Guild Wars 2

The secret to I-mage is not about dealing direct bulk damage it’s is a summation of supplemental peripheral damage… That is why most of you deem this poor phantasm as useless that is all…if you want more insight… I’ll try my best to reply promptly.

If you’ve found a new way to effectively use the iMage, I’d love to hear it.

Personally, I don’t see how it can be useful considering that a condition build will likely get more out of a staff clone passing around conditions/boons, and a shatter or phantasm build will likely go for more direct damage options. I’d love to be proven wrong though.

Disclaimer: I am not only cryptic with my knowledge but very protective of it. Call me what you want it is just my nature I don’t like spelling things out. There is enough information here for your own experimentation.

Applications: Primarily attrition based.
Areas of focus: Boon Duration
Primary Boon: Retaliation
Primary Stats: Power
Supplemental Stats: Vit/Tough
Weapons: Pre-Patch Scepter/Torch- STaff
Primary condition Confusion
Utilz: Any 2x Glamours + SoI or SoD depends if you want more boons or Condi.Dmg
Trait out Domination get VIII Confusing Enchantments and IX cleansing conflagration. Trait out Illusion for glamour CD’s the rest of the traits is up to you.
People have been kind enough to tell me by the time I stomped them they took upwards to 8k retaliation + 3k-5k confusion plus various damage from regular abilities ranging in 500-2k. Add it up and that is enough pressure to down the most stubborn adversary who doesn’t realize where your dmg is coming from…

Strategy primarily SPVP and have not tested WvW. PvE mobs do not hit fast enough or live long to make this viable for PvE please prove me wrong. I need more data….

I use iMage for the retal boon since i run a power build (pow >2.2k). If you time it well against enemy multi-hit burst, you can deal decent (not great) damage + a bit of confusion damage. Of course, if you run condition build, it is easily overshadowed by staff clones. Before patch though, iMage was too squishy to live long enough for greater benefit. But with this new health buff, I hope he gets better.

@Revelations: please share your knowledge, I’d love to hear it too.

My knowledge of the Mesmer class is quite simple… and believe me I have died many a times to the more conventional builds experimenting…So I’m used to the insults and requests for me to “re-roll newb”…

Lately though the tune has been changing… No gimmicky ego inflating names just make it work and make it yours.

There are 2 ways to play Mesmer which the Devs don’t talk about but you can see in the way they “nerf” the profession. Hahaha

1. Direct Dmg High Risk; High In-Combat Mobility: Shatter Builds and Phantasm Build
Primary Stats: Power Precision there are so many examples of this no need to further explain I shun these builds out of personal preference and my personal play style.

2. Peripheral Supplemental Damage
People have grossly and erroneously complained about this but as a mesmer I am sure you have asked this question:

Why are our Condition Durations so short?
Answer: Peripheral

Strategy: Your enemy is not supposed to realize they are taking dmg
Strangely Mesmer-esqe isn’t it? The mind games continue. Hahaha

In my current WvW build on average depending on might stacks and various food buffs players take 800-950 1 second burn damage and 153 bleed ticks. Even with the RNG this dmg happens so quick players do no panic or find the need to blow cleanes until it is far too late.

That is when I apply guess what: Confusion! You are now put under pressure to use skills to save yourself…Haha it is always my favorite to see the panic of a player by how many times confusion procs. So when it was nerfed it didn’t bother me at that point. Well this is how I play Mesmer It is the perspective that drives my knowledge and how I choose to innovate my play style.

Add all the conditions you get the plus your direct damage you get a supplemental summation that is quite potent. People think condition mesmers are not effective which they may be right in some applications and scenarios but I have enough personal video I study to know it is the most underrated, under appreciated, vastly ridiculed play style that keeps me logging into GW2 day after day and brings a smile to my face after a long day at work.

Revelations.3154:

Strategy: Your enemy is not supposed to realize they are taking dmg
Strangely Mesmer-esqe isn’t it? The mind games continue. Hahaha

This.
Absolutely agree with this philosophy. Most people like big damage numbers, thats why they specced for single-source damage build. But when we think of our class is a really versatile class that plays tricks on enemies, it makes total sense that our damage should be from various sources and add up if played right.

