Guild Wars 2

Can’t test this in sPvP cuz you can’t use torment runes, but I want to try something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7fl0npRtlpxUNcrNyqBZqWg6s0lgW6MktAA-T1xYwA03fAgyvfq/45iFIS3z+nowClgBAQACQmzcmz8QH6QH6QHazcmzcmzcmlCAidVA-w

You get torment from crits, heals, blocks, and shatters. Went with debilitating dissipation to pad my stacks of torment and confusion. And went with generosity, because there’s no condition removal other than nullfield.

1. iLeap. Our guild was playing in Courtyard for fun. With all the pretty shrubs, bushes and rocks…it NEVER worked. Even when you’re in open WvW or PvE, to land it once you’re like, “OMG it worked!!” It has been broken for two years….But leaps in this game generally don’t work. I know the ele earth dagger leap has the same issues. It’s just that the issues with Mesmer leap is further exacerbated by the fact that it’s a swap with a kittened clone that can’t path correctly.

2. iWarden. It works 100% of the time 70% of the time. I’m leveling a new mesmer just cuz I want a pretty pixie like sylvari. It is insane how many fights I’ve been screwed over cuz the iWarden is just standing there looking stupid.

3. Illusionairy Elasticity. Remember those patch notes that said it was fixed? It wasn’t.

I haven’t been up-to-date on thieves lately. There have been some condi thieves that totally wreck me. All I can do is slow them down when killing me. Not sure what cantrips you’re using but I go with cleansing fire and I used focus earth 4 to remove conditions. But there was this one thief that could insta-reapply bleeds and torments. I know he was rocking nightmare runes too because I got feared a few times. Guess it can be paper, rock ,scissors depending on the build of the thief.

I also have a difficult time with bunker necros. I have fought some necros where I literally did not move their health bar at all. And the ones I do…I might get them to 50% before they kill me. I don’t know much about necros either so I couldn’t tell you their specs. I just know that it takes like 5 kittening people to bring them down to phase II before you have to unload DPS to kill them in phase III of the fight with them.

I’ve been running D/F, 2/0/2/4/6…. with spell slinger, reduced recharge of cantrips, and cantrips add regen & vigor in the water line.

Thank you thank you thank you for this. I had given up on my ele about 7 months ago, and I’ve only been playing my mesmer. After this build, I’m excited about playing my ele for the first time in months.

I’m still debating between D/D and D/F though. I feel like ALL the o.h. dagger abilities are useful; whereas focus has some really great ones and some really crap ones. I also think it is just as easy to get might stacks with D/D by using fire 4, water 3, earth 3 to get aura, and then 4, 5 for two additional blasts. However, I was appreciating the condi removal and immunity from focus. And I did find the air 4 useful against rifle/pistol engis, SB rangers, daggerstorm thieves, and longbow warriors. ……soooooooo decisions decisions….

Flarefox.9713:

It’s the fact a profession like thieves do not need the passive speed boost.

Before I get boo’d to hell for this, I just rather see Mesmer’s receive bugfixes and not just randomly buffed so we can be QQ’d at and harshly nerfed again because “that’ll teach you for being a viable class” – Anet 2014

Not to mention Mesmer’s do possess a lot of ways to reposition or even slip out of combat and their “poor” chase potential is a little exaggerated.

I don’t think it’s so much getting away that’s the problem as it is keeping up. If an enemy wants to run away it’s difficult unless you have traveler’s runes. Poor chase potential is not exaggerated at all. You flat out are not going to keep up with someone if they have 25% run speed and you don’t. Also in WvW you’ll find yourself in the “tail” of the zerg unless you have traveler’s runes.

I really hate mantras. I’ve only tried this out in sPvP, but I use generosity and energy runes on both weapons and use the torch trait and I’ve found that to give me pretty decent condition removal. I replaced the mantra with signet of inspiration and use Holebrak runes and have pretty good boon uptime and pretty good condi removal.

