Guild Wars 2

It is entirely possible to be tanky as a Mesmer, it’ll obviously not be the same as tanking with a Guardian or Warrior, but it can work.

Try something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgIQNAscWlwzSqXUzhGaNJhJF9G5new8oPdUFAfpC8G

Your defensive tools will mainly be:
- Chaos Armor (from Staff and combo fields)
- Chaos Storm (Interrupts / Aegis)
- Blurred Frenzy / Block
- Regeneration (grants Protection)
- Illusionary Defender
- Shatters (Daze, Invulnerability, Condition Removal)
- Shatter resets for more shatters

The problem is the traits that give shatter damage will require that you sacrifice phantasm damage. For example, replacing Empowered Illusions by Mental Torment.

What could work with minimal change (untested) is putting 5 more points in Inspiration and speccing into defensive shatters, e.g. Shattered Conditions / Restorative Illusions / Vigorous Revelation, so that shattering becomes sacrificing illusions for self-defense while still providing moderate damage. After which you can bring your phantasms back and continue as usual. This would make your build even tankier than it was before.

Really, people should just man up and take the death. Logging out is an act of cowardice and a refusal to take the consequences for losing. Rationalize it however you want—deny badges, for laughs, etc—it’s still the same thing.

Just watched some of your videos, you are very skilled The first time I’ve seen a really compelling reason to try Pistol OH.

Out of curiosity though, how much do you change your setup/playstyle when you are in PvE, say doing Fractals?

There’s been a couple people on reddit/gw2guru who are experimenting with it, so far what we’ve got is the Prototype Fractal Capacitor + Vial of Mist Essence + ? + ?

Highly suspected Gift of Ascension is involved but of course no one has that many tokens yet, people have only barely been able to afford the Capacitor.

It’s also worth noting that even for a power build, the condition damage given in the Illusions tree is not wasted by any means. Since condition damage is not mitigated, every single point of condition damage you have is just extra damage, since there’s not really a tipping point where it becomes effective.

I’m getting pretty respectable confusion damage despite having no condition gear.

I could see a basis for an argument if the montly gave a reward unattainable by any other means, but they do not. You get karma and mystic coins, the former you can get doing practically anything, and the latter you can buy for 1s a pop.

You can equal the monthly reward via just a few hours of extra work. If you hate dungeons then simply do not complete the monthly. I can understand some level of annoyance but this is not a big deal.

I actually quite liked the story and graphics, and I don’t think class balance is nearly as bad as you make it to be. Warriors/thieves certainly are “easier” in a sense but I don’t think they are strictly stronger.

My issue with the story is it got kind of dull near the last few quests. And after completing the story and a set of exotic gear I haven’t had much ambition to do much, and my playtime has dropped off some. Up until that point it was great though.

Nope, but you can apply a new upgrade to replace the current one (it will destroy the current upgrade).

Does anyone have recommendations for a guild hosting website? At the very least with forums and ability to use with my own domain.

I can also host my own website if anyone has a good framework that could be used as a guild website.

The protection is applied whenever you receive the boon “Regeneration”, so it would depend on how those runes work.

My server, Maguuma, has gone about a month without a close matchup at all. We are either dominating, or being dominated, and in my opinion, the orbs are a big part of that. Why is it that the server that is strong enough to hold all 3 orbs rewarded with more strength? The outmanned buff is worthless, as well, and doesn’t encourage anyone.

Speaking of Maguuma specifically, we’ve actually had all 3 orbs in this matchup at certain points, even while having the lowest score. I’m not saying there aren’t issues with the orbs in general, but in this particular case I think it’s a different problem.

Sea of Sorrows has historically been a “night capping” server, in the sense that the majority of their WvW population plays during the night. It’s a lot more dramatic than most other servers, as they basically take the entire map during the night, then lose the entire map during the day.

What’s happened in this matchup is apparently Sea of Sorrows has recruited a few extra guilds, making their daytime WvW comparable to us, while still being unstoppable at nighttime. It’s this sudden shift in their WvW strength that’s caused them to dominate the matchup so hard… so the real problem is that the matchup was made based on their previous strength and not their current one.

