Guild Wars 2

Hello Osi and Team mesmer,

Been reading Osi’s epic post and gotten about 10 pages in so far and watched almost all the videos.

Been trying to figure out shattercat for the last couple days and I must be missing something. I’m rather new to the mesmer, so that would definitely make sense. =)

I’ve been practicing on the PVP dummies in the Heart of the Mists. The problem for me is that a full shatter vs light target for example gives MW x 4 at 1k-1.2k with crits, then follow up with Sword 2 hits for about 3k with crits. Therefore I get a burst of about 7-8k when everything crits and about 5-6k normally.

Seems good, but not super powerful. I’m not seeing these 15-18k bursts that people seem to achieve quite regularly. I have my crit chance at 44% and crit damage at 50%, and I understand full WvW gear would up my crit damage to around 100%. Even so, I have a hard time seeing how to get to the burst dmg ppl are describing. What am I missing here?

Thanks!

the difference in damage is that extra 50% crit damage, nothing else.

do the math, and you will see.

Okay, based crit dmg is 150%

+50% crit dmg = 200% overall
+100% crit dmg = 250% overall

This is a 25% increase in crit dmg. Thus:

With +50% Crit
Sword 2 hits for 3k with crits in WvW
Each MW hits for 1 – 1.25k = 5k
Total = 8k

With +100% Crit
Sword 2 hits for 3.75k with crits in WvW
Each MW hits for 1.25 – 1.5k = 6k
Total = 9-10k

Getting better but still not quite there. Any other thoughts?

I don’t think that’s quite how crit damage scaling works. It works as a multiplier, not as a direct % of the initial attack.

So you don’t just add another 25% damage, you raise the multiplier the higher you get, thus the more you have the more effective it is.

I think.

There is also that initial phantasm hit, from either iDuelist or iSwordsman.

If you watched his vid on multi clone shatters you’ll see that sometimes he starts with a Diversion x3-4. This will instantly give the target 15-25 stacks of vulnerability. He then does a quick 4x MW+Sword 2 combo for big damage (Leap + Mirror Image).

Another tip is dropping a chaos storm before the leap+burst to get few boons which will also add to your damage.

Last and not least, there are food items which you didn’t account for.

Interesting. So 2 questions:

1. Diversion, I think that’s shatter 3, does it give 5x stacks of vulnerability per clone? I don’t see it on the info page.

2. This seems to say that crit damage is pretty straightforward.

So I can buy +25% damage if you have full vulnerability when you are shattering, but this is not always the case in his videos, it’s usually straight shatter. Can you tell me what food does?

-Shawn

The vulner is one of the traits we Mesmers have. It’s 5 stacks when you cause daze, so it works on chaos storm as well, but diversion is just that much better given you can cause 3-4 dazes, hence 15-20 stacks. I don’t play shattercat style, but will do this particular shatter to go with the rest of my build.

yup, try doing the two shatters in quick succession, it’s very powerful. I think that shattercat build and guide is definitely some advanced stuff, especially the blinking, which I am just starting to play with now.

I suggest just picking one or two of the techniques and playing around with it to encorporate into your build. Don’t worry about getting the same numbers – ESPECIALLY if you are new to the game.

The reason I say that is because the shatter cat build is a sort of glass cannon build that relies a lot on player skill for damage mitigation. If you don’t have the skills yet, you should try a less demanding build to start. I’d suggest the immortal build, or a similar bunker-ish build. These can still do some of those same tricks (albeit not as spectacularly), and they are also more forgiving, so you can get away with 5-10 mistakes in a battle, rather than one and you’re dead.

edit: sorry, been a while since I looked at shatter cat – there are variations on it, including a “heavy” version, which may be a bit more forgiving for a beginner.

Are you certain about the 5 vulnerability stacks per shatter? I just tried hitting target dummy with Shatter Daze and got 1 stack per clone, max 4 stacks.

Do you have the dazzling trait from domination?

The test golems have very high armour. Test it on some glass cannon casters too.

Glad you enjoy the Mesmer, yes its alot to it and its alot of different moves and outs we got. For shatters there are endless of variations with diferent skill combos + cc,s to use. Bets is just experement alot.

A good start thu is to know how to do “the perfect burst”. When you know this its just to chnage things after situation to better work for the situation.

Some times its better to do a “haflf burst” or even a fake burst (leap + blade but not shatter) to trick the enemy to use survival skills.

I add my shatter tutorial, in this you se how to do the perfect burst plus how to use it in direct combat after intitial tutorial. Hope this help:

First part is in slow motion to let you track al moves and buttons. The dmg is to a heavy golem.

/Osicat