Guild Wars 2

Hey Xyonon,

Would you mind sharing the condition build that you use for high-level fractals? I am in the process of making a set of ascended gear for fractals and am exploring my options. Also, do you switch to a power build for reflect-heavy fractals (like Volcanic and Uncategorized) or do you stick with condition?

I enjoyed the video. Nice to actually see some 1vx clips, since I find a lot of 1v1 exclusively when I browse through youtube. As for everyone’s critiques on not taking 20 in Domination, I think that taking Mender’s Purity is fine since you state that you are playing a more defensive variant of shatter and since you show that you still kill people.

eldenbri.1059:

Thanks – that’s helpful. How do you think Torment fits in here?

The wiki says “inflicts damage twice per second if the victim is moving”. Do you think this means that Torment gets its own timer when it gets applied? (Or at least gets it’s own secondary timer?)

I believe torment still ticks on a 1s interval, but it simply ticks for twice as much. I haven’t tested it, but I would assume it follows the rules of the other conditions.

zest.4192:

They should realy make burn tick every .5 or even .25 seconds rather then every 1 second- hardbreakpoints on a condition that tends to have very short durations are a bad things- they make the damage random an unreliable.

I agree that the mechanism they have in place is kinda weird, but I think it works. Sure, there’s a chance, based on your condition duration, for conditions to get an extra tick, but over the course of a fight there are so many conditions that they should average out to reflect the condition duration accurately.

The main problem with mesmer traits is that each trait line has a couple very good traits and a lot of mediocre ones. The fact that certain traits combos are mandatory greatly limits build diversity. This is especially apparent with shatter, where there are 50 mandatory points between deceptive evasion and illusionary persona.

Touching on the new traits:

Power Block: This needs to work against thieves. Without that functionality, this trait is near-worthless.

Triumphant Distortion: Clearly this was intended for a zerg-minded build. However, to work well there needs to be no ICD.

Bountiful Disillusionment: The number and/or duration of boons needs to be increased. Additionally, it is in a very strange spot. Shatter has a hard time justifying 30 in Chaos.

Disruptor’s Sustainment: This is a useless trait. Healing power, of any amount, is not useful for such a short duration (or at all, really). I like the suggestion for healing on interrupt.

Maim the Disillusioned: This is decent, but I wouldn’t mind having it swapped with Bountiful Disillusionment.

Now for some other traits, since we’re talking about them:

Confusing Enchantments: Needs to apply more than one stack of condition to be worth it post-confusion nerf.

Wastrel’s Punishment: Complete re-work. It’s unclear how this skill functions, but regardless, 5% is a very slim amount for any “inactive” opponent.

Furious Interruption: A longer duration of quickness would make this more useful.

Chaotic Revival: Remove completely. A skill based on rallying is flawed, since most competent players will not being going down regularly. Even then, chaos armor is not nearly strong enough for an on-rally effect.

Retaliatory Demise: Remove completely. Any skill based on going down is flawed (see above).

Mirror of Anguish: Cooldown needs to be reduced and work on a per-enemy basis (that is, each enemy has a separate cooldown, not the mesmer).

Cleansing Inscriptions: Needs to remove at least three conditions to be worthwhile, given the long cooldown of signets.

Compounding Celerity: Mesmers have very good in-combat mobility and this seems underwhelming. I’d be in favor for a complete rework, but I know some people like this trait.

Shattered Conditions: Increase the radius slightly and increase to two conditions per illusion.

Dazzling Glamours: Make cooldown on a per-enemy basis.

Blinding Befuddlement: More than one stack of confusion to compensate for the confusion nerf.

Imbued Diversion: Not terrible, but will never be taken over IP. Maybe turn diversion into a stun.

The information in the reddit post is correct. When a damaging condition is afflicted, a timer starts, ticking at 1s intervals. As long as damaging conditions are on the target, they will tick every second. This is why, when viewing an enemy health bar, it seems to drop in chunks rather than a continuous draining effect when the enemy is loaded with conditions.

