Guild Wars 2

For those saying "Mesmer AoE is fine because i gets lots of gold medals " you’re misunderstanding the problem a lot of us have.

Our complaints in Dynamic events stem from tagging mobs for loot. For example my necro generally rakes in 5 times as much loot as my mesmer.

Now this is not to say that iBerserker doesn’t hit like a bus, or that shatters don’t hit plenty hard as well, it just isn’t feasible to use these in some events where mobs die within a second of their spawn. Events scaling better would solve this issue however, we don’t need our kit to be stronger.

Again, Mesmer AoE and Dynamic event complaints are not a numbers/ gold medal problem. They are a mob tagging problem. If you want to get a good amount of loot in these events 30 points in illusions is practically mandatory. Even then you won’t be getting as much loot as other professions.

LOL I nearly spit up my coffee @ iDerper.

Shatters do not proc on death traits.; however people have given generally positive feedback about clone death builds with a condition set up.

You may want to swap blade training for phantasmal fury. Our phantasms have this neat little bug where they stand around for up to 2 seconds before doing something useful if you don’t have one of the traits that grants them a boon.

waaah? After he switches phases the grubs stop being an issue and all phantasms become safe. He has never eaten a pet/illusion/turret whatever.

Mirror blade is perfectly safe on grubs/swarms as the grub spawn has a cooldown. In fact you can tell who is going to be “grubbed” next because that person/pet will have an aura of crap around them about 5seconds before the grub spawns. Simply use the generators on the grub and Wrack to kill it.

Use Izerker and Mirror Blade in conjunction with sword 3 and 2 to smack down grubs with quick spawn and shatter. I usually do this and allow most/all the other players in my group to sit on Lupicus. If you’re not confident/ not running enough glass gear to do this you will need some help but generally keeping one person chipping away at Lupicus makes the phase a lot shorter.

If things like iBerserker’s spin or even the swordsman’s leap are aggroing other groups I’d argue that the pull, not the ability was flawed. I use the GS extensively in dungeons and I have never had an issue. It sounds almost like you’re being scapegoated to me. “durr mesmer bad at dungeon.”

Phantasm army builds tend to be mediocre at dungeon crawling. In phase 2 of Lupicus those Phantasms have a snowball’s chance. So you may want to swap out things like the 10point dom trait for 15% illusion damage for the mindwrack damage if you have points in that tree. Phant traits will help on phase 1 more with the iDuelist but phase 1 isn’t the hard part of this fight.

Mirror is actually a decent heal to slot here to block Lu’s incredibly hard hitting, rage inducing auto. If you do get hit by it and see another one coming, cast mirror. It’s like another second of distortion for that obnoxious ability.

20/30/0/0/20 is the power build I’m running right now but it’s a bit glassy, especially for Lupicus. I’m actually looking to switch over to a staff condi build in the near future. Glass mesmer is just incredibly satisfying in WvW so that was the first set I went for.

I hope some of this information was useful.

I like scholar runes, but I also dungeon a fair amount and I’m not sure I can continually meet the health requirement.

Ah you’re on JQ arn’t you? Scholar runes makes sense, running ogre myself. It seems the thing I’m missing is the bloodlust rune but I’ll have that cash shortly.

Are those iBerserker crits against low level players?

Given the mantra build a try myself but I’ve never seen a number that high.

What runes do you run for that build? Perhaps it’s a difference in setup.

The happens to me quite a bit as well. At least it’s good for a chuckle.

The clone gets a white revive icon ( NPC revive Icon) the player gets a blue revive icon ( Downed Player). As players get more used to playing with a mesmer nearby it will become less of an issue.

Abarcine.7189:

God why is this still on the front page? The only thing iBerserker needs is to not go through LoS, it’s silly that I can circle kite someone around a pillar forever thanks to the cripple.

Also meteor shower and iberserker have the same range. If you were in range for the phantasm I’m pretty sure an ele could damage you as well.

Defend my profession? Are you dense?

Also other classes AoEs can hit players on walls too, the point was if you’re in range to get zerkered you’re in range to get meteor showered and the like. Though the fact you claim it took 90% of your life is another issue entirely. I don’t think I need to add anything at this point.

What is Time wrap?

noot.8641:

Well this the whole point brother, no1 could hit me because i was out of LOS, behind a stone where i putted my arrowcart. If u have been in EB at durios, then i placed it on the stones next to the bridge but all the way back so it was out of LOS and nothing could hit my arrowcart except for those phantasms, so i was talking about LOS all this time.
LOS also means u cant spawn ur phantasms ontop of a wall in WVW cuz obviously thats LOS.

Can someone paint a better picture of this area? AFAIK everywhere I’ve been able to clip someone with the iBerserker I’ve also been able to catch people with random meteors on my ele. Place the AoE in LoS but so the far lip extends past it. Am I misunderstanding here?
Edited because English hard.

God why is this still on the front page? The only thing iBerserker needs is to not go through LoS, it’s silly that I can circle kite someone around a pillar forever thanks to the cripple.

