Guild Wars 2

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.8.12.7.0.17.4.4.0.0.182.190.189.187.204.8.9.6.526.535.536.542.547.551.0.0.0.0.0.0.588.0.0.30.30.0.0.10

That’s pretty close to cookie cutter 30/30.

People rarely run mantra builds because mantras are awkward and you lose out on certain utilities that people tend to grow fond of.

I’ve played around with mantra builds early on (i.e. the mantra utilities, but not yet traited), and I love the concept of it, it’s very mage-y. (It actually reminds me of the old “memorizing spells” mechanic from D&D that was based on the “magic” in s-f/fantasy author Jack Vance’s stories.)

I think that, while mantras aren’t exactly fail (and one or two can be used out of the box to good effect in any build), it’s simply the case that in the earlier part of the game (at least) there’s just more bang for the buck elsewhere, at a point where you’re still learning what everything does.

However, I fully intend to explore Mantra builds a bit more when I’ve gotten to 80 and can full trait for them, and have a better control of my chosen levelling build(s), and want to experiment more.

Alternative costs are too high.

I found just having a single mantra in my bar annoying. I had to spend 4 seconds after every battle, after every time I zone, even if I go from the overflow zone to the normal zone casting the mantra, or else I don’t get the ability for that battle. I get more damage and utility out of something like mirror images, and it’s always ready a the start of a battle, and in a long fight I may be able to use it more than once.

Mantras certainly have a time and place. The question is whether it’s worth investing too much into them; to fully trait mantras you have to put quite a few points into trait lines you wouldn’t usually find very useful.

In PvP they shine brightest, traited or not. In the scope of a large WvW battle, there’ll be times where you can dart behind cover to buy a few seconds of recovery time and to recharge your mantras, and hop back out and combine the mantras with your attack to burst down an opponent

The nail in the coffin for me is the 4 second charge PER mantra.

The +1 trait ( so they can be use 3 times instead of 2) is nice.

The +heal on use COULD be awesome BUT the heal only activates on charge and not on use of a mantra.

Direct damage mantra? nice.
Condition removal? very useful.
Daze ? nice
Break stun? very nice!

But like I said. Once your out of charges….
Not to mention that if you run with 3 mantras that 12ish seconds of standing around charging them up for use. WAY too much time…especially in PVP.

They’re not fun to use.

I use mantra of pain as my only mantra in a healing mantras build (30 vitality line) and its quite fun but i tried a full mantra build and charging 4 mantras is just way too much, it would have to really be charged and left in a full mantra build(similar to the all-signet warrior build that is just there for the + precision and not really used)

I tend to find Signets more fun because it feels like there’s more of a trade-off (Do I want to pop the signet now and lose the passive?) and they restore themselves automatically.

Mantas though…. they’re just plain not fun. They only give you a passive if you put 30 points into Dueling. Without it, the only trade-off tends to be, “If I pop my signet now I’m going to have to spend 3 or 4 seconds recasting it. Bleh.”

When I had a Mantra build, I had 30 in Dueling and pretty much just sat on my 4 Mantras without using them, because having to recast them after a battle was so annoying, especially in a long battle. Unlike with signets, in a long battle, the last thing I want to do is activate my Mantras, because then I’m going to be stuck standing around re-casting them in the middle of the fight.

I use now Mantra of pain and healing mantra but I’m heal/support specced for WvsW so the situation is a bit different for me.

The big contradiction here, funny actually, is that I enter the fights with my mantra’s uncharged opposed to non-healing mantra builds enter the fight with their mantra’s full charged.

nidwin.6731:

I use now Mantra of pain and healing mantra but I’m heal/support specced for WvsW so the situation is a bit different for me.

The big contradiction here, funny actually, is that I enter the fights with my mantra’s uncharged opposed to non-healing mantra builds enter the fight with their mantra’s full charged.

How strong is the heal?

and wouldn’t you want recovery to be ready for use?

