Guild Wars 2

Just feels.. weird compared to the other classes, maybe it’s phantasms and the weapon swap feeling different to other classes, but i just can’t seem to get the hang of the class in dungeons, am i perhaps, doing something wrong?

Running the meta build with s/f/ /p, but if i haven’t got the signet slotted that increases illusion health by 50%, they just drop constantly, is this how it’s meant to be?

I really only dungeon on mesmer, and some times thief, but your phantasms shouldn’t be dying every fight. Sometimes it’s tough to avoid, like SE p3 where the dredge with the grenades will wipe them out quickly, but other than that, it’s just placement and knowing which enemies to put them on. Since Warden cleaves, I put it on the highest health enemy, since that’ll be the last enemy going down, my warden doesn’t disappear when a weak enemy dies. With warden, casting it on the enemy that shoots projectiles is also the way to go with it. Pistol you can back up from the stack, and drop the duelist and it should be safe at range from really anything. You don’t need the signet or the % health trait really either. Again, some fights they’ll die, but a lot of it is just placement and whatnot.

Duelist and swordsman are not too difficult to keep alive since they don’t melee. Warden can be…
In general, as long as your DPS depends for a big part on a AI-“pet”, dungeons can be a bit more tricky (the “pet” does not dodge big AOEs). Ask rangers their opinion on that (between pets and spirits, they do have hard time with some bosses).
Another problem is when killing mobs, one can hardly use phantasms because the fights are too short. In those cases, don’t hesitate shattering (with iPersona, even no illusion still gives damage and 1 illusion is almost as much damage as 3).

Heya, main Mes here

Phantasms do die often and quickly, but not everywhere. Make sure you use the correct phantasm for each encounter and do not bother too much about resummoning them when a boss is about to die.
A dps phantasm (warlock, swordsman, duellist) has to attack at least 2 times to greatly outdamage your basic attack. And never cancel your aa chain, since the 3rd hit is the spike in it.

Use the duellist if you know the enemy uses aoe’s around him. Summon one while running toward the enemy, so he will stay at 900-1200 range.

Use the warlock only and ONLY if you know you have a condition heavy team (means you got an engineer with you) and never swap back to the staff again. It’s just for summoning the warlock for the best dps IF you got many different conditions on the enemy. It then hits like a truck for up to 20k each attack.

Use the swordsman if the target uses single target attacks, or if it’s pretty safe to use this one. It deals much more damage than the duellist and unless there are really many condisions also more than warlock since the it attacks so darn fast. He also evades attacks during the leap.
Keep in mind that the offhand sword also carries a block that hits pretty hard and prevents you from dodging, wich makes it superior in 90% of the situations.

Use the warden if you want to reflect projectiles or if it’s the 2nd phantasm you cast and you know the duellist would not be able to use a 2nd salve of its attack (fast diing bosses). Its also cleaves (hits 3 targets at the same time).
Keep in mind that the offhand focus also grants you a pull and or reflection wall wich makes this weapon almost always a must have.

Use the berserker only if you need an aoe opener against 4+ targets. You want to use the greatsword only for it’s phantasm and maybe skill 3, then swap to sword and stay on it until the encounter ends. Only good for short encounters. You normally won’t need this tough.

You will learn on your own wich phantasms suits a certain enemy the most. But in some encounters it’s impossible to keep them alive whereas in others they simply wont die. According to this use the signet of illusions (heal skill) or the mantra of recovery. It’s useless to try resummoning via ultra long cast time from signet and phantasm against a foe who wipes the phantasm out 2 seconds later.

In speed encounters it’s the 2nd best to just use phantasm 1, swap, phantasm 2 and sword aa, since the target will die fast. The best would be to swap weapons between summoning the phantasm 1 and until it first hits the boss, so you can like summon i warlock, swap to pistol b4 the projectile lands, summon duellist, swap summon swordsman – BAM!

