Guild Wars 2

I agree confusion needs buffed in PvE if for no other reason than when mobs inflict confusion on a player, it procs every skill use instead of the cooldown.

Confusion builds can work ok in PvE, but it shouldn’t follow so many different rules. Partial damage here, cooldown timer there, unrestricted pain over yon, etc.

I have gotten pretty good/consistent illusion stacks on a scepter/torch build (8-11) but it is a lot of work to achieve results, and no matter how many stacks or different sources cause confusion it still hits only once per 2 seconds, and all the stacks go away at the same time.

I think it’s odd that when bleeding or vulnerability gets applied, the timer is reset, but for confusion the timer never resets, so confusion cannot build like the other conditions. I think that’s what needs fixed. It would be fine if it only proc’d every two seconds if applying new stacks refreshed the condition timer, because the damage would build. Now it’s like a race to get as many stacks as you can at just the right moment to get maybe two proc’s of moderate damage.

I am saying there is a lot of disjunction between the rules that confusion follows in both different scenarios/sources and when compared to other conditions. I think it should be more consistent on at least one of these axis, and it is pretty weak in PvE overall. The damage triggers but since it is condition damage it is not amplified by vulnerability – which makes sense since it ignores armor, but not much sense since it doesn’t function as a dot like other condition damage.

Hello,

Just wanted to thank ANet for the Mesmer improvements, I took a break for a couple weeks now and there were a couple changes that made me happy (mantras -1 second cast times and dazzling – 5 stacks of vulnerability) as they are pretty important in my sword/sword build, and I made a suggestion related to the cast times of the mantras, so I feel all special now. I am also very happy to see the spear underwater combat greatly improved as well as the underwater phantasms. AoE damage with the whirlpool will be fantastic – where it was just a slugfest before, now there will be some tricks to play – whirlpool, charge through, switch to trident – much more active then before where it was whirlpool, charge/feint, bash, bash, bash.

:)

So thank you, ANet, and happy Windersday to all.

Nijay.7069:

The Confounding Suggestions trait does not trigger stun from daze inflicted by Power Lock, Counter Blade, or Diversion (or any daze effect?) whether or not the daze interrupts the target.

Confounding Suggestions works per the description after the 12/3 patch.

The Confounding Suggestions trait does not trigger stun from daze inflicted by Power Lock, Counter Blade, or Diversion (or any daze effect?) whether or not the daze interrupts the target.

Feign (Spear) and Swap (Sword) can cause AI to flag you as inaccessible, causing a mob that misses due to teleportation to become invulnerable for a duration. This can happen even (only?) when the teleport would keep you in melee range.

Mantra cooldowns except for Mantra of Pain do not start until the last (2nd or 3rd) cast of the channeled spell. Either Mantra of Pain is bugged and goes through cooldown while Power Spike is up, or all other mantras are bugged because they don’t go through cooldown while the channeled sequence spell is up.

I never really used mantras before my latest build, and after completing Cursed Shores with a dual-swords wielding Mesmer that had 4 mantras on my bar, it is apparent to me that they have some design flaws.

1. Mantra of Pain seems to recharge while Power Spike is up while the others don’t go into cooldown until after the second casting. The pain of a 3-4+ second cast time is enough of a penalty than to add on a cooldown timer in the middle of combat. If I cast a mantra 5 minutes ago, why do I have to wait yet another 30 seconds before I can wait another 4 seconds to use the abilities? The balance between time investment and the power of the skills is imho quite off. Please make all mantras cooldown while the cast skill variants are up. This just seems like a mistake.

2. Because of the length of time to cast a mantra, Mantra Mastery is very insignificant on a build with multiple mantras. This is counter-intuitive, as you would think the more skills that got the reduced cooldown, the better, but when it takes about 12-16 seconds to cast through 4 mantras, the recharge times are largely irrelevant. Mantra Mastery would need to reduce casting times instead of cooldown times to be worth while.

3. Mantra resets. This is ridiculous. Every time I looked around my Mantras were reset. That’s everytime I teleported, discovered a new area, heck, it seemed like anytime I went anywhere, my mantras reset and wooboy 12-16 seconds later I am ready to fight something. This was really noticeable when I had logged off at a waypoint that was contested when I logged back in. “Oh, half your skills aren’t there where you left them, sorry about that.” Seriously, why can’t the game save your Mantra’s states when you travel, log off, etc.? It makes it really unappealing to ever have more than one or two on your bar at any time. In GW1, a mantra build was actually viable though heavily energy dependent. If there is such a balance issue of these being soooo strong, why not relate them to endurance? Either cause active mantras to reduce your max endurance or have them take endurance to activate or something. Or for goodness sakes just don’t make them reset every time you walk.

