Guild Wars 2

Levetty.1279:

Its the only viable build because its the only one that has a place where it can preform well (WvW roaming where the enemy is too lazy to run away if losing). All other builds are pretty much useless or outperformed by every other class in their intended role, except maybe throwing out reflects in dungeons.

If you actually played Mesmer you would want actual substantial buffs like the other classes are getting this patch, worthwhile GM traits outside of illusions and some QoL improvements instead of some poorly thought out scepter change, more nerfs and the third time we have been told we will get the same bug fixes that never work.

Stop it please. All this “PU is the only viable build” rant is really pathetic. We get a strong zerg build (thanks to mantra of pain buff and the distortion on phantasms), buffs to shatter and phantasm builds (really, fixing iLeap is absolutely enough for 4/4/0/0/6 shatter to be a beast again), buffs to our lockdown builds (again, mantra AoE), buffs to our condition builds (torment and staff clones), bugfixes, and a well deserved nerf on one single broken build.

While I agree with you that many GM traits are crap, buffing them would probably be way too much for a single patch. Maybe we will get something done there with the next feature patch, but these fixes and buffs were much more needed!

Feaduin.7603:

1. The 4-4-6 Condi/PU build was never OP in the fist place.

Sorry, but I should have stopped reading there…

What Coulter said: “Undodgable things are not good for the game”.

And btw: it is not like every class had an evade on autoattack. There are a few skills like blurred frenzy or Warrior GS3 which will allow players to destroy the clones without getting hit by the condis. But really, if they use these skills to destroy your clones, the trait is working as intended.

Please stop defending your lame build.

aelfwe.4239:

As mesmer with around 5k hour played i totally agree with those changes.

Thx anet.

IE fix and scepter buff will improve a lot of different mesmer builds and its nice you didnt touch them.

Nerfing the single build (pu) which would take too much advantage from them, has been the best choice.

Thx again

I agree 100%. PU was way too strong and needed a nerf. The trait will still be strong after the patch but we won’t see 75% of the mesmers running some variation of the common PU build.

About all the “they nerfed every build” comments: I have been playing mesmer since release and I have never really played any of the boring meta PU/clonedeath builds. So all the awesome builds I’ve been playing have not been nerfed at all. In fact my builds will be stronger after the patch and I will have tons of new stuff to try!

So to all the whiners: cry me a river! Learn to play this very awesome class and don’t reduce it to some op traits.

And to ArenaNet: thx for these awesome changes. The better part of my mesmer wishlist is being implemented, so I am very happy with the upcoming patch.

Dear ArenaNet,

Will there be other ways to get Ascended Keeper Recipes than the rare drop in the last living story part? While I’d love to get a Keeper armor for my guardian I won’t pay over 300 gold for the recipes while all the other stats are so much cheaper!

Cheers!

It would be really nice to get a dev answer to this. I was going to craft a full celestial ascended armor and weapons for my elementalist and/or guardian because of the heavy crit dmg i’d get together with some defensive stats. If you’d really set ferocity to the same level as the other stats I’d lose around 11% crit dmg from weapons and Armor alone. Please don’t do this! Celestial absolutely needs the crit dmg to be usefu!

It would be nice to hear about your plans on celestial equipment because I would really like to craft my ascended armor before april.

I don’t think this build is that strong. I did only watch the first video but as far as I can see you win most of your fights because of the absolutely overpowered melandru rune+dogged march+lemongrass combo and because your opponents fail to dodge kill shot multiple times.

While I don’t like the rifle at all I do still have a suggestion for your build:
-You don’t really need hightened focus because you use kill shot very often and therefore don’t get the full benefit from this trait.
-since your rifle applies bleeds you would benefit a lot from the attack of opportunity trait (this is a huge dmg boost!)
-5 extra points in defence could increase your armour by 50 points and your attack by 170.
—> If you’d change the build to 0/25/25/0/20 you’d deal more dmg and have more armour! Kill shot would still be on 80% crit chance with fury.

Cheers!

There are other ways to play than 25/30/0/0/15 and full berserk.

While I do agree that this is the best equip/trait combination for a lot of dungeons I do prefer a more defensive build for fractals since there are lots of situation where you will get hit no matter what you do (and if you manage to stay in melee without getting hit a single time you must be some thief god imo).

My Fractal build:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.5p.h2.8.5p.h4|5.5l.h1|1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e|2v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0|0.u12c.p56.f2.0|2n.2|57.5e.5d.5c.0|e

The survivability of this build is insane: 2800 armor, 16k+ health, lots of dodges (acrobatics 15) and blind on stealth.
At the same time your d/d or d/p dps is still very high because of the hidden killer trait (10k + with backstab) and if you happen to have warrior and ranger in your team you’ll still have a crit chance of 60-70%.

Cheers!

This rune is a serious problem in WvW at the moment. I’ve played several hours of wvw roaming in the last 2 days and it seems like 50% of my opponents (especially warriors, thiefes and ingis) are using this new rune.