Yes, and we should get rid of clones, and confusion should deal damage to the Mesmer not the attacker, and shatter abilities should root the mesmer in place for 5 seconds and refresh on evade. They can nerf PU when they nerf all the other class cheese builds.

It’s the stealth mechanic people hate, and thieves have the most access to it. I don’t know a solution because with it they annoy the everliving F———- k out of everyone. Without it they would be completely broken and a free kill.

I liked the way Warhammer Online handled the stealth mechanic. ONE class on each faction had access to it, and it’s only purpose was so that the Witch Hunter or Witch Elf could get behind enemy lines to take someone out. It was never intended as a reset over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over mechanic.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been trying to tweak this so that I can put on the most pressure. Life would be so much easier if I could just play 6/4/6/0/6 haha. Anyway, I digress.

This is the spec I’m trying to optimize for sPvP, and below are the things I’m on the fence about:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-NFRg;1VPVz097BV-71;9;4T-T9-19C;127A3;3Uom6h;1DsV2DsV25Bt

Halting Strike vs Empowered Illusions:
Would the 15% damage from illusions place more pressure than the damage from an interrupt?

I never see GS Mastery in anyone’s lockdown builds:
In the domination line I also chose GS mastery because I liked the reduced cooldown on Illusionary Wave. (The build is based on interrupts so why not have a trait that offers more interrupts)

Master of Manipulations vs Illusionary Defense:
Again, I always feel cooldown starved in sPvP and I’ve found that my decoy or blink pops back up just in time when I have MoM traited. I haven’t found Illusionary Defense to be worth it because I have a hard time cranking out clones without Deceptive Evasion. Plus I’ve found that with point capture, they get destroyed by aoe a lot.

10 Inspiration vs 10 Dueling:
I pretty much went with Mender’s Purity just for the added condition removal. I’ve found that this trait, plus Generosity runes, and null field gives me barely enough condition removal. However, I see the merits of possibly going 10 into dueling in order to get reduced cooldown on blurred frenzy due to Blade Training. Furthermore, Critical Infusion is offered in this line. So, this is a hard choice for me to decide which offers more survivability.

Mesmer Runes vs x Runes:
I went with Mesmer for the 33% daze duration. However, it only adds 1/4 second to each clone hit for Diversion and another .5 second to Magic Bullet. Maybe Lyssa would be better which could help with my decision to drop mender’s purity?

Pistol vs Sword Off-hand:
I just went with pistol originally because it hit more thane one target reliably whereas Counter Blade hits in a line. Also the illusion does more damage, but it’s also more in your face than Phantasmal Duelist. Kinda in the middle on this one.

Shockwave.1230:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Power Block was originally stated to not affect thief skills or any skills that have no cooldown. It also puts stomps/rezzing on a 10s cooldown. Right now it’s actually pretty awesome, but very likely soon to get hotfixed. At the most, I believe the only thing that needs fixed is locking out Rezz/Stomps.

You’re right though. There IS a chance that this behavior is intended, but its highly unlikely… which is a real shame considering the trait is in an excellent place right now.

These are obvious things you’d QA. There’s no way they didn’t know that at some point the trait was doing this. The way it would be considered a bug, is if a dev put a code build in with the wrong version of the trait.

Otherwise it’s intended, or their QA was on vacation.

Aren’t you the optimist about their QA haha. Mesmers got some major bugs this patch that would have been found if they like…..tested it once.

Josh Davis.6015:

Good morning mesmers,

Going to touch on a few items that are still being reported as issues post 4/15.

• Portal: This utility was given a skill-fact for range (5000). I personally like the suggestion of mini-map markers, and I’ll bring it up with the team, but I don’t think that was ever planned for this release. Sorry for the confusion.
• Illusionary Elasticity: I’ll have this looked at again.
• Illusionary Warden: We made some changes for Illusionary Warden for 4/15. Can you guys elaborate on how its behaving now?
• Illusionary Counter issues with MS/IC: These issues are still open in our tracker and did not make it into this release.

That’s all for now. Feel free to respond with any additional issues you guys discover post-patch.

