Guild Wars 2

So HoT expansion brought several various new prefixes that give 4 attributes instead of the usual 3 that we’ve known. Of the new quad attributes, here’s what seems to be categorized for mesmers:

Power-oriented:
- Commander’s
- Marauder’s
- Vigilant
- Crusader’s
- Wanderer’s

Condition damage-oriented:
- Viper’s (although it also includes power)
- Trailblazer’s

I am not sure about Minstrel’s as we don’t have strong group healing capabilities and other professions can perform boon sharing better than we can.

Comparing to triple attributes, the quad stats tend to give more overall points while triple seems to bring a bit extra more for the primary attribute.

One-handed, Triple attribute, ascended:
90+125+90 = 305

One-handed, Quad attribute, ascended:
108+108+59+59 = 334

Two-handed, Triple attribute, ascended:
179+251+179 = 609

Two-handed, Quad attribute, ascended:
215+215+118+118 = 666

Are the quad attributes worth having or are the triple attributes still consider better choice when it comes to PvE/raid/fractal? Or is it still too early to decide? Also, has anyone try having a mixture of quad and triple attributes setup?

Without crunching numbers or anything (so purely on face value) I think the new quad stat setup is an excellent idea because of the additional flexibility it can offer some builds. I feel that these likely will provide different avenues for theory crafting by being able to at least partially compensate for potential stat weaknesses for more niche or custom builds.

I, for one, am quite curious of the potential of a significant amount of Commander’s gear in combination with a Elixer wielding Scrapper or Dragonhunter rocking its respective runes.

Don’t you dare the mesmer can’t strongly heal and share boons.
Signet of inspiration on its own is the most op boon sharing thing ever. The whole staff is filled with boons. Phantasms can proc infinite regeneration on the whole team while Phantasmagorical defender shield the team.

Minstrel stats are super duber op on a healing mesmer (and yes a healing mesmer is more than viable I’ve been playing it for over a week and I’m having a blast in decently high level fractals).

Sombrero.9204:

Don’t you dare the mesmer can’t strongly heal and share boons.
Signet of inspiration on its own is the most op boon sharing thing ever. The whole staff is filled with boons. Phantasms can proc infinite regeneration on the whole team while Phantasmagorical defender shield the team.

Minstrel stats are super duber op on a healing mesmer (and yes a healing mesmer is more than viable I’ve been playing it for over a week and I’m having a blast in decently high level fractals).

Whoa, easy there! I didn’t mean to push a button. I know we got some good supportive skills/traits, but all I kept hearing about are just dps mesmers and alacrity/quickness chronomancers a lot (which others say just bring a Herald with you for boon sharing). Glad to hear that a healing mesmer is viable.

Sombrero.9204:

Don’t you dare the mesmer can’t strongly heal and share boons.
Signet of inspiration on its own is the most op boon sharing thing ever. The whole staff is filled with boons. Phantasms can proc infinite regeneration on the whole team while Phantasmagorical defender shield the team.

Minstrel stats are super duber op on a healing mesmer (and yes a healing mesmer is more than viable I’ve been playing it for over a week and I’m having a blast in decently high level fractals).

I’ll dare.

Healing mesmer is absolute garbage and if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party.

Your healing coefficients are awful. Healing requires you to spam mantras continually, which is awful. Even if you absolutely maximize every possible way to heal on a mesmer, you’ll still get outhealed by a druid that isn’t even using healing stats.

Healing mesmer is garbage.

Edit: And our boonshare isn’t even that good. Unless you’re running my particular chrono build, you don’t generate any good might, fury, or aegis, which are the actually important boons to be sharing.

Fay.2357:

Sombrero.9204:

Don’t you dare the mesmer can’t strongly heal and share boons.
Signet of inspiration on its own is the most op boon sharing thing ever. The whole staff is filled with boons. Phantasms can proc infinite regeneration on the whole team while Phantasmagorical defender shield the team.

Minstrel stats are super duber op on a healing mesmer (and yes a healing mesmer is more than viable I’ve been playing it for over a week and I’m having a blast in decently high level fractals).

I’ll dare.

Healing mesmer is absolute garbage and if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party.

Your healing coefficients are awful. Healing requires you to spam mantras continually, which is awful. Even if you absolutely maximize every possible way to heal on a mesmer, you’ll still get outhealed by a druid that isn’t even using healing stats.

Healing mesmer is garbage.

Edit: And our boonshare isn’t even that good. Unless you’re running my particular chrono build, you don’t generate any good might, fury, or aegis, which are the actually important boons to be sharing.

Any chance you can share this build with us?

Yobculture.5786:

Fay.2357:

Sombrero.9204:

Don’t you dare the mesmer can’t strongly heal and share boons.
Signet of inspiration on its own is the most op boon sharing thing ever. The whole staff is filled with boons. Phantasms can proc infinite regeneration on the whole team while Phantasmagorical defender shield the team.

