Guild Wars 2

i’d love to get your opinion about mantra’s in sPVP. i tried this build in sPVP yesterday. it started terrible but after some play i was getting better results. i noticed its very good against hambow warrior, at some point i even 1v2 hambows for quite a while. i didn’t do too well against d/p thieves, especially with them stealthing until they’d pull out backstab. but i guess that’s partially my bad play, i believe there is a play to interrupt them in blackpowder-finisher chain. i suspect s/d evade thief will be more of a problem.

the idea is to have phantasms (pistol and swordsman) out and then play defensively. staff autoattack clone and crippling dissipation should help kiting. healing mantra takes a lot of clicking and time, but there is a lot of healing here (about 11k/10sec and more). stability is always good but especially to be saved for mantra chanelling. there are a lot of dazes, hope to use them against d/p thieves and ranger rapid fire. condi removal is everywhere, even condi necros ended up running away.

there is a “dry spell” with mantra cooldown. healing mantra is fairly frequent (8 sec+channel), that takes care of healing and conditions, but i’m worried to be left without stability for 20 sec, that means healing can be up in the air for interruption. i hope to juggle between daze and stability mantras to have something at each time to have mantra channeling covered (but 1 sec daze still leaves 2.75 mantra channeling exposed). i also think to save magic bullet for channeling stability mantra.

Oh it works for a while, then it just become an infuriating mechanic. You will forget to charge. And you’ll blame yourself.

I only recommend full Mantra builds if you’re good at playing piano. Because that’s what it will feel like, constantly cycling the keys to maintain effectivness.

Personally, I prefer having fun when I sPvP.

yeah the way mantras work is not really the way i like to play, plus i feel like it doesnt really fit in with the way anything else works in gw2. it just feels awkward to me. i dont mind using 1 once in a while, but more than that is just stressing me out. its a constant oh gee i need to recharge my mantra and then u are in a large fight and boom u are out of charges…..now gotta spend quiet some time to try to recharge them while trying to avoid all the cc spam and aoes and thieves……

Dawdler.8521:

Oh it works for a while, then it just become an infuriating mechanic. You will forget to charge. And you’ll blame yourself.

I only recommend full Mantra builds if you’re good at playing piano. Because that’s what it will feel like, constantly cycling the keys to maintain effectivness.

i dont mind that. phanta mesmer has some time off (relative to some others builds) once phantasms are out, so might as well do something

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i’ve tried it today again, not too bad. still struggling with thieves. today it was not stealth/backstab, just spamming #1 dagger, outdps’s me pretty fast. kiting d/p is hardly possible. i guess unloading all my dazes is the only option.

Full mantras absolutely isn’t viable. No blink, no access to stealth, you’re just a sitting duck for thieves basically.

In general though, mantras just are too clunky to make effective builds based around them. You’ll try them for a while, but ultimately you’re going to end up realizing that you’re putting in more work for less results than almost anything else. It sucks, but until the devs rework mantras that’s the way it is.

Fun fact: GW1 mantras were stances. Honestly couldn’t remember that until I checked the PvX wiki out of nostalgia. I miss hexes, and stances, and proper signets. And chain-interrupting monks.

sigh

Pyroatheist.9031:

Full mantras absolutely isn’t viable. No blink, no access to stealth, you’re just a sitting duck for thieves basically.

In general though, mantras just are too clunky to make effective builds based around them. You’ll try them for a while, but ultimately you’re going to end up realizing that you’re putting in more work for less results than almost anything else. It sucks, but until the devs rework mantras that’s the way it is.

well said pyro. i really hope mantras will get reworked. the recharging is simply not working at all.

calavel.6249:

Fun fact: GW1 mantras were stances. Honestly couldn’t remember that until I checked the PvX wiki out of nostalgia. I miss hexes, and stances, and proper signets. And chain-interrupting monks.

sigh

yep if mantras were replaced by hex like aoes, we would be less depending on illusions. also the stances were great….i wish gw2 mes had just a little more of that and a little less of illusions only.

I don’t have a problem with the clones, they can be buggy at times but they also have a lot more flexibility than most classes’ mechanics. I just miss the more reaction-based play of GW1. #2 has too much auto-attack power IMO. The worst part is that it is wildly unbalanced among classes and ranges, rewarding some classes and builds for AA spam and punishing others.

But I digress, carry on lamenting mantras. God knows they deserve it.

Phantasm specs fall apart in bigger team fights. When combining the build with mantras, they are going to have low hp and no uptime with all the aoe and cleaving that flies around.