I have tested this and found it to be true with Winds of Chaos, The Prestige, and Siren’s Call and I have no reason to believe it doesn’t apply to all conditions. I tested it at various condition benchmarks which did not result in whole additional second, recording video and watching it in slow-motion to see if extra ticks occurred.

It is a common misconception that whole-second duration increases are all that result in extra ticks. I don’t know why such a misconception exists, but it does.

The ultimate result of this information is that condition duration, regardless of the amount, increases dps. For further info, see:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/question-on-condition-duration/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Video-MSS-GreatSword-Mesmer-10-Dec/first#post2358299

Nobody is saying that you’re playing incorrectly or that you should change your build. You touched on this build being fun; if it’s fun for you, then you should absolutely play it.

However, there are many veteran mesmers on this forum. Many of us, including myself, have played since launch. We have all tried countless builds and we know what works and what doesn’t. Every few weeks or so, someone comes along claiming to have a revolutionary new build (which yours seems to suggest based on its title). I assure you that many of us have considered builds like yours, only to arrive at the conclusion that they are not superior from a numbers perspective. It is very off-putting to us when we see someone claiming to have a revolutionary new build and act like the idea has never dawned on us, when in fact we’ve considered and reject the same or similar builds.

Of course, as I stated above, you are entitled to play as you want. If you enjoy this build and find success with it, then please continue to use and enjoy it. I don’t think anyone here is saying otherwise. However, don’t try to tell us that this build is somehow vastly superior to the tried-and-true builds which have been tested both mathematically and “in situ,” so to speak.

I will concede that the durability of the phantasms is one of the weaker points of the build. However, given that all phantasm-summoning skills are reduced to 12s cooldowns, they can be summoned rapidly enough to somewhat compensate for their frailty.

I do not find damage to be an issue, although I have considered taking Domination III over Chaos XI. I generally find that between the now-fixed Phantasmal Haste and the might gained from Bountiful Interruption, they hit sufficiently hard.

@Chaos Archangel: I’ve been using an almost-identical build with pretty good success in PvP. It’s sword/sword and staff with the same 0/4/6/0/4 spread. However, I use Dueling II and IV instead of IV and X and Chaos III instead of V. I may give your spread a try though, since I can see the advantage of using Debilitating Dissipation with sword clones in particular.

For runes, I’ve found the updated Runes of the Pack to be pretty useful. The flat bonuses to power and precision are great, and the “when hit” effect gives up to 80% swiftness uptime and significant fury uptime as well. Also, the fury will get applied to nearby illusions, extending/replacing the effects of Dueling II.

Since we’re talking about sigils, here’s a question: given the changes to sigil of air, at what point does it surpass sigil of battle for single-target dps (let’s assume battle is giving 6 stacks of perma-might)?

I’ve been trying out a 2/4/4/0/4 build with staff and sword/sword. It has domination III, dueling I and IV, chaos III and X, and illusions III and X. I’m still experimenting with gear and sigils, but it had great defenses with 5s phase retreat, 9s blurred frenzy, and 24s blink.

With random, non-optimal gear and missing sigils/runes (because I was lazy) I was winning most 1v1s and a few 1v2s and 1v3s. The damage was a little bit on the lower side, but that’s because I was about 300 power short of what I should have had with proper gear.

I really like the fixed Phantasmal Haste. It turns the iSwordsman into a little mini turret, and between blade training and illusionist’s celerity, they can be popped out every 12s.

I got it just fine after killing the priest. This may be a silly question, but are you doing enough damage to the priest to get credit for the event? If not, that would explain why it’s not unlocking for you.

Of course, if you are getting credit for the event, it’s probably some sort of bug. It’s pretty common to have a whole host of assorted bugs with a big release like this.

