Guild Wars 2

I believe that everyone will agree on blink and decoy being arguably the most useful utilities we have. I always run with both equipped leaving the third slot down to what seems to be more appropriate depending on the situation.

However, I lately started using Mantra of Recovery + Harmonious Mantras + Mender’s Purity and once I got used to the different play style I decided to slot in Mantra of Resolve for testing and to my surprise I feel I do not want to drop it anymore! Between the condi removal on heal and Resolve utility, conditions now make me laugh!
But now I only have two utilities left

Like I said I often used blink and decoy but if you had to choose, which of the two would you prefer and why?
To help you deciding for me I bet you want to know the build. It is a 30/30/0/10/0 phantasm build that uses GS/sw-ps with traits for weapons cd reduction, traits for phantasms, DE and the two mentioned beforehand.

Third slot. I have been using veil but I’m interested in switching for portal. I tried it for jumping puzzles but never used it in combat because I do not feel confident. Do you have tutorial videos to see how it works? Would you recommend it over veil? Should I just scrap the both and keep using blink+decoy?

Last. To help you advising me you may want to know that my biggest concern are (good) thieves and that I mainly roam and do spvp/tpvp

Thank you

for pvp, wvw or pve?

I play a staff / greatsword mesmer with no decoy/veil. Every kill gives me a great feeling of reward, a true sense of victory.

When it all comes down to it, why not play what you want to play?

And if you have problems with hard cc (stun breaking), blink and decoy are appropriate.

Wyrden.4713:

for pvp, wvw or pve?

Last. To help you advising me you may want to know that my biggest concern are (good) thieves and that I mainly roam and do spvp/tpvp.

Wyrden, I wrote it at the end.

@Sesundar. I know what you mean and this is why I move away from any 20/20/30 PU build (whether power, hybrid or coditions based). Succeeding with this build is more rewarding for my taste and this is one more reason why I want to try something different in the utility slots. For me Mantras are new and doing well in pvp with 2 is already a big achievement. I see Portal a skill step higher than decoy, blink and veil and that’s why I want to learn to use it

ops sry, should have read properly sry:p

veil has insane long cd considering its only 2 sec without pu, u can hop on it to get a swecond sneak but i dont think its worth it, i would recommend to take decoy instead

strictly said long sneak isnt that good in s/t pvp , so decoy is just fine

trooper.2650:

@Sesundar. I know what you mean and this is why I move away from any 20/20/30 PU build (whether power, hybrid or coditions based). Succeeding with this build is more rewarding for my taste and this is one more reason why I want to try something different in the utility slots. For me Mantras are new and doing well in pvp with 2 is already a big achievement. I see Portal a skill step higher than decoy, blink and veil and that’s why I want to learn to use it

Portal is great in pvp, double great if your team can utilize it.
It can be use to repair trebs (leave the treb when they attack it, help mid, pick up the repair kit when it’s destroyed and port back)
Safeguard home point when you rotate to mid.
Juke the enemy with far-mid, fake an attack to far and force them to send 1 back to defend. Port back to safe location when you’re facing 2v1, and then port back to far point at the very last second. At that point, you’ll face either a 1v1 or no one because most likely they will return to mid.

I’m not avid portal user, but that’s what I use it for when I feel comfortable using it. I’m sure you can think of creative ways to use it too.

Lastly, thieves. I put my 10 spare points into chaos instead of inspiration because of the trait that give weakness (among bleeding and vulnerability) when a clone dies. Taking away condis clear is risky in the current condi meta, but this trait makes it easier for me to deal with power builds a lot. Another thing, save your pistol stun for their stealth heal. Time it right, and they’ll either drop like flies or run really fast.

I personally prefer decoy over blink. Mesmer stealth is pretty OP, since your opponent is forced to lose target, and retargeting you can be pretty annoying. It buys you 4-5 seconds of damage mitigation because of this fact, along with a stunbreak and extra clone.

For you, I can see the merits of taking blink over decoy. I usually play staff, so phase retreat gives me the mobility I need. For both WvW and PvP roaming, blink is extremely helpful if you don’t run staff. And you risk losing the point in stealth.

I’m not a huge fan of veil due to its long cd. My personal roaming set up is usually decoy, arcane thievery, and blink. If I’m fighting a condi opponent, I swap out blink for mantra condi removal. If you’re debating between decoy/blink/veil, I definitely recommend decoy + blink over veil.

Lastly, if you intend to play PvP seriously, I’d consider some other utilities as well. Currently, your utilities are very selfish and provide little team support. Portal, illusion of life, and null field all offer more team support than blink/decoy.