4. Mantra of Distraction does not seem to trigger Confounding Suggestions and Counter Blade is still bugged in this way as well. Diversions also doesn’t seem to work with it. In a whole map of events, farming, exploring, skill challenges, etc. out of all the dazing I inflicted – yes, counting only interrupts – never did a stun trigger from Confounding Suggestions. I must have interrupt foes that could be dazed 1000+ times. This is a grandmaster skill that does absolutely nothing. What exactly CAN trigger the stun on daze, if anything?

I think this point might go more in a bugs forum, and there are just so many Mesmer bugs to go along with it, it could be a subforum by itself. I mean god forbid you teleport at the wrong moment during a fight, because the AI will flag you inaccessible, and the mob will go invulnerable and heal while you stand (or swim) right in front of its face (trying to) pummel it. Etc., etc. And don’t get me started on Confusion, the trait with different rules for every occasion. Why on Earth or Tyria would confusion trigger for every action a player makes, while only triggering once every 2 seconds for mobs, yet inflict reduced damage in PvP? In other words, why do mobs inflict a super buffed version of confusion? It makes no sense that a player-inflicted condition would be any different than a mob-infliced condition, OR that a player can suffer the full damage on every action when it is mob-inflicted but when it comes to PvP, it’s reduced damage. It’s either fair game or it’s not, and to do it in both ways that disadvantage a mesmer player as much as possible makes me wonder what the purple butterflies did to anybody to merit such hate.

Anyway, enough ranting. Please improve mantras. They have synergy with many, many other skills and traits and can be a nice build option, but as they are, they are more work than they’re worth. And please fix Mesmer bugs.

I have to admit Straits of Devastation was the hardest map to get through because there were few people to do the events and keep the waypoints up. I basically just ran through it. I hit 100% in the next two zones as I progressed through them, but I dread going back to SoD because it will be painful to do some of the skill points.

In GW1 there were multiple zones with max level enemies, and it’s a given that higher level enemies have better loot tables. After lvl 80, you want the best level 80 gear, not good lvl 76-79 gear. It seems like that’s where the downfall of the design is.

I had someone in CS text hurry, come help and linked a waypoint to take the Balthazar statue…it’s really that bad.

So now for a history lesson: Chronicles of Spellborn. Anyone ever play this game? I did. It was brutal. Once you got around lvl 10-12 you had to play a zone where the difficulty spiked dramatically because the aggro mobs respawned based on a minimum population much higher than what the game actually had, so you would have mobs spawning on you left and right and you literally had to run all the way down the map to a town so you had a safe spot to start farming out from. It’s sad to say GW2 has some of the same respawn and balance issues. I appreciate that not everything is designed to be solo’d but when you need 10 people that just aren’t there…it can get frustrating to know that it’s much less about what you do, what your skill level is, and all about the number in the zerg.

I am just saying ANET should dynamically balance the respawns and event difficulties based on the map population – by zone if possible.

I posted this before, not really sure if it is good, but it can’t be that bad. If you think about it, every 10 seconds you get 2 seconds of evasion with main hand sword, and you can daze a target several times with skills. Add in Diversion and Distortion and even though you are squishy, you will spend less time getting hit – even with just standing there. No need to tank – just dodge and interrupt skills.

The Dazzler
30 Domination 30 Precision and 10 Chaos with sword/sword focusing on daze and mantras:

Illusion of Vulnerability: Inflict 5 seconds of vulnerability when you interrupt a foe.
Dazzling: Inflicting daze also causes 3 seconds of vulnerability.
Wastrel’s Punishment: 5% increased damage to inactive foes.
Halting Strike: Deal damage when interrupting a foe.
Rending Shatter: Shattering illusions causes vulnerability for 8 seconds to nearby foes.
Harmonious Mantras: Mantras can be activated three times before needing to be channeled again.

Critical Infusion: Gain 1 second of vigor on critical hits.
Sharper Images: Illusions inflict bleeding on critical hits.
Confusing Combatants: Your illusions cause 3 seconds of confusion when they are killed.
Blade Training: +50 precision while wielding a one-handed sword or a spear. Reduces the recharge of sword and spear skills by 20%.
Retaliatory Shield: Gain 3 seconds of retaliation when you block an attack.
Furious Interruption: Gain 4 seconds of fury when you interrupt a foe.