I really enjoyed the videos. You’re obviously very comfortable and adept with shatter builds and your colorful Charr is quite fun to watch as he decimates everyone around him. I had a couple of questions about your build:

1) How strongly do you feel that the overall stat boosts from the Divinity runes help you compared to other runesets (ie Traveler’s runes or something focused solely on DPS)?

2) Is your current mixture of celestial vs berserker gear deliberately planned out to reach certain thresholds of vitality/toughness or is it just what felt about right?

3) How do you deal with condition removal? Do you just kill everything before they kill you? Also, what do you think of the iDisenchanter instead of Mirror Images? It would give you more illusions/sec assuming you cast in on cooldown and would give you condition removal, but you would lose the stunbreak and the burst potential MI provides.

Hi everyone,

After playing a condition mesmer since launch, I feel it’s time for a switch. I’ve been running 20/20/30/0/0 PU build for the past six months or so, but I’ve begun to do much more PvE and want a build that can transfer over decently (I’m not talking about a min-maxed speedrun build, but something that can provide decent support). However, that being said, I want the build to have good 1vX potential in WvW, as that’s my primary focus. In general, I like playing tanky/support builds and while I realize those aren’t optimal for PvE, I want to give them a try.

I have the Bifrost and Whisperblade, and since sword and staff are my favorite weapons, I’m hoping to keep them as part of the build. I was looking at skcamow’s Paladin Mesmer 1.0 (http://tinyurl.com/mb2nh7u though I’d rearrange the armor and trinkets a bit to use all ascended gear).

Given that skcamow’s thread is several months old, I was wondering as to the present viability of the build for 1vX roaming. I am also looking for alternative options. I am very open to suggestions for roaming builds that perform acceptably in fractals and dungeons with minor trait adjustments.

Thank you!

Lyssa runes work quite well in my opinion. I used them in my condition build for ages before they released perplexity runes. I feel that the bonuses to condition and boon duration synergize much better with a condition build than a power build though.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Scepter 3 has the same issue. To much effort (time) to get 5 (to weak now) confusion stacks up.

But at least Scepter 3 has a decent duration with + condition duration gear/food and the +33% confusion duration trait. Cry of Frustration, due to its short base duration, as well as the fact that it causes clones to stop inflicting conditions while they run to the target and the fact that it negates on-death traits, make it in a far worse situation for condition builds. The only time I can see myself using it is if I had all three clones within melee range of the target and could immediately produce three more.

I’d be a fan of rolling the two together, but which line would they go in? Both Dueling and Chaos have so many good traits that, regardless of its placement, some people wouldn’t be able to take it anymore. For instance, I see Chaos V, X, and XII as a necessity for my condition build, so if it moved into Chaos, I’d be out of luck. At the same time, someone who has Blade Training and Deceptive Evasion as necessary traits might enjoy having it in Chaos.

Also, I find that the traits work very well with Arcane Thievery in addition to Blink. I have both utilities on my bar, and I love the range increase it affords me. A cooldown decrease on top of that would be delicious.

Here are my suggestions:

First, as KUTM said, you probably don’t need the cavaliers’ trinkets. I’d consider using either Knight’s or Rabid instead, depending on how you want your damage split between direct damage from the iDuelist and conditions.

For weapons, I wonder about your choice in using all Giver’s weapons. Many months ago I struggled with Giver’s vs. Rabid. My build is somewhat different, being solely a condition build with staff and sword/torch, but I came to the conclusion that Giver’s weapons had a slight edge over Rabid in terms of maximum dps, but they also increase the ramp-up time to get your conditions maxed, meaning that classes with good condition removal are going to be a pain to take down. Ultimately, I found Rabid weapons to be preferable due to the more immediate damage they can provide.

Finally, I think everything else looks decent. Depending on how much you’re autoattacking with scepter, Debilitating Dissipation may or may not be worth it. You could experiment with Bountiful Interruption given that you have 45% boon duration.

I’ve literally had my computer on for the past 30 hours monitoring these events. I need Fireheart Rise, and the last time it appeared was on 8/28 at 23:00 UTC. It didn’t appear once on 8/29 so the previous information that every map would appear at least once per day is false.