The only useful mantra is the condition removal one.
The heal mantra is really really horrible, I have no idea why people use it.

@Qelris
Still haven’t found out how it actually works or how the formula could be.
Let’s say that 2875 heals aren’t uncommon and I think I saw a 3k+ heal this morning on someone (could be a critt if it’s possible for heals to critt). But not certain about the 3k as it went fast.

@ManCaptain
It’s not because you have no idea why people use it it’s always bad. ;-)

1. I’m in Rune of Dwayna so every time I heal I grant myself and surroundings allies 5s regeneration (10s cooldown). Mantra has 2 casts.
2. Being heal specced when I recharge my healing Mantra it aoe heals around me.

Here it’s not about the amount of self healing I get but the amount of “heal my allies” that matters.

mantra builds are not bad but hard and boring to use. you have to avoid getting hit (thus mostly staying back) AND restrain yourself from spamming mantras too often in combat in case someone jumps at you. you also have the long recharge after using all the mantras. my GS mantra build hits for 3k with just autoattacks. the problem is you can get high damage with builds that are much easier to use.

nidwin.6731:

@Qelris
Still haven’t found out how it actually works or how the formula could be.
Let’s say that 2875 heals aren’t uncommon and I think I saw a 3k+ heal this morning on someone (could be a critt if it’s possible for heals to critt). But not certain about the 3k as it went fast.

@ManCaptain
It’s not because you have no idea why people use it it’s always bad. ;-)

1. I’m in Rune of Dwayna so every time I heal I grant myself and surroundings allies 5s regeneration (10s cooldown). Mantra has 2 casts.
2. Being heal specced when I recharge my healing Mantra it aoe heals around me.

Here it’s not about the amount of self healing I get but the amount of “heal my allies” that matters.

Right… it’s the combo with your runes and stuff. That’s the thing that is pissing me off. Aren’t abilities supposed to be useful by themselves? There’s always people who say: “well if you use traits x,y,z and runes x then it’s ok”. Yeah… I’ll pass. Mesmer builds are traitlocked enough as it is. I think we should strive for abilities to be useful without any special traits or gear.

And heal mantra heals less than Ether Feast, which is wrong and bad. Even traited for 3 uses it heals less than Ether Feast with 3 clones out. That’s bad, for an ability with 5 sec charge time.

I understand your point of view ManCaptain and see where the frustration comes from. But if some abililites become too strong they would clearly be OP once traited in combination with the right equipment.

Mantra of Pain is decent when working with the Sword in PvE. When you are kiting between Leaps + Blurred Frenzy, you can charge and use the MoP for a bit of damage. If you have 20 Inspiration for Restorative Mantras, even better.
-Tends to replace Signet of Illusions for me when in situations this occurs.

I think the problem with Mantras is they’re kind of bad.
The idea is amazing though. Charging up your magic before a fight and instantly shoot off some magic.
But you only get two shots and they do next to nothing. They could benefit if you were able to generate more charges or they had a bit more potency.

I suggested in beta, that casting channel of mantra would also serve as a AoE buffing of allies. Like the Guardian staff skill which is channeled and pops out some might every second and ends with a heal. Something like every second of casting the Mantra of Pain, aoe 1 sec retaliation. That would improve the concept a lot.

There’s always people who say: “well if you use traits x,y,z and runes x then it’s ok”. Yeah… I’ll pass.

Do you realize that pretty much every ability in the game is like that?

And heal mantra heals less than Ether Feast, which is wrong and bad. Even traited for 3 uses it heals less than Ether Feast with 3 clones out. That’s bad, for an ability with 5 sec charge time.

Mantra of Recovery has a 10 second cooldown. It has the highest sustained healing throughput of any heal because it can be used basically twice as often as Feast.

Direct usage also has no cast time, unlike Feast which can be interrupted.

In other words, Mantra of Recovery is out best heal to heal with … except it’s a pain in the kitten because it’s a Mantra.