Full mantras are cumbersome because of the long channel. Against skilled opponents, you’re going to be punished hard for doing it mid fight, and even if you’re not you are taking yourself out of the fight for a noticeable amount of time. It’s a little unfeasible to have all of your utilities and healing wrapped up in 11 seconds of channel time.

Nettle.9025:

Phantasm specs fall apart in bigger team fights. When combining the build with mantras, they are going to have low hp and no uptime with all the aoe and cleaving that flies around.

Full mantras are cumbersome because of the long channel. Against skilled opponents, you’re going to be punished hard for doing it mid fight, and even if you’re not you are taking yourself out of the fight for a noticeable amount of time. It’s a little unfeasible to have all of your utilities and healing wrapped up in 11 seconds of channel time.

this is all true, especially phantasm part. when facing phantasms myself, mostly i feel i just need to run on other side of fight and phantasms will be taken care of when passing through mid death-ball. in team fight they are placid.

but mantra’s, i’m still not giving up on them. in punishment if you mean interrupts, stability and dazes should provide some cover to this. there is time off and a dps loss, but phantasms mechanics somewhat tame that. it’s about 25% of say staff aa dps, which means around 200dps loss. i haven’t run numbers (i should), but i believe this build gets 11k/11sec guaranteed heal, which is about x2.5 infamous healing signet. and condi “immunity”. in fresh fight it’s guaranteed for 40 seconds, someone in 1v1 should be down by then. coupled with around 1.5k dps – that’s not that bad. looks like sustain here (1.5 dps, 1k hps) is very good. it’s burst (thieves, may be eles) that is a challenge.

what i like here is that you dont have to spam anything, you just get phantasms out and then play reactively, using dazes to ruin opponent mechanics, skills like scepter#2 and sword#4, sword#2, pistol #5 to counter opponent. and maintaining mantra charges, which need some management.

i’m mostly playing in hotjoins and what i care most is winning 1v1, anet conquest mode is secondary to me. i could be home defender and though very slow out of combat, could go far point too. for instance this build should not be bad against spirit ranger (or any ranger), should it? against guardians probably it will be a draw (and they get the point). i should do well against necro and engis (even rifle). i had hambows on run on number of occasions. if i could get it against thieves, i’d be happy with this build.

How coincidental. I actually made an (I assume) “original” build a week or two ago centralizing around phantasms and mantras (though quite different from the one listed), and have been spending all my play time in sPvP getting better at my build and tweaking it.

I’m at the point where I win most duels (minus non-braindead warriors or well played blind/stealth/shadow step spamming thieves) and about 1/2 of the 1v2s. Anymore and I might be able to down one of them but usually end up on the ground myself.

Though what has been said about phantasms just dying in larger scale fights, or mantra recharging taking you out of fights is somewhat true, I’ve not had as much fun in sPvP for a while. I used to play a full shatter Mesmer, and while it probably is more optimal, it truly is a one trick pony. Easily negated by warriors or guardians using just one of their kitten nal of invulnerability skills at the right time.

I’ve beaten other shatter mesmers (though I’ve had my share of my bum being handed to me by the very same shatter mesmers), and have found that the high condition removal makes fighting conditionmancers a whole lot easier than I was used to. Instant stun break/stability makes cc-train warriors easier to deal with too.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just so thrilled that I came up with something that I thought was “original”, or maybe because it’s a new build/play style to me, I see it as better than it really is. I hardly play tPvP though (when I do I play shatter), so most of this is from an sPvP point of view.

Either way, so far, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.

@DeathReign.7821 can you post your build? i feel once being so much invested in mantras through skills slots, i’d rather max on my money and get traits aligned to mantra (and well – phantasm) benefits. one alternative was to go for more phantasm traits instead (health, fury), but i believe numbers line up behind mantra traits better.

gesho.9468:

@DeathReign.7821 can you post your build? i feel once being so much invested in mantras through skills slots, i’d rather max on my money and get traits aligned to mantra (and well – phantasm) benefits. one alternative was to go for more phantasm traits instead (health, fury), but i believe numbers line up behind mantra traits better.

Here is what I’ve been using. Soldier necklaces aren’t usually allowed in duel servers so if I choose to go to one of those I’ll swap it out for a Berserker necklace.

I was thinking of making a thread on my build but, meh, it’ll just be classified as not optimal since it’s not shatter so why bother, right?

Edit: Nevermind. I was bored and made a build thread with my build anyway. Here’s the link if you’re interested.

so wait a minute. u made this build just recently, just recently tried this build out….and then u make a thread in balance forums complaining about a power necros lifeblast being too strong and that your build is only supposed to die to thieves and never to any necros or anything else?wow….