Thanks!

Another that you’re missing from your list is that clones do not copy the skins of the outfit. So if you choose to display your outfit, the clones still retain the skin of your equipped armor. Therefore, we can’t use this feature like other classes because it makes it obvious who the real mesmer is.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Mek.2947:

Just to clarify: Pyroatheist has been testing this out and posting his progress on the Mesmer forums. The bug only triggers when the mesmer is wearing a full set of armor skins from a dungeon regardless of whether they kept the original runes or not. The bug has been reported and been around forever. It used to not be that noticeable until they changed the runes in the last patch. The same happens for CoE gear where the mesmer’s clones are spawning golems. Right now CoE and TA gear are confirmed. They’re testing out other armor sets.

This bug is NOT triggered in PvP with a Nightmare rune. It is only triggered in PvE/WvW with Mesmers who are wearing the full armor skins from a dungeon, regardless of whether they resocketed the runes.

That’s really, really interesting. I feel like I’m being dense though, because I can’t connect the change in the rune to this bug hitting the spotlight. Was the rune change just an easy scapegoat now, where before it was like “….what just happened I don’t even”?

I think before the patch, the six piece bonus gave a 5% chance of proc’ing so it wasn’t that noticeable. It would happen and people would just say, “wtf?”. After the patch they changed it so that it has a 50% chance on hit with an internal cooldown of 90seconds. So that’s much more noticeable when the clones don’t share the cooldown.

Just to clarify: Pyroatheist has been testing this out and posting his progress on the Mesmer forums. The bug only triggers when the mesmer is wearing a full set of armor skins from a dungeon regardless of whether they kept the original runes or not. The bug has been reported and been around forever. It used to not be that noticeable until they changed the runes in the last patch. The same happens for CoE gear where the mesmer’s clones are spawning golems. Right now CoE and TA gear are confirmed. They’re testing out other armor sets.

This bug is NOT triggered in PvP with a Nightmare rune. It is only triggered in PvE/WvW with Mesmers who are wearing the full armor skins from a dungeon, regardless of whether they resocketed the runes.

I hate downed state too. The only thing they could do to make it better is give everyone access to the same skills. An auto attack, an interrupt, an aoe whatever, and a heal.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Mek.2947:

I’ve been trying a torment build with nightmare runes (not bandwagoning…picked them before I knew about the bug)

Just a quick note. The bug is not with the runes exactly, it’s with the nightmare armor set.

This bug has been known about for a long time, but it’s only become an issue with the higher proc chances. Basically, some armor sets seem to have some sort of inherent runes preloaded onto them that somehow are expressed on the clones that you summon. The clones won’t get the benefits of runes that you actually put into the armor, it only works for armor sets that naturally come with runes in them already.

Interesting. Come to think of it. We used to have a Mesmer with the full CoE set equipped with different runes. Every so often she would summon a golem, even though she long since didn’t have the original runes.

I’ve been trying a torment build with nightmare runes (not bandwagoning…picked them before I knew about the bug), runes/sigils of torment with GS/Staff…also tries Staff/Sw/Torch and Staff/Scepter/Torch. I just can’t get into it. Maybe I’m too used to autopiloting in power shatter mode…so I keep going back.

For sPvP I’ve been trying 6/0/6/10/0 with generosity and mender’s purity….I’m really liking it. Just trying to resist……the urge……….to shatter!!

I was trying out a power block build in sPvP last night. I was running 30/0/30/10/0. I really liked it but I noticed two things from previously being a shatter build. One – I was clone starved. Two – many times I missed illusionary persona when it came time to stomp somebody and I wanted to get invulnerability or interrupt without a clone. However, when I landed an interrupt it was AMAZING!!! So fun to watch someone standing there looking stupid.

I’m too lazy to look up the specific trait names, but had the following:
Power block
damage on interrupt
Reduced cooldown on GS
Bountiful Interruption
and 30 point trait to randomly add chill, immobilize, or cripple

I was running GS/S/P zerker amulet, generosity and engergy sigils and mesmer runes.