Metaphysical Rejuvenation: Gain 10 seconds of regeneration when your health reaches 75% (30-second cooldown).
Illusionary Defense: 3% reduced damage for each illusion you have in the world.

Mantra of Recovery
Mantra of Distraction
Mantra of Pain
Option – Technobabble (Asura) – Battle Roar (Charr) – Prayer to Lyssa (Human) – Call Wurm (Norn) – Grasping Vines (Sylvari)
Time Warp

I am going to give this a try once I collect a second armor set. This build would want mostly the power/precision/crit damage stats w/ precision and crit damage infusions. It should play like any crit build but where you get hit a lot less.

The grandmaster skills can be flopped to
Empowering Mantras: 4% more damage for each readied mantra
Confounding Suggestions: 50% chance to cause a 1-second stun whenever you daze a target.

This is a bit more straightforward at the cost of gaining fury from intterupts, focusing on non-critical damage increase. Instead of gear that boost critical damage, this switch would want as much straight up power as you could get. Might want to switch out Retaliatory shield for Mantra Mastery, too.

I never saw the skill calc before, awesome.
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/mesmer#2|2|4150|4092|4099|4198|8987|30|2206|2205|2301|30|2209|2210|2306|10|2220|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|2|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Interesting, I usually pick my utility skills based on my weapon set, instead of a fixed selection.

If most classes don’t appeal to you, what exactly are you looking for? Certain types of skills? A new skin?

I haven’t read anything about plans for new weapons. Usually that kind of content is released with an expansion, no?

I always like to have a wider variety of build options open to me. A cross-class option like the first Guild Wars where you could pick the weapon combos available to only the main class, but could select, slot-by-slot, skills available for a weapon available to either class, would be cool. For instance, a W/Me wouldn’t be able to use a pistol, but could select either mesmer or warrior sword skills for one and off hand swords. Anything to make more combinations and builds would be welcome.

Yeah, I gave it a shot I changed up the skills to add Mirror Images and Mantra of Pain, but kept Signet of Domination for the condition damage boost. You could throw Clone on there instead I guess if you don’t like a passive skill, and signet of illusions can let you milk the retaliation from Confusing Cry. I might switch back to that after I get a little more familiar with the build. I also changed Glamor Master to Mending Purity since I took Feedback of the menu. Ether Feast was working pretty well for healing. I wanted the 20 inspiration for Malicious Sorcery if nothing else. Sorry about the confusion over the game mechanics, but with these changes I was going through Malchor’s Leap easily enough. The enemies bash themselves and 4 digit purple bubbles, like 1300-1800, were popping up. Solo’d a vet without moving an inch. Seemed at least as quick if not quicker than any other build I’ve tried and I had little problem when taking on multiple enemies. For some reason Risen Brutes give me trouble on any build, in that they are too slow to die, but the Risen Thralls went down faster than my Staff/Condition/Shatter build where I did have the clone on dodge and did use signet of illusions for more than F2.

Generally speaking, you don’t need – or even want – to move with this build, so Clone and making clones on dodge would be a bit distracting from all the standing around.

I wonder if Vulnerability affects Retaliation damage?

The minis- YES. VERY YES.

Ultimate Condition Build

Scepter/Torch Build that focuses on Confusion, the ULTIMATE CONDITION.
Remember how good backfire and empathy were in PvE in GW1? All that goodness rolled into one condition – the ultimate condition. Throw in retaliation for a double-whammy and wrap it all up in a nice purple feedback bubble.

Illusion Trait 30

Illusionists Celerity Illusion-summoning skills recharge 20% faster.
Illusionary Retribution All shatter skills inflict confusion.
Shattered Strength Shattering illusions gives you might.
Confusing Cry Cry of Frustration grants retaliation.
Master of Misdirection Confusion you inflict lasts 33% longer.
Blinding Befuddlement Cause confusion when you blind an foe.

20 Domination

Illusion of Vulnerability Inflict 5 seconds of vulnerability when you interrupt a foe.
Dazzling Inflicting daze also causes 3 seconds of vulnerability.
Rending Shatter Shattering illusions causes vulnerability for 8 seconds to nearby foes.
Cleansing Conflagration Torch skills remove conditions. Reduces cooldowns of torch skills by 20%.

