Guild Wars 2

I tried meta build after patch and i have to say that nerf to illusionary reversion is quite heavy.
Do you think meta will remain the same ? As an alternative, what do you think of taking improved alacrity instead and , as a test, offhand sword to replace shield ? I really love shield’s skills but they have a long cd and with the nerf to illusionary reversion you shatter less clone… so less alacrity … so less cd reduction on shield …. instead off hand sword has really short cd and spawn clones fast ( with sword sword you have 3 illusions there and 2 on staff… a lot more ) …

I must say I do like the offhand sword 5 animation now and it seems like a fun weapon to use.

I think improved alacrity will probably take over. However, I would keep your shield. Tides of time is still going to help you land shatters and the shield has a channeled block rather than the single black of Illusionary riposte. Plus, the last skill just summons a phantasm and really doesn’t have any utility. There is really no reason to take OH sword.

Curunen.8729:

I must say I do like the offhand sword 5 animation now and it seems like a fun weapon to use.

Haven’t looked at the animation yet though. I need to try it out.

The meta will probably be the same

Power mesmer gets a bit more shatter damage(mind you they still benefit condition mesmer as well). But you lose things like air/blood/hydro/leech. So some burst is gone. The GS iberserker is changed a bit but for the worse as it does minimal damage but reveals you.

F5 shatter gets a CD nerf which makes taking illusion line even more mandatory than before.

The only change that has potential is the buff to bountiful disillusionment. Maybe just maybe you can consider play power support mesmer.

For one, warrior and reaper doesn’t pulse stab anymore so interrupt mes may have more presence. But you need to be capable of survive our age-old counter/friend thief.

Just wishful thinking, I’m also curious on how sigil of ruthlessness can play out with chaotic interruption, that 10 stacks of might immediately (+ GS if you want) can hurt quite a lot if you want some kind of daze/interrupt burst. I might try something like domi/chaos/inspi or domi/chaos/chrono with ruthlessness and some cleanse utility just to see how it works in this boon feast era.

Also sigil of opportunity synergise well with GS trait in domination, which I never thought I’d say that. Though mental anguish is also a lot stronger now.

For WvW.

I’m experimenting with Danger Time and Lost Time in combination with the change to Master of Fragmentation giving Mind Wrack a 25% crit chance. A lot of the time I’m using MW (I don’t usually stealth burst as I find it cheesy) on a slowed target even without shield phantasm and can keep very high uptime of it so I end up with +55% crit chance on them for guaranteed crits. The mirror blade crits most of the time too and with dom I can take a massive chunk off even heavy armour targets.

I combine it with torch and the pledge, no PU but I still get a decent low cool down on stealth skills, the important damage skills on GS and with a little extra condi cleanse. At the moment I’m very likely massively over capped on crits so will be swapping some pieces out possibly for valk or cavalier and obviously I’m running mantra of resolve as the other condi clear utilities aren’t up to snuff and I don’t like WoE if you have to heal in stealth.

On a side note I’ve found that the new iZerker animation looks weird and feels more clunky but the sword throw attack means the enemy will get hit by either the sword or the zerker a lot of the time. Synergises well with the dom line adding extra vuln, just a shame you can no longer cast phantasms from stealth anymore.

The biggest change for me is the removal of pulsing stab for high stacks instead, I can rip it and actually CC warriors, guards, rangers and necros in shroud knowing full well if I shatter on them they will likely be open to CC.

Yea, I’m very happy about the change to pulsing stab skills. Overall the best part of the balance patch really.