I’m new. I agree that it makes sense, but I’m not exactly sure how to make use of it.
Superior Rune of Balthazar or Superior Rune of the Flame Legion make the most sense to me at the moment. I want to switch from the meta to a condition mesmer, but I’m not sure how to go about it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Flame_Legion
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Balthazar
*Leaning towards balthazar b/c burning is guaranteed on heals.

Is taking Retaliatory Shield 10(III) Trait in dueling worth it with Scepter/Torch? When you trait 30 in Domination, you gain the 300 power & 30% Condition duration. I looked in the wiki & found out that retaliation scales off of power. Sceptor 2 also applies Torment now so long as you can pull off a block.

Right now I’m looking at 30/10/0/10/10
Dueling – Realiatory Shield
Inspiration – Glamour Mastery
Illusions – Confusing Cry

Which leaves me with 10 points. For now, I’m thinking deceptive evasion for clone generation for shatters/disorientation. However, the problem I’m having is justifying spending any points in the Chaos line; which adds toughness & boon duration which are important. I also though of malicious sorcery for scepters 20% reductions.

The other thought I had was 30/0/0/30/10 taking most of the traits you suggested & adding glammer duration/recharge & scepter recharge. Whilst taking confusing cry in the illusions tree.

Hey Lunar, I’m glad I’m not the only one motivated by this play style

First I would like to say don’t fall into the new Mesmer trap. Decided right now that you can’t be a jack of all trades. What I mean by that is certain builds you cannot dabble in everything so be careful with the addition of deceptive evasion that might spread you too thin. The root of this build revolves around power and it’s contribution to retaliation damage and supplementing that with other sources of dmg as mention.

Imagine streams into tributaries into rivers….

I like the approach with Balthazar and wanting to increase burn duration. If we are talking PvP then it is too narrow of a damage stream to to dedicate your rune set to I used a mixture of rune sets that gave me +40% Boon duration. As Mesmer we have the least innate access to condition removal but that does not apply to the other professions. You will look for the effectiveness of your burn damage and possible never find it in PvP.

PvE I would say you are on to something with the condition duration strictly because of the food buff. I’m running late to work :P But we will discuss this more when I get back

That is one avenue to increase and maintain Retaliation and I have seen it used to amazing effect… but I see most professions have a cadence to where they attack and reset, attack reset like waves on a beach. Some profession have a longer sustained attack cadence so having to maintain near 100% percent Retaliation is unnecessary if you are not fighting such profession. If I do then they will take more dmg from confusion application.

I used my glamours to control the pace of the fight if they break off retaliation and another batch of phantasms is waiting for them that is why I find SoI beneficial along with chaos storm it get’s to a point that the enemies is taking too many little hits with varying intensities of pressure… Some stay and get down, others get the point and bring back up (s/tpvp)

The burn duration is actually still rather minuscule, though, isn’t it? 30% increased condition duration, +15% on runes is 45%, so roughly half. Burning’s base value is 3.5 seconds (from Prestige) so I’d probably glean an extra … 1.2 seconds or so of burning on Prestige so 4.7/5s.

Not entirely sure how to calculate the burning damage. I also like that rune compared to the other one because of the guaranteed 3s (4.5s) AoE burn on heal. The duration was just a bonus.

I may be motivated by it, but after looking around it’s going to take quite a while for me to get some exotic Soldier/Sentinel gear. The crafted set runs upwards of 18g per piece; which honestly isn’t affordable for me. The Invader’s Acolyte set is also a bit time consuming, though it might be doable with shatter/phantasm builds whilst running with a zerg. My best bet seems to be running Ascalon Catacombs.

I’ve definitely started to feel-out our lack of condition removal; that’s another reason I like the Torch; I’m eager to try “Torch skills cleanse conditions”.