20 Inspiration

Vengeful Images Grants retaliation to Phantasms.
Phantasmal Healing Phantasms grant regeneration to nearby allies.
Glamour Mastery Glamour skills recharge 20% faster.
Malicious Sorcery +50 malice when wielding a scepter. Reduces recharge of scepter skills by 20%.

Mirror -Ether Feast – Racial
Feedback
Signet of Domination
Signet of Illusions
Time Warp

Racial alternates: Pain Inverter (Asura)

This might not be the best way to use a torch, but it will be kitten consistent, and lots and lots of purple bubbles will pop up in combat. If only there was a way to make them attack faster. This will really take those Risen abominations and thralls down to size along with any other mob that frenzies. Now the blinding from the torch can cause confusion, too, a nice one-two punch of fiery discombobulation.

I see a lot of people listing condition builds but I had ran a crit build at mid-level (40-50ish). It was mostly based on greatsword procing criticals 44% of the time and giving phatasms fury and bleeding on their crit procs. It would be fine at 80 but is focused on phantasms surviving.

A better build would probably be 30 Domination 30 Precision and 10 Chaos with sword/sword focusing on daze and mantras:

Illusion of Vulnerability Inflict 5 seconds of vulnerability when you interrupt a foe.
Dazzling Inflicting daze also causes 3 seconds of vulnerability.
Wastrel’s Punishment 5% increased damage to inactive foes.
Halting Strike Deal damage when interrupting a foe.
Rending Shatter Shattering illusions causes vulnerability for 8 seconds to nearby foes.
Harmonious Mantras Mantras can be activated three times before needing to be channeled again.

Critical Infusion Gain 1 second of vigor on critical hits.
Sharper Images Illusions inflict bleeding on critical hits.
Confusing Combatants Your illusions cause 3 seconds of confusion when they are killed.
Blade Training +50 precision while wielding a one-handed sword or a spear. Reduces the recharge of sword and spear skills by 20%.
Deceptive Evasion Create a clone at your current position when you dodge.
Furious Interruption Gain 4 seconds of fury when you interrupt a foe.

Metaphysical Rejuvenation Gain 10 seconds of regeneration when your health reaches 75% (30-second cooldown).
Illusionary Defense 3% reduced damage for each illusion you have in the world.

Mantra of Recovery
Mantra of Distraction
Option – Mantra of Pain , Signet of Domination, Mirror Images, Feedback, Other
Option – Technobabble (Asura) – Battle Roar (Charr) – Prayer to Lyssa (Human) – Call Wurm (Norn) – Grasping Vines (Sylvari)
Time Warp

I am going to give this a try once I collect a second armor set. This build would want mostly the power/precision/crit damage stats w/ precision and crit damage infusions and I am running around in Traveler’s gear for the magic find boost.

The area with the white mantle had a champion ghost soldier guy that I kited on and off a cliff for over an hour. Mesmers are kiting experts. I found myself in an area with 3 veteran cave spiders spawning as fast as I could kill them – along with a couple regular cave spiders – and I just never went down. In both situations I was using the greatsword only, I didn’t start switching weapons sets until more recently.

Once you make illusions on dodge (Illusion trait 20) the shatter builds really open up to the point where you want to activate signet of illusions. Mirror Image and switching weapons gives a good cycle, too. To maximize your damage, you have to take the burst damage phantasms and sac them with as little delay between shatter skills as possible.

I rolled with scepter/pistol for awhile, cause I thought the gun was cool and the extra clone on the third hit was a good distraction. Illusionary Duelist with Fury was decent, and Sharper Images made that even better. Once I tried the GS and saw the self-contained synergy, I found my lazy man’s weapon of choice. Increased damage at range, cripple, knockback, and might/vulnerability – why bother switching weapons?

With mesmers, your build is all about how you want to play your illusions. You either mean them to stick around or not, and if not, they can be mere distractions while you vanish/deaggro or fuel for rapid shatters or anywhere in between. Many of the illusions take advantage of vulnerability because they are all burst damage, which you can pick a trait to cause vulnerability on interrupt, iterating another build. You can even go with a mantra build and specialize in something as specific as picking up downed people, but mantras are so boring to me. I have no idea what other classes offer, cause I have it all right here. I am not even sure that there aren’t shatter/warlock builds that wouldn’t put up dps numbers competitive with other classes.

