Guild Wars 2

This trait is now amazing!

Where are you finding the benefits? PVE/PVP?

It is only veil and MI isnt it?

torch and decoy

What about Decoy and the Prestige?

MI, Viel, torch 4, decoy

love it in WvW

Wow, it sounds really good.
Prismatic Understanding: grants you protection, regeneration, or aegis every second while stealthed.

…and +1 sec of stealth. Also there’s +30% boon duration from specing that deep.

It’s not uncommon for me to come out of stealth with almost ten seconds of protection now. I love it.

cool thing about decoy is that it stealth you while under the effect of revealed (a 3-4 second debuff when stealth is broken).

it also works if someone else puts stealth on you…. just incredible.

I’m running this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWl0zKqXVTqGb9IipH9GyBcoUgdZXJF42FC-jExAZvioxWzKiGryGTDTEVDA-w

Tiny: http://tinyurl.com/ohnnvmk

Good survival — can make some good escapes.

I may move the 10 points out of “illusionary elasticity” since it’s not utilized by scepter/torch. I haven’t decided. I was using scepter/pistol but the torch prestige is too much fun.

EDIT: This build isn’t fine-tuned for scepter/torch and staff. All my gear is based upon a different build — I was just messing around tonight and was really enjoying PU. I’m going to work on it over the next week. If anyone comes up with some cool variations, please share.

I said it! I knew it! Perma protection mesmers… We will rule the world!

@juno : the website hasn’t been updated, so your Illusion Celerity is different—just in case you didn’t notice.

jportell.2197:

I said it! I knew it! Perma protection mesmers… We will rule the world!

“I said it! I knew it! Perma protection mesmers….. We will be nerfed into the floor!”

There I fixed that for you.

Btw its not just our own skills that applies the boons. I just /danced in a thief’s Shadow Refuge.

…. Please lets just stop this thread now.

Stop this thread before Anet sees and nerfs this as well.

just gave myself 45 seconds of protection and 40s of regen, 30s of aegis.

then gave it to my whole party.

who needs guardians

I don’t understand… How do you expect to kill people like this? Or is it just a troll build?

Xephiare.4793:

Stop this thread before Anet sees and nerfs this as well.

THIS. Hide what we have left please!!

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

I don’t understand… How do you expect to kill people like this? Or is it just a troll build?

you go condition build with staff+scepter/torch

you can go full rabid gear and be tanky as if you’re in pvt with the 100% protection/regen uptime. or even full rampagers if youre good

juno.1840:

I’m running this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWl0zKqXVTqGb9IipH9GyBcoUgdZXJF42FC-jExAZvioxWzKiGryGTDTEVDA-w

Tiny: http://tinyurl.com/ohnnvmk

Good survival — can make some good escapes.

I may move the 10 points out of “illusionary elasticity” since it’s not utilized by scepter/torch. I haven’t decided. I was using scepter/pistol but the torch prestige is too much fun.

EDIT: This build isn’t fine-tuned for scepter/torch and staff. All my gear is based upon a different build — I was just messing around tonight and was really enjoying PU. I’m going to work on it over the next week. If anyone comes up with some cool variations, please share.

Prismatic Understanding provided good survivability before the patch, u just never tested it before now until u saw the trait in the patch notes. And now decoy and phase retreat has longer cooldown due to IC change means you’re in stealth less often and is more susceptible to damage when you’re out of stealth.

you can also get 100% retaliation uptime from retaliatory shield because you’re procing aegis so often.

this is no doubt the next fotm build, if anet doesnt nerf it.

That’s all well and good. But now actually try to kill something in wvw. You will have no chance against any decent player. Unlike pve where the AI is dumb and enemies don’t regenerate health, other players in wvw actually have a brain. You will now be better at running away than before though, congratz.

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

I don’t understand… How do you expect to kill people like this? Or is it just a troll build?

squallaus.8321:

That’s all well and good. But now actually try to kill something in wvw. You will have no chance against any decent player. Unlike pve where the AI is dumb and enemies don’t regenerate health, other players in wvw actually have a brain. You will now be better at running away than before though, congratz.

Feel free to check out the build in my signature. I’ve been using this condition build since the confusion nerf, and it’s worked wonders. The PU buff just makes my build even better.

I’m able to stack ~2000 condition damage, 50% condition duration, and 45% crit (plus an additoinal 20% from fury) on the offensive side. With stats like that, things die pretty quickly.