I use a staff/sword torch and I’d say a have a better time catching runners than my scepter-wielding kinsman. I have 80% condition duration when I’m using sword/torch so the immobilize from iLeap lasts almost 4s. In those 4s I can burst down the enemy if he’s low enough or I can summon enough sword clones to blow up for Crippling Dissipation. The latter scenario goes something like this:

iLeap → Swap → Dodge → Swap to Staff → Chaos Storm (if available) → Phase Retreat → Dodge (replaces first clone from iLeap) → dps with Winds of Chaos for a moment → swap back to sword → The Prestige → iLeap (from stealth) → Swap (from stealth) → Blurred Frenzy

It’s a very involved sequence, but if done correctly it can delay an enemy for 10+ seconds. Of course, I’d never claim that this is a good or reliable method for stopping enemies; in fact, if the enemy blinks, blocks, or has condition removal ready, this method fails pretty hard. I just wanted to make the point that stopping runners isn’t impossible, and I always try to stop them. I never just let them go.

One time I ran into a zergling warrior who was separated from her brood. She ran away at about 90% health. I chased her from the ruins to SE tower of a borderlands map, keeping her crippled or immobilized for quite a bit of it. Unfortunately she just barely made it to the tower before going down to bleeds inside, but I considered it a personal victory when I got invited to her party so I could be berated about how annoying and mean I was for chasing her.

I wouldn’t make the switch. You have Decoy, The Prestige, and Mass Invisibility all in your build. That’s 3/4 of all the stealth skills we have. You are losing massive amounts of survivability by not taking Prismatic Understanding. Since you use sword/torch and greatsword, you don’t gain a ton from Illusions. Sure, you gain a little more condition damage for your GS clone bleeds and the burn from torch, but Illusionary Elasticity isn’t going to give you much extra mileage only affecting Mirror Blade and Phantasmal Haste isn’t that useful given that one of your phantasms (the iMage) is next to worthless. Overall, you give up huge survivability for slightly more damage.

Also, I noticed that your build has no condition removal. Might I suggest taking Cleansing Conflagration instead of what you currently have in Domination? Confusing Enchantments gives very minimal confusion, and unless you are doing a lot of ZergvZerg where you need to tag lots of people and where other people are removing conditions from you, you’re better of traiting torch. Without condition removal, you will get destroyed by just about any decent condition necro that you fight. With the trait, you have decent condition removal, as well as more frequent access to stealth and burning, which goes hand in hand with Prismatic Understanding and serves to increase both damage and survivability.

I like these ideas. They seem like a great way to boost signets without making them overpowered. Signets are very niche right now, and often lose out to other, more useful utilities. I think this could make them even more powerful.

I was just thinking about signets earlier today after a laughably one-sided fight I had with a condition mesmer. Thank you for taking the time to come up with some good ideas!

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

selan.8354:

hahaha, yesh totally agree with u. making it trigger on interrupts was a huge mistake…i mean…erm trebs….they interrupts multiple targets at one.(not sure if it works on that but would have to try that out), interrupts can be spammed by warriors, engis and also thieves….how could they not see that coming? they even had to hotfix/overnerf tormenting rune, because they realized that engi could spam it too…oi

i think the on interrupts has to be removed and replaced with something else in this case if they wanna buff confusion builds.

Yep, why they fixed the Tormenting one as Engi could spam healing kit and get it to 25 stacks lol but not do anything about Perplexity. I think having them on Interrupt is fine, what they need to do is give it a 20-30second cool down though

Another thing they could do. Move 4/6 bonus to 6/6 and give it a buff and give it a new 4/6 bonus, maybe another duration or damage increase. Maybe even a damage increase to those affected by Confusion?