I understand that specialization is key for most builds, but I guess the idea of doing multiple types of condition damages at once threw me off a bit. It’s a sound principle, but I’m not entirely sure how to go about it. I suppose part of my current problem is understanding just how many conditions Sceptor/Torch/Staff is capable of churning out; and whether I need to trait for more procs.

Torch skills remove conditions, glamour skills cause additional confusion
Sceptor: Clone generation, Block/Torment/Retaliation* (If traited 10 in dueling). However that will take practice/skill based. ~ Confusion
Torch : Burning/Blind & Retaliation/Confusion.

Superior Runes of the Monk/Water/Lyssa get you 30% boon duration
Superior Sigil of Geomancy lets you start a 7s AoE Bleed on swap. .
Superior Sigil of Intelligence on of the MH/OH combo’s would increase the chance of procing another Sigil, say a Superior Sigil of Earth ~ would let you stack even more bleeds over the course of a fight.

How useful exactly is Illusionary Elasticity – Staff’s Winds of Chaos getting another bounce? I know it bounces between enemies/clones/allies. Mostly Winds of Chaos applies a 9s bleed, and staff is a fairly close range weapon to make the most of its bounces/condition application.

I’m thinking 30/0/0/20/20 with 2x (II/VII) for the respective major traits aside from the confusion/retaliation. I would like to get that dueling block trait, but blocking is too hit or miss to waste 10 points on a chance. For example, I know at least with a staff that I’ll apply a detrimental condition; not so with a dodge move that requires me to anticipate attacks ahead of time.

Glamour/Scepter 20% Recharge Rates & Cry of Frustration, & Illusionary Elasticity.

The confusion/retaliation build can work as 30/0/0/20/20 or 30/0/20/20/0 pre-patch. Illusionary Elasticity is good for builds that utilize staff traits and are built with high condition damage. But yea the burning for the prestige is nice but not a reliable source of condition dmg… You have the concept down packed it just takes some more experience and experimentation and you’ll be fine. I’m a big fan of Superior Sigil of Earth on my WvW condition spec.

Prestige is mainly used for utility. One of the other builds emerging on the forum was that prismatic build that could use stealth to ramp up conditions & signet of inspiration to really buff (and maintain protection & aegis for upwards of 30s, specifically).

Your choice of words confuses me some. In particular when you start off by saying that “_ can work, [pre-patch]” as if you’re expecting it to get nerfed, or that they dont’ work as well since the patch?

I’m curious about how much condition damage you need to accumulate through gear to really see a tangible benefit. I’m guessing that you really don’t need more than 100-200 extra condition damage aside from the condition damage you get from the traits because bleeds/confusions are already fairly potent/stackable; so any bonus has to account for stacks.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage
The wiki seems to suggest that bleeding/confusion benefit the most from 100(X) condition amounts, (especially considering how much they stack) I guess the trick is balancing out boon duration with condition duration.

One of the big realizations I’ve had thanks to you is how important it is in understanding the Mesmer class to not get pidgeon-holed into the Shatter/Phantasm meta. The staff is a potent condition damage weapon, but the best part about it is that it isn’t as [All or Nothing] reliant on Power/Precision/Crit Damage ~ you need to realize as a mesmer that you’re giving up a ton of defensive skills, traits and most of all; stats that make you much individually weaker and more of a target.

The pre-patch comment meant that I have not played that build since the patch with the change to Illusionist Celerity so I do not know how that build would be impacted.

This is a Condition Damage chart I found on GW2 reddit. It doesn’t have the formulas but you get an idea of the benefits of stacking vs. duration:

http://i.imgur.com/khbsevA.png

Here is another link for condition dmg compare it to ingame to make sure it is accurate: http://gw2.hazno.net/

Thanks! After reading your last paragraph I can truly say my job here is done

Hello. I read most of the posts here, and I’m intrigued by the discussion, particularly revelations and lunar. And question:
How do you play around with the retaliation? I experimented with 30/0/30/20/0 with soldier stats, and 40% boon duration due to 30 in chaos and signet.
I only get retaliation through iMage and chaos storm. I did well in my spvp matches due to, i think, condition damage, sometimes occurring retaliation, and confusion.

