Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone, I’ve been trying to get my head around some of the deeper tactics behind maximising shatter efficiency.

I’ve noticed in a few threads that it seems common place to stagger CoF [f2] into Mind Wrack [f1] or Diversion [f3] into Mind Wrack [f1]. While I understand the reasoning behind the above rotations I don’t quite grokk the mechanics…

By queuing CoF are all your clones essentially turned into confusion bombs in a rotation like the following:

3 clones up > CoF (All clones are walking confusion bombs) > 2 Shatter > 1 running into position > Mirror Images > MW (all three are now nuke bombs) or would the first one still hit as a confusion bomb?

Basically I’m asking for an explanation for those really quick and fast multiple types of shatters that I’ve seen listed in rotations and demonstrated in videos.

Thanks for the help.

You’ve got the right idea. The main reason being that Mind Wrack multiplies its damage based on the number of clones “up”, therefore if some are running off of shatter 2 or 3, then when you fire shatter 1 it stacks all the clones on the field. If you have points in the Illusions line it doesn’t matter which shatter you use as they all inflict confusion.

How you generate your clones is a matter of weapons, traits, and situation.

Some good explanations in the following thread for anyone else interested in my original questions: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/How-is-this-happening

Ross Biddle.2367:

You’ve got the right idea. The main reason being that Mind Wrack multiplies its damage based on the number of clones “up”, therefore if some are running off of shatter 2 or 3, then when you fire shatter 1 it stacks all the clones on the field. If you have points in the Illusions line it doesn’t matter which shatter you use as they all inflict confusion.

How you generate your clones is a matter of weapons, traits, and situation.

Ahhh thank you, please correct me if I’m wrong but based on the above situation ANY CLONES given a shatter 2,3 or 4 command can still be wind wracked AND apply the effect from their previous shatter command or would the mind wrack damage only effect clones without a prior shatter type but still have the mind wrack damage multipled by the number of clones on field at the time that mind wrack was triggered?

Sorry for the noobish questions but without a proper combat log and shatters happening so fast it’s difficult to assess exactly what happens without the 100’s of hours invested as a main.

if you have 3 clones and hit cof those 3 clones vanish from your clonecount and are walking confusion bombs. if you summon 3 new clones and mind wrack then they vanish from your clonecount and are walking HE bombs. if you mind wrack them before the confusion bombs shatter you got a 6 clone train on the field (3confusion, 3 mind wrack). when they hit the cof clones will apply cof stuff(little damage + 6 confusion stacks) and the mind wrack clones will do their stuff (3 confusion stacks + massive damage)

Excellent thank you, misunderstanding from my side was thinking that your clone counter only reset once the clones went “poof and butterflies” instead of resetting on a shatter command, makes perfect sense now.

Another thing to note is that if you have 3 illusions up that have been queue’d to shatter, they will stay on the field even if you summon more, potentially allowing up to 9 illusions up at one time, assuming you have the cooldowns and magic hands for it (which I don’t think is possible).

Yes, illusions will bypass the 3 illusion limit if they are queue’d to shatter.