Also meteor shower and iberserker have the same range. If you were in range for the phantasm I’m pretty sure an ele could damage you as well.

It seemed to be one per clone when I ran it in a dungeon but I’ll need someone to confirm.

Edit: Although if you’re not having trouble with condition damage than the other 10 in chaos or even illusions maybe better. It seems like a fantastic build though.

Would throwing those last 10 trait points into Inspiration for Shattered Conditions allow you to bunker more effectively? Or do you find the iDisenchanter handles condition damage well enough?

Celestian, are you using a trait that gives your phantasm a boon? Phantasms tend to behave rather stupidly if you’re not taking at least one of those traits. With a build taking either fury or retal/regen (same trait line on the last two you have regen you’ll have retal) the zerker will twirl before people can target him. You can typically follow with a shatter if they’re behind something and he’s going to die before another spin.

post to fix thread?

Edit: May as well be a useful post. I find myself using scepters a lot on bosses where melee is dangerous and I’d like to bring the duelist along. Although a staff may be better here since I’d typically run rampager to beef up bleeds from GS clones and CS would help my melee survive. Hrmm.

The thread is very old, I’ve since branched out my specs and went with experimenting on my own instead of listening to the doom and gloom on these forums.

Shatters are very useful to large number of my specs and weapons at this point.

My current favorites usually involve the focus trait warden’s feedback. The utility it provides is just too strong to ignore. However I usually keep at LEAST 20 points in dueling for the pistol if there isn’t any reason to bring a reflect as duelist is very potent.

I’ve also toyed around with a build taking the 4% damage on mantras as well though I typically only run that when I’m feeling a little selfish. I flipflop between rampagers or zerkers with some defense thrown in as needed depending on spec.

Can’t bring myself to post in the sky is falling oct 7th thread. We’re pretty amazing right now.

Thank you for the quick response Ryuu.

It happened like 5 seconds ago in WvWvW. Suddenly the iBerserker would not attack on spawn. Instead it would stand in place for about 1-2seconds and then twirl. Most of the targets had moved out of range or simply killed him by that time. Is anyone else having this issue?

Err phantasmal haste doesn’t effect our phantasms cooldowns on spawns. It effects the phantasm’s time between attacks. Trait phantasmal haste with the warden and then watch the time between whirls without it. Some get more benefit than other phantasms but the trait seems to be functioning.

I think your solution is better than adding another NPC to game Sinsko. But I didn’t want to remove the ability to view the item at all. However items that you cannot use or sell back shouldn’t be available for purchase.

Why am I even given the option to buy medium/heavy armor as a scholar profession? These are currency traps. AFAIK you cannot even transmute the look on them to your light armor sets.

I think that it would prevent many people from being frustrated if you removed armor sets that either unusable or lower than your professions’ highest proficiency. Move these sets to a dressing room type NPC that lets you view the other sets but gives you no option to buy.

This will remove many currency traps from game. Keep in mind that GMs will not refund your tokens or karma for an accidental purchase for an unusable set. The vendors also do not list your 3 sets first in the case of dungeon vendors. It’s not hard to see a situation where someone sees the stats the want and buys before reading that red text. These situations are completely avoidable and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the chance to waste tokens is removed from game.

When I’m playing my mesmer and I use either Mirror Blade or Chaos Storm it sounds as if my character has sucked down 50 balloons. I’m confused because other abilities with the same animation and cast time the sound plays normally, she grunts and it’s fine. For these two abilities it sounds like she’s 3 years old and just tried to throw a shot put. After 80 levels of it it’s finally started to grate me.

Cingen, while I don’t have much to add about stats I noticed in your build you take both 15% damage talents to our illusions ( one in domination and the other in inspiration.) The last time I checked our bug post, people have stated they do not stack correctly right now. Perhaps not even at all. I read through it again and I didn’t see a post stating it was fixed or that others did their math incorrectly so you may want to make a trip to the mists to ensure that you’re gaining something for having both those traits.

The traits you’re describing can have negligible downtime when using swap + 2 phantasms and a clone generator as clones count as well. You’re arguing that there are some builds that do not want to shatter.

This is simply untrue. Even with those traits you do want to shatter as you only gain damage and the attack refresh if you do it correctly. I find your argument similar to an elementalist that only wants to be a fire mage unless I’m misunderstanding.

We just don’t work that way, having 3 phants always out not only disables your class bar but the 1 and 2 block portion on scepter, the 2 on staff and GS, and the 3 on sword. Shatters are used in all specs once you get the timing down. Even one with 0 traits aimed at shattering wants to shatter. Those phantasms are going to be replaced soon anyway you may as well pick up some more damage while you’re at it.

Traits can enhance our shatters but you’re free to enhance other things as well and still find them useful. I’m not looking to get into an argument but please consider the points made by others. I’m not in love with our shatter mechanic and I think it could be improved upon, but essentially removing our class bar is not a viable form of play right now.

Edited to elaborate a bit at the end. Added a bit more then I intended apologies XD. Let’s please not turn this into another 3 PHANTS VS SHATTER 2012 THUNDERDOME. Make suggestions that would enhance how you play instead of condemning our class mechanic. Or make a thread that condemns it heh.