Back to my question: are those two skills the only times we’re supposed to get retaliation? And that we’re supposed to just play around with traits to enhance the retaliation from those two skills?

Oh, I my rotation:
Open up with iMage, then stall around waiting for a #2 skill for torment.
Switch to staff, then cast chaos storm, thinking I need it for retaliation.
I stick to staff until I get em below half health.
Then, I end it with shatter #2(confuse), glamour for confusion, and #3 scepter.

I also use the glamour skills null void and feedback as utilities in between fights, not just to end it with confusion stacks.

For more info, my build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNArfWlwziqnQzqGb9IipH9GyRhnKwckeUao2rB-jUyAYLQkGEkittenEBl+GyaOMiVzioxqux0xER1CB8YBA-w
Don’t mind the armor/trinkets

I decided 30 for toughness due to more condition 5% at 25 trait as well as the boon duration, but I’m thinking I don’t need that much condition damage anymore. My next experiment would have 30 in domination and 20 in chaos—I haven’t decided on what to do with the other 20 points. Of course, I would need glamour mastery in Inspiration; and i’m thinking 10 in duelist for block retaliation thing, or 10 illusion for cry of frustration having retaliation..

Perhaps this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNArfWlwziqnQzqGbNJhpC9+kCm3cUF2OpHlG1vG-jUyAYLQkGEkittenEBl+GyaOMiVzioxqux0xER1CB8YBA-w

Since i have two glamour based traits, why not three. And then 10 in illusion for the shatter retaliation as well as the condition on all shatters; however, i’m losing boon duration from traits.

Hi Xephiare, I am by no means a mesmer veteran, but as i understand if you want to increase Retaliation uptime, you might want to look into the trait combo Prismatic Understanding (Chaos XII) + Retaliatory Shield (Dueling III), among which PU recently got a significant buff. This ofc drives the build towards a stealth-heavy playstyle though. Obviously the torch is the best weapon of choice in this case.

I think Boon Duration doesn’t affect iMage. Other than that, keep posting. It’s definitely underrated (as opposed to other Phantasms), because it’s our one, true ConDmg phant.

@keenlam: I appreciate the tip.
I see how Prismatic Understanding gives us aegis, which is a block! Chaos storm also gives us aegis. Wow that 10 in dueling comes in handy.
However, what would be the point of retaliation if we’re invisible and without the opponent causing the retaliation. Although, we could use it if we run out of retaliation as well as in deep trouble.
I will check out how much time in average we get from Prismatic Understanding soon, to see if including that one stealth move would benefit us greatly. It sounds really good though, with the protection/regen/aegis + cleanse as torch skill—pretty much resetting the fight with boons in hand.
@Espleen: Are you referring to the retaliation boon that iMage gives us? I’ll go check it out.

Edit:
Taking Prismatic Understanding along with 30 in domination leaves me 10 traits left, which would be put to 10 in dueling; however, this build would be focused entirely on retaliation until opponent’s death. This would leave nothing else for us to finish the opponents because the 20% glamour CD would be gone. The confusion stacks from glamour + #3 scepter seem too good.
Else, we could get a replacement but what?

Esplen: I tested iMage retaliation duration, and boon duration works on it.

The best, easiest form of retal duration is 2x monk, 2x water, 20 in chaos, 30 in illusions with confusin cry for your adept. Every illusion shattered gives you 5 seconds retaliation + boon duration, so 5 + 50% = 7.5s. That’s 22.5 seconds of retaliation, which can be cast every 23 seconds.

Add to this chaos storm procs of 4.5 seconds with 50% boon duration, 4.5 seconds of retal from iMage,and you’ll have more retaliation than you know what to do with. You can also run sword/focus for the leap combo. Retaliatory shield works best with Mimic. 3 seconds for every block, and you can proc the skill yourself with bouncing attacks. Chaos III reduces manipulation cooldowns by 20% to give you mimc every 20 seconds, and also a reduced blink and arcane thievery. Options options.

