I have been running a condition shatter build after the patch. As long as I am not caught off guard ( and even then…) I will always kill the theif. The few Eles I have fought haven’t been a problem either but I only 1v1ed 3 Eles who weren’t great.
How many salt mines do you own exactly?
Hey I was a Mesmer main and now I switched over to Thief and was playing with a D/P 2/6/0/0/6 build in sPvP, I do pretty well against most opponents as long as I time my skills right but Mesmers are incredibly hard to fight effectively for me, even though I know the skill rotations of the Mesmer like the back of my hand.
I hope they increase it’s damage overall, but fix that godkitten FGS. Really, An Ele is nothing more than a FGS delivery right now.
Try playing Mesmer then and you would never say soemthing so silly. Elementist are much more than a FGS delivery system, they have a role in every game mode.
Yeah A full duelist burst onto you will get 8 stacks of bleed if it all hits you, not to mention the 2-3k damage it does on its own if every shot crits. So some illusions, mostly phantasms, need to be taken out just to alleviate pressure.
Hey I mained Mesmer since the beta and just recently switched to Ele thanks to all the nerfs. Most condition Mesmers you wil run into will be PU so here are some tips.
1. Most Conditon Mesmers are running clone death traits, meaning everytime you are close to a dying clone you will get a bunch of nasty conditons. With only two adept traits they can apply cripple, and either bleed/weakness/vulnerability. So kill the clones from afar or avoid killing them.
2. In the same vain for 3 points they can get a trait that makes their clones inflict bleeding every time they crit, and clones take on the Mesmers crit chance and damage. If they have this and the above traits(Common in the meta PU build) you will have to kill their clones ot mitigate their condi damage, which might justi nflict more condis on you.
3. When they exit stealth avoid the urge to try and knocj them down or burst them hard. More often than not they will have Aegis and Protection after coming out of stealth, which will heavily negate your damage.
4. Avoid the scepter block, it inflicts 5 stacks of torment, and it is deadly.
Hope this helps you out
After watching you tube videos of players and some streams it seems like, at least to me, a Thief or Ele is the best dueling wise, it just depends on the players skill.
Alright so what makes D/D ele so hard of a fight? On my Mesmer they are nothing but then again that is Mesmer.
I see a lot of complaining about S/D thief, how do they rank up in the list. Also how does an Ele fair against a thief?
Depends on the spec of the thief.
Easiest to hardest for me:
P/p<D/d<D/p<S/d<P/d.P/d is just a joke of a cheese spec, I do much better against it when i play with diamond skin though.
None of the others will be a push over, if the thief is good it’ll be a close fight and if you’re caught in the wrong rotation it’s over. Even poor thieves will be a pain if they land a backstab as it can be a sudden 7-9k damage, and then they spam heartseekers for 3-4k a pop.
So my advice is to time your dodges really well, don’t wander round spamming auto attacks in a circle as it makes it so much easier to land backstabs when you do that. I played a d/d thief for a year, and i found eles to be one of the easier classes to kill.
Awesome advice, how about an engineer?
Thanks for the answers, I was a Mesmer main but with all the nerfs I am looking for a class to swotch to, and since Mesmer was a great roamer I wish to switch to another good one so I am looking at every class weakness’s. What is interesting it seems is that Engis have no problems with thieves, who have no problem with Eles, who have no problem with engis. At least that is how it looks to me so far.
How is engi vs S/D thieves and D/D eles?
Awesome video, I am just starting to play thief and I am wondering if you have tips for Engineers and Ele’s and how well do you do against those classes normally?
How does a D/D ele do against a thief?
Well I’m glad it has remained that way, can you sum up some of the most popular 1v1 builds currently and how well they compete against each other?
I just came back to the game from a long break and I am looking for exactly what the title says.
I believe the build I made a while back was one of the few that used Dire armor, It was 20/0/30/0/20, Taking all standard PU traits and in Illusions the first trait is up to you but the second should be IE. Weapons are Scepter/Torch and Staff with doom sigils for some great poison. I was very, very, very hard to kill and my biggest weakness was Conditions, which were mitigated by torch and phantasmal defender.
I honestly forgot you were on Yaks Bend Skcamow, I’ll send you a message when I am in game. Otherwise Thanks for the help Abusive, Fort Aspen has seemed very interesting to me as it has a large but not to large community.
I am really not sure if this is the appropriate forum. However I have never been involved in a community as much as the Mesmer forum here so I feel like I should look here first. I am looking for a new server to switch to, I am currently in Yaks Bend and am looking for a server with both an active PvP and WvW community with strong guilds. When it comes to population I don’t really care. I am more looking for a community I can play, test, and generally have fn with. The more mesmers the better.
Hey Chaos I would love to help wit the fight sessions as a Tester, since i get to try a lot of builds out and experience there strengths and flaws.
I do believe Lockdown is the highest skill cap build and the hardest to play. I took a long break from GW2 to focus on school and now that I have that under control I have started playing again. Coming I had to start with a PU build to get reacquainted, then moved to shatter and have been experimenting since to build back up my reflex’s and skill. Soon I will change to the 20/20/30 Lockdown build to get back into that whole play style. Interrupts by definition require good timing, dazing however can be chained in quite a , I guess, un-skillful way. But that doesn’t really provide an effective build, to truly be good you have to know the tells of ALL enemies spells and interrupt them just right, since some of the cast times fall as low as 1 second. Not to mention I helped skcamow test an early version of a lockdown build and it was one of the hardest things to do as a very experienced Mesmer, Lockdown is not easy in any sense of the word.
