Guild Wars 2

Does the heavy condition spam shut Mesmer out of teams, or are we simply being inflexible and not willing to adapt?

This isn’t an easy question to answer, as it’s rather hard for Mesmer to trait for condition removal while still maintaining damage. Yet, this does not mean that we don’t have the tools to utterly shut down condition builds, here are a few examples…

MANTRA
- 30/30/0/10/0 – Mantra of Recovery / Blink or Decoy / Mantra of Resolve / Mantra of Concentration
- Sword+Offhand – Greatsword or Staff
- Dom: V, VII, XI / Duel: II, X, VII / Inspire: IV, V or III

This setup offers…

• High Damage from Phantasms
• Heavy AoE Condition Suppression
• Dat AoE Stability / Cripple
• Vigor & Boon Removal on shatter.
  The AoE effects of Mantras rock, despite the pitiful range. With a bit of boon duration, this setup can have a near 50% AoE Stability uptime, remove enemy boons/ally conditions, while still pumping out nice damage via Shatters and Phantasms.

SHATTER

- 20/20/0/30/0 – Mirror Images / Decoy / Null Field
- Sword or Scepter/Focus – Staff or Greatsword
- Dom: I, V, or IV / Duel: X / Insp: V, VIII, XI

This setup offers…

• Damage, Vigor, Condition Removal, and Boon Removal via Shatters
• Projectile Reflects

It’s a bit annoying that Shattered Conditions forces you to choose from either Illusionary Persona or Deceptive Evasion. I’d definitely advise getting either sword or Scepter cooled down for higher clone production. Scepter may actually be a better choice here since it produces clones faster but I usually prefer Sword’s mobility and defense. I can see iPersona working in maybe a 0/10/0/30/30 setup but I can’t see the tradeoff being worth it. (then again, I haven’t tried it yet so I can’t say for sure.)

PHANTASM

- 10/10/0/25/25 – iDisenchanter / Null Field / Decoy
- Sword / Pistol or Sword – Greatsword
- Dom: III, Duel: II or IV, Inspiration: I, II, V, or VI Illusions: III, X

This setup offers…

• Powerful Phantasms
• Condition Nullification
• Weapon Cooldowns

This may be the the most solid setup of the three. Simple, strong and straightforward while still excelling at what it’s meant to do: eliminate condition damage.

I can’t say for sure how these’ll work out in WvW, but I know these builds should do fine in sPvP. If anyone has any ideas for runes/gear and condition damage variants I’d love to hear them.

Honestly, in my experience a single disenchanter is all it takes to neutralize the majority of condition spam, and that can be wedged into any build.

The problem with shattered conditions is you end up being completely useless other than a walking condition remover. You’re still rather fragile and you have 0 damage.

The 30/30 mantra build is also incredible fragile, and will get instakilled if a thief sneezes on you.

Sometimes the best thing you can do to support your teammates in tPvP is to offer more damage, more pressure, and more interrupts, saves. A mesmer can do all of these things. You don’t need to try and accomplish all these objectives to be effective(that’s why you have 4 other team mates).

I’ve had success recently building tanky/ condition. Staff + Sceptor/ Torch. I use phantasmal disenchanter, illusion of life, and dazing mantra, but usually blink(or whatever defensive cooldown I think is best) and go mid point. My job is to interrupt heals while putting out decent AoE pressure in the form of confusion/ weakness/ poison, but mainly my job is to assist the real damage dealers by interrupting the heals of our focus target. Illusion of life is pretty amazing for mid point fights. 15 seconds is a really long time.

A couple minor annoyances aside, the big downside with the disenchanter (talking PvP only) in my experience is that he gets destroyed in AoE situations on points – even 2v1 fights he goes down so fast, then you’re completely vulnerable if that’s all you’ve got. The good thing is the shorter CD but then that minor annoyance of a long cast time comes into play. About as bad as charging a mantra.

It shuts out Mesmers.

A build that I like in PvP is a hybrid phantasm/mantra as follows:
GS + sw/sw
Mantra of recovery, mantra of resolve, blink, decoy
30/15/0/25/0
Empowered Illusions, GS training, harmonious mantras;
Phantasmal Fury (or blade training);
Mender’s Purity, Restorative Mantras

This gives a good mix of damage and group support and plenty of condition removal (even more when Mender’s Purity is increased to two cleanses).

anti tox traited with mender’s purity .

A perk with the disenchanter is that it has really long range, and it doesn’t move a lot. So you just need to find good spots on each map to put it so if someone wants to kill it, they’re going to need to abandon post for a little bit.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Honestly, in my experience a single disenchanter is all it takes to neutralize the majority of condition spam, and that can be wedged into any build.

The problem with shattered conditions is you end up being completely useless other than a walking condition remover. You’re still rather fragile and you have 0 damage.

The 30/30 mantra build is also incredible fragile, and will get instakilled if a thief sneezes on you.

The thing is, the goal of these builds isn’t condition defense for the Mesmer, it’s enemy condition/boon shutdown. As in: as long as the Mesmer is on the field anyone using condition damage will be entirely negated. We have the tools to lock condition users completely out of a fight, like you said probably moreso than any other class. But this is something rarely capitalized on. My curiosity is if the damage tradeoff is worthwhile to snuff out condition users while also locking out enemy buffs.

The shatter build definitely is pure lockdown, so much so that it hampers damage and becomes a symbiotic support build that needs allies to work.

The mantra build has about the same defenses as Mind Crush or any zerker shatter build, as long as you stick a staff in there you should be alright defense-wise.