Been running power, crit, high armor, retal, confusion for a long time now. Started with the ‘iProc’ build you can find in the forums, and worked on it from there. It has some vids with retal/confusion at work.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-iProc-Mesmer/first#post1971583

Here’s one option with Retalatory Shield, allowing Illusionary Invigoration for more survivability/confusion shatters.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWlwz6pHTzmGb9IiJFEHyh6x1BefXJF62FC-j0DBoLQINJDrJg0CKjUGAkIQZPFRjtOMIVXht8KaKbYaYER1mbKamcp2qDQIgFzBA-w

Hi Ross, Xeph, Riddle

I can’t really comment because I’m a PvE/WvW amateur, most of what I’ve been discussing with Revelation is in fact reliant on me having gold (I have none at the moment) unless you count the 60 or so ectoplasm I have in storage; and I’m in the process of deciding for or against a legendary weapon (bolt).

I found out today that Soldier/Sentinel ~ Karma gear is incomplete, so the only options to get it affordably are running AC (and transmuting that god awful asura armor) &/or playing WvW for the Invaders Acolyte set (which is rather decent looking).

What I will say is this, I’m really blown away by the diversification in play-style(s) that you guys represent. I can only hope that once upon a time I’ll be able to afford to experiment with and have the confidence to create my own builds. Revelations focused on glamour, whereas Ross focused on manipulation reductions.

I decided to stop salvaging my rares for ecto’s and start saving them in the bank to use for chances at exotics in the mystic forge.

I think that confusion in combination with retaliation is very potent. People tend to ignore confusion from what I’ve gleaned, but when you have confusion, retaliation & bleed to deal with, I’m frankly convinced that they’re quite hard to deal with because of how often they’re re-applied, not because of how many stacks you can accumulate.

No doubt this is an area I’ll be researching for a long while. Thanks for joining the discussion, I really appreciate some more experienced analysis.

Before I turn in (edit:) I’d like to mention that http://www.intothemists.com has updated their build calculator to reflect the recent changes in the various trait trees.

There were a few problems I ran into with the iProc, namely glass cannon thieves simply out DPS’d me, and there’s nothing to stop players from simply turning and walking away. Playing tier 1 wvw, there are more smart players than stupid, and thus retal/confus reliance is ultimitly weak indeed. Thus I moved to much more crit damage while retaining high armor, and keeping retal with whatever condition damage/duration I could build.

I should explain about being out-dps’d. If your total sum of damage from regular attacks, confusion, and retaliation is less than the total amount of damage of the enemy attacking you, assuming relatively equal hp’s/healing, then you will lose every time. So a glass cannon thief who only uses his two or three hardest hitting attacks is only going to proc a little bit of damage each time, meanwhile dealing thousands upon thousands of damage to you. That’s the trouble with both the confusion and retaliation nerfs. They are no longer anywhere near on par with straight up raw damage, let alone crit.

Revelations.3154:

… No gimmicky ego inflating names just make it work and make it yours.

… You offend me!

Haha nah, but seriously… This is a really good thread. Reading through ti has inspired me to pick up my sPvP condition Mesmer again. I broke one of my own rules and listened to the “This build is bad!” masses after a really painful assbeating in a duel(The person, a higher ranking Mesmer, then told me condition Mesmers are predictable and easy). Rather than really dig in and learn the ups and downs of the build, I shelfed it in search of something else.

Thanks for reminding me that the masses are only as strong as each individual. And each individual needs to strengthen him/herself instead of folding to the whims of others.

iMage retaliation is better than nothing – I quite like that aspect.

But it doesn’t change the fact that the cooldown is far too long. and the 3 stacks of confusion not sufficient. 3s of retaliation should really be increased as well to 4 or 5 seconds.

I feel like people are making the argument that Phantasm/Shatter builds work because they’re simple, direct damage methods of playing Mesmer. I’ll be honest, I don’t particularly like this, but I have found it easier to tag mobs in PvE using iBerserker (GS #4). than using a staff.