@Furienify exactly. A pure mantra build isn’t fun. Mantras, themselves, imo, aren’t very fun either.

@EasymodeX
Mantra of Recovery actually not twice as often as Ether Feast. You have to factor in the Charge time, and the 1 sec CD between heals. So for one full cycle, it takes at least 15 seconds (assuming you aren’t interrupted during the charge).

Its when you get Restoring Manta and any Runes Heal Skill effect that it has potential to match or exceed Ether Feast. Not to mention clearing Conditions with another trait. Of course, that still compares to a vanilla Ether Feast with no other additions added to it.

Feast is 5,560 + 640/i, with 20cd and roughly a 1s cast (although not sure if the cd starts before or after; I’ll assume before). Assuming a random allocation of 2 illusions: 342 hps. Assuming 3 illusions: 374 hps.

MOR is 3260 x2. 10cd, 4s charge, and 1s delay between uses. 3260 * 2 / 15 = 435 hps.

So, sure MOR has a little more time investment than at first glance. However, MOR is more heal per second sustained, period. And that’s not counting any traiting for MOR.

Edit: On second glance I’m not 100% positive about the numbers on the wiki. I’d have to look in-game for more reliable heal amounts.

At maximum throttle, MOR is:

3260 x3, 8cd, 4s charge, 1s delay between uses, bonus 2500 heal. 12280 / (8+1+1=4) = 877 hps.

Anyone have in-game experience with Mantra of Recovery and the Mender’s Purity trait? I’d like to know if each cast of MoR (2x or 3x) strips a single condition, in contract to Ether Feast’s one condition removal.

@easymodeX.

My tooltip in game showes MOR at 2700 per use while feast is showing 5760+660. With these numbers (assuming 2 illusions and MOR untraited) it’s almost even.

Now with both at full power, 3 illusions, and 3rd cast on MOR. Mor is way higher hps.

One thing though, that MoR amount is too high in comparison to Ether Feast. I assume thats from the Wiki which hasn’t been updated?

My numbers of the MoR healing have never been over 1/2 the amount of the base value of Ether Feast. Its usually a bit under 1/2 the amount of Ether Feast in fact.

Current in-game values for me with only a tiny +43 Healing Power:
5,603 + 644/i for Ether Feast
2,637 per cast of Power Return (Mantra of Recovery)

Ether Feast (20s CD + 1s Cast = 21 sec):
0x Illusions: 266.8 hps
1x Illusions: 297.5 hps
2x Illusions: 328.1 hps
3x Illusions: 358.8 hps

Mantra of Recovery (10s CD + 4s Cast + 1s CD = 15s total)
2x Power Return: 351.6 hps
(Don’t forget the opportunity cost of 4 seconds used uninterrupted in combat, for a second use).

Okay, that threw me a bit off. MoR is better then Ether Feast at all times, unless you have 3 Clones out. That and can take 4 seconds out of combat uninterrupted for charging it. That last part gets me, as I too often find the need to Roll or get CCed in some form. Especially harsh when that interruption occurs at wrong moment where you get the Full CD but no charge (rather then interrupted CD).

One thing to bear in mind is that you can fire off 1 mantra while charging another AND while moving and dodging. i.e. you don’t have to stand still to charge a mantra, and you aren’t blocked from firing off one mantra while you charge another.

i.e. their intended use is in a continuous flow of charging, using, moving, dodging, i.e. if your utilities are all mantras, there is never any point at which you can’t have a continous stream of mantra firing (of one kind or another) going on.

Just a heads up as it seems like some commentators here don’t seem to realize this.

gurugeorge.9857:

One thing to bear in mind is that you can fire off 1 mantra while charging another AND while moving and dodging. i.e. you don’t have to stand still to charge a mantra, and you aren’t blocked from firing off one mantra while you charge another.

i.e. their intended use is in a continuous flow of charging, using, moving, dodging.