How are you guys running it?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

BlackBeard.2873:

If this is intended, my question is if the clone-fears proc power-block.

Now that would be a REAL lockdown mesmer. Putting everything including auto-attacks on a 10s cd is kinda funny.

Don’t think auto-attacks can ever have an interrupt cooldown.

We think it’s bugged right now because it is putting aa on cooldown as well.

DeWolfe.2174:

Cogbyrn.7283:

If there was food that reduced direct damage by 20%, they’d probably run that.

No, because then we’d just get melted by conditions.

That and there’s something out there already called Toughness that has no impact on condi damage.

Shaogin.2679:

Mek.2947:

Shaogin.2679:

Lmao about Engi bombs. You mean those things that he places on the ground that have a delayed explosion and are clearly marked with red circles? Dear god how much more of a telegraph do you need? And if you aren’t built to survive, then you counter those flames covering the point by GETTING OFF THE POINT! Sounds like a bunch of glass cannons whining that they can’t sit on a point like a bunker.

And what happens when you get off the point? Like I said before, if someone dodges one of your conditions, then fine, you just hit the 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,9…or in the case of engineer…1,2,3,4,57,1,2,3,4,5,8,1,2,3,4,5,9,1,2,3,4,5…Please tell me the secret of your ways on how you recover after someone dodges one of your conditions?!?!

In all these arguments people defending conditions provide math and gameplay examples from logical approaches to explain what is going on. Yet all I see from those against conditions are highly exaggerated remarks and completely false “facts” being thrown around. Do you really expect anyone to take your ranting seriously?

And after all is said and done, and you still think condition classes are op as hell, then change your spec to condition based. And I don’t wanna hear the “I would but I don’t enjoy it” coverup when what you really meant to say was “I would but turns out I suck at that too.”

And, you’re assuming a lot about me and my playing experience. FYI, I did switch to a condi build on my mesmer because it is so much more face roll than when I was power/shatter. Miss my shatter burst due to a dodge,block,evade? = screwed. Miss a condi…Oh NOES timing is literally not an issue.

And what math are you referring to? The only math I’ve seen in this thread was proving the amount of damage Condis can do in 4 seconds which are not mitigated by toughness. Direct Damage dealers have to sacrifice their survivability for damage. As other posts have stated, direct damage requires three stats: power, precision, ferocity which is mitigated by the other player’s armor. Condis require ONE stat that is not mitigated by toughness -condi damage, which leaves room to stack other stats that increase survivability.

Shaogin.2679:

Lmao about Engi bombs. You mean those things that he places on the ground that have a delayed explosion and are clearly marked with red circles? Dear god how much more of a telegraph do you need? And if you aren’t built to survive, then you counter those flames covering the point by GETTING OFF THE POINT! Sounds like a bunch of glass cannons whining that they can’t sit on a point like a bunker.

And what happens when you get off the point? Like I said before, if someone dodges one of your conditions, then fine, you just hit the 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,9…or in the case of engineer…1,2,3,4,57,1,2,3,4,5,8,1,2,3,4,5,9,1,2,3,4,5…Please tell me the secret of your ways on how you recover after someone dodges one of your conditions?!?!

Yeah I was talking about animations. Waving your hand or squatting to drop a bomb instantly is a little different than a guardian raising his sword or hammer above his head, or a warrior leaping towards you or swinging his hammer to play golf, or a big flaming arrow, or a bunch of clones running towards you.

If you dodge someone’s burst setup then you basically just negated their entire damage until their cooldowns are back up. Usually those combos are well telegraphed (see above) Whereas an engi can just kitten out bombs next to you or a necro can flick his wrist. If you dodge 1 ability that lands a condition GG – the necro or engi can just move on to their next 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,9 button mashing to load you up with conditions. And if you have a hambow warrior covering the entire cap point with flames, what exactly are you dodging? Is it possible to flop around on the ground like a fish to keep dodging it? And there’s no skill involved with it. It’s just set it and forget it condition spam.