High level fractals are a different story tough. There you have to think in longer terms. Phantasms will come and leave very often. They are rather a single skill to use once. You’ll learn that too, don’t worry

greez Madame Le Blanc

I find it awkward, too. Though I’ve been having a much better time using Furious Interruption with Mantra of Distraction.

MoD works in an AoE and hits 5 targets, so when used against a wave of trash mobs the chances that you’re interrupting one is pretty good. This makes it so, at least against all the elites and vets, you’ll have a very high quickness uptime. I’ve been using this with mantra of pain to burst down trash really fast, sometimes it is so fast that I question if I should summon warden at all.

In general, I find there are four types of champ fights: Warden Fights, Duelist Fights, Either, or Neither. This is usually the phantasm that I’ll stick on, since the other tends to die very quickly.

Wardens: good against immobile enemies, multiple hit spots, and projectiles. Bad against melee cleave.
Duelistss: Good against melee enemies. Bad against projectiles and large AoEs.
Both: An enemy with single target damage only.
Neither: An enemy with huge map clearing non-projectile attacks.

Now that bleeding has been reduced to almost 0 for none condi classes and the ninjabuff for iswordsman attack speed makes it a good chunk stronger than the duellist. If you are in a really good party, there will be tons of champs who die within 5-15 sec. The duellist attacks only every 6.5 sec whereas the swordsman does every 4.5. The possibility is high that in such short encounters the swordsman deals more than double damage a duellist would have done.

The phantasms don’t come alone, you always have that other skill too. The sword block lets you deal damage without doding wich makes this weapon already superior in most fractal fights. Against trash mobs, both phantasms are trash, but the swords daze applies 5-8 stacks vuln and may interrupt each mob for tons of power locks / quickness. The pistol shot only may proc 1 target to be dazed (vuln) and 2 to be interrupted.

Btw pistol now has 1200 range, so does it’s phantasm. There are only a few bosses with that range.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

MoD works in an AoE and hits 5 targets, so when used against a wave of trash mobs the chances that you’re interrupting one is pretty good.

Instead of just “spamming” MoD and hope for interrupts, better try to find some dangerious animations some mobs have. For example cliffside fractal, the heartseekers, caudecus, those thief d/d #3 attacks, golems who start rotating, aetherblade warbanner summoners, those are skills who are easy interrupted and cause much more passive damage than wild spams, since they also protect your team and won’t make them use heal skills or condi cleanses already.

This is just an expirience thing, but try to keep an eye on the mobs. It’s a very good training if you just go fotm with only 2 good buddies and try to make it. You will learn much more about your enemies this way

Our illusions are meant to be one shot, developers say, play this class, it will be fun they say.

Well they’re right

Well yeah if you can clearly see a visible threat then stun it. But, given the tendency for so many elites to come pouring around a corner, the mess of polygons and bright lights frequently leaves me utterly blind in the encounter. After years I still can’t see what is going on.

But regardless, we have a new dilemma. In may groups, the enemies die really fast to melee cleave. So fast that I’ll frequently target someone to use warden, only to have them die before I can fire it off. I can spend my time waiting for a particular kind of enemy I’m watching do an animation and hope I can interrupt it, or I can interrupt rather haphazardly, going for the quickness + vulnerability stacks more than stopping any particular attack. So, I’m constantly weighing using MoD precisely to defend against a particular attack, or immediately for greater DPS. I go for the latter, given that should I need to I can use diversion or distortion if necessary.

The thing with 1200 range duelists are that, to ensure that amount of protection during an encounter, you have to be 1200 range away in the first place. Through the winding corridors of dungeons, this generally doesn’t happen. Withdrawing from a boss to use duelist takes time, so you’ll end up using it at a closer range to keep pace in the fight. Though if you do have that range, the duelist + signet of ether + duelist + warden combo works nicely. Suffice to say I’m switching to sword for the majority of circumstance now.

You can try to protect your phantasms with Inspiring Distortion.