Minstrel stats are super duber op on a healing mesmer (and yes a healing mesmer is more than viable I’ve been playing it for over a week and I’m having a blast in decently high level fractals).

I’ll dare.

Healing mesmer is absolute garbage and if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party.

Your healing coefficients are awful. Healing requires you to spam mantras continually, which is awful. Even if you absolutely maximize every possible way to heal on a mesmer, you’ll still get outhealed by a druid that isn’t even using healing stats.

Healing mesmer is garbage.

Edit: And our boonshare isn’t even that good. Unless you’re running my particular chrono build, you don’t generate any good might, fury, or aegis, which are the actually important boons to be sharing.

Any chance you can share this build with us?

Ah yeah, uhm. It’s been discussed a lot and has generally been determined that actually running the variant that generates might isn’t worth it. The build that I run now is as follows: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8cncfCtfilfC+fCUrBFvjqOMXz2EttCg4C-e

That’s the basics. The third traitline should either be domination or inspiration, depending on whether or not you need reflects. If you take insp, trait focus and replace the oh sword with focus. You should run it with zerker stats, runes/sigils of your choice, they’re not important.

What is important is the combo. You put 3 illusions up while in sw/sh, then do the following.

CS → time warp → all 4 wells → shield 5 → CS → all 4 wells → shield 5. Keep dropping the wells and shield 5 off cooldown until you’ve used recall twice, then let them cooldown. That combo will keep ~90% uptime of alacrity on your entire party, and with a rev pulsing the boon duration facet, 90% uptime of quickness as well, If you keep a couple shield phants up, that’s easy 100% alacrity.

I’ve run a bunch of numbers on Vipers, and it is definitely the go-to condi set for any class not named Revenant.

The real question is, it is worth it to run a condi set on Mesmers right now.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’ve run a bunch of numbers on Vipers, and it is definitely the go-to condi set for any class not named Revenant.

The real question is, it is worth it to run a condi set on Mesmers right now.

I checked out your other thread. Thank you for doing the calculations and comparisons of Viper’s and Sinisters. Mesmers do have more of a “burst” condition damage compare to other professions. I actually realized that confusion actually does DoT, like torment, besides skill activation damage (it must have change during my hiatus of the game).

Fay.2357:

I’ll dare.

Healing mesmer is absolute garbage and if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party.

Your healing coefficients are awful. Healing requires you to spam mantras continually, which is awful. Even if you absolutely maximize every possible way to heal on a mesmer, you’ll still get outhealed by a druid that isn’t even using healing stats.

Healing mesmer is garbage.

Edit: And our boonshare isn’t even that good. Unless you’re running my particular chrono build, you don’t generate any good might, fury, or aegis, which are the actually important boons to be sharing.

While I normally respect your insights (I haven’t been on the forums much in a long time, but I remember your stuff from the Pyro days), responses like this really bother me.

I won’t pretend like I’ve done extensive research into a Mesmer healing build, but I do notice that you don’t even mention the “heal on shatter” trait. My only point there is (theoretically) you don’t have to spam mantras to heal the party.

That said, I don’t care as much about arguing the build itself. Saying things like “if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party” is both rude and completely absurd. Who are you to tell people what they can and can’t play? If he has a build that he enjoys and is contributing to the group, what right do you have to tell him he can’t do it?

Maybe if you’re in an elitist “speed run” group I can understand it, but to tell him he should be kicked from any party is just plain ridiculous. That whole mentality is a big issue in this game (although it’s not as rampant as it used to be). The “follow the meta or GTFO” is stupid, because you can easily handle the content in this game without following it.

And “Unless you’re running my particular chorno build”? Come on man, are you really arrogant enough to think that your build is the only viable one?

Like I said, I usually respect your opinions and I appreciate everything you contribte to the Mesmer community, but I just don’t see why you feel the need to say stuff like that.

/end rant

Zumi.6384:

I won’t pretend like I’ve done extensive research into a Mesmer healing build, but I do notice that you don’t even mention the “heal on shatter” trait. My only point there is (theoretically) you don’t have to spam mantras to heal the party.

You clearly haven’t done extensive research into Mesmer healing builds, or you’d know that Restorative Illusions only heals the Mesmer.

Mesmers have exactly three ways of healing the party:

• Restorative Mantras
• Well of Eternity
• Healing Prism

The two traits have .2 scaling with Healing Power. Well of Eternity has good scaling (1.2), but it’s one skill and it’s on an 18-30s cooldown.

tobascodagama.2961:

You clearly haven’t done extensive research into Mesmer healing builds, or you’d know that Restorative Illusions only heals the Mesmer.