I’m going to assume the above disagreement is solely focused on how much damage we can churn out. I’m also going to be using GS a lot in my examples just to keep it more condensed. I have a tendency to type a lot :x.

The minor traits in illusion beef up a shatter if only a little. If we’re talking about dealing damage one of our best specs i’ve found is 10/30/0/0/30 with some wiggle room in the last 10 points of Illusion. So for DPS purposes we’ve got 2 offensive phantasms from our weapons. So you can start with one set and swap to another, while you pew pew in that setup, watch your phantasms.

After cooldown refreshes (or slightly before ) watch for their last attack. If your phantasm attacks say, 2 seconds before its cooldown is up go ahead and shatter, resummon, and swap back immediately. Trying to run triple phantasm is such a fragile way to DPS. So many bosses are walking wastelands.

It’s categorically superior because you’re refreshing phantasm attack time getting some free shatter damage (which is just icing for us really), confusion damage if traited, and most importantly opening up your clone generators and therefore the utility your clones bring ( Staff clone is great for some support/ conditions, GS clones are great with SI specs like the one suggested above). Not to mention the GS’s Mirror Blade hits pretty hard and coupling it with Illusionary Elastictity when appropriate is lovely. Even in a phantasm build, the clones should contribute something and not having access to generators shuts us down far too hard. With only 2 phantasms out you can spam Mirror Blade on CD. This will proc clone death traits as you replace them (again icing here.)

If you wait for that third phantasm CD and just hold on to them you’re putting all your eggs in one basket, to use a cliche. You hope that unfortunate AoE pairing won’t annihilate your turrets before CDs allow them to be replaced. Even then, 3 phant uptime is rarely 100%. You also lock yourself out of using the scepter entirely if you don’t shatter and while I think it’s a weak weapon overall it has its uses. Like when melee is unsafe, and the fight calls for a warden or a duelist. I’m sure you also find yourself holding onto those phantasm cooldowns so that you can replace them when they get wiped out. If you are, you’re missing out on that attack refresh with the shatter.

With so many traits sprinkled throughout our trees that allow for small bonuses to clone death( replacing them counts!) or shatters removing conditions and the like, it’s hard to find a good build that avoids all of them completely. So I don’t find having to trait them to be useful an issue either.

Now back to the thread topic.

I do agree that shatters could be visited. If we’re balanced around shatter damage being a reliable source of DPS, and it usually is, I personally don’t see a problem with making them even more reliable. The delay on the button press vs the damage being delivered feels a bit off. I don’t really think we need to be buffed or deal more damage. We’re a strong class and we have a lot of utility to bring to the table that no other class can bring.

Having the option of ranged Shatters being instant would be like a Christmas present at this point and after playing with the class for a long while and discovering ( or reading) all of our quirks I don’t think we need massive changes.

Edited last paragraph for clarity and made some changes for an easier time reading. Also as a not class specific wish-list condition gear with magic find on it please!

Somna.5168:

Abarcine.7189:

Would it be more constructive if people posted the builds that they were using that they’re toting success with?

I think a lot of us who have never tried a shatter build for dungeons because Phantasm traits seem to mesh better (for me at least) would like to see what traits you’d expect to pick up.

The cooldown managment isn’t so much a problem for me but I’m not sure which traits to take to have a successful dungeon build. Or which weapons to bring along, does focus fit in a shatter build because I’m really enjoying the ranged shut down it brings with its respective trait.

Edit : Some tips on dealing with all these “walking wasteland” bosses would be appreciated as well. Unless clone death is really the only way to deal with this, which would make me sad.

I’m not sure why this (the non-edited part, that is) is necessary.

Shatter works better for melee-oriented Mesmers.

There’s no extra running on top of your normal running around and when you shatter, everything immediately goes. There is no travel time to care about — anytime someone complains about that, you know they’re playing at range. But as a result, the “(effect) on Illusion/Clone/Phantasm death” effects tend to be more useful than the actual Phantasm-specific and Clone-specific buffing traits or the “on Shatter” traits. You know they are going to die, and in fact, can cause one to when you want to just by popping another Clone or Phantasm. Or you can Shatter and cause one of the Shatter effects, plus any other Shatter traits you may have liked to pick up.

You present this as opinion where exactly? Not sure why you have a bug up yourkitten about my edits, they’re usually to correct my horrible grammar. You jump back and forth describing shatter builds/ clone death ones that I can’t get a clear picture on what you’re trying to say. Then compare the entire community to a pack of rabid hyenas. And you’re asking seriously?

I’m certain that there is nothing to learn from these threads at this point and posting here is going to devolve into an argument between shatter builds or phantasm builds or whatever the hell someone is itching about.

So quick to play the victim. I asked if someone could give an example of a shatter build since there are numerous instances of others phantasm or bust. You stated that shouldn’t be necessary. You went on to say that shatter builds using ranged weapons didn’t work as well because of the delay ( no new information here. ) There is nothing to indicate that this is your opinion. You flat out say that on death tends to be more useful as a result of knowing your clones are going to die.