I’ve never had problems with 1v1 fights in the past but with this rune most fights are a joke and I have zero chance to win against opponents with this rune. Combat usually starts with some interrupts for 10+ confusion. A good player can often interrupt my heal skill or condi remove for even more confusion and if i happen to successfully cast a condi remove I usually get 10 new stacks immediately.

This is obviously completely overpowered.

If you look at other confusion sources in the game this is even more obvious: Mesmer confusion usually lasts for 3-5s and only one single skill (scepter 3) can apply 5 stacks of confusion.

Please, dear developers nerf this rune in the next patch! It completely ruins small scale combat at the moment. A internal cooldown and reduced duration to 3-5 s would be very nice.

I was talking about this build:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s;4RKVL0Y4JL-60;9;5O-TE;127;21585;9;5o-FvVHw6;2Vp-wWz12Z8_E5230C-2i;9;9;9;9;3kkkkkkh

I’m also testing this build at the moment (more direct damage but not as much support):

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s;4RKVL0Y4JL-60;9;4J;0JT49;518-58BLJ;0S;9o-kKVH-VK;1Vp-wWz12Z8_E5230C-2i;9;9;9;9;3kkkkkkR

HeyHey!

I need some help with my dungeon build.
Since I’m working on the legendary warhorn Howler at the moment I’d like to do something different than the usual 30/25/0/0/15 or 30/0/0/10/30 and use 20 points in tactics for the “Quick Breathing” trait. Equipment is 100% berserker.

Now my Question to the experienced warriors out there is: what sort of weapons and traits would you use alongside the warhorn?

Additional info: I’d like to play the warrior in all dungeons but not in the fractals and I’m only doing runs with my guild which usually does “semi-speedruns” (as fast as possible with whatever classes are available).

My first Idea was this one btw. but i might not do enough dmg with this:
Sword/Warhorn + Bow might stacking:
(0/25/0/30/15)

->8s Fire field and 3x combo finisher: blast for might stacking and the mainhand sword with 95% crit chance (including fury, banner and some cheap buff food).

Cheers and thanks for your help!

BlueSoda.6297:

It looks like, from that error message, that what happened was when you disconnected the area you were in became full, so you are probably in the overflow. I would say that they need to right-click join you in your overflow.

No, I tried to open it alone now and it didn’t work.

ninja’d

Same here. Seems to be a general problem (people were discussing this bug in the mapchat).

I tried several things (forcequit GW2, relog, change character etc.) and nothing worked.

I don’t think that this is a problem at all. The events in southsun cove are harder than other events. But to be honest, I’m very bored with most other events, where you can walk into big groups of enemies with zero defense and slaughter them in seconds.

Use your defensive abilities! A well placed wall of reflection, feedback, daggerstorm, whirling defence or magnetic aura will destroy a whole group of Karkas on its own. Endure Pain, Shield stance, smoke screen, swirling winds, obsidian flesh or what ever lets you survive the initial burst and cc abilities will prevent the karka overrun!

I can’t see no reason to play anything but 0/10/0/30/30. The last 10 points in water are far superior to the extra 10 points in air (2% dmg/ boon is usually at least 10% in dungeons) and 30 points in arcana for the boon duration, faster attunement swap, boons on attunement, vigor on crits and evasive arcana (additional blast finisher and heal!) is also more or less a must have. I do also think that the faster attunement swap is very useful

The problem with the fire aura build: you don’t actually need that much fury. As Thrashbarg mentioned above, other classes (like warrior) will also grant fury to the party so you can get about 100% fury uptime without using the flame aura stuff.

About our usefulness: I do only run dungeons with my guild and we do usually have a guardian, 2 warriors and a mesmer in our group and we do about 95% of all fights in melee. In my opinion the D/D ele is very helpful in this group, because he can provide a lot of protection (very high uptime together with the guardian), regeneration, burst heal, condition remove and cc for the defense as well as plenty of might (12-15 stacks) and fury for dmg support.

I’m playing on Kodash (Rank 5) and I’ve been trying to get my world completion for two months now.
Unfortunately Elona Reach is on Rank 4 and since they are always better than us it is very unlikely for Kodash to reach rank 4 in the next few months.
Is there a way to get world completion without a paid world transfer?

Cheers

A question for ArenaNet: are you planning to release additional legendary weapons in the near future?

I ask this because I would really like to craft a legendary weapon but I don’t like any of the available ones well enough!

Cheers ant thanks.
Arahain

Try GS/Longbow with bolas (or stomp/balanced stance), endure Pain and Bulls charge, 20/20/0/10/20. I use some knight equipment and t/power/critdmg rings for about 2400 armor and insane dmg. I usually play in a small roaming party and sometimes ikittenerg. F1 and skill 3 on longbow are insane against groups. 2x immobilize, bulls charge and GS are strong against all glasscannons and with swiftness, GS and bulls charge you can leave most fights alive.

Or run one of the tanky builds mentioned above. I’m not experienced with those but I think they sound very funny (especially with Hammer!).

My warrior is not as strong as my mesmer and I doubt he’ll ever be. But I like the playstile and feel of the warrior in pvp/wvw so I can only encourage you to keep experimenting with builds until you find one that suits you!

