Guild Wars 2

I’d appreciate a moment of your time to help me choose between two PVE builds using staff + s/s.
Armor is knights/emeralds + divinity runes (I know many staff users use cond. dmg gear, but this is what I have now and need to work with) My playstyle is to stay in mid-range with the staff and close with s/s for burst while focusing on clone placement/production/overwriting and letting enemies get kited into detonating clones. This seems to work well without cond. dmg….as far as I can tell, not owning any of that gear. I guess my question boils down to “how important is Illusionary Elasticity vs the synergy between Phantasmal Healing + Metaphysical Rejuvenation + Illusionary Membrane”. Here are the two builds:
http://tinyurl.com/ayoz46w

http://tinyurl.com/ba8jnae

No staff users have an opinion on which would be more beneficial?

When/if they fix the bug/tooltip for Elasticity to allow/clarify interaction between staff clones and Elasticity you’d be better off (not) taking it.

As it stands, though, you’re better off with the survivability than Elasticity. If you switched to some condition damage gear things might change, but as it stands you’re not getting tons out of that extra bounce.

I’m not using staff all to often, but in terms of Illusionary Elasticity: I don’t know if an extra bounce on your staff #1 is really worth it, since it wont get carried over to your clones (tried it today, clone attack only bounced once, no matter what)
Now in terms of Phantasmal Healing + Illusionary Membrane: I’m not too sold about the fact, that Illusionary Healing will randomly proc Illusionary Membrane. Altough I have to admit that aside from Metaphysical Rejuvination Mesmer do not have that many ways to get regeneration. (Having ~100% Regeneration uptime is quite nice for a condition based build tough)
I would probably go with the first build, since as I said, Illusionary Elasticity wont work on clones.

In your first build… why do you pick 10 in domination for +100 power and +15% phantasm damage when you could put it in inspiration for +100 vitality, +15% phantasm damage AND a major trait of your choice?

Illusionary elasticity is not so useful because your staff attack is going to be a small fraction of your damage. I’d take those points out of your second build and find somewhere else for them.

Is there a reason you don’t want to use focus for pve? It’s very good, especially with the reflect trait.

The focus reflect is indeed a really strong trait in some scenarios. Beeing able to knock down/pull enemies is also not too bad.
But the focus phantasm is one of the worst if you dont use it to block/reflect projectiles, since it needs a lot of time to get its damage done, as well as having a high cd. Also the Temporal Curtain speedbuff is not that great, considering it wont stack with other already existing speedbuffs.
IMO focus where you can reflect stuff and pistol/sword when you can’t is the most efficient choice.

fadeaway.2807:

In your first build… why do you pick 10 in domination for +100 power and +15% phantasm damage when you could put it in inspiration for +100 vitality, +15% phantasm damage AND a major trait of your choice?

Illusionary elasticity is not so useful because your staff attack is going to be a small fraction of your damage. I’d take those points out of your second build and find somewhere else for them.

Is there a reason you don’t want to use focus for pve? It’s very good, especially with the reflect trait.

I’m not sure how moving 10 points from Dom to Insp would give 15% more damage to phantasms…am I missing something? Unless you mean dropping Dom and all but 5 points in Illusions to make this: http://tinyurl.com/cbvzave . All that extra vit. would fit into the tanky build as it stands now. I’m not a big fan of the focus personally and I’ll admit to being a bit lazy and using the rather frequent speed buff from signet of Insp. to help get around.

Agony.3542:

The focus reflect is indeed a really strong trait in some scenarios. Beeing able to knock down/pull enemies is also not too bad.
But the focus phantasm is one of the worst if you dont use it to block/reflect projectiles, since it needs a lot of time to get its damage done, as well as having a high cd. Also the Temporal Curtain speedbuff is not that great, considering it wont stack with other already existing speedbuffs.
IMO focus where you can reflect stuff and pistol/sword when you can’t is the most efficient choice.

Eh, if used properly, you can get almost full effect from both the skills in a Focus. There’s a combo in the Focus to guarantee most, if not all, hits from the Warden if the opponent does not use a stunbreaker. The combo is as follows:

Run towards opponent.
Drop Temporal Curtain (behind the opponent).
Start casting Illusionary Warden.
Right before Illusionary Warden finishes, cast Into The Void (Temporal Curtain combo).
Finish casting Illusionary Warden.

Proceed to combo knockdowned opponent with a Warden smacking him.

As for the Focus not giving a useful speed buff, I do agree when you have random stacks of minor swiftness (THANKS RANDOM PEOPLE RUINING MY CURTAIN), but if you’re able to coordinate your own buff bar, you can easily get what you need out of Curtain.

With high Swiftness/boon duration and speccing into the Focus, you can easily get 99% Swiftness uptime. (The 1% being re-casting and not being able to stack them.)