What I’m trying to say is, is this. Ours is a very complex class; we have access to a very considerable and formidable array of -20% recharge cooldowns; whether they be in Glamour or manipulation magic the point is that with specialization and a decision to play a certain way, I believe that we can overstep the general boundaries beyond illusionary celerity; which some will argue was undoubtedly a grandmaster minor-trait cough reddit, cough.

I think that the swapping from minor trait to a grandmaster-minor trait has forced us to make specific decisions that do in fact encourage build diversity within the perspective of specialization.

A friend in my guild pointed out that his build (30 Domination/30 Illusion, 10 dueling, I believe) let him switch out traits to let him use his sunrise. While his is more direct damage based with lots of mindwrack boosts; he see’s a distinct advantage in applying confusion at the right times; such as before a temple boss such as Melandru/Dwayna or Lyssa begin their rotation that he has memorized.

There are so many ways to overstep the boundaries of build’s. We can mix armor sets, be it Soldiers, Bersereker’s & knights to find a balance that we find useful to our build’s. We can also swap traits around to allow us to use many weapons we became accustomed to in the Meta. If Mesmer’s are atypically supposed to be considered masters of confusion, why would we ever stick with one build regardless of it’s effectiveness?

That’s redundant; changes exist for us to decide on different paths; and while I’m certain some will vehemently disagree with me IC allowed us to generalize our build’s far too much. There’s a problem when both Shatter/Phantasm and Condition build’s all make use of the same trait in different specializations.

I think Mesmer’s are a class that can excel beyond shatters & phantasms into a combination of the two and various conditions; it’s just a matter of understanding the set principles based on our chosen traits and how to create a varied array of useful effects and conditions.

At least, that’s what drew me to Mesmer’s, I knew it would be a class with more depth than charging in & using brute force to accomplish our goals. Deception is something we need to re-kindle; and I think we’ve been deceiving ourselves for too long.

In WvW, I’m guessing that people try to create a generalized class/build. Why? I feel like condition/confusion/retaliation are considerably stronger against certain classes than others. Sure, we can’t fight them all the time, but in PvE (or even in sPvP, if you’ll allow me to theory-craft) you can target and abuse different professions quite easily. When you remove someone from a fight and gain a 4v5 advantage, you can make plays.

For example, While I’m more careful about using feedback now; glamour spells applying confusion makes it quite a bit stronger than normal; which makes it an ideal way along with other spells such as veil & portal to sneak up on ranged/range-caster classes. I’m convinced that I’m always going to have trouble with more solidly built warriors/guardians, so why not focus on a stealth/deception based battle of attrition?

I’m certain a group of 2-3 specialized Mesmer’s could wreak a lot more havoc in a small roaming group than 2-3 mesmer’s that are individually specialized towards phantasms or shatters; why not all of them? They’re all respectably strong; it’s the combinational synergy that makes our class strong in opinion. We have so many avenues of applying damage; why restrict ourselves to just one or two within group play? Direct damage, Stealth/Damage, Boon application/Condition removal.

That theory-crafting aside is it not possible that people have focused on specializing for condition damage too readily? Last I checked ~ it’s a damage type focused on short bursts of stacks that doesn’t scale too heavily with raw stats like power or precision. The fact that these conditions/effects stack briefly allows us to overlook traditional power/precision stacking armor ideologies.

So my question for my seniors is this; how much condition damage do you really need to do a noticable, but overlookable amount of condition damage, such that at the right times it would be a pain? The key word here is -right times-.

If people feel condition build’s aren’t strong, I can understand and respect that, however… I think that the message I’ve taken away from Revelation is that people (in particularly mesmer’s lol) are misunderstanding condition damage entirely. It’s not something that benefits by stacking stats (or structuring entire builds around), because it’s the concept of quick ephemeral bursts that I find interesting, “Wait, why did I take so much damage, he’s a shatter/phantasm mesmer isn’t he o.O?!”