Something like:

1) 28 condition damage
2) 15% confusion duration
3) 55 condition damage
4) 20% chance to cause confusion on hit (15 second cooldown)
5) 100 condition damage
6) 15% confusion duration, 25% increased Confusion damage

I actually really like this suggestion. I don’t know how easy this would be to implement, but this would make the rune better for classes that can apply confusion on their own whilst still making it a good rune for other classes. While I don’t have a problem with the current rune, this would be a good alternative that wouldn’t give the most benefit to interrupt spammers.

They are already very strong condition weapons. In what way aren’t they condition weapons? Sure they can work in a power build, just like a sword can work in a condition build, but at their core, they are condition weapons. The one thing I would change with scepter is the autoattack, to make it a bit faster and not generate useless scepter clones. On torch, I would add burning or chill to the current phantasm’s autoattack. However, I think condition mesmers are already quite strong in WvW.

Please, enlighten me as to what “the weakness” of mesmer condition builds is. In my WvW condition build, I have stealth, significant access to protection and regeneration, decent condition burst through torment and Confusing Images, good condition removal, and good sustained damage and defense from staff. The only things missing are out of combat movement speed and some sort of cripple/immobilize to stop runners. I highly doubt that either scepter 1 or torch 5 could help with the movement speed issue, and I doubt that scepter 1 could apply movement impairing effects without being incredibly broken. I also wouldn’t want to mess with the other scepter/torch skills because as they say, “why fix something that’s not broken?”

Please, tell me why you think scepter and torch aren’t condition weapons. I would love to hear your suggestions on how you would improve them in a balanced manner.

Edit: Started typing this before you posted your above reply. In regard to your reply, I agree about the scepter autoattack. As for Confusing Images, why do you want it easier to dodge? I’m not following your syntax on that one. I also agree that iMage should have a faster projectile and stronger conditions (though maybe not necessarily confusion), but it can bounce to the same target more than once. The wiki is incorrect in claiming that it can’t.

If you are choosing solely on the basis of what will get you into groups, then go with mesmer. Stealth, portal, and projectile reflects all have a place in PvE. Also, soloing is typically very easy as a mesmer, since you have clones to sponge enemy attacks.

That being said, both classes are very viable for all levels of PvE content. A skilled ele can bring just as much to a party as a skilled mesmer. However, if you’re concerned about easily finding a group, mesmers are always in demand.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

I like the idea of adding weakness, but why does it have to be a bounce? Just so it can work with the trait?

It doesn’t HAVE to be a bounce, but by being a bounce, it forces mesmers to make thoughtful choices about traits. If the iMage is revamped to be a powerful phantasm that reliably applies conditions, then I would rather mesmers be forced to make a choice; do they take the reduced CD and condition cleanse, or do they add an extra bounce for dramatically improved offensive output. By removing the bouncing effect of the attack, then virtually all condition mesmers will take 20 pts in Domination. By having two lucrative traits affecting one skill, we will see more build diversity, which is a very good thing in my opinion. Some mesmers will go for Cleansing Conflagration, some will go for Illusionary Elasticity, and some will go for both by making sacrifices elsewhere.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Skill use every 6 seconds with a cast time of 0.75 seconds. Skill use every 4.8 seconds with Phantasmal Haste.
The skill bounces twice and cannot bounce to a target more than once.

Phantasmal Mage 6.3s 5.27s

Anyone know which one of these is correct? Both of them are from the wiki but different pages. Also the bounce never hitting a target more than once? That just seems silly and maybe old, especially given that they changed the bounce mechanics recently. Anyone tested this with the new changes?

The projectile can bounce to the same target more than once. I’ve fought mesmers using the iMage, and with Illusionary Elasticity, the projectile bounced to me, then to the enemy mesmer, then back to me. As for the attack speeds, I don’t know which is correct, but the first one seems a lot more normal to me.

As others said, 60g had a lot more buying power back towards release. Everything was cheaper, because there wasn’t as much money in the system. Heck, I still remember buying 250 Ancient Bones for 18c each. However, people have added more and more money to the system by farming CoF and they will continue to add money to the system by running dungeons. Money is going in faster than it is being consumed by gold sinks, so the prices will continue to rise. Eventually, precursors will become craftable, so at that point their prices will fall, but the prices of the materials used to craft them will spike.