I just never went in for the melee weapons. The focus and torch seemed to gimmicky to me, but I bet they offer up several more gameplay styles and specialized build options. You really get to pick your gameplay, and in PvE you can kite forever. If you want AoE, you are going to be stuck with chaos storm, prestige (delayed burining,) and that trait that makes Cry of Frustration AoE – and AoE confusion isn’t the greatest AoE condition. And maybe the crippling phantasm, but that’s 3 weapons.

I also find it interesting that mesmers make a better melee class than ranged when underwater, though they can still win the Kiting Olympics. Changes things up a bit.

And they are really good at moving when stunned/bound/breaking fear etc. and removing conditions. It’s like my Mesmer/Monk from GW was genetically engineered with a little ritualist spliced in.

I am wholly on board with this idea. I am the kind of player that read many of the books in the elder scrolls games, I love the little mini stories specific to different fantasy worlds. Malchior’s Leap is just such an example. This story is told through scrolls in a pact camp. It would be fun to find scrolls for different POI’s in the vicinity, and encourage active clearing of mobs instead of just running through for map completion.

I am a collector at heart and I love the beastiary feature in many games where you can see a list of all the monsters in the game and the ones you have killed show stats, flavor text, locations, that sort of thing. With the crafting component collections I would love to see a beastiary, at least a basic one, and have an achievement related to killing every creature in the game.

I think it could add a good motivation for higher level players to pay attention to “kill the champion mob” events in lower level zones, or map areas off the beaten path. The karka DE map has a champion reef skelk and champion shark that I bet went unkilled my most players, including myself as the groups were only forming for the zerg. The zerg did not travel the way of those rare creatures, and few players could be seen exploring off the beaten path.

This could allow headhunter rewards, dialogue options, or access to restricted zones/dungeons, maybe work a little like personality. And we could always use another reason to group up. As good as it is to help people complete events, it gets a little old hat after a time, and while long-term it wouldn’t solve population issues in certain zones, it could boost some interest in those events and help out players, too.

With the unseen hunter race, it seems like sport hunting has some basis in the story of Tyria as well, and the area with the chaos portal and several strange enemy types could easily be expanded into a hunter’s kind of event. Instead of halloween doors, chaos portals could open and spawn random enemies across a couple zones. Something like that. Maybe their loot tables could be randomized, too

I would like to be able to solo everything, maybe except for Fractals. But so far, Fractals is the only dungeon I’ve run across that requires teamwork, even the DE’s were more based on adding bodies for more DPS than any kind of teamwork. If teamwork isn’t part of the equation, why not scale for soloing? When I have done the story runs, it was with parties that had done it a dozen times, and they just went quick through it all, and the mystery and difficulty was greatly reduced. It was much less enjoyable than going through at my own pace and learning the trick to the boss fights. Once Nightfall came out, I said goodbye to PUGs, because the henchmen were more consistent than the players. GW2 is much less tactical and cooperative and the only tactics/roles that really matter is to target the same enemy, fall back, and do dps.

Then again, I only completed the first three story modes, so I am hoping the explorable modes and later dungeons get more intense.

It’s not like you could portal on the clock tower. Help a fellow Guildwarsian out – lend a helping portal. I love my mesmer because it can adapt to anything – even platforming – such as a timely blink-assisted portal in FotM after Old Tom. Between Blink and the Portal, I get an edge from my class that lets me contribute to certain elements of dungeons, jumping puzzles, running through maps, etc. I am sure other classes have skills that are situationally helpful in some way in non-combat situations. While Portal is like a trump card, it really helps with the community spirit.

I mean everyone was jumping up the shortcut on the skipping stones puzzle and after that it is a relatively straightforward trek to the treasure and the champion and 2nd chest beyond. The largest difficulty was getting through the two sets of skipping stones, and I was able to bring people up to the first landing so that they could keep making progress, and in turn, help me learn the tricky jumps faster myself.

I mean really, what else is that skill good for other than the very occasional res-and-run to prevent a total party wipe? Helping your team – or anyone – have an easier time of it – it’s just a friendly thing to do.

If you miss the trigger to kill the breeze riders by walking straight out of the bandit camp into the canyon, you will complete the dialogue and bug the instance. After being told to return to the Pale Tree, Jal returns to the camp with the green asterisk over his head and no leave-the-instance button appears. You have to walk out of the instance and redo it.