One of the most annoying parts to me is that you can use partial charges, but the cooldown timer doesn’t start until you’ve used the last charge. If you have 3 charges of Mantra then used one and are dropped out of combat, should you just waste 2 charges to set off the cooldown? Then wait X seconds before spending the 4s to charge it again?

I’ve found when I’m running Mantras that I tend to spend way too much time inbetween skirmishes just sitting there resetting all my Mantras to make sure I’m at optimal combat potential, and it gets pretty tedious after a while.

EasymodeX.4062:

1. Staff blows because skirmish relies on chasedown or escape, and Staff is not that good at either. The only really useful thing out of Staff is the CC on Chaos Storm, and that’s only strong for slowing a big push by the enemy through a chokepoint.

For everything else Staff is pretty meh, although it could be useful for “bunkering” on a supply camp I suppose.

2. GS is the only useful siege DPS weapon. iD and iWarlock fail at shooting up or down ramparts, not even counting iBerserker’s LOS or lack thereof. You can be on top of a rampart and iW/iD will get obstructed shooting down. So sad.

This is basically it… the no-obstruction on Berserker is really the nail in the coffin as far as greatsword vs staff goes. There are so very few situations in which the staff has any advantage whatsoever.

I think one of the bigger problems with attacking objects is that they don’t trigger attack bounces. Greatsword 2 will only hit once, for example. I tend to just plant a warden next to an object and go back to hitting the boss.

This is one of the awesome things about being a Mesmer. Can go around reviving people and whatnot once you drop a few phantasms, since you only lose partial DPS while your toon isn’t attacking.

aaron.7850:

Looks interesting. But why not swap the greatsword for scepter+pistol? GS doesnt offer much…. 2 is okay, 3 is mediocre and 5 is just a push with no other effect to it.

What exactly is Scepter going to help with?

GS 2 does good damage/might/vuln and spawns a melee illusion, 3 strips more boons, 4 is another melee illusion that also cripplies, and 5… a knockdown is one of the most powerful forms of control.

The phantasm does not ignore LoS. The skill that spawns it does. Whether that’s a bug or not remains to be seen. After all, no other working direct target-able skill ignores LOS this way; perhaps it’s an intentional difference.

Feedback ignores LOS as well, actually. As long as your target is within range, Feedback will cast on it.

I know for a fact that the Warden can be summoned through walls. Further phantasms which spawn at their target would be Disenchanter, Defender and Swordsman. Maybe even the Rogue when you’re downed. But it has to be checked if they really summon without LoS.

Warden will spawn behind a target (which can be out of LOS), but the original target still has to be in LOS. Warden can still be obstructed. e.g. casting Warden on a keep gate will spawn it behind the keep gate, but you still need LOS of the gate.

A lot of you are arguing that Mesmers perform fine; this is true. But the OP brings up a good point that the Mesmer is pidgeonholed into specific / boring playstyles. There are very few choices that a Mesmer makes when deciding when to do with illusions, it’s almost always a choice between damage and damage that make it all too easy to either abandon phantasms or abandon shatters.

A lot of mesmers have compensated for this with rune setups (e.g. Rune of the Centaur). When you’re running with a large enough group you usually get hit with Swiftness buffs as long as you don’t fall too far behind.

My main gripe is the speed buff from Focus doesn’t “refresh” your swiftness; if you already have swiftness it won’t refresh the duration. So if you accidentally use it before your current Swiftness runs out you get nothing.

Dark Blue.4530:

Another thing that could help is if the Greatsword’s skill 3, Mind stab, had a bigger radius. It says affects up to 5 targets but at that radius they would need to stack on each other to all be hit!

I wouldn’t mind the small radius if it was more rewarding to hit with Mind Stab. Currently:

- Removes 1 boon
- Does about the same damage as GS auto
- Can’t move during animation

So I have to aim this tiny circle on an enemy who is likely moving, and the only thing i have to show for it is it removes exactly 1 boon. Mind Stab is on a long enough cooldown that the removal of 1 boon doesn’t seem to even help that much.

