Guild Wars 2

I want to discuss what other Scepter/Pistol Mesmers use for their builds.
This one I created and easily got to 80. What do others think of this build?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAraWnsICVohFoBOoBEIiFYDCNKLfJkB4C5ucC7+3A-e

The strategy is to stack all 3 illusions, then shatter them with Mind Wrack every chance you get. This does massive AOE, it blinds and confuses them , and causes vulnerability. The confusions causes additional damage, and you get 3xMight.

In between these stacks use Confusing Image to channel damage to a main target.
Use Phantasmal Duelist to cause additional damage and bleeds or to pull off you.
Magic Bullet will be used alot for large groups.

1st take Illusions
Your damage and condition damage (for bleeds) are stronger.
Shattering gives you stacks of Might per illusion.
Confusion will cause additional damage thanks to the last trait in illusion.

2nd take Duelist
Illusions now cause bleeds, and your crits cause bleeds.
Every time you shatter they are constantly being blinded
Gain fury if they are below 75% HP
Interrupts cause confusion and damage

3rd take Domination
Interrupts will also cause vulnerability
Signets cause distortion which help you evade. This triggers confusion and damage.
Signets recharge faster, so use blind and stun alot.
Deal more damage for vulnerability
Shattering deals up to 30% more damage

Note my all Signet skills.
Domination and Midnight are used to cause stun and blind constantly.
With distortion fields, they are used to evade and cause confusion damage.
Inspiration will constantly give you Swiftness for maximum movement speed.
You also gain a random buff which greatly helps in critical fights.
For you elite skill, I recommend a pets, so go Hounds.

First let me say that scepter isn’t maximum dps. Then a question: Are you running power, condi or hybrid? What kind of equipment are you using?

From your traits and stuff, I would guess it’s a hybrid-build of some sort.

So then: Cry of Frustration might also be a good shatter to use. You’re rarely gonna interrupt mobs in PvE; so I’d consider Deceptive Evasion over Mistrust. That way, you’d also be less tempted to use the scepter-autoattack for clone-generation. In the Illusions line, Maim the Disillusioned would add more to your DPS than Shattered Strength. I’d also think about switching Compounding Power with Persistence of Memory, although that highly depends on playstyle (and sometimes also the utilities used). I guess Compounding Power might indeed be the better option in your case. In Domination, I’d probably go for Empowered Illusions instead of Rending Shatter. Signet of Midnight should only be used if you really need that blind or want to tag lots of mobs at once with a single stack of confusion (if it actually even does enough damage to tag). Otherwise, the passive effect would do much more for your dps than the active. Signet of Domination should also not be spammed, unless you really want to break a breakbar quickly. The passive increases your dps, while the active actually decreases your dps, since you lose out on the condi-damage and stunned mobs don’t use skills and don’t move either, thus confusion and torment deal way less damage to them. Last but not least, not every Mesmer has access to Mistfire Wolf or Hounds of Balthazar. My recommendation would be Timewarp (in groups) or Signet of Humility (for breakbars and an okay-ish passive). Or you could go Mass Invisibility if you find yourself in need of stealth. Of course; if you prefer to use one of the other two elites (one being from a premium option when buying the vanilla game, and the other one being a human racial skill), feel free to do so. It’s okay in open world I guess.

Oh, and Staff is superior for condi-dps (possibly also for hybrid-dps) in melee-range, so don’t forget to switch to it once you get close. Back when I was running condi in PvE, I would spawn an iDuelist (or iWarden), run in while casting Confusing Images, block for the torment, dodge for an additional clone (with deceptive evasion), shatter with Cry of Frustration, switch to staff, use Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat, dodge backinto the mob (basically try to get 3 clones up asap) and then auto-attack from melee, while shattering as soon as I could quickly get 2-3 clones up again. Mirror Images can also be a funny skill for that purpose.

I’m honestly not sure if this is a trollpost or not ._.’’

If you took Signit of Humility, you could Moa your target and just pretend that that’s your pet.

This forum is not the place to discuss scepter/anything. Here it’s Chronobunker or bust. I sent you a PM.

msalakka.4653:

This forum is not the place to discuss scepter/anything. Here it’s Chronobunker or bust. I sent you a PM.

Chronobunker is only one of multiple options for PvE, and chronobunker in the PvP form is not one of those options, not sure what you’re going on about.

