Guild Wars 2

Link says it’s a Bad one… but it’s:

30 – V, VI, XII
0
0
15 – V
25 – V, VIII

Power/Precision/Vitality Gear.
2 monk, 2 water, 2 strength runes.
Glyph of Storms (mostly for WvW), Arcane Wave (for Blast finisher), and Mist Form.

Thoughts?

I’m not sure if this is common knowledge, but I was quite surprised to find out tonight that the Confusion damage shown on the tooltip on gw2skills.net build calculator, appears to be exactly half of what the actual damage is for in-game Confusion.

Illustrated Here: http://oi59.tinypic.com/o8uddw.jpg

The picture shows my build on gw2skills.net, with 1527 Condition damage doing 180 Confusion damage. However, with that same build/gear in-game, it shows 1604 Condition damage (I had Might I think?) doing 371 Confusion damage with 1 stack. Or, as mentioned above, almost exactly double what the calculator shows.

This is a pretty significant thing to know when attempting to make a Condition build viable like I’ve been doing the past week. I didn’t check if the Torment damage was also halved/different, although it seems to be displaying what I would imagine is more accurate. This makes a 3 clone Cry of Frustration suddenly make them hit themselves for 2200+ damage, instead of barely 1000, with my gear at least. That’s HUGE.

Were others aware of this?

Your sword/offhand in a condition staff build is mostly just for survival/utility/swiftness with focus in my opinion.

I rock a 0/25/25/0/20 build that I’ll link to at bottom of post. I run with almost entirely Rabid gear, have about 1400 condition damage, 30% armor reduction and 16k hp. I am VERY hard to kill, and if you don’t have condition removal – you die. My burns tic for 750~ and my bleeds for just over 100 per tic, per bleed. That’s somewhere close to 2-3k damage/tic a few seconds into battle.

Works great solo PvE, decently in dungeons (it’s mostly a suicide clone build, I rarely shatter), decently in WvW roaming. Not sure about tPvP.

Build: http://tinyurl.com/abjrqyy

You also have 3 different spells to get chaos armor from, so I have chaos armor like 75% of the time I’m in combat. (Feedback, Null Field, Chaos Storm + Phase retreat = chaos armor).

I really like having a character that can stay alive, and I really like conditions. So this is hands down the build for me. Tried a shatter build, amongst a ton of other builds, but could never get into it. I’ve solo’d end bosses in Explorable mode dungeons when everybody else has died for the last 25% at times.

Edit: 6x Rune of the Undead, for the extra 5% Toughness into Condition damage, giving you a total of 10% of your toughness (mine is around 1800) into condition damage, which equates about 150-200 depending on your gear.

Nobody else seems like they’re going to… so I’ll tackle this one.

But first let me address something important here. You mention 3 times in your post that you think you’re not good enough to play a certain way. Allow me to enlighten you about something: nobody is born with an innate sense of video game skill. Someone didn’t pick the game up and suddenly understand everything about Mesmers, Guardians, Thieves, whatever. It took them time, and trial and error, and experience. Don’t ever let your doubt of being able to do something get in the way of trying it. This applies to video games, life, your career. Anything. Remember that.

Now, as for builds, based on what you describe I’ll link you the PU Condi build that I run when I’m playing that style. I haven’t played it in a few weeks so am not sure if I would have changed anything, but the basic idea is this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fhEQNAW7flknpRtlpxVNcrNitxY6LKpC0NUZDYYA-T1yCABQoEEgHAwxHEg92foJleXq+TBm+k4IAklyA90NM9FAQUQaE-w

Now, this is just my tweaking the general setup for PU, so some things are moveable and changeable based on your preference obviously. Gear included. I like being Tanky as hell when I play Condition spec, so I’ve got a TON of armor, on top of the PU boons I get. I also like lower cooldowns, and exploding clones, so I take 3 in Illusions and 5 in Dueling. Others builds’ may vary.