You take someone asking for build advice and then turn it into HELP ME IM BEING RIPPED TO SHREDS.

I’m not sure how it is more constructive to post a specific build when Shatter works better for melee-oriented Mesmers, and we’ve only got 1 melee mainhand weapon. :/

But now you’re saying that on death traits work better for a melee build rather than the ones that buff shatter?

Basically what I was after. You’re saying that a shatter build is only useful for one weapon in our arsenal. That one weapon needs to take traits from our condition tree to get itself the support it needs to function, while being a power weapon? The offhands that are available are not condition weapons either. At least not unless we take 15 in dueling for SI.

Doesn’t this go back to the OPs point of sucks unless traited ? Why does a mesmer who is leveling need to stick it out before they can grab core traits sprinkled throughout several trait lines. Sure it’s fine at 80, but why can’t it be a bit more functional at lower levels without being game-breakingly good.

You’re not sure why it’s necessary to ask others how to run a successful shatter build when you’re unsure which weapons and traits to take? Did you quote the wrong post perhaps?

If no, OP says shatter is flawed mechanically. Others say that it’s fine as is and needs little/no adjustment, I’d like to know what weapon sets, and which traits are being brought by the ones claiming to have so much success is all.

If yes, Shatter intentionally being reliable for only a melee-oriented mesmer feels iffy to me. We have our entire class bar devoted to bringing a single MH. While sword is a great weapon it can’t be intended that everyone either use their sword or treat your class bar as an afterthougt that might work. Most of our weapon options are ranged. Why devote our class bar to one playstyle?

Yes you can use GS and scepter to spawn clones from range to shatter them with little pause between the button press and the effect. But this feels a little odd on both weapons. We spawn clones who have ranged attacks… in melee range. We can’t really use the clones from these weapons to confound anyone. It’s painfully obvious where we are.

I’m wondering if it’s better to attempt to work shatters into the phantasm build then and if I’d have better luck with that. The 2Phant 1 clone + shatters lets you use those clone generators which is nice, and while I think you’d deal a bit more damage if you’re able to spawn a phantasm right after it attacks thanks to the attack reset , I’m finding Wrack to be sort of bleh vs most bosses. Cry is more of the same and Distortion is only somewhat useful for knocking off Defiant, after all I should already be gaining damage from getting an extra attack from the Phantasms so I don’t NEED to be using wrack or cry but I feel like they could be better. If I’m using distortion I’m probably not going to care i just interrupted my iS iB iW or whoever’s attack cycle because there are probably 80 rockets or something flying at my face.

Dungeons seem to have too much AoE to place run with a pure shatter build reliably and I feel like using them to eek out a tiny bit more damage albeit unreliably is sort of lackluster for what should be a button I’m excited to press.

Solo play with a glass cannon build Illusionary Persona is pretty amazing but I can’t seem to find a shatter build that doesn’t make me super squish.

Can we all agree at least with the OPs point that when we convert our clones into bombs they can stand to be a bit more universally reliable? Right now I’m having a hard time giving the greatsword/ Sword +focus up just because it lets me readily shatter the clones/phantasms spawned by them in WvWvW. That weapon set seems to support a power precision and either crit damage or a defensive stat. So I’m a bit concerned it’ll make staff less appealing. I suppose I could always go with Power Condition Vitality gear and get some use from SI.

Am I the only one perplexed that our shortest CD shatter with the most trait support seems to favor a power build, while the Illusion tree adds to condition damage? I assume I’m missing a synergy here. I’m aware that this places 3-4 stacks of confusion up thanks to the minor trait at 15 but it still feels odd to me.

After playing some rounds of sPvP and being able to pull off 1v2s with some consistency and even a couple of 1v3s, I’m concerned that we’d need too much work to make dungeon crawls a bit more fun without overpowering us (even more) in small scale PvP .We’re not broken by any stretch and we pack enough utility to be worth the spot as long as we pull our weight. I just think the class and shatters could be more fun use is all. But because of our presence in sPvP I think things may stay as is for a good while.

Would it be more constructive if people posted the builds that they were using that they’re toting success with?

I think a lot of us who have never tried a shatter build for dungeons because Phantasm traits seem to mesh better (for me at least) would like to see what traits you’d expect to pick up.

The cooldown managment isn’t so much a problem for me but I’m not sure which traits to take to have a successful dungeon build. Or which weapons to bring along, does focus fit in a shatter build because I’m really enjoying the ranged shut down it brings with its respective trait.

Edit : Some tips on dealing with all these “walking wasteland” bosses would be appreciated as well. Unless clone death is really the only way to deal with this, which would make me sad.

Xine.5827:

Mesmers do fine in PvP.
Mesmers are meh in PvE. Many of the points the OP made are even worse in a PvE environment where you can’t shatter or use phantasms for many fights. Confusion spikes are worthless when the mob you confused gets knocked down or is kited and doesn’t get to attack.