Also, a note about using the Mystic Forge. You chose to gamble, it is not in any way “unfair” that you didn’t get a precursor. The Mystic Forge is all about luck and you are not entitled to getting a precursor after putting 200g in. If you lost 200g, you probably were not efficiently using the forge. When I went for my precursor (The Legend), I put over 1200 staves into the forge. Because I used buy orders and sold my exotics instead of reforging them, I only lost about 40g. Ultimately I got my precursor elsewhere, but by making smart choices, I would have had to put almost 20,000 staves into the forge before using the forge was more expensive than just buying the precursor outright.

If you have a good group, Arah paths 1 and 2 are both pretty good gold. Farming the Crown Pavilion is also pretty profitable at the moment. Other notable strategies for making gold include doing the world events from gw2stuff.com to get rares, and running many short dungeon paths once per day for some gold. Also, if you’re skilled enough, farming Dunwell or Strugar and Chomper with 3-5 gambits in the Queen’s Gauntlet is good money, but with the downside that you need a near-100% win rate to make meaningful money.

There are a few waypoints which were added to the game later on. I believe there are such waypoints in Plains of Ashford, Snowden Drifts, Cursed Shore, and Brisban Wildlands (there are probably more than I’m forgetting). I believe that the exploration prize was not updated to include these new waypoints, but the title and the badge on the log-in screen were updated.

To find the waypoints that you’re missing, mouse over the name of each zone on your world map and it will tell you how many of the zone’s waypoints you’ve unlocked.

@Esplen – The OP said he was missing waypoints. The Chantry of Secrets is a POI, so he probably already has it, since he said he had everything but waypoints. In fact, since it is required for Krytan Explorer, which he has, he must have already visited it.

If you’re good at jumping puzzles, the four puzzles in WvW are good ways to get badges. They are usually pretty deserted (especially with everyone farming the Crown Pavilion) and they aren’t too hard. Each of the borderland puzzles shouldn’t take more than five minutes for a skilled jumper, and the EB puzzle doesn’t take more than ten. Including travel time, you can get through all four in about 40 minutes, netting you about 30 badges. Of course, they can take longer if you are bad at jumping or if there are enemy players impeding your progress.

Running around with a zerg is also a good way to make badges, but only if you’re fighting other zergs. If your group is simply capturing objectives with little enemy resistance, this won’t get you make badges.

Finally, achievement chests are a great source of badges, but you only get one chest every 500 points. This means that if you are near to a 500-point milestone, you might as well go do some achievements and get the badges from that chest, but otherwise it’s probably faster to get badges via zerging or puzzle jumping.

For armor, you really only need one set. You can’t drastically change your build in the middle of a dungeon, so you don’t need lots of armor sets. However, I have met several warriors who carry both berserker and soldier’s armor around depending on how much survivability they need.

For weapons, you’ll need at the very least a melee set and a ranged set. Once you get more familiar with specific encounters, you might want to start carrying a wider range of weapons. For instance, on my mesmer, I carry all weapons with me except off-hand sword, and I use them all in dungeons, depending on the encounter. Learn all the weapons, so you know which one is right for the content you’re doing.

Finally, check out youtube for a brief walkthrough of the dungeon you intend to do. You can learn the dungeon well enough that you won’t slow the group down by requiring an explanation of everything. Even if you are running with guildmates, it is considerate to know what you’re getting into and not expecting others in your party to explain everything or to cover for your mistakes. For example, I ran Arah path 2 for the first time a few days ago. I watched a short video on the path before I went, and I knew the mechanics of all the fights and didn’t need to have anything explained to me. Meanwhile, the other new person in the group didn’t prepare and died a lot, hurting the group overall.

Hopefully that was helpful, good luck with your foray into dungeons!