Most of the goodies mesmers got are probably bugs that will get fixed sooner than their broken mechanics that haven’t been fixed in months … cough looks at iWarden.

Let’s not forget they nerfed a lot of the poison output which benefits regen warriors as well.

I was using those runes yesterday on my Mesmer because I was trying out the new grandmaster torment trait, and I liked those the most. I had no idea they were procing off clones.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Kincaidia: How in the world did you get that last word past the filter? I’m reeling over here.

Also, your 18k HP pool goes from full to empty after the conditions have been applied in full, which is a several second process. During that time, you can interact with the applicator of the conditions to block/blind/evade/dodge/invuln their application to reduce the effect.

If you aren’t proactively attempting to mitigate the impact of conditions while they are being applied, you have no real right to complain about their impact once they are all applied. Unless, of course, part of your plan is to accrue their condi burst only to send it back to them in bulk once it’s been applied in full. In that case, though, you wouldn’t be complaining. You’d be laughing.

Which I still am about the end of your post. Just… how.

Oh there’s huge casting animations to announce when someone is laying on conditions so you’ll know when to dodge, evade, block? Good to know.

What’s wrong with it?

I love the mesmer community. I have improved my play soooo much just by reading these forums at work, and then going home to try out what I learned when I game at night. I think we have the most constructive community where the top players are willing to share their knowledge. There was a stretch for a few months where I played the elementalist. You look at their forums and you have people posting videos of their leet game play and then refusing to share their builds because they put the work into figuring it out and they somehow cling onto their knowledge as if they have something to lose by sharing it. The only exception would be daphoenix (not even sure if he plays anymore).

The people I’ve learned the most from:
Oscicat - hands down. I think to myself…hmm I want to do damage but still survive, or how can I get more mobility. I just simply go to his webpage and find something that works.

I used to learn a lot from seven mirrors, but he left the game

And I’ve always appreciated Pyroatheist’s constructive forum posts. I’ve learned a ton by reading the knowledge he shares.

And just recently I’ve discovered Allisahcat!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE your videos and I strive to be a fun, skilled player like yourself.

Pyroathiest.4168:

A note, though not exactly a criticism, is that despite this being a shatter build, you’ll still face the same problems that PU condition builds do, in that if someone doesn’t want to fight you, they can simply walk away and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

This is why I plan on switching to a torment build for ONLY sPvP, where the objective is to cap points and unload some serious pain for those who are near you.

As a WvW roamer I rely soooooooo heavily on having traveler’s runes and the two traits that reduce cooldowns and increase range on manipulation skills in order to either escape or keep up with my enemies. I wouldn’t give that up for a shatter condi build.

edit: I know a noob question…but does debilitating dissipation work on shatters or only when a clone is killed or replaced?

And you got the Order of Whispers point of interest right? Because, I don’t think that shows up on any map. kitten nevermind you said you clicked on the map icon and have all the objectives. I would put in a customer support ticket.

Interesting, I have 99% but still got map completion. A big one people miss is the Order of Whispers PoI. The only thing I can suggest is hover your mouse over the title of each zone on the map to make sure each one has all the objectives met.

Still going back and forth with customer support. The plus side: they have been responsive! The negative: they’ve been careless with their research. They’re saying that I transmuted/salvaged the boots on the same day, on a toon that they weren’t even soulbound to!! Furthermore, I’ve had these boots for months, so it’s not something newly acquired and salvaged. And, I AM 100% SURE I DID NOT SALVAGE THEM! If I tried to, I would have received a pop up warning.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I know you said you checked your bank…did you check your locker as well?

Sorry when I said PvP set I meant my WvW set. It wasn’t sPvP gear.

Mine is request #497155

Same thing just happened to me. I swapped from pvp gear to pve gear before doing Twilight Arbor this afternoon. When I logged back on my PvP exotic boots with Traveler’s Runes were missing. I’m 100% sure I did not destroy or salvage them….and I’ve been sitting her looking at my bank for a good 10 minutes.

