Guild Wars 2

Has anyone ran the numbers for a shatter Mesmer in PvE? I feel like with alacrity and the large number of ways to generate clones now that this could be quite good. I was thinking greatsword and sword/shield. Shattering also gives us vulnerability application, more alacrity, and might if traited.

Photinous.4628:

Has anyone ran the numbers for a shatter Mesmer in PvE? I feel like with alacrity and the large number of ways to generate clones now that this could be quite good. I was thinking greatsword and sword/shield. Shattering also gives us vulnerability application, more alacrity, and might if traited.

Shatter dps is just atrocious. Shatters would literally have to have a cooldown of 2s to compete with ele Lava Font alone, and you’d have to have full illusions for all those shatters, to boot.

That’s not to say that shatters are useless, but alacrity does very little to change the basic design that they are burst, and not dps abilities.

Shatter Builds weren’t pushing out nearly the damage output I thought they would even with the insta-refresh of illusions and Rift shenanigans. The trait-able utility from Shatters went often unused as well. However, you can use Chronophantasma and Rift to do a sort of quasi-Shatter builds or even relieve the ultimatum of shattering Phantasms. I’d need a paragraph or so but in small form it’s something like:

Rift -> Summon Phantasms (with Ether Signet) -> Shatter -> Rift ends ->Let re-summoned Phants attack -> Shatter again -> Cast Phantasm skills again -> Shatter -> Let re-summoned Phants attack normally.

The Alacrity from all that Shattering helps manage other skills (Wells or utility). Though the likelihood of being able to pull that off everytime is unlikely, so I’m just throwing a rotation out there for food for thought.

Realistically speaking , traits such as Chronophantasma let me use key shatter skills (damage, stripping, interrupting, etc) in clutch situations without having to worry too much with needing to re-summon everything again. In the end, Phantasms still do more work for the majority of PvE needs than what Shatters can offer. In PvP? Well, that’s another thread discussion.

I mostly play a shatter build, both power and condi since launch. In PvE, classic power shatter does reasonable burst damage; whereas classic condi shatter does decent sustain condition damage. That’s it. If you want a be-all-end-all dps build, shatter is not your first choice.

Currently I play a ChronoCondiShatter, which I find it fun to play. I use a mixed of Rabid and Sinister setup. I shatter mainly for alacrity. The burst of conditions inflicted does good AoE dps but the damage output is no where near a sinister Reaper. Sometimes my skills recharge so fast that after may be a round of shatter rotation, I have a choice to choose what skills to use next instead of auto-attacking while waiting for them to come off cooldown. It is good enough for me since I do not mind taking a few more seconds to kill a mob and I do push out stable dps. Solo-ing may seems slower but in a team, your teammates will be thanking you for all the alacrity.

When I need good solid sustain dps from my Phantasm for prolonged boss fights, I just put three Staff 3 out and they will do a good job then.

With the 95% damage reduction from AoE/cleave when not focused, phantasm builds are so very good in PvE now. Quite transformative.

However, I’d say that alacrity and quickness on shatter does indeed encourage me to shatter more in PvE now. Knocking the last chunk of health off a mob when your phantasm attacks are still refreshing (especially when that mob is surrounded by other mobs) is certainly worth the effort of pressing Mind Wrack at the end of a fight now.

I have to strongly disagree that shatter builds are inferior to phantasms or a Elemtalist lava font, have you tried a build with endless illusion spamm and max cd reduce on shatter and phantasm? its literalle perma aoe bomb and just crazy, you also have up to 20-25 mightstacks yourself and support for your team, perma well active…. chrono did alot of work… negative point, you are spamming buttons 10x more than a elemtalist..

When looking at Shatters in PvE you have to consider a lot more than just Mind Wrack’s damage. With Chronophantasma Shatters also serve to reset Phantasm attack CD to 1.5s (and fully heal damaged Phantasms to boot), and with Persistence of Memory it reduces all Phantasm CDs by 2s per Phantasm Shattered which means you can reconjure Phantasms much more often for essentially another attack CD reset.

With Chronomancer the boundary between Shatter builds and Phantasm builds has blurred considerably. They actually synergise now. (Although they really should synergise WITHOUT Chronomancy, they’re both base Mesmer mechanics for Lyssa’s sake.)

Amaya.1483:

I have to strongly disagree that shatter builds are inferior to phantasms or a Elemtalist lava font, have you tried a build with endless illusion spamm and max cd reduce on shatter and phantasm? its literalle perma aoe bomb and just crazy, you also have up to 20-25 mightstacks yourself and support for your team, perma well active…. chrono did alot of work… negative point, you are spamming buttons 10x more than a elemtalist..

Yes, I have.
Spamming shatters gets you a Mind Wrack every 6.3 seconds. That’s better than the 10.5s we had before, but when you’re asking about pve numbers, you’re asking about dps. My point was that for the math to line up, you’d need a lot more than 40% cdr on Mind Wrack to make shatter dps competitive with other dps options.

You’ll note that I myself pointed out that they aren’t useless, but that they are burst rather than dps abilities. If you need to kill something big, do it with phantasms. If you need to kill lots of smaller things, shatters are still probably your best option.

So if the question is the numbers on shatters, the answer is no, they haven’t caught up to other classes on pve damage.

Per Embolism’s point, there is a way to synergize shatters with Phantasms via Chronophantasma and Persistence of Memory to improve phantasm dps. That’s not a shatter build, however, despite the shattering. Shattering on cooldown makes a viable Chronophantasma rotation impossible, and the Mind Wrack damage is actually adding relatively low dps to your total in that build. The bulk of the leg-work there is still coming from phantasms, and shortening their attack cycles through the shatter/summon rotations.

Edit: there’s also a solid shatter condi build that can be created, but I tend to assume that if people are talking about condi, they say so.
In BWE1 (before the IR nerf), I know that build was solidly competitive in pve dps.
After the nerf to IR, I believe such a build should still be viable via CP+IR+DE, but I was never able to work out a clear rotation to hit those levels…it’s super-complicated now, because you’ve gotta work on keeping up 2+ illusions per shatter, but you’re shattering so much that it makes even normal chronomancer look slow-paced (as far as button-mashing goes, to Amaya’s point).

Condition Shatter still works very well, not the same kind of burst as bwe 1, but we can keep shattering with a scepter and dodges.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW7anknBNoh9fCWoBEgilcjqMAStep+Vn1dF9HKpcA-e

Well your point looks plausible but i wonder what i did wrong, right or whatever, i tested the dps on invinite dmg Golem with Mesmer, Ele and so on and i never felt like i was behind, i felt like i was even ahead of Ele for example. The uptime of my skills and phantasms were so high, i could have kept GS in close combat… Oo