Just a heads up as it seems like some commentators here don’t seem to realize this.

Dodging while charging cancel the cast.

Yeah, it’s a massive learning curve though if you try to really use multiple Mantras in combat.

I’d prefer it if Mantras charged themselves automatically when you are out of combat. No need to charge them yourself which is not fun. Has the disadvantage that once combat starts, you can only use them twice (or thrice if specced) and that’s that till you drop combat which I think is a fair tradeoff.

3260 per charge was what MoR used to heal. After release they nerfed it to 2620 per charge for no apparent reason: it was rarely used before in PvP, now it’s completely unused.

The CD used to be 8s too, they nerfed it to 10s when they made MoR work with HM. Really though, I’d rather HM be removed and keep the 8s CD.

As for other Mantras, MoP, MoRes and MoC are all crap. MoP does minor damage and is only useful for hardcore burst builds (which the Mesmer is bad at anyway), MoRes frequently fails to cleanse the more pressing condition (such as the 20 stacks of Bleeding) if there’s more than two, and MoC… 2s of Stability, really? MoD is the only Mantra worth a kitten

One of the things I hate about multiple charges is that if you only used one charge during a fight, you must discharge all the other charges, wait for it to finish CD and channel it again to be fully ready for the next fight. This is one of the reasons why I’d prefer Mantras to be powerful one-charge spells with no option to increase number of charges.

Mantras are “great”…

They do great thing on lower CD compared to other similar skills, but in return you have to much more active in gameplay. Mesmer is already a busy class, but there are still times in combat (especially with certain builds) that you are just shooting off autoattacks – those are the moments to recharge mantras. Of course, they make the busy gameplay of mesmer even busier and require much more timing and planning. There are numerous times when I am not on top of my game, and realized my MoR is not charged when I really needed a heal… that’s a lot where the mantra hate comes from.

For mantras one of the best builds rely on Berserker, and Divinity runes are expensive, so people stay away from it.

Considering you’re using 60 trait points in 2 rows, for mantras, and that these 2 rows support Sword/Pistol and GS, wouldn’t that be the best weapon set for a mantra build?

Also, why do you need Divinity Runes for a mantra build?

I used mantras for most of my below 40, now I switched back to a clone build. I will try mantras again later when I can actually get the traits for them.

EasymodeX.4062:

There’s always people who say: “well if you use traits x,y,z and runes x then it’s ok”. Yeah… I’ll pass.

Do you realize that pretty much every ability in the game is like that?

Actually most skills in the game start out at ok then become great through traits.

Mantras start out bad then become ok but boring though the use of all of our trait points and our ruins.

I’d like to see MoRec get its old healing back, MoRes cleanse 3 conditions, MoC grant 3s Stability, and MoP be reworked to something else… say, inflict 3x Confusion (and given a much longer CD for balance and so that Mantra Mastery isn’t wasted on it). It could also be renamed Mantra of Confusion and be given MoD’s chant (Obfuscate, Disorient, Confusion), and MoD could get a proper chant that ends with “Distraction”.

I’d also like to see either channel time reduced to 3s, and/or have a trait that reduces channel time. 4s is too much and doesn’t correspond to the length of the incantation anyway.

Is it just me or are mantras the most boring abilities in the game? They’re just not fun to use.

I wish ANet would just scrap them and give us 4 new utilities.

Mirroring what other people are saying.. mantras miss the mark because they need to be actively charged.

If they operated the same way they do now, but with 4 more seconds on their cooldown, after which they were AUTOMATICALLY charged and ready for use, they would be much more heavily utilized.

As they stand now, mantras are relegated purely to healing and control builds. Even then, I could only see a build with more than 1 mantra being used for dungeon healing and support.

Mantras aren’t flexible enough.

There are two main reasons why they aren’t flexible.

First, no freedom in traits due to mantra related traits being in grandmaster.

For people who want a high dps, they will have to go 30 in dueling for the +4% per readied mantra trait.