To explain my doubts with utilities and problems with thieves I need to start from the very beginning. Sorry for the wall of text. I hope someone can make it to the end

A 20/20/30 PU build stealth-centric is something I used right after the PU buff for a long time. At the time I didn’t realize the OPness of it and thought I finally mastered the class (how wrong :P ). I was almost “immortal” (sorry Pyro for stealing the name ) and there was no class I couldn’t beat and managed quite few 1vX in wvw too. But I soon realized that the pattern behind this play style was the secret of its greatness but it was also making the game boring as hell and so I started changing builds and so on, till now.

All this just to say that there is little that you can do when you cannot see the enemy. At that time I was able to counter thieves by going in to stealth every time they did so. Between torch, decoy, veil, MI and PU I was able to hide (and let the phantasms do the job) more often than a thief could. Add the blink and they were screwed more often than not. Even without using all that stealth, it wasn’t hard to play the cat and the mouse game.

But as I said I want to move away from easy trolling builds (although some may argue that 20/20/30 still requires skill and to which I may agree to some extent). And here come the problems with some thieves (maybe they are just better than me, but I want to find a way to beat them without abusing on stealth).

I never played a thief but I watched many videos and their pattern is the same as the one I was using when trolling with PU: hide, massive damage and hide, watch for proper dodges, damage, teleport and hide. It is not so simplistic but you get the idea.

Now, do you think that a blink, a portal and MI are enough to counter them when they do the opening on you from stealth? Granted they can re-stealth often and your skills are on a much longer cd (except from blink) and that magic bullet and illusionary wave will not 100% guarantee to save your life how would you play your cards in a straight fight? Lets say they start from stealth and backstab you ? blink away/dodge. They can hide again ? portal/dodge and so on… and in the end they will still be able to hide while you are left with only dodges.
This guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747zllYsMx4 I must admit is good but that’s what he is doing. Thieves counter hairy moments with stealth, that’s their nature.

All this rant just to know if you guys can successfully run a rather glassy build such as 30/30/0/10/0 on less than 2k armor without relying 100% on stealth but mainly on portal and blink. I have seen good mesmers videos but there are always two common factors beside the build they are running: deceptive evasion and stealth. As far as pvp/wvw I think mesmers can be squished down to these 2 skills and I find it a bit sad tbh. I love the class, but in the end if you strip down all the glitter there isn’t much variety.

PS: sorry again for this post. I wanted advise but ended up writing from the top of my head and derailed a bit :P. I should rename the post, shouldn’t I?

What do you say?

@mango. thank you but I play either solo arena, spvp or roaming so a more selfish setup suits me better

Regarding thieves, decoy and blink should be enough. Portal is okay against them, but its long cd means you’ll only mitigate a single thief burst with it. Similarly with veil. Personally, I do fine with decoy alone.

If you’re having trouble, consider swapping greatsword for staff. It still does great damage on 30/30/0/10, and you get the extra phase retreat from staff, along with chaos storm and chaos armor.

More specifically, it’ll depend on what kind of thief you’re fighting. Blink is better against pistol whip thieves, since decoy won’t help against their immobilize. However, decoy is better against backstab thieves because, even if you blink, they have a lot of gap closers, and decoy stealth will prevent them from targeting you. If you’re worried about backstab thieves, learn the backstab timing and use your dodges, distortion, and blurred frenzy to mitigate the burst. Thieves backstab fairly obviously, so once you learn the timing, you should have enough dodges/evades/invulnerability to survive against them, even without utilities. Don’t rely on your utilities to mitigate the thief burst; treat them as a defensive bonus to use if you mess up.

For thieves – I find iCounter and iRiposte are two of the best tools, though not utilities, and can make up for not using decoy (mostly just count to <3 on their stealth and put up a block). Downside is having to use certain weapons, and also single target.

Blink however is too useful for escaping AoEs and also repositioning/mobility, and blink stomps, so I would keep blink over decoy personally. Only if not using any other stealth apart from MI would I consider decoy a must have.

Bugged CStorm kills just about everybody out there. Being bugged, it justified its weakness. Phrase retreat allows you to avoid skill shots but that’s just about it. IWarlock never seems to hit anything. And Chaos armor is good if not nor its long cd.

Anyways, a combined combo of blinding powder and heartseeker takes up 1 1/4 second, bullet or wave can counter it. Make sure you’re not standing in the field and strafe to avoid the initial blinding shot. If that fails, there’s F3. The first back stab may be inevitable, but you can guess the next one. I’d guess to myself how long would it take for the thief to get behind me.