I’d be happy if they either made the damage worthwhile, or added some kind of cripple/immobilize or other condition effect to it, possibly along with a CD reduction.

These are the minimum traits you would likely want:
10/15/0/0/5

Grabbing the obvious illusion-related major traits.

IMO there is not much benefit to raising Domination past 10 for the general power build, other than for the stat boost. Same to Dueling, you aren’t likely to need more than 20 (and only 20 if you want the clone-on-dodge). The higher level traits in those trees tend to be related to interrupts, which only help if you are interested in traiting for interrupt.

From the above base traits you can either add 25 in Inspiration for phantasm damage and general survivability/utility, or 25 more in Illusions for more shattering ability / extra bounces / etc.

My personal build is 10/15/15/25/5, which grants lots of phantasm damage while still being pretty tanky. You could likely go for glass cannon gear and do fairly well on this trait setup.

That is actually impressive…never seen such a large mob of bots before.

Same here, I never had significant issues with non-loaded players until this patch. Client restart seems to make it a little better, but it’ll still happen.

Yup, same problem here. The chest itself isn’t the problem, it’s the vault door leading to the chest that simply won’t open. About 6 or so people who came after me had the same problem.

I’m glad we’re good in pvp — that’s what I enjoy anyway — but it’s too bad that our DPS is so bad against large “boss” mobs in both DEs and in dungeons. I feel kind of bad letting my team carry me in dungeons when I could be a second elementalist or something more useful.

DEs is arguable, especially if you’re referring to zerging in Orr (I’ve actually never had much of a problem getting credit on dragons).

Mesmers do perfectly fine in dungeons. From the explorables I’ve tried, while there are some cases where having illusions flying around causes problems such as accidentally aggroing mobs you were trying to avoid, in most cases we’re quite good.

We’re able to take awesome utility skills such as Feedback, Time Warp, and Null Field that help you’re entire party, even when specced completely for DPS. Our reflect skills alone make certain explorables absurdly easier.

Thieves are also capable of attacking at range, if you’re having trouble with dungeons. Illusions are our trick to being more survivable, but the thief has its own tricks as well. You should be able to mold your build such you have acceptable survival in dungeons, either by switching up utilities/traits, weapons, or more survivability gear.

Mesmer damage is inherently lower, but our illusions do damage as well, so it balances out.

The armor is for any light-armor class, not just Mesmer. You could always transmute/switch to another armor if you don’t like the look of your current one.

It’s worth noting that Berserker cripples, which makes the kiting aspect easier. Against mobs you can find ways to get far away, against players the range really isn’t that big of an issue, you should just put all your GS skills on CD then swap to an alt weapon if he gets too close.

I think the range is fine, there needs to be a limit on how far you can drag it, I wish there was a better indicator of where the max range is though. Similarly, I wikitten was easier to tell the cooldown on Portal, like you’ve said.

It’s actually extremely fun, unfortunately some server matchups cause it to be really kitteny for the losing team.

However, even losing, if you have a good number of people (say 20) you can still have some fun capturing supply points and killing yaks and whatnot, if you can get all of them to work together.

cainejw.7142:

Then you are, in fact, colluding and acting in an alliance. Thank you for admitting that TC and Maguuma, in fact, were acting in tandem as an alliance.

You’re assuming somehow 2 servers were able to communicate and coordinate their entire servers to work together. We can’t get our entire server to do anything together, much less work with another server.

If we both happen to be attacking you, hey, guess what, it’s a 3 way war. Deal with it, and realize there’s more than likely another front between the the other 2 servers at the same time.

EB is allowed to take an early lead. Maguuma is allowed to take an early lead. Maguuma is not allowed to constantly insult, berate, and mock EB because they aren’t winning. There’s a difference in these behaviors.

Where exactly are these constant insults. You’ve been throwing out the most insults of anyone here. If anything I’ve been seeing people trash talking Maguuma for things we didn’t even do, and insults directed at Goons for behavior they didn’t even demonstrate.

I don’t appreciate some of the server taking clear advantage of exploits, rumored hacking, and alliances to win at any cost.

What exploits? What hacking? Our currently standing in WvW is due to constant effort on our part and not from abuse. And don’t expect me to apologize if you come out lashing at us from the start.