I think that the iMage should be kept as a bouncing attack. Currently, the bounce works with both Cleansing Conflagration and with Illusionary Elasticity, and thus provides a torch user with some interesting trait choices. Maintaining these choices is very important in my opinion. However, the iMage could certainly use some tweaks.

The biggest problem is that three stacks of confusion for 3s is very underwhelming. Even traited for an extra bounce and with condition duration, this phantasm is very weak, considering its cooldown. I would propose that the iMage keep the confusion portion of its attack, but apply either chill or burning with each attack. Both of those conditions very much fit with the theme of a classic mage. Furthermore, they both relate to the torch. Burning very overtly corresponds with the flame of the torch, while chill is essentially the opposite of a flame, and is suited to the mesmer’s very “inverse” nature (i.e. using a big sword as a sniper rifle).

I’m not sure which condition should be applied or for how long. Perhaps a random chance at burning or chill to correspond with the “random” nature of the class, though it seems awfully strange to put a damaging and a non-damaging condition in competition like that, given the phantasm’s low attack speed.

What do others think of this idea?

Edited for grammar.

LUCKY HEART.1843:

I’m finished it

http://youtu.be/cG1xoXq4Hyk

Nice work You made it look easy!

I would not advise taking the sigil. There are many sigils which work far better for a condition build, such as Earth or Doom. Any damage gained from this sigil would pale in comparison to the above choices.

Edit: Also, they’re much cheaper than Sigils of Malice. Doom is about 4s and Earth is about 1g presently.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The problems i see

Light Field Leap, isnt exactly easy to get right. especially in the heat of battle. The shield one isnt to bad though and neither is iMage, when it works it seems to be very iffy on how it wants to bounce.

Though i am liking CoF with it though, a solid amount of time that is ALOT more reliable then the Light Leap

Once you practice more with the focus you’ll have a better time with retaliation. As others have stated, we have the most access to retaliation of any class in the game if we take the appropriate skills and are adept with using combo finishers.

Fortus.6175:

RIght now Im having 3 big problems with mesmers;

1. Movement speed; Runes of the centaur cut into my build and they are too expensive

1. Condition cleanses; I feel like I dont have enough, this is from someone coming from Eles and guardian, necros cast 5-6 conditions every a couple of seconds and I cant do nothing but watch my beautiful princess die to them

1. Tagging In PvE. By the time phantasm pop out the stuff are dead.

Please help, how could I solve this?!

1. You either need to run Centaur runes, use a focus, or become really proficient at blink/phase retreat antics.

2. You have a number of options here. You could run Melandru or Hoelbrak runes and use Lemongrass Poultry soup, you could run traited torch, or you could pick up some of the other condition removal traits. Also, you’ll probably want to run either null field or arcane thievery given how dominant conditions are right now.

3. Tagging can be pretty rough; I find that sticking at the front of the pack with sword gives me the best results.

Celestina.2894:

Oh I get it, the mesmer used perm mass invis!

Yes, he was using the very popular 30/30/30/30/30 build with traited permanent invisibility.

Do keep in mind that it takes multiple people from different servers to duel. For every person from your server dueling, there is someone from the other server dueling. Ultimately, it evens out.

Pure Heart.1456:

A ‘Champion’ is a powerful foe, with special abilities and lots of hitpoints, presumably garnered through hard training, or magical means.
At this point, Player characters can never achieve this kind of power; Put another way, the players can never become ‘Champions’.

This juxtaposition poses a problem, in that while a massive undead creature can believably hold ‘Champion’ status, a Queensdale Bandit does not. As a player, I feel ‘lame’ and unimportant when I am defeated by a mere ‘Champion’ bandit, or other similarly unimpressive foe. This issue stands by itself, but I also feel it impacts the Personal Story.

Do you have any thoughts?

