Guild Wars 2

so playing around with my mesmer i found some points that leave me doubtful:

- is it possible to shatter illusions right after they get lethal damage? it looks like there’s a 1-sec delay before they disappear.
- after being given the shatter command, illusions stop completely to attack right? (iyt would be nice if phantams did one last shot)
- staff clones apply conditions? (putting conditions doesn’t seem related to actually doing damage)
- phantasmal warlock gets closer than the actual range to the enemy, bug?
- has anyone found a way to quickly use area skills? i use no mouse at all, and losing time to targt area with the trackpad is annoyng, apart from “chaos storm” it’s better to use the area skill on your same spot.

thanks for reading.

1: Once the clone/phantasm’s target (meta-term since phantasms can find new targets when bugged) dies any shatter attempt is a failure and no damage is dealt and no benefit is gained. However, defensive shatter like F4 works fine.

2: Yes, the clones/phantasm stops immediately once a shatter command is issued. The Mesmer must be wary of their Phantasm’s attack patterns at all times to use optimal Shatters.

3: Staff clones will apply conditions that use your Condition Damage, which can be quite significant. But, beware the Vulnerability chains that deal no Condition Damage.

4: The iWarlock has a range of 900, as does The iDuelist. Do not be fooled by the skill’s 1200 range.

5: Area skills were designed with a mouse in mind. If there is a Mod that helps you target AoEs it will probably be blacklisted by ArenaNet as a cheat.

Hopefully my answers were helpful.

- is it possible to shatter illusions right after they get lethal damage?
No and if the illusion dies before reaching the enemy the shatter will also fail.

- after being given the shatter command, illusions stop completely to attack right? (iyt would be nice if phantams did one last shot)
Yes they do so.

- staff clones apply conditions? (putting conditions doesn’t seem related to actually doing damage)
Yep! Making them the only damage dealing clones when not traited. But if they die damage from the conditions they applied drop to zero.

- phantasmal warlock gets closer than the actual range to the enemy, bug?
Yes every ranged phantasm goes too close. Maybe it will be fixed one day …

- has anyone found a way to quickly use area skills? i use no mouse at all, and losing time to targt area with the trackpad is annoyng, apart from “chaos storm” it’s better to use the area skill on your same spot.
Mhmm mouse is pretty mandatory for placing your AoE. But you’re right : putting them on your position (even Chaos Storm since it’s better as defense skill rather than an attack) will do fine (in PVE only of course). For that let your cursor rest out of the environment (over your skill bar for example) and press the key of the skill. The game will launch the spell at your feet (you have to activate the “fast casting” for AoE option in the menu (F11).

Like Animando said, it’s better to place Chaos Storm on yourself usually. It gives you buffs including Aegis, and can actually keep your clones alive much longer while getting directly attacked.

Animando.7956:

For that let your cursor rest out of the environment (over your skill bar for example) and press the key of the skill. The game will launch the spell at your feet (you have to activate the “fast casting” for AoE option in the menu (F11)).

You do not need to use fast cast ( but it may be recommended in your case) since you can just press the Area Skill hotkey twice to use it.

EDIT: Also like Animando said, any Conditions that are applied by a clone/phantasm that is killed will deal zero damage.

thank you, i was actually thinking of damage improvement for the iwarlock from clones conditions.

i was not thinking of a mod, thanks for the tips to the 3 guys up here.

about being traited: what traits make clones able to deal damage? i knew they were able to do a little damage (15 or so) at level 80.

Dueling 15 points gives “Sharper Images” which makes it so any clone/phantasm attack that crits (even 0 damage attacks can crit) apply a 5 second bleed.

As for iWarlock’s bonus damage from conditions? It is not dependant on your clones that applied it staying alive. Even a condition that deals 0 damage still counts towards the +10% damage per unique condition applied to your enemy.

yeah, that’s what i thought, just wanted to be sure about it.

about sword/ sword: it looks like mesmer is still too vulnerable to go melee, a hit can take away at least 1/5 of total hp and when it comes to multiple mobs it’s impossible to win or it takes too much time.

is there a certain level when it comes viable or is it just the way it is? pvp oriented?

bibbiri.6028:

about sword/ sword: it looks like mesmer is still too vulnerable to go melee, a hit can take away at least 1/5 of total hp and when it comes to multiple mobs it’s impossible to win or it takes too much time.

is there a certain level when it comes viable or is it just the way it is? pvp oriented?

I’ve been pretty survivable with it from level 1 to be honest.