I used to run around with 100% boon duration which would easily have netted me that near perma Swiftness uptime if I had specced into Focus. As it stands now, I have 99% uptime with Runes of the Centaur + Focus.

Drop Curtain —> Run through while casting Heal (I use Mirror for the shorter cooldown).

Spam heal every chance you can.

When Swiftness is about to run out, drop curtain in front of me, eyeballing the distance it takes for me to reach it so I can get there as my Swiftness runs out.

Rinse and repeat.

Flintbrow.7985:

fadeaway.2807:

In your first build… why do you pick 10 in domination for +100 power and +15% phantasm damage when you could put it in inspiration for +100 vitality, +15% phantasm damage AND a major trait of your choice?

Illusionary elasticity is not so useful because your staff attack is going to be a small fraction of your damage. I’d take those points out of your second build and find somewhere else for them.

Is there a reason you don’t want to use focus for pve? It’s very good, especially with the reflect trait.

I’m not sure how moving 10 points from Dom to Insp would give 15% more damage to phantasms…am I missing something? Unless you mean dropping Dom and all but 5 points in Illusions to make this: http://tinyurl.com/cbvzave . All that extra vit. would fit into the tanky build as it stands now. I’m not a big fan of the focus personally and I’ll admit to being a bit lazy and using the rather frequent speed buff from signet of Insp. to help get around.

What I run (with S/S + Staff and sometimes S/F + Staff) is http://tinyurl.com/aa2m8te
IGNORE THE SKILLS/GEAR, I just used your link and then moved around the traits.

If you don’t want a Focus, trade the spec for anything that you see that you like.
The reason why we ignore Illusion tree is that the usefulness of what you get tends to contradict what you’re aiming towards. In your builds that you show, you tend to use Illusions. By speccing into them, you can increase their damage by a sizeable amount. Ignoring the Illusion tree lets you focus more on Illusions instead of yourself (something you should be doing as a non-condmg staff mesmer*).

*: Unless you’re using staff as a defensive mechanism and not a quasi-offensive weapon.

As it stands, your build looks like it’s a clone factory with the purpose of the opponent killing themselves off of clones while you whack them with a staff. It doesn’t look or sound very effective, which is why you have to figure out where you want to be. Do you want to be a condmg staff user that utilizes elasticity, or do you want to focus on clones and pump them out asap (not recommended) so that opponents hurt themselves when they die (definitely not recommended).

I’m sorry but IMO swiftness isn’t that great of a boon in Dungeons (I dont care what you do in open PvE, you can pretty much do whatever you want there). For me its defenetly not good enough to spec on Boon duration to get a 100% uptime in dungeons (a lot of other classes have an easier way to buff your party with it too).
In the same manner I was refering to bosses/stronger mobs in Dungeons when speaking about the focus #5 phantasm. Often times bosses will run out of its attack range (even with sword #3 snare) or simply kill it in one hit.

Esplen, ok I wasn’t aware that empowered illusions and phantasmal strength stack. A 30% dmg increase by phantasms may just be worth loosing the staff cooldown trait. Thank you for taking the time to post, I really do appreciate the help.

Agony.3542:

I’m sorry but IMO swiftness isn’t that great of a boon in Dungeons (I dont care what you do in open PvE, you can pretty much do whatever you want there). For me its defenetly not good enough to spec on Boon duration to get a 100% uptime in dungeons (a lot of other classes have an easier way to buff your party with it too).
In the same manner I was refering to bosses/stronger mobs in Dungeons when speaking about the focus #5 phantasm. Often times bosses will run out of its attack range (even with sword #3 snare) or simply kill it in one hit.

I definitely agree. I used to run 100% Boon Duration and in Dungeons, I was beefy due to Aegis/Protection but it was RNG for application and it wasn’t superbly useful.

In Open-World PvE/WvW, I’m able to keep nearly 100% uptime swiftness WITHOUT any boon duration (unless you count swiftness duration from centaur runes). The trait in Focus in my build isn’t for more swiftness, but it does come in handy when I’m roaming. Mirror/SoR + Curtain = Nearly 100% uptime if you have centaur runes (air gives you less uptime, but you get more damage).

As for bosses, there are bosses which Focus #5 is extremely useful, but when I’m in dungeons, I’m always moving around my traits/weapons based on what I’m going against. That’s why my build tends to be S/F + Staff AND S/S + Staff. Really, I was explaining more for WvW than dungeons, as Swiftness isn’t really a need for dungeon runs unless you’re speedrunning, which is something else.

Flintbrow.7985:

Esplen, ok I wasn’t aware that empowered illusions and phantasmal strength stack. A 30% dmg increase by phantasms may just be worth loosing the staff cooldown trait. Thank you for taking the time to post, I really do appreciate the help.