Regardless, there’s no ambiguity with the amount of damage scepter does: it’s not good. You’re better off using anything else. For power, you’re better with sword and for condie you’re better with staff.

Fay.2357:

Regardless, there’s no ambiguity with the amount of damage scepter does: it’s not good. You’re better off using anything else. For power, you’re better with sword and for condie you’re better with staff.

The exceptions to this are twofold:
1. Breakbars. Nothing breaks a bar better than shield5+f3. But now you’ve gotta have a mainhand, and you’re condi, so scepter it is.
2. Lonnng fights. If the fight is long enough to get multiple iDuelists up, keep them up. iDuelists with Duelist’s Discipline do more sustained damage than you can get out of shatters. Only shatter when you can get them back up. That’s scepter/pistol to get the duelists up, then when you hit 3 duelists, swap to staff. Stay in staff til a duelist dies (or you do a shatter rotation).

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Fay.2357:

Regardless, there’s no ambiguity with the amount of damage scepter does: it’s not good. You’re better off using anything else. For power, you’re better with sword and for condie you’re better with staff.

The exceptions to this are twofold:
1. Breakbars. Nothing breaks a bar better than shield5+f3. But now you’ve gotta have a mainhand, and you’re condi, so scepter it is.
2. Lonnng fights. If the fight is long enough to get multiple iDuelists up, keep them up. iDuelists with Duelist’s Discipline do more sustained damage than you can get out of shatters. Only shatter when you can get them back up. That’s scepter/pistol to get the duelists up, then when you hit 3 duelists, swap to staff. Stay in staff til a duelist dies (or you do a shatter rotation).

And unfortunately, these two situations usually collide in destructive fashion.

Short fight? Probably won’t require a big bar to break.

Long fight? Most likely will have a challenging breakbar built into it.

Regardless of which offhand you chose to pair with scepter, you made the wrong choice. The obvious solution is…don’t use scepter.

Fay.2357:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Fay.2357:

Regardless, there’s no ambiguity with the amount of damage scepter does: it’s not good. You’re better off using anything else. For power, you’re better with sword and for condie you’re better with staff.

The exceptions to this are twofold:
1. Breakbars. Nothing breaks a bar better than shield5+f3. But now you’ve gotta have a mainhand, and you’re condi, so scepter it is.
2. Lonnng fights. If the fight is long enough to get multiple iDuelists up, keep them up. iDuelists with Duelist’s Discipline do more sustained damage than you can get out of shatters. Only shatter when you can get them back up. That’s scepter/pistol to get the duelists up, then when you hit 3 duelists, swap to staff. Stay in staff til a duelist dies (or you do a shatter rotation).

And unfortunately, these two situations usually collide in destructive fashion.

Short fight? Probably won’t require a big bar to break.

Long fight? Most likely will have a challenging breakbar built into it.

Regardless of which offhand you chose to pair with scepter, you made the wrong choice. The obvious solution is…don’t use scepter.

It’s the offhands that provide the needed value. Staff contributes nothing to the breakbar conversation, and the dps is demonstrably inferior to an offhand phantasm.
For your statement to make sense, you’d have to choose a mainhand that both provides condi damage and allows an offhand that is not a scepter, and there’s no such thing.
It’s not that your point isn’t valid (breakbar killing and dps weaponsets conflict), but that your proposal of staff doesn’t resolve that issue.

For my part, I generally deal with it by choosing scepter/shield for breakbars/support/tanking and staff for dps. The dps is inferior, but doesn’t suffer from the danger of overwriting phantasms via scepter AA that I’d get from the alternative.

That alternative, of course, is scepter/shield+focus or pistol. This places a risk of overwriting phantasms, but provides potentially better dps than staff, especially if you can get a good shatter rotation going to short-circuit your phantasms’ attack cooldowns. I don’t usually do this outside raid-tank because I still haven’t gotten the hang of the phant-shatter rotations needed to make it work, but some testing I’ve done since that fateful spat with Fry suggest that it can be workable, and even competitive with a persistent 3-phant setup.

Fay.2357:

msalakka.4653:

This forum is not the place to discuss scepter/anything. Here it’s Chronobunker or bust. I sent you a PM.

Regardless, there’s no ambiguity with the amount of damage scepter does: it’s not good…For power, you’re better with sword…

This. But last time I said this everyone seemed to think I was out of my mind.