Guild Wars 2

Domination

• Adept: Confounding Suggestions – Daze will Stun. +25% Daze duration.
• Grandmaster: Power Block – Interrupts deal damage, apply Weakness, and increased cooldowns by 15s.

Chaos

• Grandmaster: Chaotic Interruption – On interrupt, you Gain Might + Random Boon and your target gains Immobilize + Blind/Chill/Cripple.

Dueling

• Grandmaster: Mistrust – On interrupt, apply 2x Confusion (6.25) in a 240 radius around your target.

The current zerg meta is to stack tight.

To hit that hard, we can throw down a Chaos Storm as they around about to auto-attack their way through a location. You can hit up to 5 people per pulse of Chaos Storm. That’s up to 5 Interrupts each time the RNG Dazes. That’s 2x Confusion times up to 5 targets … also known as 10 Confusion. On top of that, if they were interrupted, you just gained up to 5 * 5 = 25 Might (make everything really hurt now!) and are now immobilized so more likely to be eat some more Chaos Storm. On top of that, the COnfusion is now protected by Immobilize, Weakness, and Chill/Cripple/Blind … possibly even some other conditions courtesy of any Sigils/Runes you have and/or from your allies.

Also take Mantra of Distraction which can hit up to 5 targets within a 180 radius of your target. Same possible effect against a stacked zergball.

Mesmer may be able to get the meta to stop being “stack tight”. Will have to see how effective it truly is though in practice … still that 5 person limit that favors tightly packed zergs.

If nothing else, I could see people being even more wary of Chaos Storm

it’s not that easy… your chaos storm and the other CC going down needs to eat away stability charges before it can interrupt anything, in my daily WvW experience, I usually see one or two interrupts from a chaos storm when I’m lucky

it works better against guild groups, when stability is harder to come by (groups running 2 guardians per party)

Inspiration will be too good not to take it for zerguing.

CS is going to have 5s CD, so you’re only going to stun one person per chaos storm, and hope it isn’t wasted on the one guy that’s rooted by immobilize as well.

Mistrust is an interesting one, if you’re lucky and the blob is spamming auto then you can stack 2-6 confusion in one hit. Confusion together with weakness, chill/cripple/blind and vulnerabilities can potentially protect immobilize and drag their advances.

Good points.

The counters come from a zergball being smart enough to combine their stability, etc..

I think a group of Mesmers could still get this off given a combination of Null Fields, Chaos Storms, and Mantras of Distraction.

This isn’t to say that a group of Mesmers is going to be able to take on a zergball all by their selves, but instead that a group of Mesmers could potentially have a new role to play in the meta.

In combat, it is beneficial to break your opponents’ formation (even a crude one like zergball). We may be able to do this quite well with these traits.

What, 5 mesmers in wvw? In the same map? In the same party?!
In EU Silver and Bronze it would be quite a rare sight (not sure about gold nowadays)

Menaka.5092:

What, 5 mesmers in wvw? In the same map? In the same party?!
In EU Silver and Bronze it would be quite a rare sight (not sure about gold nowadays)

Hey, it’s not my fault if your server has a bad case of the stupids :-p

Interrupts doesn’t kill enemies, damage does.

That’s why, even with these changes, 5 necros or 5 eles will be better than 5 mesmers. And a shatter mesmer will be better than a lockdown mesmer for zerguing.

AoE lockdown should be buffed quite a lot to be better than what shatter will be.

PD: Neither in gold league you see 5 mesmers.

@Ansau:
Yep, damage is great. You might want to inhibit your opponents’ ability to strike back as well though if you’re able.

Sure, you and your opponent can just slug it out and not care about mitigating each other’s abilities (I’m still surprised when I see how little reflection I see when two sides are shooting projectiles at each other) … but it’s very nice to do a little here and there to make it so that only you are throwing out the damage. That’s a bit of an advantage.

Again, I’m not saying that Mesmers can just take on a zerg … but not they can possibly do more than Reflection, Boon Removal, Portal, etc. … it’s another possible option in our bag of tricks.

If nothing else, I’m going to camp a narrow bridge with some boon removal and my focus and throw people off it