Condition damage is something that people overlook because DoT / Mages aren’t really something that exist heavily outside of the Mesmer class (as far as I know) and I find that rather interesting. I think that condition damage is viable; I don’t think there are extreme benefit from stacking condition damage on a full set of armor, (at least, right now) but I think that people are overlooking temporary manifestations of conditions to create confusion.

Playing a condition mesmer might be predictable, but the same can be said of both Shatter & Phantasm based mesmers. I think that a subtle integration of conditions into either build’s is something worth investigating.

http://i.imgur.com/khbsevA.png
http://gw2.hazno.net/

Proves that condition damage has benefits for putting as little as 100-200 points (from traits) to 2-3 pieces of armor because we’re able to quickly ramp up conditions in a limited cycle of time.

Just some thoughts I’ve had this morning. Hope that they manage to inspire and motivate us to work a little differently. I have an appointment, but this is a discussion I’d like to continue into the foreseeable future.

A 1000 points of condition damage will approximately double the condition tick DPS. Some conditions will be a little higher (burning and torment) and others a little lower.

You should ask yourself what you give up going that deep into the condition damage stat. The most likely answer is “direct damage from lack of attack power”.

As a condition build you have to out-last your opponents as the condition damage is not bursty and can be easily thwarted by duration consumables, duration runes, and condition shedding skills.

Personally I don’t like going “all in” for conditions for that reason.

I tried something different this morning.

I took in what Ross Biddle suggested and tinkered with it:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArcWlwzCoHTzmGb9IiJFEHyh6x2BefXJF62FC-jUDBINJDrBgWIZUGAZPFRjtOMIVXht8KaKbYaYER1mbKamcp2qDQIgFzBA-w

Scepter/ Sword and Staff
Power/Prec/Toughness, although I tested with knight’s Power/Prec/Vitality in spvp b/c for some reason there wasn’t any Power/Prec/Tough amulet.
Signet of Inspiration and two manipulation skills.

In spvp, I think the build is a success. It’s hard to me to die unless 3 guys focus on me without team help. This time, I played around with shatter because I now have shatter cool down reset at 50% health. I find myself casting cry of frustration and having a lot of retaliation. I almost always have retaliation with shatters + two blocks + chaos storm + signet of inspiration—not to mention the boon duration is 40% in spvp(could be more in WvW with food i think). With having the illusion tree maxed out, the first trait in there has confusion on all shatters. I can stack a lot of confusion if timed carefully with #3 scepter.
I also have might on switch with 40% boon duration and 20% might duration from runes.
I haven’t tested much on iSwordsman and the staff clones precision w/ bleed. I’m guessing that iSwordy does a good amount of damage with power/precision.
I’ll see to them soon.

In fights, what I consider successful is surviving attacks from many people and getting them to half health, them running away, and them staying for me to kill. A major issue is that a lot of guys just run from me when they blow skills, finding me to be still over 75% health and knowing that perhaps it would take too much to beat me. For the guys who stay, I just wait for them to die and stack mass confusion when they’re quite low—I still don’t know when to cast stacks of confusion to end it though.
The only real trouble I’m going against is the condition necro.
Perhaps it’s too early to judge this build, but I just wanted you guys to know. I’ll test more soon.

Curunen.8729:

iMage retaliation is better than nothing – I quite like that aspect.

True story, but to be honest with you I never run with nothing in my off hand. In fact I’ve never seen a player over level 4 that does.

The cold hard truth is that no matter how underreted the Mage is, or how effective you can make him, he is still vastly subpar to the other weapon phantasms. Yes, you can get some juice out of him, but you lose so much more than you will ever get by not selecting another phantasm.

Yes, several builds, like mine, can make up for this in the way they use The Prestige to devastating effect, but I’m in no way under the illusion that the Mage does anything for me another phant wouldn’t do better, except versus FT engis maybe.

Hey Xeph, that looks fairly interesting. I have a lot of choices to make…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mighty-Mesmer-WvW/first#post2303150 — also looks potentially really strong too for zerg fighting.
(The WvW Mighty Mesmer Thread).