I just put in a support ticket. Just really irritated. I’ve done a search and found posts like this dating back a year ago, and it’s still not fixed. I can’t WvW right now because 1/6 of my godkitten gear is missing, and it’s too expensive to just buy another piece before I get a response.

What spec and gear are you running? 20/20/0/0/30?

OMG! You’re my idol!!! I would have hands down died to that thief. The video was hysterical too. I lost it when I heard the first screaming sound effect when you knocked the guy off the cliff.

Isn’t the name plate different too? I thought a red arrow appears with the name plate on the real mesmer.

They should put Warriors’ GS 5 ability on a 40 sec cooldown if they don’t hit a target.

Oh the tears that would happen!!

Squall.8704:

Mek.2947:

100% agree with the OP. You should not be able to copy paste your legendary and duel wield it. It’s not fair to the people who already put in the time and effort to craft two legendaries. If you are duel wielding 2 legendaries it should be because you earned them.

This is exactly what you guys don’t understand… The skins will be transmuted more than once yes, but the weapon isn’t copy pasted or cloned or whatever you call it. It is only the skin that is transmuted more than once, just like you use your dye over any amount of skins. The stats and the rarity and the item still remains legendary only for the original. The transmuted items will never have the legendary rarity and stats. It might be frustating that people will look like you, but you need not to forget that it is not doubling a legendary item, it is transmuting the skins more than once. Please stop saying it’s saving 2,500gs for others or whatsoever, it is not.

I understand how skins work. I’m saying you should not be able to show off something you didn’t earn. People are not farming legendaries for their stats. If that’s the case they would just farm ascended weapons which are way cheaper.

If you can copy the skin of a legendary to another weapon, then YES, you did save yourself 2,000 + gold that people before this April patch had to spend.

Reminiscent Valkyrie.3109:

People who are against this idea, stop treating us as bad people, we are just people who want to defend our rights from people making fake copies to seem as if they have two legendaries when in fact they only have one. The fact that you are flaming us with harsh and disrespectful words clearly show how much respect you have for niche gamers with lots of time on their hands who don’t feel like they should be getting the cold shoulder from Anet because everyone wants the benefit of dual wielding their already existing expensive dual-wield skin, be it Exotic, Ascended or Legendary when they only worked for ONE.

There have been a lot of odd circumstances formulated to try and get us to understand this in a more positive light, but nothing can justify that a person who made a second legendary for the skin can now do it for much less, be it 2800g less. Legendaries are treasures, they take time and effort, even if you say that people could have paid for them, that group of people also had to work for the money at the first place (Don’t comment anything about being given free money here, because not everyone is like that). The main point here is that, no matter how you get the Legendary, it takes time and effort. Seeing people dual wield their single incinerator they just made, really destroys the happiness from people who made another incinerator to make their Thief/Ele look amazing, because they didn’t make TWO, but only made one. If you wield a Sunrise you only see ONE, as you made ONE. When you make ONE Incinerator, you shouldn’t be able to make a copy of that Incinerator onto an Exotic, and dual wielding.

*Don’t think of it being fair or not, think of it as, you grow one apple, you have one apple. You grow two apples, you have two apples. You can move your one apple around all your accounts, but you don’t have two apples, you want to have two apples at the same time? Grow another. *

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Uproar. Uproar.

How about the people who made 2 incinerators in the past? All their efforts wasted if they went in for the skins.

Wouldn’t this devalue the motion of making a legendary if you can just skin them? Also the people who have 4 incinerators or 2 bolts or any dual wielded identical legendaries, striking these people who worked hundreds of hours or spending thousands of gold so they look different, now everyone who made 1 incinerator can immediately visually get 2 provided that they pay the price of transmutation?

It just isn’t fair.

EDIT: There seems to be a petition on this website regarding dual-wielding legendaries:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/compensate-dual-wielding-gw2-fans-in-april-2014

100% agree with the OP. You should not be able to copy paste your legendary and duel wield it. It’s not fair to the people who already put in the time and effort to craft two legendaries. If you are duel wielding 2 legendaries it should be because you earned them.