Most important: play with people you know, use voice chat and play together. Teamwork is very important, especially as warrior!

One of the biggest advantages of the sword is the double combo-finish leap. Learn to use it in the right moment and you will love the sword! Example: we do often have a ranger or ele in our dungeon group and if you double leap inside a water combo field you are healed for about 2.8k. Or you use it after casting the mighty feedback to get chaos armor! It also works as a stunbreaker (the second leap).

Unlike other people I think that the sword autoattack ist great. It has the mesmers highest dps and since the last update hits up to 3 targets with every attack. It also removes boons (and there are still some situations where this is very useful).

I like the idea but it probably wouldn’t be enough.

Some Ideas I had:
1. I would really like to get additional rewards for doing all paths of a dungeon in a single week. Something like the daily fractals chest, with some additional tokens and a increased chance to get exotics for example! The same would be possible as daily reward for doing a dungeon for the first time that day.
2. If all dungeon vendors would sell lv 80 rares we would finally know what to do with our caudecus/ ascalon/ twilight/ dredge tokens after completing our exotic sets!
3. Better loot in harder dungeons: it should be possible to judge the difficulty of every dungeon by now. It’d be nice if the harder/ longer dungeons would be more rewarding (more lodestones/ cores and rare+ drops).

First of all you need to know: you won’t be able to farm as good as some other classes like thief or warrior. In my opinion your best options are:
Sword: hits up to 3 enemies per strike. Good AoE with skill 2.
Focus: the phantasm often dies very fast against big groups, but has high aoe potential.
Greatsword: AoE with Skill 3 and good AoE on the Phantasm.
Mind Wrack: another strong AoE. Combine it with mirror images for fast AoE!

Scepter, Staff, Pistol, 2. Hand Sword, Torch: not very useful (no strong/ fast AoE Skills).

Traits: everything that buffs the mentioned weapons/ skills.

I do also have problems with mobs continuing to attack me even after I disappear into stealth. For example in a fight against a Mesmer in WvW today. I use shadow refuge so his phantasms should stay where they are and wait for me to break stealth. They did however attack me while I was stealthed and I therefore got spiked to death by a iBerzerker and a iDuelist.

There would have been some good fixes for the stealth problem. For example stealth could cause a loss of aggro over time. If you’d stay stealthed for 3-4 seconds you’d lose aggro as in the past. But if you would immediately use backstab after stealthing, the enemy would instantly turn around like he does now.

To be honest, this ruined the thief for me (in pve at least). I have a Mesmer and Warrior with full exotic/ascended gear as well and now there is simply no longer a excuse to play the thief in any dungeon. I used to deal more damage with my thief, because I was able to focus on stealth and evade for defense. But with the stealth nerf I feel like I can’t play full berzerk anymore and this means that I won’t be able to deal more damage than my warrior or mesmer nor can I match them in survivability or general utility (tons of party-wide boos with the warrior and lots of reflection, crowd-control and clones with the mesmer).

So in general I would be very happy if there was an explanation about the intention behind this change. Is this really what the update should have done or did something go wrong?

Same problem, EU Server (Kodash).

For PvE the iWarden doesen’t need any improvements in my opinion. I use it very often and with the reflection trait it kicks kitten It is probably the strongest weapon skill you can use on a ranged enemy (drop one on a young karka if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and still does the highest possible mesmer dmg on any group of enemies. If you know how to use temporal curtain to pull enemies together (I’m still working on it to be honest :P) his lack of mobility is no big problem.
The focus is of course useless on most melee bosses but you can easily switch to sword/pistol for them.

If you have problems with mobs walking out of your iWarden’s range I would guess that you are playing with randoms? I usually tell my friends to stay in the iWardens range if possible or even pull some mobs in there (guardian with greatsword are great for this).

Thanks for the answers!
I will probably try a mix of knight (chest, trousers, helm, rings) and berserker (everything else), ignoring condition dmg. I should have at least some survivability and rather high dmg with this combination.

@Kisarae: are the air/centaur runes superior to six ruby orbs (120 power, 84 precision, 12% crit dmg) or scholar runes in your experience?

Thanks for the advice with the traits btw. your suggestions make perfect sense!

Hello there!

Since my mesmer will hit lv 80 in the next few days I’m thinking about which build and equipment to use. I have lots of ideas for cool builds, my favorite one being a 20, 20, 0 25, 5 Phantasm build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNAR8dlwzipHVzqGaNJyZGR3yhWAJFqWqVSxsdhA). Yet I have no idea how to equip my mesmer (I play Dungeons and WvW)!

My first Idea was to go full knight since I’ve read in other posts that crit dmg on equipment doesn’t work on phantasms. I dropped this plan after testing this on the training Golems in Heart of the Mists, because crit dmg on equipment does seem to work on phantasms!

So my second Idea was to combine rampager armor with knight trinkets and berserker jewels. But does the condition dmg make sense? I do always apply some conditions (bleeds from my illusions and confusion) but it’s hard to say if the condition dmg is worth it in my a Build! Or should I take more knight and/or berserker stuff?

I would really appreciate it if a more experienced mesmer would give some advice.

Cheers
Arahain