For defenses, I have over 2900 armor, ~18k health, and now with this buff, massive uptime on protection, regeneration, and aegis. Combined with my great in-combat mobility due to stealth, phase retreat, and blink, even if my build can’t kill someone (though that’s rarely the case) I will almost never die.

It still escapes me how people can claim that a condition build isn’t good for mesmers, at least from a WvW roaming perspective. With the change to PU, based off my initial roaming experiences, there is no doubt in my mind that condition mesmers are a real threat now.

And squallus, maybe everyone I fight is just horrible, or I’m somehow the best mesmer ever, but I would like to think that this build has some potential. If my experiences are of any value, it is more than capable of killing skilled players. Sure, some players are going to escape, but I’ve practiced enough that I can kill most players who aren’t right next to a keep/tower that they can run into.

edit: Also wanted to add that the increase in Decoy’s duration, due to a lack of Illusionist’s Celerity, is frustrating, but unless you’re spamming you’re stealth skills on cooldown, it’s not much of an issue.

juno.1840:

I may move the 10 points out of “illusionary elasticity” since it’s not utilized by scepter/torch. I haven’t decided. I was using scepter/pistol but the torch prestige is too much fun.

iMage attack bounces…

The change makes the boons actually interesting. Previously most of them would have faded by the time you get out, since the older ones are 3s+ old.
Now, I actually come out of stealth with a sizeable amount of extra defence.
I’d have preferred the previous version and make it work on the group on Veil and MI, but this one is really cool for personal power. At least in WvW, I don’t intend to try it in sPvP.

The Condition Staff build is by no means as weak as many on this forum would have you believe, and speccing into Prismatic Understanding is quite natural for a Condition Staff Mesmer.

This makes Condition Staff Mesmers much harder to kill, and they’re already one of the most survivable Mesmer builds. Of course the tradeoff is you don’t have burst damage (and you can’t get Illusionist’s Celerity if you take Prismatic Understanding, which means 8s extra CD on Decoy mainly).

But yes, Condition Staff Mesmers still don’t work in tPvP as the idea of tPvP is burst hard or bunker hard. While Condition Staff Mesmers do have a lot of survivability, they don’t have much point holding capability. Stealth in particular is too selfish to be particularly useful in tPvP.

Prestige-> Viel X2 (cause you can run over it again after you pop out of stealth the first time) ->MI->Decoy-> Prestige (i traited for CD reduction) = 45sec of protection with, 28s of regen and 22s of retaliation with 50% boon duration and 65% protection duration. Yeah I really want to make my full whitemage build i thought up now. lol

Signet of Inspiration that and without condition removal you can keep 100% protection up on a small party.

My whitemage build is full support. I highly doubt I will be able to kill anyone by myself BUT I actually really hate that they did away with the holy trinity because I liked being a White Mage. ^^

Embolism.8106:

But yes, Condition Staff Mesmers still don’t work in tPvP as the idea of tPvP is burst hard or bunker hard. While Condition Staff Mesmers do have a lot of survivability, they don’t have much point holding capability. Stealth in particular is too selfish to be particularly useful in tPvP.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Viable-Builds-after-6-25-2013/first#post2283516

try it out killed a bunker ele 3 sec after he pop water, with torment/confusion/burn you can do sick burst if timed right.
we just need to shift the mindset of portal and shatter burst that made us 27/7 play close point/mid assist.
now you can go mid and stay and let someone else do it.(thiefs).
also if we see the rise of condinecros just think what epidemic can do to team fights with a necro and a mesmer on the same point.(and if you run with signet of inspiration).

afaik it also works with Desperate Decoy

(albeit you probably want to go for Retaliatory Shield in that trait slot since you’ll block often thanks to all the aegis coming from PU)

The trait was already good before.

PU was strong before, it is even stronger now. The builds you guys are posting are the same build (or slight variations) of Flimp’s build pre-confusion nerf. Do a quick search.

Lack of OOC swiftness is still the problem with builds that don’t run Focus or Centaur / Air runes.

KnattyDreads.1856:

PU was strong before, it is even stronger now. The builds you guys are posting are the same build (or slight variations) of Flimp’s build pre-confusion nerf. Do a quick search.

exactly for this reason:

The trait was already good before.

The only difference is that more people realised how the chaos line can be strong with PU and started to think about builds that already exist. Here’s the build diversity, huh?

@Xavi before the patch you could trait staff to gain a very short phase retreat and use it to move ahead. It was efficient, now that i cant have DE-PU-IC ill have to think about it. You can also trait blink.

