Conditions are so worthless in group fights unless the rate of reapply-ing conditions is really high. The problem with this build is that it doesnt rely on fast applying conditions but on long duration conditions. 1 cleanse and bye bye damage. Out of all aoe burning I saw there, I think an izerker or a fast shatter burst in a power build could do twice that damage.

Updated the build, + new Video:

Build: http://tinyurl.com/Napalm-Cat-2-0

/Osicat

Osi did they ever fix the staff clone bounce? =/

No they havent yet, on the good side Baltazar burn hit dont brake stealth and go thru block etc.

/Osicat

That’s great, just hard to give up Travelers runes because they’re so useful. Them not fixing staff clones makes me want to scream. But someone told me the mesmer designers left Anet and the current devs don’t know how to fix some of the core problems without redoing the class from scratch. So maybe it will never get fixed.