Oh, be careful when swapping builds to the Phant build I linked. The trait in Staff is AMAZING and one thing I definitely miss in my build. I love having a 5 second stunbreak, but I don’t get it in my build, so my Staff isn’t as defensive as I’d like it to be.

Basically, I can’t just stand around in staff for a full minute without weapon swapping and not suffer too harshly (except for damage loss). With my build, I have to constantly be weapon swapping and using all my cooldowns to maintain phantasms and survivability.

Yeah that’s the spec I meant. 0/20/20/25/5. You wouldn’t opt for 10/20/20/15/5 instead because the 10 points in domination can get you the same thing in inspiration plus an extra major trait. After that you just need to take a good look at the chaos line to figure out if you want another 15% phantasm damage or not.

I alter between 20/20/0/25/5, and 0/20/20/25/5 depending on my mood. The first spec uses greatsword & sword/focus, and the second spec uses staff & sword/focus. I wouldn’t recommend switching to staff unless you need a ranged attack or your group is nicely bunched up and could do with some aegis ticks, or when you’re about to use chaos armor and signet of inspiration for some bonus protection. It’s a dps loss overall compared to sword.

Don’t forget focus is amazing for bunch mobs up. Lay a temporal curtain by a wall, start casting a warden, blow up the wall to pull the mobs into one cluster… the warden spawns and you follow up with sword #3->#2 to root them all in place and make them eat a whole warden cycle, blurred frenzy and then a mind wrack. Really amazing when you have other guardians or warriors in your group with cleave, a 100b will chew through all mob groups in this situation.

I don’t particularly like taking points out of inspiration and putting them into illusions because I find 15% of just 2-3 phantasm attacks (swordsman, warlock or duelist), less if you manage to get warden placed nicely, to be a higher damage increase than the 33% increased mind wrack once every ~10 seconds in a single target scenario. Sure it’ll get multiplied in an aoe scenario but one swing of your sword is likely to do more aoe damage than the extra shatter from illusionary persona. There’s honestly not much else in the illusion line which excites me besides the 45 sec cd 4sec invuln.

Oh, and I prefer phantasmal fury + blademaster to deceptive evasion. I don’t get why everyone loves that trait.

One other possibility btw and this is debated often – is dropping the 5 from the end of inspiration and putting it in illusions for compounding power. Personally I take 15% phantasm damage over 9% personal damage even though the 9% would be ideal for sword cleaving activities because you also need to drop phantasmal fury for it. I’d estimate the total damage loss to the phantasms to be over 25% because of this, and I don’t think that’s worth it.

It really depends, fadeaway. I agree that Greatsword is more overall damage, but in terms of having one build for both PvE and WvW, I stick with Staff + Sword/Sword/Focus. Using Staff defensively is amazing in dungeons, letting you get out of a sticky situation. Greatsword offers little to no chance of doing that (unreliable cripple and a knockback don’t really help vs bosses).

My mentality is if you’re going for a Phantasm build, you should just go all the way. With that said, however, my build should get rid of the 10 points in chaos and utilize them more effectively, possible putting them into Inspiration and Illusions or Dueling.

Ok, this seems to be it: http://tinyurl.com/clctug7 . I’ll give it a spin..thanks for your help, I feel much better informed.

If you’re using staff and sword/focus/sword, I can’t see any improvement on your 10/20/10/25/5 build unless you turn it into 0/20/20/25/5 – and that’s just a decision based around dps vs survivability.

Full phantasm traits and several conditions on the target is verrrrry fun to watch though as a staff mesmer!

Flintbrow:
Why do you take debilitating dissipation?
Applies Weakness (3 sec), 3x Bleed (5 sec) or 3x Vulnerability (5 sec) at random when your clones die.
The weakness and vulnerability will last few fractions of a second against bosses, so you have 33% chance of getting something useful out of it.

If you’re phantasm spec (as opposed to shattering) I’d say the 9% less damage taken trait is far better.
Also in terms of gear – if you’re going to be taking knight gear and some crit damage gear, make your trinkets the crit dmg gear and leave your regular gear/weapons as knight. Far more efficient because the ascended trinkets give more crit damage than they would have given in raw stats, and weapons/armor for example give less crit damage than they would have given in stats.

Anyone got any opinions on the two duelling traits? My picks are phantasmal fury and blademaster. Do many people prefer deceptive evasion? Why?

For me taking or not taking deceptive evasion or duelling X really depends on wether i want a shatter or a phantasm build.
There is no place for clones on dodgerolls , which are really vital if you want to play dungeons, no matter if you take zerker gear or not,in a phantasm build. Why is there no place for duelling X? Because in a Dungeon enviroment you are already quite starved on phantasms anyway, even with some toughness/vit and signet of illusions they will still die quite often to boss attacks. If you are also bound to lose one of your phantasms everytime you dodge it will just make things even worse.