Legion.1460:

they have the invul buff check the photo

Well, okay. I thought you meant that area was an invuln area, that’s pretty stupid then…

zTales.4392:

I’d just like to add something here, about Maguuma. Just the other day, I was thinking about transferring off of Maguuma due to all the crap I’ve been hearing. However, after actually logging back on for the first time in 24 hours and talking to some people, I realized that it would be silly to do such a thing.

That’s basically the only reason I even got involved in this thread. We’re perfectly fine and the WvW community has been great as far as I’ve seen, it’s just easy to talk trash and accuse people you haven’t even met.

That is definitely not an invuln area. And you can get there by walking around, or setting up your own siege to hit it. Not an exploit, just clever positioning.

bcbully.7289:

>.< OP all the class have all the same stuff. You haven’t noticed? Look a little bit more all classes have about 3 ways of granting 33% speed.

Ever play a Mesmer? Our only mobility skills:

Focus → Temporal gate -- 10s of Swiftness on a 25s CD
Blink → 900 range teleport on a 30s CD

…we really don’t get anywhere fast. Our spear gives us excellent movement underwater though.

It’s highly dependent on what’s going on; there needs to be large amounts of death and point capping for you to amass many tokens. The most tokens I’ve ever had was a couple days ago when all my party did was go around capping supply depots.

Jamaz.9837:

Kyrul.7681, you have pictures of [Kaon] hacking the orb all week, but you make the assumption that last night EB hacked your orb. I can guarantee you that we did it the normal way since some of our guys broke through the outer and inner gate earlier and then wiped. A mesmer in our guild said he managed to hide in the vista and was speaking in our voice chat about how happy he was overlooked. 15 minutes later, he dropped down and ganked the orb. You’re welcome to trash talk all you want, but do not accuse our server of any wrongdoing where it’s not due.

I’ll take your word for it, I’m just going by what people nearby claimed. Ultimately it really wasn’t that big of a deal, and won’t be unless it becomes a repeat problem.

As far as alliances go, I have no knowledge of any such thing. If we’re taking territory from you it’s as simple as that it is the easiest thing to do at the time… we want to control as many points as possible at any point to increase our score. Nothing personal.

Also, half of us know what the other half is doing half as much as we want to half the time.

I’m from Maguuma:

I’ve been on WvW for hours a day this weekend, and I haven’t seen any foul play from our server.

Goons — I don’t know why there’s so much hate for Goons. I’m not a part of them but other than being absurdly large they haven’t done anything worth frowning upon.

The glitched garrision — no one I’ve talked to knows why it’s like that. I’m sorry, but we can’t do anything about it either.

Orb hacking — Ehmry Bay nabbed an orb from our west keep (forgot which borderland) from underground. The inner keep had not been breached in any way. As far as I know no one on our server has done anything like this, or at least not to the awareness of the general population.

“Unkillable” trebuchets on garrison — I’ve seen at least Yak’s Bend do this too. And they actually took out our trebs there at some point, so it’s not untouchable.

Other that the mentioned points, I haven’t seen anything wrong with the fight. We appear to have a stronger night crew, which is kind of funny considering TC’s night crew was the reason we were getting rolled so hard the last matchup. It may be because we’ve made a considerable effort to become more organized every since the new matchup started.

One tactic I utilize is firing off a normal clone before casting my phantasm. This way if the mob AI just targets whatever the first thing to whack it is, then the phantasm should be safe for at least a few seconds, enough to fire off one attack cycle at least.

This works especially well with sword, because you can fire off the clone, summon the phantasm, then swap with the clone to immobilize the target then Blurred Frenzy on its face.

The problem with Scepter is the clone generation isn’t immediate. With every other weapon it’s just pop a skill and you’re done. Scepter you either autoattack 3 times, or wait for something to hit you. Meanwhile using the Confuse Ray means not generating clones. With other weapons you can spam every other ability then come back to generate the clone again when it’s off cooldown.

I’d say the only instance I’d prefer Scepter as a generator is if I either traited for on-clone-death effects, or I had Time Warp on me.