PvE Mesmer relies on active defenses such as evades, reflects, and invulns in order to survive. Your phantasms don’t have the ability to save themselves, so in order to protect them you must prevent damage from reaching them in the first place. With the changes to Mantras and Traits, there is a case for a control-oriented Mesmer.

I run daily FotM 50s with a triple Ele, Warrior, and Mesmer party comp. This is the build that I use: http://intothemists.com/guides/5916-gfc_cc_phantasm_spec. The absurd amount of daze and interrupt skills that PvE Mesmer has access to allows for rapid vulnerability stacking and quite literally CC-locks hostile NPCs from glassing your Eles and phantasms.

We are sloppy…

Group: Is that a Mesmer!? We need Feedback, we need Time Warp, and occasionally we need Portal

How many people run glamour builds into dungeons? Cause every dungeons group I get into people are clamouring for a glamourin’ and I’m never traited for that type of set up so it’s sloppy…

Well for high-reflect dungeons, inspiration with traited focus + glamour is “meta”. Looks at the reflect variant of the “meta mesmer” in metabattle.

@ expandas: totally approving the whole comment. i run trio and rarely with a good matie duo fotm 50. it’s nice to see that i’m not the only one making use of signet of midnight. not always and i also change the build multiple times each fractal, but i like how you kittenslap the meta and think on your own <3

@ doam: domination, duelling and inspiration are meta. so going for glamour is easy achieved. feedback is very strong if you can make use of it, do it. same goes for time warp. all other glamours aren’t really required. better go for mantras.

The “meta” tends to end up being what i come up with myself so just think about your build, what your strengths are, how you can help your group and build for that. This will obviously not be some weird double ranged shatter for dungeons with dire gear and runes of nightmare.
If you do this, you should not feel underpowered, sloppy, like doing nothing, underwhelmed, etc. in dungeons.

I don’t really bother with Portal most of the time. People don’t know how to use Portal, and they also don’t pay attention to them. A lot of times it’s just a wasted cooldown and not worth it for the skip (I only really use it if it’s a long run like those in Arah P1 or P2 where people die… often).

With Mimic, Mesmers are refreshing in Dungeons. I usually always just run Feedback, Blink, Mimic and swap out Blink if I truly need a second utility (usually MoD). Mimic Feedback + Warden Ether Signet + Focus Traited = Ridiculous Reflection uptime. Assuming your Wardens don’t die, of course.

if you are not skipping some seriously dangerious parts, always have mantra of pain in your bar isntead of blink, especially with the new mantra trait that gives a dmg modifier, it’s just a must have unless you really need something else. mimic is nice and i love it, but there are many situations where the normal feedback + focus are enough so you can take mantra of distraction too.

Most things die so fast that you don’t need more than Feedback. While I agree that MoP adds a significant amount of DPS, I dislike the trait because it makes me feel like I should be spamming Mantras to get that sweet damage boost (which means I’m not dealing damage, therefore reducing my damage output). I understand that just activating the Mantras I pre-charge will give me a DPS boost, but if I’m fighting trash it doesn’t matter.

There are some fights where swapping to MoD is useful (actually, there are a lot of fights), but since you’re in a party of 5, you don’t need to be doing everything. In fact, a lot of the times I don’t bother with MoD because we have enough players to be taking care of all the other nonsense (1 thief stops both Abominations just before Lupi, MoD doesn’t affect Risen Hunter right after Grub/Abom boss, etc etc).

I dunno, maybe I’m lucky with PUGS. Then again, if we fail at least once, I’ll just swap to srsbznz solo mode and try to be a one man team with a lot of summons… I mean allies.

It’s always a question of how much of a tryhard you are, or if you don’t care about “perfection”.

Besides, about MoP – there are nowhere a consistent encounter of trash mobs where you have no time to recharge it. So it’s basicly a skill that just deals 15k dmg on active per encounter. It rarely leaves my bar, but agreed, it sometimes does