If you play a shatter oriented build on the other hand duelling X will come in really handy. Its pretty much the best way to get consistent shatters on the enemy and can be used quite effectifly in order to avoid damage too→ dodge into distortion shatter grants about 3 seconds of invulnerability.

Dueling X is amazing in WvW even using a Phantasm build. It offers defensiveness in terms of targets and the clones can help reach the 5 player aoe cap if you have allies.

“Flintbrow:
Why do you take debilitating dissipation?”

Explosions, I kite away from them. And phantasmal fury is canceled-out by Vengeful images or vice versa correct? So, if you want to go into Insp., picking up
Phantasmal fury would be wasted, no?

Fuschia.6573:

When/if they fix the bug/tooltip for Elasticity to allow/clarify interaction between staff clones and Elasticity you’d be better off (not) taking it.

As it stands, though, you’re better off with the survivability than Elasticity. If you switched to some condition damage gear things might change, but as it stands you’re not getting tons out of that extra bounce.

As someone that tested Illusionary Elasticity extensively, this is not true. Let me break down how it works.

As a staff wielder, when you use your auto-attack, your enemy will be hit once, then the shot will bounce back to you (or an ally, but almost always you) and give you a boon, if you are at a range of 600 or less away from your target. If you are farther the attack will not bounce.

Your illusions will also bounce their attacks once towards you if you are in a range of 600 or less of your target, giving you more fury/might boons.

If you have Illusionary Elasticity traited, your attack will hit your target, bounce back to you if you are at a range of 600 and less, and then bounce back to hit another target – and if no other target is nearer it will hit your initial target again. The trait does not function for your illusions (honestly it would be OP if it would have).

This means that a staff Mesmer fighting a target in a range of 600 or less using this trait double their single target auto-attack direct damage, and do as much auto-attack damage as a greatsword (but also apply conditions and get boons), while also applying 2 conditions on the target per auto-attack.

Flintbrow.7985:

“Flintbrow:
Why do you take debilitating dissipation?”

Explosions, I kite away from them. And phantasmal fury is canceled-out by Vengeful images or vice versa correct? So, if you want to go into Insp., picking up
Phantasmal fury would be wasted, no?

Phantasmal fury (duelling line) grants fury, 20% crit chance, to your phantasms.
Vengeful images (inspiration line) grants retalliation to your phantasms.

So there’s no reason you can’t have both

In terms of debilitating dissipation vs 9% reduced damage taken.. I prefer the reduced damage taken.

WoC’s bouncing range isn’t set, it depends on how much of its 1,200 range is left after it hit its target. You can see this easily with Clones: a Staff Clone at maximum range won’t give you boons unless you’re right on top of the target, while one in melee range can give you boons even if you’re standing quite a distance away.

LiuliRenai.3928:

As someone that tested Illusionary Elasticity extensively, this is not true. Let me break down how it works.

Illusionary Elasticity is a fine trait. I would know, I hardly ever have a build for roaming in WvW that doesn’t take it.

That being said, it’s not great for PvE because of the positioning requirements – you have to be within 400 range (not 600, Embolism is quite right on this point) the whole time for the bounce to get in – and it doesn’t actually add all that much damage when compared to, say, extra phantasm damage, particularly in a build that isn’t taking advantage of the conditions with damage/duration bonuses.

In more difficult PvE content he’s much better off with a smidgeon of extra survivability than the ability to deal a bit more damage when very close to his target.

Ah sorry, I should have definitely mentioned the range is my rough estimate. The 1200 range left over is good info to learn. I guess Illusionary Elasticity works well for me due to my higher toughness+tanky illusions build, I tend to be closer to bosses more often than not though not quite in melee range.

More great information as well as more arguments both for and against taking the trait. I’ll just have to try both builds and see which I prefer long-term. Thanks again for all the replies.

One thing that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned. Illusionary Membrane is on a 15s CD, and therefore doesn’t really synergise that well with Phantasmal Healing.

Debilitating Dissipation inflicts one of three conditions: Weakness, 3xVulnerability or 3xBleeding. The first is short and therefore not particularly helpful in PvE, the second is meh and the third is more useful in a condition build. For Power builds I’d go for Illusionary Defense.

But debilitating dissipation + clone on dodge = so much fun with the staff though. I can kite large numbers of mobs, keep overwriting clones and birthing phantasms for much chaos and death. Plus I’m Asura with 2 superswords…very Yoda looking when I’m flippin’ all round. It’s a good feeling when I’m online during off-hours and can solo a risen event, dragging all those undead around, pulling them into exploding clones! To each his own, but I think this style of gameplay is addictive fun. Thanks again for your help Embol.