But to actually have the +4%, you can only use each mantra once. Because of this, many people will pick up 30 in domination to be able to use them more than once, and also because it gives a lot of power. Healing mantra just isn’t worth without 30 dom trait too.

If you have 30, 30 in dom and duel, you will only have 10 points left to spare for other traits. Hence, it results in a lack of flexibility.

Of course, it is possible to make builds with 30 in dom/duel and disregarding the other trait line. However it throw many players off.

Secondly, mantras are very limited.

EasymodeX.4062:

People rarely run mantra builds because mantras are awkward and you lose out on certain utilities that people tend to grow fond of.

EasymodeX says it all.

I find that mantras are poorly implemented.

Take this scenario:
You are using Mantra of Distraction(daze) in your build. After you killed someone, you are left with 1 charge. Do you use it and wait for the long cd? or do you bear with it having just 1 charge and losing 4% damage right after you use it?

Charges should recharge out of combat.

Personally, I like the idea of having charges gained every x seconds instead of having a cd and needing charge it. but this put the restorative trait after charging mantras out of business.

Edit: Also, mantra builds could be made more flexible simply by changing the traits to non-grandmaster or doing something along this line. All this so that people who want to make a mantra build will not get streamlined into going 30/30 in dom and duel.

I never really used Mantra’s up until yesterday – Our dungeon group decided to try our hand at Twilight Arbor for the first time – Place is hell if you’re not prepared, have no idea what’s happening and you choose the forward, forward paths…

I found however, that for the first time, mantras were really good here…

Mantra of resolve, great for all that poison – As a mesmer, I’m usually the last to die, so mantra of concentration was also wonderful against the nights and the wardens, that constantly knock you down and one-two shot you dead..The stability and Stun-break allowed me to solo these guys just enough to get the job done when the rest of my party where down…

I look forward to using mantras more, ppl say they are only good in certain situations – Um, yeah, they’re utilities skills, you’re supposed to adapt to what you need at a given moment, not play the same bar through all content -

As far as dedicated mantra builds go – No idea, haven’t experimented with it yet – I had fun with them in TA, but I agree, we may need a little buff in this area to dedicate to them….

Certainly have their uses though

The reason there are no common mantra builds is because, despite all the synergy you gain from the 4 mantra traits, having to recharge up to 4 mantras in combat (or even out of combat) destroys those synergies.

If mantras automatically recharged out of combat? That would be a big help. Having potentially 16 seconds setup time between combat is nuts for this game.

Better still is if they INCREASED the recharge to 5-6 seconds, and let it recharge all of your mantras.

Three uses of Mantra of Restoration combined with Rune of the Centaur (10s Swiftness, 10s cooldown) means permanent AoE swiftness. I still don’t like it though. IMO Mantra of Restoration needs a quality of life buff allowing you to queue multiple activations, or just remove the cooldown between activations entirely. It’s too cumbersome and distracting to press the button four times, one second apart every time you want to heal, especially when you’re in the middle of something else.

If I could just tap the button four times I’d be ok with it, but as is it’s too much of a bother to use, especially with such an incredibly long cast time making it even less appealing.

I see no problem with HealingMantra. Especially traited with “remove conditions on heal” and “heal allies on mantra cast”, I feel it to be very superior to eathers feast. With the second, even MoP becomes useful for yourself and allies. Here it depends on IF you want to support or be egoistically and only deal damage.

The main issue of Mantras is still unsolved. Their main purpose is still great. Upon a charge you can use the effects unconditionally. With healMantra you can heal while being hit, while dodging, while locked, while casting and even while falling. As said before – combining with different mantras you can use the charges while charging the other mantra.

I think passively charging could be an option. Personally I’d prefer a “reduction in CD” if you keep the charges long enough. Kinda like “the original CD runs immediatly after casting finished”. So you skipp the CD if you preserve the charges long enough.
I’d also like to see an option to recharge a second charge if you’ve only used one.