That is much more balanced
Sounds like you just want a button to instantly save your kitten , but we have plenty of ways to avoid damage otherwise without some OP elite. The teleport would be nice I agree but the three high DPS phantasms is overkill.
Hey Osicat just wanted to say after coming back from a break your Stealth chatter build is the one I favor so far out of all the ones I tried. The only things I changed to fit my style of play were instead of CC in the Domination tree I took Shattered Concentration and in Dueling to the shorter Mantra recharge. I also changed out blink for the Stability mantra as now it is a stun breaker on shorter CD than blink.
Hey I am back after a long break and started playing with this spread in sPvP, it has been awhile mind you but kitten is it effective, there is something satisfying about hitting the enemy team with a shatter that removes all their boons then mind wracking them right after. I got to say you guys have really explored the lockdown playstyle a lot in such a short time, after I craft a set of berserker gear I will begin testing builds for WvW, which is of course my favorite area. the 30/10/30 build seems like an epic Mantra group support build in WvW if your just running a small 5 man. With that said I have to say thieves are my most hated enemy, I can barely lock them down with all the stealth they have, conditions aren’t even that problematic as of yet.
@skcamow
Thanks for the nomination, I took a little break from GW2 because of finals and have now returned to play once again. I see it is to late to enter the contest but I appreciate your nomination non the less and will enter next month. I am excited to see all these new builds I don’t recognize compete in this months contest. Good luck to all competitors
Tbh the only class I lose to while roaming is a Necromancer and that is only on occasion. Rangers are by far the easiest followed by guardians/warriors. The others are mostly dependent on the skill of the player using it.
Wooo its back!
/char15
So the viability of all these builds is still high. The current meta however prefers condition damage to this because it is more consistent and I believe higher. HEavy is the most viable of all as it is the tankiest and best equipped to deal with the current meta.
WvW Condtion/Bunker
I am glad we’re having another competition for November. I am looking forward to competing.
I intend to since no one else is willing to answer questions. I’ll do the best I can.
I’m here although I am not entirely sure what to post tbh. I have the final form of my Dire armor build though.
If anyone has any genuine questions on shatter feel free to ask me or any other tester/teacher in OMFG. I played osicats shatter spec for awhile in WvW both roaming and in zerg (Much less success there)
I want video, and not of people running away
When I run with Zergs in WvW or when I’m doing GvG I always take it. Having another source of feedback bubbles is great as there is always someone who drops at the beginning of the battle.
While what happened to the Duelist trait looks like a nerf it is not, it is just simply a fix. It does hurt us in the long run but TBH nothing on the skill info nor the trait info did it say it raises the chance of a projectile finisher to 100%.
My Traveler runes cost me about 31 gold but they were the single best investment I could make on my Mesmer. I have come to terms with the fact we were designed to be this slow from the get go to, IMO, counteract other benefits we get (Second largest amount of stealth’s, Staff mobility, unique utility skills etc.) Not sure why Anet decided to hurt our speed to balance us but it is one of the few explanations I can think of.
Yeah, come on mods please stickie this so every Mesmer that comes here can benefit. I mean Osicat quit GW2 and his thread is still stickied.
PU condition builds use Rabid armor and go 20-20-30-0-0 when it comes to traits. They rely on Sharper images to inflict bleeds while using scepter/torch & staff ( or sword/pistol) to inflict others. Natsus Blackwater build is an excellent example along with osicats non-shatter condition build in the sticky.
Build that does not require sharper images and kills most enemies, I doblost against the occasional necro. Mesmer does not need sharper images to be viable ina condition build and to say so is spreading a wild misnomer.
I agree with you Zen I think it would be an awesome build to use in a 5 man roaming squad. The aoe blinds and reflects would just be devastating to most groups.
I will say that I myself finally made the permanent switch to Traveler runes and I am now in love with them. The mobility you gain is phenomenal not just for getting around in WvW but also for pursuing and escaping enemies. I used to not be able to catch anyone who ran away but now only warriors can escape, not to mention if someone calls in back up while I am fighting them I simply Mass invis and run away. Running this with blink and the Staff make my in combat mobility ridiculously high.
I did loose some damage from changing runes of course (Was using Scavenging before) but the boost makes up for it so much and I was able to incorporate both the % buffs into my build. Sitting at 45% boon duration and 70% Condition with Rare veggie pizza, both solid numbers.
Hello once more Chaos, after some feedback from Pyro and some testing on my part I have updated my build to this version. It has much higher damage output along with more condition clearing.
Dueled some XOXO’s tonight. Good fights all around
Hey I am US and not EU
Beating thieves isn’t that hard you just have to react carefully. most thieves run something called Basilisk Venom witch stuns you on attack, simply carry any stun breaker skill to counter, and we have a lot. I usually carry two: Blink, and Decoy.
Hey I have been testing this build for over a month now and before I post a guide I would like someones second Opinion.
Go for it Chaos, I am actually going to try and do more GvG or at least Zerg running to get an even better feel for it since we have so few who choose to do that.