Mesmer’s are fun when they can use their tools, but too often the tools don’t work well or the tools fight each other.

After 80 levels, dozens of dungeon runs, and hours of PvP and WvW, I agree 100% with the OP. The Mesmer has confused itself into a state of identity crisis.

Effigy boss in CoF is a pretty good example of this. That burn aura will rip through the shatter and his ranged AoE will keep the number of active phantasms pretty low.

Sezneg.8630:

Abarcine.7189:

Marxo.3829:

You missed the part where I said the strength of the shatter build is that it doesn’t matter if the odd illusion dies because it is designed to crank them out at such a high rate.

Your build on the other hand is very vulnerable to pet death.

Don’t confuse one big number being better than lots of small ones. With all the confusion/other condition stack in addition to mind wrack damage and the fact that phantasms will still get a volley or two out, it certainly does add up.

You are somehow envisioning a perfect set up where you have 3 warlocks standing there in one spot, (which takes a long time to set up relatively), safe from harm with no target changing. It’s so far from the reality of GW2 play it’s bizarre.

I should add that yes, the maybe a few situations where the fight mechanics will permit you to /popcorn and let phantasms do their thing but that situation is a rarity to say the least.

Jesus tap dancing Christ, did you really just insult my reading comprehension when you failed to address ANYTHING I said about a shatter build’s flaws. Oh and then the shot at my ability to understand or do math when your own numbers are far from factual. They do not in fact add up.

1: Your build is limited by Wrack’s Cooldown! It doesn’t matter how many useless pets you can field if you have more than you can reasonably shatter. This is a huge flaw in our shatter builds that you need to address

2: You need to prove that Wrack can consistently outpace 2 locks that live to see a third volley. At 80 on a boss that’s about 13k worth of damage

3: Clones can and will die before they reach their shatter target a good percentage of the time. Warlocks have the advantage of ranged delivery. You are vastly understating how frequently 1 or 2 clones don’t arrive.

4: No idiot is going to stand in one place with their auto on and spam 3 on any boss. Fortunately you have these cool movement keys that let you place your pets at safer areas in the room. You can get 3 out on basically any fight. The ones where this is problematic are the also the ones that chunk shatter builds and even still you can usually field two constantly. See above.

5: Confusion is a very poor condition in PvE. Boss attack speed is usually too slow for it to contribute a significant source of our damage.

6: Most bosses have 0 target changing. Other classes can swap more efficiently than we can anyway.

7: Shatter builds do have their uses, Phantasm ones simply cover more bases while being harder to kill

So, lets propose builds that solve these issues shall we?

Can’t really take your build seriously

1. You lose a lot of potential damage to weapon downtime. Other than warlock, the entire staff skill set is crap for someone running power/crit for a phantasm build. You have a lot of time spent in your build just using our weakest attack for a power build (staff auto-attack), and being stuck on a weapon that outside of the phantasm does not have any synergy with your stats/traits. Even when you do swap to your greatsword (really all you can use), you have to avoid using 2 of the skills outright and really the knockback is a dead skill in the boss fights you are basing your arguments on (as they are pretty much all immune to it). So… your weapons consist of a staff which is terrible for power/crit builds, and a greatsword that you pretty much don’t/can’t use 3/5 of the skills on.

2. Your view of what constitutes a successful build is tailored and narrow to absurdity. And even then… you can’t prove it! There are no DPS meters or combat log parsing widgets as of yet. So your build has what… a few big numbers when the phantasms fire, then pretty much NOTHING else. And you assume that this is our best possible DPS build. I’m sorry, but you are mistaken. With good timing and play you can get more damage AND more utility out of just normal phantasm use. Others have tried to explain this to you on these forums. You simply ignore it. So I’m not going to give you the same play by play list on how this is achieved.

3. In your quest to /afk in dungeons you ignore the amazing support and utility your class can provide. I would honestly not even invite you to a dungeon (let alone sPVP or WVW).

Not using that build anymore. I’ve been quite sick for the past 2 weeks or so and not thinking very clearly. Most of what I’ve said in this thread should probably be disregarded at this point.

Honestly I think this thread should just fall by the wayside now that we have a class forum, it’s pretty old.

MLieBennett.9031:

Abarcine, the specific details you give seem to be about Sorrow’s Embrace Story mode. I could be wrong though, but it seems so familiar to that.

For the final boss of that dungeon, you are meant to beat down the adds then toss the boulders they leave behind at the Terminator-wannabe. I.Persona was useful, in spiking down my add, so I could toss the boulder then either target a different add or waiting till the next lava dump with ranged attacks.
(Still laugh at remembering the thumbs up)

I will admit, its annoying getting stuck with the Scepter as it ends up being the only feasible MH-Weapon in quite a few situations for a lack of options. Flowers from TA? Scepter (G.Sword only works well at max range in comparison but then respawns get you, Staff is too slow, Sword will get you killed.). The fact I find the scepter to be a horrid weapon, and forced to use it because its the only MH-Ranged auto-attack is annoying.