Zepidel.5349:

A phantasm speced mesmer is the premier 1v1 class. If you have trouble beating anyone 1v1 its a l2p issue and not a class issue.

This was such a constructive, helpful post that helped further the discussion. Thank you for that. Let us know if you have any other pointers to share.

In WvW I’ve managed to beat a few warriors that ran away. I had to chase them across the map to do it. I only kept pace with them because I had reduced recharge on manipulations and increased range on manipulations traits. In addition I have traveler’s runes and GS equipped and sword equipped. Basically Blinked on cooldown, kept zerker phantasm on them and just wore them down and prayed that no one else jumped in.

I want a cosmetic trait that adds blood and gore to my shatters. I want to see the shards of my shatters stuck in the enemies’ bodies dripping in blood….oh it could add bleeding damage too.

Aiden.6483:

@Mek, OH RIGHT because eles have perma immobilize! Let me just immobilize this thief right here that will then teleport and keep attacking the ele.
@OP, the situation is that in the current meta (in pvp and wvw) thief is pretty much the anti-ele. They steal our boons, they cc us (hard and soft cc, dazes and cripples and immobs) and because they have such high damage and we’re so squishy, they usually dont have any trouble killing us.

Hopefully with the balance patch we will see some improvement to ele so we can deal with thieves with a bit more efficiency. (Add a “revealed” effect on certain ele skills? Maybe a trait that gives you aegis if you’re hit for 10%+ of your hp?)

gd…my post was a joke about the typical thief response about how immobilize just makes their toon explode and deletes their account for them. It got infracted and deleted by the forum moderators. …oh well.

Simonoly.4352:

King Amadaeus.8619:

I will also add I would trade my PU and mesmer defensive line traits for my thieves defensive line traits….THEN THERE WOULD BE CRYING, of that I have no doubt.

Could you imagine if Mesmers could remove a condition for every second in stealth? Oh god the horror! Makes me feel all queazy just thinking about it.

….and blind nearby enemies when entering stealth, and regenerate health while in stealth, and have a 100% chance to crit next attack while in stealth.

We would be…
~~~~~~~~\ (0.0) / ~~~~~~~~ drowning in the tears.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Mek.2947:

The only thing I’ve found helpful with focus is pulling people off walls, and sometimes dropping a warden in the middle of a group of people.

Focus offers

• High dps
• AoE
• Area denial
• Projectile destruction/reflects
• Swiftness
• AoE Pull/interrupt
• Condition cleansing
• Cripple

I was speaking to things you can do reliably.

Getting all those benefits in open WvW are extremely difficult. You have to be standing near the warden, ie near the enemy to get things like the reflects. In open WvW there’s a vast amount of space for people to avoid the warden and to avoid your temporal curtain. If you’re in a choke point then yes those skills are awesome, but it’s pretty situational. The GS is way more reliable for damage and cripple when chasing in open WvW.

The only thing I’ve found helpful with focus is pulling people off walls, and sometimes dropping a warden in the middle of a group of people.

GS is awesome for chasing down targets. When chasing you’re rarely close enough to land a focus pull or to cast it in front of the enemy’s line of movement. The iZerker is a great ranged cripple that helps you gap close.

On my mesmer I have GS/Sword/Torch. I had far reaching manipulations and the reduced cooldown trait for manipulations as well. I have traveler’s runes and I was able to chase a warrior across the map, and keep on him to whittle him down to death. I’m sure he was probably thinking WTF I should be able to get away from anyone, MESMERS OP!! I felt like my build and setup passed the true test of mobility at that point haha.

I was trying to find a YouTube video a while back that explained how temporal curtain works, but I can’t find it anymore.

Anyways, this is how it works:

Projectiles fly at you in an arc that land at your feet. If you place temporal curtain between you and the attacker the projectile will simply fly over the curtain. However if you place the temporal curtain directly at your feet than all the projectiles will bounce back to the attacker.