The healing manta doesn’t result in permanent swiftness with Centaur. Its casting time is too chunky.

Do you realize that pretty much every ability in the game is like that?

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Most guardian abilities work just fine untraited.
Mesmer is by far the most trait dependant class in the game.

Current in-game values for me with only a tiny +43 Healing Power:
5,603 + 644/i for Ether Feast
2,637 per cast of Power Return (Mantra of Recovery)
Ether Feast (20s CD + 1s Cast = 21 sec):
0x Illusions: 266.8 hps
1x Illusions: 297.5 hps
2x Illusions: 328.1 hps
3x Illusions: 358.8 hps
Mantra of Recovery (10s CD + 4s Cast + 1s CD = 15s total)
2x Power Return: 351.6 hps
(Don’t forget the opportunity cost of 4 seconds used uninterrupted in combat, for a second use).

Irrelevant analysis, because it assumes people spam heal skills as soon as they come up and enemy inflicts continuous manageable damage.

If you try to use mirror you will understand this. Even though, when you factor in recharges, it heals almost as much as 0 clones ether feast, you will find out that it’s way worse healing. People usually use healing skill when they drop a significant amount of health instead of perfectly using mirror when they drop 4k. On top of that some enemies drop you to half health in a heartbeat. Both things mean that big heals on longer recharges are preferable. But they mustn’t be over 50% heals because that will cause overhealing in a lot of situations.
Then there’s also times you’re busy doing other things, so casting of heal skill is delayed. Mantra is especially bad here. When using it I need to find a 4 second window in the combat, where I expect not to get bursted. That’s hard to find, and it certainly doesn’t come up every 15 seconds.

Realistically I cast Ether feast around every 30 seconds, and 2 second window of not being harrased can be found. You won’t cast heal mantra twice in 30 seconds in combat even though you technically could.
I think the best case scenario for mantra, you’ll cast it about as often as Ether Feast. And that’s being generous. Then there’s the whole issue of what to do with half-spent mantra.

Mantra’s recharging automatically out of combat would be bad for heal/support specced Mesmers. We heal while recharging our mantras at the end of the recharge.

Mantras start out bad then become ok but boring though the use of all of our trait points and our ruins.

Mantras start off OK, to be perfectly honest. 2-shot 2x cleanse on a shorter cooldown than any other condition removal?

Yeah.

Anyways, I’d like to clarify that my earlier post described why people don’t like Mantras, not to be confused with any characterization of whether or not Mantras are balanced.

Because, to be honest, they are balanced for the most part. Only imbalances I see:

1. Concentration needs to last 1 more second. 2s is just really kitten short.

2. Charge time could use a 0.25s reduction, or something minor.

Basically I whipped out the 30/30 build again this weekend since I’ve acquired most of my gear (Berserker’s), and I slaughtered fools in WvW. 3k Mantra of Pain shots make baby HODies cry.

I could down glass Elementalists in 2.5 seconds. It wasn’t pretty.

While the mobility is kitten poor (I used no Blink), I was very resilient against touch-and-go attacks. Heavy condition removal, stability, and a very high heal throughput with a fully traited MORecovery.

I run mantra healing with MoP on auto attack (ctrl+right-click to change auto attack), which is nice. I can evade attacks, focus on the mob/zerg around me as long as I have someone targeted I’m dealing damage and healing my team. Win Win in my book.

MoR is my main self heal and when not using other utilities I like to have MoRes charged too.

I’m not sure why people are complaining of charge time, it’s really not that difficult. You’re not stuck there in one spot during the induction. I’m always on the move rarely standing still. I rarely notice that they are charging.

If they fixed a few of the issues with mantras I would find them more usable. Losing your charges at the drop of a hat is lame. You lose when:
1. Go underwater and don’t have that mantra equipped.
2. Any zone changes.

The constant having to recharge them is annoying as well. If they automatically recharged when out of combat they would be alot more user friendly for PvE.