Anyways, on Shatters and Bosses? I do find that I tend not to use them unless for emergencies (Distortion), or for breaking through CC Immunity (3-4x Clones to remove that many CC Immunities is also great. Confusion on most bosses is lackluster, due to low attack rate. MW is about as pointless for me, tbh. They only get used if my Phantasms go down, and before I resummon them I’ll put out a few clones to shatter specifically.

I’m aware about the boulders being intended to use on the boss . However all other classes have someway to use their defining mechanic to contribute in many situations. Illusionary Persona was useful, just not so useful that it felt like it warranted 30 points in a trait line. And having no safe zone for phantasms at ALL on that fight seemed silly. My clones need to be disposable, but useful in doing so, I should always be able to use my class mechanic when I have the resource for it and feel good about doing so. Lava dump coming? Too bad nothing to shatter. Adds down and laser coming? Too bad. The best solution I found was to spawn things on the catwalks after a laser and wait for a dump and then rapidly replace them on the add and then shatter before the next laser. So it works best to refrain from using something that should be iconic, save for a tiny window on the fight.

The example here was being used to illustrate that a lot of dungeons seem to be overly punitive for our mechanics specifically, and not to describe a challenging encounter; this boss was not particularly difficult and yes the terminator reference was awesome.

And I hate the scepter. I used it for the same reasons you did but I’ve just gone to GS and tried to deal with it being inferior in some situations. I really can’t stand the weapon. But having the 300 condition damage glaring at me for being 30 in illusion when I want to run a power build makes me cringe. I feel like I need to go staff/Scepter and alternate pistol and focus.

There are an additional ~5 traits that affect all illusions (movespeed, damage, damage reduction per illusion count, proc on illusion death). These do not synergize with phantasms in particular.

If you’re looking to run a phantasm build these synergize pretty well. Just becuse they also effect clones doesn’t mean a phantasm build won’t see the movespeed, damage reduction, and damage increase, and want take this as “keep their 3 phantasms for these useful bonuses!”

Shatters work well on a large majority of bosses however there are quite a few that they don’t work on and on those few Illusionary Persona won’t help. Let’s look at the dredge dungeon for instance. The golem boss is particularly clone unfriendly. You’ll often be using 1-2 clone shatters just because they’ll melt away so rapidly. Melee range offers very little time to react to their more dangerous abilities so Illusionary Persona becomes dangerous to use. On the one it is usable on you’re better off standing at range and using the GS to spawn clones and the iB so the lightning won’t jump from you and immediately smash anything spawned by weapons other then a Scepter/Focus combo. Being locked into a particular weapon set for a fight to make your class mechanic function makes it feel more like a crutch. And if you have any melee party member, just forget about having any clones reliably up ever.

The final boss of the dungeon cannot be shattered at all there isn’t anywhere for melee Phantasms to stand. iWar and iB and iS are automatically less useful here. And shattering or Illusionary Persona isn’t possible at all. Thankfully we’re pretty good at spiking down the adds but other classes will have an easier time at that as well. It’s not uncommon to send your clones after an add only to watch them get obliterated by a laser from the boss, again Illusionary Persona won’t help here.

I think I’d like a trait for the final tier of Illusion. We can either grab persona for added spike, or choose to give them a ranged delivery here.
Will this be overpowered?

Now that I’m feeling better I’m not sure what exactly I was trying to argue or why I thought having a discussion about a boss that moved frequently and had no/little Aoe was worth having at all.

Couple of issues i’m having.

1 : I feel like I’m expected to keep up with 3 different MHs and 2 OHs at all times. Staff GS and Sword and pistol focus offhands. I’d like our weapons to be a bit more differentiated, I feel like there is too much overlap.

2 : Shatter builds and phantasm builds kitten hate each other to the point that Malakree and Easymode are having an inflamed discussion about what does more damage and what’s more viable in reality. Potential damage is nice but if your illusions go poof constantly in a dungeon potential doesn’t really convert into observed output.

Why is our class mechanic so unfriendly to a popular build right now!?

Traits that exist seem to encourage the play of fielding as many phantasms as for as long as possible. This flies in the face of what shatter wants to treat our clones and phantasms as; disposable minion bombs.

3: We NEED a way to make shatters more reliable. Minion bombs is not always a viable delivery system. Especially if said bomb doesn’t explode on death. I feel almost like it’s intentionally underpowered because it does pretty decent spike in PvP. Are they just afraid of what would happen if we could guarantee that spike virtually all the time? If so, this solution flat out sucks for the PvE mesmers. I want something that’s dependable and can see a use no matter what I’m doing. You could say distortion is this shatter, but I’m talking more about our damage delivery system.

4: Mantras feel like they need a lot of improvement. We have so many traits that seem to encourage taking a Mantra from damage boosts to group heals. However Null Field and Feedback always seem to warrant a utility slot in a dungeon, and MoR takes too long to surpass other heals when you need it to save you. The fact that we have so many traits for mantras and they still feel weak should say something.