I actually realized that right after posting (when I went to see if I could make a decent healing build), but you’re totally right on that point. For what it’s worth, one of the passive traits in that same tree heals others whenever you heal yourself, so I guess it indirectly works, but it still isn’t very good.

But as I said, my overall point was more about the nature of the response more than it’s content.

Zumi.6384:

tobascodagama.2961:

You clearly haven’t done extensive research into Mesmer healing builds, or you’d know that Restorative Illusions only heals the Mesmer.

I actually realized that right after posting (when I went to see if I could make a decent healing build), but you’re totally right on that point. For what it’s worth, one of the passive traits in that same tree heals others whenever you heal yourself, so I guess it indirectly works, but it still isn’t very good.

But as I said, my overall point was more about the nature of the response more than it’s content.

The 10s ICD on that trait (Healing Prism) is what kills it. It really needs the same revamp as that engi trait that was in the same position.

Zumi.6384:

While I normally respect your insights (I haven’t been on the forums much in a long time, but I remember your stuff from the Pyro days), responses like this really bother me.

While I don’t always take the time to put my reasoning and facts into a response, as it’s not always necessary, I do always have them. This is no exception.

Zumi.6384:

I won’t pretend like I’ve done extensive research into a Mesmer healing build, but I do notice that you don’t even mention the “heal on shatter” trait. My only point there is (theoretically) you don’t have to spam mantras to heal the party.

As tobasco already mentioned, the shatter heal (and condie cleanse on it) is self-only. You do have to spam mantras to heal the party outside of phant regen pulses and the heal well.

Zumi.6384:

Who are you to tell people what they can and can’t play? If he has a build that he enjoys and is contributing to the group, what right do you have to tell him he can’t do it?

This is the point. If you’re running a healing build on Mesmer, you are not contributing to the group. As previously mentioned, the only way to actually provide continual healing is by continuously spamming mantras. Doing so means you’re accomplishing…nothing other than mediocre heals. I’d rather have an empty slot in my party than someone doing that, because at least then I wouldn’t have to listen to “agony, Torment, PAIN” 80 billion times.

Zumi.6384:

Maybe if you’re in an elitist “speed run” group I can understand it, but to tell him he should be kicked from any party is just plain ridiculous.

There is ample room between ‘elitist speed run’ and ‘using awful builds that accomplish nothing’. When I make statements, I’m assuming that most people aren’t going to be in a pure meta speedrun group, but I’m also assuming that most people aren’t going to want a bunch of play-how-I-want-ers running water ele, healing Mesmer, and bunker staff guardian. You don’t have to be an elitist speed runner to prefer that people use at least slightly sane builds.

Zumi.6384:

And “Unless you’re running my particular chorno build”? Come on man, are you really arrogant enough to think that your build is the only viable one?

Did I say my build was the only viable one? No, I didn’t, though I could probably make an argument that my build and variations of it encompass the whole of the Mesmer pve meta now, but that’s neither here nor there.

What my build was doing was maximizing shatter rates while maximizing boon duration, while taking BD. It’s the one and only combination of mechanics for Mesmer in the game that allows you to generate an appreciable amount of useful combat boons. This is simply the way it works. That being said, as I mentioned, that particular variant isn’t actually seen as being great to use for the same reasons as before: other classes do those boons easier and quicker.

Zumi.6384:

Like I said, I usually respect your opinions and I appreciate everything you contribte to the Mesmer community, but I just don’t see why you feel the need to say stuff like that.

I say stuff like that because I don’t feel it necessary to spend the time explicitly refuting and supporting every point of contention and mechanic used every single time some random person is wrong on the Internet. If I did, it would be a full time job.

If you’re a rupter mes with CI, Vigilant armor is a beautiful thing.

Fay.2357:

This is the point. If you’re running a healing build on Mesmer, you are not contributing to the group. As previously mentioned, the only way to actually provide continual healing is by continuously spamming mantras. Doing so means you’re accomplishing…nothing other than mediocre heals. I’d rather have an empty slot in my party than someone doing that, because at least then I wouldn’t have to listen to “agony, Torment, PAIN” 80 billion times.

The chant can get annoying, but isn’t cycling MoP technically the second-best thing you can do when not running chronomancer? More as a nice addition in zerker gear than an actual heal build ofc.

If you are running chrono the best “heal build” obviously is to reduce the CDs of your teammates’ proper heals via Alacrity…

On topic, if you’re skilled enough and no “forced damage” threshold is in place all new sets except Viper will be worthless since you don’t need the defensive stats. If you do need more passive defense these are probably better to mix in than zerk+knight/soldier due to the higher stat total.

I have both Assassin’s and Marauder’s gear (armor+weapon), the latter gives me more power and I already have over 60% crit (trinkets are a mix with Marauder/zerk/assassin).