Shatter plays very differently in the sense that it requires a lot more of an “active” approach to killing things. With PU Condi, stuff can attack you, you can attack back, and generally if you don’t just stand there and choose good times to use invis and hide while your clones do some work, you’re going to have a good chance at winning. Shatter you need to setup the fight to your advantage, or catch people off guard. Again, takes some time to learn, but anyone can do it. If you want to play Shatter, the standard spec is 4/4/0/0/6. Traits don’t vary too much, but you take Illusionary Persona as your 6th trait in Illusions, and Deceptive Evasion in dueling. The others can be swapped around a bit, but there’s a few better than others mostly.

Hope this helps man. Play what you want, not what you think you are capable of being good at. With enough time, anyone can get good at anything. It just takes some people more time than others.

Ahhh…. well that makes more sense. Good to know, thanks.

Edit: So THIS is the “Confusion Nerf” everyone talked about for the year I didn’t play.

Hey everyone.

I played a Mesmer for almost 2 years. I recently switched over to my Elementalist for a while, and have to say that as a Staff Ele it’s such a huge change when roaming with zerg in WvW. I feel so useful. I can heal, I can actually tag things in ZvZ fights because of ground targets. I have blocks, slows, bleeds, burns, roots, reflect.

My basic question here is… I really like playing my Mesmer, but having had a taste of Elementalist it’s tough to try and come back.

What does a Mesmer have in WvW/large scale fights that Ele doesn’t? Or rather, what is the Mesmer’s “role” in large scale fights? I just feel like as a GS/Staff Shatter mesmer in WvW I’m simply there to tag along for the ride. When defending, I don’t really do much. When attacking… I don’t really do much?

I’m totally sincere, sorry if it comes across as a troll. I really want to like my Mesmer more than my Ele (mostly because Sunrise, lol). It just seems that the… variation?… of Ele FAR surpasses that of a Mesmer.

Looking for some things I can focus on that Mesmer’s do better, if possible.

I had even tried to come up with a viable GS/Staff Condi build but… it just didn’t work out that well. Mesmer seems very pigeon-holed.

Mesmer is an excellent solo class. We don’t necessarily kill things as fast as other professions, but I have, on numerous occasions, solo’d veterans and even champions under the right circumstances – sometimes even in MF Gear.

The thing to note however is: Mesmer doesn’t truly shine until about 40+ when you’ve got some traits and abilities. We are a very slow starting class. Stick to it though, and the reward is great.

Definitely depends on spec, but our AoE leaves a lot to be desired in most cases. Our single target is more dependent on what weapon set and build you use. Nothing super important has changed though with the class, a few cooldown differences and such.

Limited combo fields aren’t a huge deal. And besides, the ones we do have are awesome (almost all ethereal fields, granting Chaos Armor). There’s more than you think though if you use the right slot skills.

Mesmers are decently in demand. Nobody will turn you away that’s for sure. They just might not be looking directly for you. I’ve solo’d the last half of many EXP mode bosses because the rest of my party wiped though. While they shout “Just die so we can reset”, I just end up soloing and winning lol.

Mesmer is, in my opinion, one of the most challenging and fun classes. The payoff is sometimes way better than some, and sometimes worse. You probably won’t be standing auto attacking like a Guardian/Warrior does, but you also won’t be skill spamming quite like an Elementalist all the time. The decision is up to you, but I just leveled an Ele to 80, and a few days later jumped back to my Mesmer with over 500 hours.

Cheers
Euca

I can’t wait to iLeap someone, jump off a cliff, have them jump after me, and then swap back to where my illusion is standing on the cliff.

I haven’t really been doing the event stuff yet as I’m working a lot… but wanted to check with anyone if you could get the Dragon Wings back skin through the new Festival of the Four Winds? I wasn’t playing at the time of the Dragon Wings event due to a break, and I’d really like to get it for my Mesmer…