Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m a new player and I’ve been playing Mesmer for a few days now. I’m curious regarding some of its abilities:

1. Phase Retreat – Does the clone use real wind of chaos on mobs, as in, does it induce conditions and boons, or does it only cast a fake one that looks like the skill but no cond or boons?

2. Phantasmal Berserker – Apart from the first spin, does it attack again after a few seconds? Often I see it standing around until it or the enemy dies.

3. Chaos Armour – Does it trigger on ranged attackers?

4. Shatter – For PVE, is Cry of Confusion (confusing foes) useful at all? Or should just stick to mind wrack and distortion?

5. Sword attack / Blurred Frenzy – This is probably a general question for melee builds, when I run up to an enemy and swing my sword, it sometimes does not continue to attack even with autoattack on. I see the enemy move around me a bit so is it possible that’s what is cancelling the attack? And frustrating times when I use Blurred Frenzy and the mob just casually walks behind me and I manage to miss all my hits.

Some of these questions will probably seem noobish, though I am new, so want to see how vet players do their stuff. Thanks.

Lanster.4218:

Hi, I’m a new player and I’ve been playing Mesmer for a few days now. I’m curious regarding some of its abilities:

1. Phase Retreat – Does the clone use real wind of chaos on mobs, as in, does it induce conditions and boons, or does it only cast a fake one that looks like the skill but no cond or boons?

2. Phantasmal Berserker – Apart from the first spin, does it attack again after a few seconds? Often I see it standing around until it or the enemy dies.

3. Chaos Armour – Does it trigger on ranged attackers?

4. Shatter – For PVE, is Cry of Confusion (confusing foes) useful at all? Or should just stick to mind wrack and distortion?

5. Sword attack / Blurred Frenzy – This is probably a general question for melee builds, when I run up to an enemy and swing my sword, it sometimes does not continue to attack even with autoattack on. I see the enemy move around me a bit so is it possible that’s what is cancelling the attack? And frustrating times when I use Blurred Frenzy and the mob just casually walks behind me and I manage to miss all my hits.

1. Can’t remember if it was updated so that clones no longer used the beta version of WoC, but the only difference is the path the projectile takes. Any clone made while you have a staff out (decoy clone, mirror images, phase retreat, deceptive evasion, etc.) will use the attack, and the attack will cause conditions.

I don’t believe their attacks bounce though, and if not, they can’t cause boons.

2. Yes, it will continue to attack until it dies, it’s target dies, or you shatter it. Most things die before it can get the second swing in though (I believe it has about a 6 second cooldown)

3. Yes.

4. It has its uses, but they are very, very niche and is really only effective in a confusion build. For the most part, stick to MW and Distortion- mobs will generally only attack once for the duration, so MW will do more damage.

5. If you aren’t in range for the attack to hit, you won’t try the attack. Melee attacks are very close ranged. So if the mob is behind you, you won’t attack (obviously).

I don’t have any exact specifics on melee though, since I rarely stay in melee range (we’re really squishy). You’d have to just find the rest of what you want to know through trial and experimentation… or just spam 1/stay out of melee range :P

Hope that helps.

@Lanser,

1. Richard accualy got this a bit backwards. Yes they do cause boons, its one of the many reasons shatter cat and Shatter cat hybrid use staff as it give a fury uptime in battle. Get some staff clones and let em hit a few sec then burst can give a good inc dmg. Latest patch updated the pathing aswell so they not can cast from rocks, platforms etc and be extremly annoying.

For the boon part and clones in general behaviour have a look:

4. Cry have some room idd, agree with Richard, if you have a big energy bank and skills for remake clones ready (with vigour buff in latest patch you hvae more energy than you can spend on clones almost) a cry is worth not only 3,5-4,5k depending on crits and vuln stacks dmg but some confusion ticks and 3 might.

5. The blurred hit in a “cone” in fron you you, try to daze, stun /root a target before bf. Sword leap place you in the optimal position (if it work) and also root taregt for you. As a shatter illusionary pers I must say we not squshy in mele range, in the enemy face is exactly where we want to be, just not al the time. Juking is how you solve this. Juke in, deliver a burst and juke out.

For land sword nr 2 tipps see this vid, its is a bit about how ot manage 2 opponets and land bf on both, need some sneeky tricks to do that if its pvp, alot easier in pve.

Cheers

/Osicat

Osicat and Richard pretty much summed it up. I can also vouch for WoC bouncing boons, but beware the Illusion trait that adds an extra bounce does NOT affect staff clones; their attacks will only ever bounce once.

I can also tell you Cry of Confusion is much better in pvp than pve, but there are still some uses. Get to know the mobs you fight and their attack patterns. Some mobs, especially some bosses attack rather quickly or in bursts, and CoF tears them up. If you know a big stack of attacks is coming CoF will do more than any other attack you have as long as you bump some condition damage. On most mobs it won’t do as much as a Mind Wrack, unless you are running +condition damage AND +condition duration gear.

Another common use is for builds that have the Illusionary Persona trait. With this trait, quickly tapping CoF after a point blank Mind Wrack will add an extra 2 stacks of confusion and a little bonus damage. This was much easier before the GCD patch, but it’s still easy enough to pull off without losing anything.

I realize you are new to mesmer and some of these are more advanced tactics, but keep them in mind for later. One of the first things you should master is stunning/rooting before a Blurred Frenzy as Osicat mentioned. Sword 3 or Pistol 5 are generally the easiest combos. Hint: Now is usually good time to shatter, too.

If I could interject a few questions into this thread. I moonlight as a mesmer for WvW roaming because my main is such a horrible option for getting away from a zerg (necro). I was running a confusion build last night against a few other mesmers also running confusion builds. They were certainly better players at executing the combo’s to get the maximum number of confusion stacks on me, but I was curious about the following:

1. When I am “blurred” from the sword two skill, I know that I will not take damage from a shatter skill from an opponent, but will i get stacks of confusion applied to me at that time from a shatter? I noticed a long time ago that being “blurred” provides no defense against conditions, including confusion that are already applied to you.

2. The shatter skills have the internal 0.25 second cooldown, but for all intensive purposes (for me) they are all still instant cast and chainable. One of my strong draws to the mesmer in the first place was access to all these instant cast skills, and being able to control my mobility. As it pertains to confusion though, does every activation of one of my shatter skills trigger the confusion “tick”?

I had two occasions, one where I landed my combo well, and another where the other mesmer did the same, and we were respectively dead in 1 second. Coming from the necro class, where confusion is something I enjoy being cast on me, having a build without a condition clear is a challenge.

Holy cow, the staff clones bounce and can grant boons now? WHEN did that change, or have I just never noticed it? I sat right in front of a mob in the mists and set staff clones on it and didn’t notice I ever got a boon. Man, that makes me so happy to hear as it’s even better support than I thought to go staff.

Staff clones don’t bounce.

Ramiah.5648:

Holy cow, the staff clones bounce and can grant boons now? WHEN did that change, or have I just never noticed it? I sat right in front of a mob in the mists and set staff clones on it and didn’t notice I ever got a boon. Man, that makes me so happy to hear as it’s even better support than I thought to go staff.

It’s been that way for a very long time. The staff really shines when you get Illusionary Elasticity from Master Illusions and some clones up. It does good condition stacking and good boon stacking if you have boon duration builds.

The downside: melee allies steal your buffs. >:(