Yes I know you could (and still can) use Phase Retreat for a mini teleport but it still wasn’t practical unless in combat. It doesn’t make up for Mesmer’s lack of OOC swiftness without having to resort to bandaid solutions.

If there are enemies near you its reliable. You dont need to go in combat to use it, just target something. Im not saying its the final solution for mesmers but it helps a lot with that kind of build and was even better with IC.

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

I don’t understand… How do you expect to kill people like this? Or is it just a troll build?

Stuff dies — not much I can say. I also mentioned it was WvW (which should be obvious with the Centaur runes and Mirror)

I didn’t post that build to show off or anything like that. Someone specifically asked how I built around PU, so I posted it. I have a comment in there that the gear doesn’t match the trait/skill build. However my gear provides a good amount of power so it doesn’t rely completely on conditions to burn someone down.

Feedback is there to support my team. NULL field for the same reason plus I use it offensively against bunkers and other heavy boon users.

for spvp, its too bad that we can be so tanky only at the sacrifice of being an inefficient point-holder due to the amount of invis required.

In this vein I have not decided if I like it yet.

Levitas.1953:

If there are enemies near you its reliable. You dont need to go in combat to use it, just target something. Im not saying its the final solution for mesmers but it helps a lot with that kind of build and was even better with IC.

Still not 100% swiftness.

Yeah it’s ridonk-a-donk! I couldn’t believe the patch notes when I saw it.

Run 0/20/30/0/20 or 20/20/30/0/0 with torch, decoy, mass invis and you’ll see how good it is.

Though I’m considering running 0/20/30/20/0 to see how much of an impact the extra 150 condition damage does with scepter.

They nerfed chaos 15 (or is it inspiration 15) months back just because of perma-protection.

This will (unfortunately) be nerfed in a month or two.

I have learned to never put too much stock into strong builds with this game…

Yup, it’s definitely OP on it’s own. However, I think ANet knew this and they’re probably seeing what falls out from the nerf to Illusionists Celerity before making more changes.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Yeah it’s ridonk-a-donk! I couldn’t believe the patch notes when I saw it.

Run 0/20/30/0/20 or 20/20/30/0/0 with torch, decoy, mass invis and you’ll see how good it is.

Though I’m considering running 0/20/30/20/0 to see how much of an impact the extra 150 condition damage does with scepter.

Also toying with new build ideas as well similar to 0/20/30/20/0 or 10/0/30/20/10.

One challenge is I don’t want a pure condition build — they are near worthless against a profession that sheds conditions like water, they are slow to kill lacking burst, foes can just run away, etc. I still want good power in the mix.

Maybe 10/0/30/30/0 — so many choices…

EDIT: any prof can seriously kitten a condi build by using Melandru runes and Lemongrass soup. It shouldn’t be that easy.

With Torment and Confusion I find that even condition-resistant professions can be downed surprisingly quickly if all goes well.

I don’t feel the “loss” of IP at all. Offensively IP primarily benefits Mind Wrack (+50% damage) and defensively, well, Condition Stealth Mesmers already have incredible defense.

Not sure what you mean by Dom. Signet of Domination? There are better Utilities to take I feel.

Now?

It was always good. Now it is borderline crazy.

x/20/30/x/x for life.

Curunen.8729:

Now?

It was always good. Now it is borderline crazy.

x/20/30/x/x for life.

I was so addicted to my shatter/phantasm build pre-patch that I never gave PU a real shot.

Now I’m running 20/20/30/0/0 and I’m loving it!

7 Mirrors ran with PU in a lot of his builds, and he seemed to kill people pretty effortlessly. I’ve run with this trait a lot. With 30 in chaos, and centaur runes, you have 100% uptime of swiftness. And this trait buff just makes things even better. I usually run

20/20/30

But sometimes I run

10/30/30

I usually run in full zerker armor, with all celestial jewels. My Izerker wakittenting people for awesome amounts last night. And this little bump my survivability made me smile all night.

With cleansing configuration. You remove conditions, stealth, gain protection, and heal yourself. Its just plain awesome.

Huge prot/retal/swift/regen stacks?

Bountiful Theft : Stealing removes 2 boons from your target and grants them to nearby allies.
Larcenous Strike: Stab your foe and steal up to two boons from them.

No thanks.

fadeaway.2807:

Huge prot/retal/swift/regen stacks?

Bountiful Theft : Stealing removes 2 boons from your target and grants them to nearby allies.
Larcenous Strike: Stab your foe and steal up to two boons from them.

No thanks.

So now boons are bad to?