Looking at this entire thread, we’ve gotten way off track. So just let me say
1: Getting 3 phantasms out and keeping them out is virtually impossible.
2 : Shatters builds are infinitely more fun
3 : You’ll need to change weapons depending on the mechanics of the dungeon anyway so ideal situations are useless to describe
4 : Let’s talk about how to make shatters more useful for ALL specs.

So far I really like the Mind Wrack and Cry are now instant ranged abilities.

1 : How far does he leap back or is he as likely to get trashed by AOE as the iB? Is that higher DPS vs a target with 5-7 conditions going.

2: Several issues I have with condition builds are their inability to be effective in events with destroyable objects that are also present in dungeons as well as a certain boss that’s immune to them. iW is useless in the above as well but you’ve got more weapon options with a power build I feel. Against most things that matter you’re going to have an average of 5-7 up

3: The bleed does about 1350 damage or iB after bleeds does about 1350 damage? Is that total supposed to be near iW’s output on single target with 5-7 conditions up? I feel like a lot of these comparisons are in made from a condition mesmer’s PoV where the warlock isn’t such an attractive option.

4: Yup

5: Agreed but we’re not really talking about how much utility each phantasm brings. I this situation I’m after damage not snares.

6: Big Ifs there

7: Again the squish or target moved issue

8: Sure he’s boring but he’s also reliable and effective.

Maybe I’m missing something but what other clone generator than Mirror Blade is contributes to damage? Is using a greatsword required ?

EasymodeX.4062:

Well you not only double the phantasms’ actual attack, but add a bonus shatter (+shatter procs) on top.

The comparison is pretty clear.

Also you’d need that second phantasm to be able to beat out the warlocks damage. The zerker from the GS comes no where near his DPS. Warden would do nicely but its getting him to live longer than 3seconds that’s the issue.

It makes for a more active playstyle sure but I’m not sure you can beat out 3 warlocks spamming their ability.

So we need to be sure that the phantasm for the other weapon set is able to get near the warlocks damage output. Since you won’t replace 2 warlocks before the phantasm build rockets past you in output you need to use your other weapon set. So your option needs to be Sword/Focus + Staff for this shatter build to attempt to be viable. Or am I wrong here? Will Pistol come close enough?

So the rotation would have to be something along the lines of spawn Warden > swap > 3 > Cstorm > wait for warden warlock CD > shatter alternatively you could Warden > 3 > 3 follow up > 2 > swap > Cstorm > 2 > 3 > Wait for lock CD > Shatter and hope the warden is still alive after all that time? This sounds unreasonable

I want the idea to work because the whole spawn 3 locks is getting old but it’s trying to find a reliable phantasm that beats out 2 warlocks that’s the issue. It seems like only the warden will work and he dies so easily.

Itolis.8590:

Shatter works great for condition mesmers. Consider the stack of 5 confusion from the scepter plus cry of frustration on a single target and they suddenly have 12 stack of confusion and die in about 4 seconds. It work just fine as it was intended to. Just because you don’t use it that way doesn’t mean others don’t.

This post feels a lot like it’s out of left field. Whose the you you’re referring to in that last sentence?

Also I’d just like to add a tidbit about illusion and how much I hate it for solo PvE. Mob attack speed is slow most of the time. Really really slow. You usually see about 1 tick that stack you worked so hard to put up before it’s gone. Boss attack speed is generally incredibly slow as well making its use in dungeons just as limited. At least that’s how it feels.

Scepter on the whole felt like a very weak weapon to me when I used it.

It feels that way but I’m unsure about all the trait interactions etc. Plus I’m sick and somewhat delirious with fever so I just need others to confirm my sanity. At least until my health improves.

EasymodeX is saying that you hold onto those phantasms while you eye their cooldown timers. As the phantasms cooldowns come back up you watch the ones currently out and wait for them to finish their next attack.

The second you see them use that their attack press your shatter key and start summoning a replacement phantasm.

I do not know if this is actually a DPS gain though and I’d need someone to go over the numbers for us.

Actually you would shift damage AWAY from shatter’s and simply buff the shatter traits.

Not following here. Shift the base damage of Wrack and Cry into other abilities before we consider traits? Won’t this irritate people who are already having a hard time with our kit in PvP? I mean I’m all for making our 1 abilities not so laughably bad on most weapons but I don’t think our Phantasm build needs to hit other players harder.

If this is a PvE discussion about PvE mechanics then this is a moot point and what you’re saying makes sense. But if I take PvP into account we’ll just kill people faster.

Malakree.5912:

I feel like shatter should break all clones but not destroy the phantasms while giving you an effect based on the total number of illusions. This would make them way more useful for ALL builds of mesmer while also meaning the phantasm reload in the illusions tree isn’t so heavily misplaced it’s unreal. It would also make it a lot more viable to quick fire off the various shatter’s meaning that the fact mind wrack is so much better than cry of frustration doesn’t matter.

Then make all shatter’s cast as an instant projectile (as opposed to having your illusions run at them) and based on your target.

Mindwrack: Deals damage to your target an all target’s around it, combine with phantasms not breaking would actually give us some really strong aoe.