1. skill is very nice (You’re invulnerable whilst using it)
2. can be used as an AoE daze (Only lasts a second though but can interrupt attacks)
   F3 causes daze.
   F4 causes attacks to miss you.
   Getting used to dodging helps a lot.

Other than that it tends to become more viable when you start getting 2/3 stat gear allowing you to get Toughness and or Vitality without having to sacrifice damage (About level 30 for 2 stat gear and about level 60/65 for 3 stat gear)

About it taking time, although it may look cool off-hand sword is more about defence than offence (It’s non-phantom ability is a block/daze rather than a directly damaging ability, though the block does create a clone that can be shattered) the offensive off-hand option would be Torch (AoE Blind and Burn) which can work wonders for AoE:
#4 as you run into a group (Takes 3 seconds before it explodes) then after exploding going into a well placed #2 to be invulnerable and doing some decent damage after which clones can be shattered doing even more damage.

It’s a combination that can be devastating whilst also quite safe (Due to the invulnerability from #2 which has a fairly short cooldown, even more so with a trait from Dueling 10 that reduced Sword cooldown by 20%)

It definitely does get much easier at around 30 when you can get gear stats with both offense and defense (and you can have blade training open with some points left over for other things), because while you’ll be relying on a lot of damage mitigation skills the longer you sit in combat the higher a risk you get for hits to go through. Knowing when you need to pull back to ranged for a while is also key, but that’s something you get a feel for as you go.

Our MH sword has one of the widest melee arcs in the game, it’s actually very good for taking on multiple enemies at once. Would be better if mind stab didn’t interrupt the groove but I guess rapid boon removal is hard to argue with. :|a

i guess going melee puts a lot more effort in terms of skill using since it takes using long cooldown abilities which seems to be more 1-time-life savers than frequently used ones.

seems is something for more melee- nostalgic players than actually useful skills, GS/ staff grants lot of survivability at mid-low sustained damage. if nothing particularly changes in the long run, stacking the same stats for those different weapon sets brings more advantage to staff-GS over sword-sword/X weapon.

bibbiri.6028:

i guess going melee puts a lot more effort in terms of skill using since it takes using long cooldown abilities which seems to be more 1-time-life savers than frequently used ones.

It depends really, the F3 and F4 are just things I thought I could mention relating to issues of survivability.

I actually am playing a GS + S/S (Or S/T depending on the situation)

I actively swap between them (Note: I use GS up close for Might stacking rather than as a long range auto-attacking weapon) and my playstyle doesn’t really change between them, I continue to use the #2 skills to my advantage (Might stacking on GS the evade from sword), I use the #4 skills to control the fight (Cripple from GS, Stealth, Blind + AoE Burn from Torch, the Daze/Block + Clone from Sword) and rely mostly on the F1 and F2 shatters (Combined with investment into the Illusions tree shortening the cooldown on Phantasms and Shatter abilities) using #2 from GS, #3 Sword, #4 GS #5 Torch/Sword to create Clones and Phantasms to shatter (With the Mirror Images utility for some on demand shattering)

My survivability is quite high, even against multiples without relying on the long cooldown F3 and F4 shatters. One of the key things as a Mesmer is that ALL abilities are useful and when lower level (When cooldowns are pretty long) swapping to another weapon set can be useful (Heck if you want you can just put a Torch in the off-hand of your second weapon set and keep you main hand sword when weapon swapping between S/S and S/T to keep pumping out skills whilst using melee) Tricks like that also help if trying to do a Phantasm build (Starting out with a weapon set that you don’t use as your main one to get up 2 Phantasms at the beginning of a fight via weapon swapping)

perhaps it just comes to one’s playstyle than, i find more gratifying avoiding damage at all and controlling the situation from afar. i’ll take you points as suggestions if i’ll try another set-up, thanks.

Blurred Frenzy and Illusionary Riposte both help you avoid damage, so running dual swords doesn’t leave your mitigation to the mercy of shatters. You’re not going to get much in the way of distanced control on the melee weapon, but our swords have a lot of strength and utility (vuln stacking, boon ripping, leap finishers, immobilize, damage mitigation) that a mesmer can be a persistent melee fighter and have sustainability even against multiple opponents (provided they didn’t spec like wet toilet paper).

But you don’t want to sit on one weapon set forever anyway, because a lot of utility is in all our weapons and you’ll always be strongest managing what weapons your on and learning how to use them in synergy.

i’ll have to see after toughness stacking, as for now tacking even 1 direct strike is terrible