I’m actually thinking of trying to make a hybrid dps build with Viper’s since it has both power and condition damage equally. The expertise is nice for all conditions. I’m just a bit concern of precision and how much a full Viper’s set gives (has anyone did the total precision/crit chance with that yet?).

Pvp amulets have the minor bonus as the same amount as celestial amulets. In pve/wvw that should be 639 Precision, or 30.428% (ascended, exotic is 608-28.95%).

Fay.2357:

Sombrero.9204:

Don’t you dare the mesmer can’t strongly heal and share boons.
Signet of inspiration on its own is the most op boon sharing thing ever. The whole staff is filled with boons. Phantasms can proc infinite regeneration on the whole team while Phantasmagorical defender shield the team.

Minstrel stats are super duber op on a healing mesmer (and yes a healing mesmer is more than viable I’ve been playing it for over a week and I’m having a blast in decently high level fractals).

I’ll dare.

Healing mesmer is absolute garbage and if you play it you deserve an instant kick from any party.

Your healing coefficients are awful. Healing requires you to spam mantras continually, which is awful. Even if you absolutely maximize every possible way to heal on a mesmer, you’ll still get outhealed by a druid that isn’t even using healing stats.

Healing mesmer is garbage.

Edit: And our boonshare isn’t even that good. Unless you’re running my particular chrono build, you don’t generate any good might, fury, or aegis, which are the actually important boons to be sharing.

Restorative mantras might have an awful coefficient with healing power, but it has a very high base value, you don’t run it with healing power, you run it with other stats.

With harmonious mantras, casting mantra of pain whenever it’s available is a DPS gain over autoattacking with the sword on coefficients alone, then you add in the fact that it maintains a +9-15% damage increase from harmonious mantras.

If you’re traiting inspiration for reflects anyway, there is absolutely nothing wrong with picking up restorative mantras to contribute a little bit of healing at no loss of DPS.

Don’t forget this discussion is about quad attributes, and minstrel is clearly inferior on mesmer for PvE atm. I actually think it suits guardian better than druid due to druid is straight up heal than boons, but that’s another topic though.

There is no issue with boon sharing. Mesmer can give every boon in the game still. And with proper traits.

F5 + time warp + null field + SoI + F5 + null field + SoI

Gives 50 seconds of resistance to allies. 20 seconds later you null field + SoI then 20 second later again, then 20 seconds later you redo the combo.

Perma resistance and with staff perma protection for allies. With larger uptime on any of the boons you get from chaos storm or armor.

Re: MoP spam

A couple things. First and foremost, MoP takes up a spot on your bar. What’s it going to replace? Well of calamity would probably be a damage loss, since you can autoattack while that pulses, and it provides alacrity. Well of action means you kill your quickness uptime. Well of recall means you massacre your alacrity uptime on teammates. If you’re in inspiration for reflects and have feedback instead of calamity, you obviously can’t replace that.

No matter what, just taking MoP to spam sacrifices more than you can afford, especially since you usually won’t even be traited into dueling anymore. Chrono/(insp/Dom)/Illudions. You need illusions for CDR on CS, chrono for obvious reasons, and insp/Dom depending on the rest.

Pre-hot you might have been right that MoP spam is a reasonable replacement for other stuff, but post-hot is a very different landscape for PvE mesmers.

Aside from all that, the original poster I responded to was advocating the use of Minstrel gear. That strategy is 110% indefensible, by any means, due to the garbage Mesmer healing coefficients.

I’ll correct an earlier statement now that I remember the context is PvE. There is no problems with mesmers boon share when glanced at in a bubble.

Out of this bubble mesmer falter at maxing dps while still performing the boon share role.

In speed runs alacrity is the end all when it comes to maxing mesmers damage (through boosting other’s). Anything that detracts from that role must be justified.

Taking inspiration over Illusions is not justifiable because of f5 . Taking it over chaos is not justifiable because of sharing quickness. And you won’t take it over chrono.

I’m eye-ing myself some vigilant armor. I feel like it’s the most appropriate one at the moment for power, non crit builds..

Ghotistyx.6942:

Pvp amulets have the minor bonus as the same amount as celestial amulets. In pve/wvw that should be 639 Precision, or 30.428% (ascended, exotic is 608-28.95%).

Thanks for the response. It’s not as low as I thought. I assume that’s with complete Viper’s estimate? Perhaps I’ll boost it to roughly 50-55% with some Assassin/Captain/Rampager in the mix. Or I probably will go full Viper’s since precision’s mainly good for reflects, ferocity, and crit chance sigil procs (unless there’s something else that precision also benefits with?).

I can see bunker mesmers using Vigilant, Wanderer’s, or Commander’s for the +boon duration.

I am hesitant on adding too much toughness since it seems mobs tend to aggro to those with higher toughness. But perhaps a little won’t be too bad.