Cry of frustration: Applies 3 stacks of confusion for each illusion.

Diversion: dazes your target for 1/2/3(4) seconds based on number of illusions you have out.

Change Illusionary Persona to do this if it’s deemed too powerful to be given to us base and I will be so freaking happy.

Diversion may need to stay as a clone crawl shatter though. Instant dazes flying at people in PvP with our current power may be a bit much.

If we do everything the above suggests we need to shift more damage into shatters though. We cannot keep our phantasms dealing such ridiculous numbers and gain a reliable AoE spike.

Vvix.9570:

SevenSigma.7462:

Vvix.9570:

Aside from focus I consider greatsword to be the weapon I use in most cases, it’s just straight good damage and range, and I’m a fan of both(even tho I hope they’ll make our GS skill #3 be a litttle better in the future…)

Thing is, GS is a single-target weapon. #3 has too small an area, and Phantasmal Berserker is not very reliable. Staff, on the other hand, has both superb single-target damage (Phantasmal Warlock) and Chaos Storm, which can single-handedly turn the tide on a group fight.

Also, why Scepter over Sword?

I know my weapon combination choices are far from the usual and difficult to understand, didn’t help that I should have said that I was doing mostly WvW with the said combination, I still use them at pve, but I swap combinations often there.

I’ve used sword + focus(and pistol) before in WvW, and it’s great(warden aoe + pull + sword number 3 + sword number 2 is an incredibly powerful aoe combo, granted it depends on a lot of things going right, including the sword skill #3….), but, given that I’m running a build that relies(some) on confusion to deal damage(running 20 pts into the illusions trait line), and that I just like having range at all times in WvW, I decided to run scepter instead of sword. I still wish the scepter skills had a bit more range, or a trait to increase it.

About the GS x Staff topic: I find the cripple from the berserker just essential in WvW(and in Spvp too for that matter), it’s great for catching people, it’s our only real long range snare. With that said I’m sure it’s likely that I could do even better with staff over GS, maybe I just need to find the right build for it. And I’m not sure what you meant by saying that the berserker wasnt very reliable, could you elaborate please?

Maybe he meant you can’t control which direction the berserker spins. It could just as easily twirl into that pack of 3 angry Charr as viciously spinning over that poor rabbit after it goes through its target.

Mindstab is pretty horrible. However I have to disagree about being a single target weapon. Mirror Blade and phantasmal berserker both spawn something fairly close to our target so it’s a good tool for trying to get long range mind wracks off.

Phantasmal berserker will also attempt to spawn even if the target is obstructed. This means that as long as someone is in range you can spawn the phantasm on them. This is a great tool in WvWvW for attacking through keep walls.

yvesbeaumont.3291:

if the scepter wasn’t so weak, i’d try that out. especially since your clones don’t overwrite the phantasms now.

I only wish this were true. Clones will attempt to overwrite clones first however if you get 3 phantasms out the scepter auto attack will consume the first phantasm you spawned.

Marxo.3829:

You missed the part where I said the strength of the shatter build is that it doesn’t matter if the odd illusion dies because it is designed to crank them out at such a high rate.

Your build on the other hand is very vulnerable to pet death.

Don’t confuse one big number being better than lots of small ones. With all the confusion/other condition stack in addition to mind wrack damage and the fact that phantasms will still get a volley or two out, it certainly does add up.

You are somehow envisioning a perfect set up where you have 3 warlocks standing there in one spot, (which takes a long time to set up relatively), safe from harm with no target changing. It’s so far from the reality of GW2 play it’s bizarre.

I should add that yes, the maybe a few situations where the fight mechanics will permit you to /popcorn and let phantasms do their thing but that situation is a rarity to say the least.

Jesus tap dancing Christ, did you really just insult my reading comprehension when you failed to address ANYTHING I said about a shatter build’s flaws. Oh and then the shot at my ability to understand or do math when your own numbers are far from factual. They do not in fact add up.

1: Your build is limited by Wrack’s Cooldown! It doesn’t matter how many useless pets you can field if you have more than you can reasonably shatter. This is a huge flaw in our shatter builds that you need to address

2: You need to prove that Wrack can consistently outpace 2 locks that live to see a third volley. At 80 on a boss that’s about 13k worth of damage

3: Clones can and will die before they reach their shatter target a good percentage of the time. Warlocks have the advantage of ranged delivery. You are vastly understating how frequently 1 or 2 clones don’t arrive.

4: No idiot is going to stand in one place with their auto on and spam 3 on any boss. Fortunately you have these cool movement keys that let you place your pets at safer areas in the room. You can get 3 out on basically any fight. The ones where this is problematic are the also the ones that chunk shatter builds and even still you can usually field two constantly. See above.

5: Confusion is a very poor condition in PvE. Boss attack speed is usually too slow for it to contribute a significant source of our damage.

6: Most bosses have 0 target changing. Other classes can swap more efficiently than we can anyway.

7: Shatter builds do have their uses, Phantasm ones simply cover more bases while being harder to kill

So, lets propose builds that solve these issues shall we?