Guild Wars 2

In general world PVE, using GS and whatever, do I shatter my Illusions when I have 3 out and the next ones are off CD? Or do I basically let them DPS until they die and replace kitten. And if that is the case, what do I do while they are active? Just auto attack?

Depends what your doing in PvE. Are you raiding? Are you doing fractals? Are you doing open world bosses or doing content solo?

Distortion can be used to save your life if you know an attack will down you and for whatever reason you have no blocks or dodges left. Its also useful in raids for certain mechanics such as protecting your teammates from green blasts in vale guardian or soaking up Slothasor’s shake attack. However, as this shatters your phantasms, its usually best to only use this as a last resort in most cases.

Diversion can be used for very quick breaker bars. However, once again, it uses up your phantasms and mes usually has a ton of access to cc even without diversion, like tides of time, gravity well, etc. However, it may be super quick or sometimes in open world you use up all your skills and the breaker bar still isn’t down. You then see that even though there is a huge mob attacking that there is not a single other person who will use a skill to finish off the breaker bar, so you just use diversion to finish it off out of frustration cause for some reason out of all the people there, you are somehow the only one who can finish it off.

Cry of frustration isn’t generally used except to supplement some extra damage if a mind wrack didn’t finish something off or just spamming for alacrity when you have no illusions up to help with cool downs (well, all shatters can be used for alacrity when traited).

Mindwrack is generally only used to finish off enemies (and sometimes for alacrity spam if you have no illusions). Therefore, this really requires experience. Overtime, you will gradually gain the intuition of when it is the right time to use it for what enemies since all enemies have different health. It is actually surprising how many mesmers read guides that say something like “avoid shattering or never shatter in pve”. They then summon phantasms and use auto attacks to finish off an enemy when a mind wrack shatter could have got the job done in half the time.

Continuum Split really requires a whole guide on its own, so I won’t talk about it a lot here. However, its generally used with your elite (gravity well, time warp, and sometimes moa), along with tides of time, signet of inspiration, well of action, and well of recall to pump out quickness to other people. However, there may be situation were you need to put out multiple feedbacks as well. Continuum split can also be used on the skill mimic. This tactic can then be used either to cast multiple portals (used before setting the exit portal) or to use 3 blinks in a row.

GS: Great sword normally isn’t used in fractal, dungeons, or raids because it severely lacks sustain damage. However, perhaps its only strong suit is bursting. I have a build for some open world stuff that I frequently use that uses gs and domination, illusions, chronomancer. Some of the key traits are imagined burden, persistence of memory, master of misdirection, and flow of time. These traits all work together to reduce your shatter cool downs and gs cool downs to make them fly by. With this build you want to use phantasmal berserker and mirror blade followed by mind wrack, cry of frustration, and then mind stab. This is mostly for taging and finishing “low health” enemies in open world meta events that are getting bursted down pretty quickly. After you do this rotation, the enemy (or group of enemies) should be dead and you quickly move on to tag the next one. It is also recommended to take gravity well so that you can group enemies together for mind wrack to damage the whole group. Depending on the circumstances and how much health is left, you can also finish this off by swapping to sword shield to pump quickness to allies so that the enemy is finished off more quickly if it is one in the event with more health. You can then still use this build for the “main” open world boss. However, your main job then switches from bursting to a more direct focus on pumping out quickness. For example, phantasmal berserker, mirror blade, continuum split/swap weapons, time warp, tides of time, signet of inspiration, well of action, well of recall, continuum shift, time warp, tides of time, signet of inspiration, well of action, well of recall, summon multiple iavengers, and then auto attack with sword.

He said general PvE and he’s using GS (our weapon of tagging pretty much) so I presume its open world.

Against normal mobs you can shatter mind wreck after summon to quickly kill mobs. But against veterans or something stronger you won’t be able to kill them as quick, and I’m speaking as someone using full zerk. Unfortunately you just have to auto attack or find something to do while phantasms or other attacking skills are on CD.

This changes a bit when you run chronophantasma, but you still have a bit of damage “downtime” after you shatter. I generally slot wells along just to keep buff on allies or keep up the damage, but yeah mesmer doesn’t have a continuous damage rotation that’s comparable to rest of the professions (maybe except ranger and revenent).

Shattering depends a lot on different factors:

- are you running base mesmer or chronomancer?
- which of the different clone/phantasm generation traits are you using?
- do you have any traits which add aditional benefits for shattering?
- which weapon sets are you using?
- which distance are you fighting on, might some of your illusions have problems reaching or hitting the target?
- how much life does the target have (is it a normal enemy, veteran, elite or champion?)

Xstein gave a nice overview of our shatters but honestly, it would take pages to explain when to use what shatter for each unique situation and trait combination possible.

In short, for open world pve you can shatter once the phantasm has finished it’s attack. Most stuff will die to phantasm summon, autoattack damage and shatter (Mindwrack is your go to for damage here if power). On tougher enemies keep the phantasms up and resummon as need be.

New summoned clones/phantasms overwrite the oldest summon with following conditions:

- phantasms overwrite clones
- phantasms overwrite oldest summoned phantasm if no clones are out (meaning you have 3 phantasms out before summoning a 4th)
- clones will overwrite a phantasm if you have 3 phantasms out overwriting the oldest phantasm out (again if you have 3 phantasms out and summon a clone as 4th action)
- clones overwrite the oldest available clone out
- clones do not overwrite phantasms (unless the condition mentioned earlier is given)