There are many players who can solo most champions. In theory, doesn’t that make those players “champions” in a sense? Through hard training (leveling up) and magical means (armor/runes/etc) they have gained the power to take on very strong foes. I would argue that just because a player doesn’t have an obscene amount of HP that they can’t be considered a “champion” in the sense you’re describing.

As for the issue you bring up about Champion Risen vs Champion Bandits, I think there are two things to consider. First of all, it’s more of a semantic issue than anything else. “Champion” is simply the term for a very strong enemy as determined by the naming schema ANet has chosen. Liadri, for instance, doesn’t have the Champion tag but is harder to kill than most champions in the game. I think that one shouldn’t be so concerned over issues of naming.

That being said, I think you raise a valid point. Why aren’t a champion bandit and a champion Risen comparable? Many champion Risen have some unique mechanic which makes them feel like they’re actually powerful foes. The Champion Bandit Lieutenant (I believe that’s the one you’re referring to) just does ranged damage and can maybe knock you off a cliff if you’re standing too close to the edge. I’d argue that a champion bandit could “feel” just as powerful as a champion Risen if it were given more challenging mechanics to make the fight more interesting.

HawkMeister.4758:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Not every story step is “Destroy every enemy on the map”.

But .. but .. death is good!!
;)

To quote a Risen friend of mine: “Death… good…”

Zacchary.6183:

I play because I like watching Bleeding and Torment tix.

Me too. Nothing beats watching tiny little 140s and 100s flood my screen; when I see the big fancy purple confusion numbers, I get extra excited. I guess condition builds really bring out my inner sadist.

I was tempted to buy one for my mesmer, but I felt that a rapier would not be suitable for the slashing animations that the mesmer sword uses.

Lazarou.3745:

Condition already got overnerfed… stop trying to nerf it harder… Back off…

Applying an ICD to the rune’s 6-piece bonus isn’t a nerf to confusion. In small-scale combat, there really won’t be any difference, assuming the ICD is kept low. It will simply prevent AoE interrupts from applying mass confusion, which is really the only issue I see.

Also, any player who allows themselves to die to these runes 1v1 either needs to cleanse more or needs to review the mechanics of how confusion works (i.e. stop attacking for a bit). Stacking one condition, regardless of what it is, will not work against a player who has reliable condition removal.

Esplen – You are right, these runes do allow AoE confusion to be applied to a zerg and I fully agree that if mesmers aren’t allowed to do that, then no rune should allow players to do that either, regardless of class. A simple ICD on the 6-piece bonus would alleviate that.

The issue I have with selan’s argument is that she has claimed directly that this rune will make confusion on the mesmer useless or that we will be relegated to “portal bots.” She also talks about confusion on mesmers with a sense of entitlement, as if it should be a condition exclusive to a few professions. The fact is, these runes are useful for a number of classes/builds and many mesmers are making great use of them. The added confusion duration benefits us more than other classes because we have skills for applying conditions other than the runes. We have a vast number of interrupts as well. Signet of Domination, Magic Bullet, Distortion, and Chaos Storm can all be used in a condition build without sacrificing anything, unlike a hammer warrior using these runes.

I find selan’s hyperbolic rhetoric about how this rune destroys mesmers to be completely counterproductive. If people want to discuss this rune, they should be talking specifically about which classes and builds are abusing the rune and how/why it should be altered. Many people have already done that in the various threads about this rune, and I thank them for that. However, there are others who are peppering the discussion with doomsday remarks about how this is the end of the mesmer. Such opinionated remarks only serve to derail any objective conversation about the rune.

Also, while I have mourned the passing of the confusion mesmer, I believe that stacking one condition is inherently flawed because of the way cleansing works. Confusion stacking was only effective because it did so much damage, even with just a few stacks. Was a 50% nerf too much? Probably. But it did need to be toned down, and the amount of confusion a mesmer could apply to a zerg was ridiculous. Once again, they over-nerfed glamour builds, but the fact remains that, based on the decisions the devs have made thus far with confusion, confusion was not meant to be the sole source of damage for any build.

TL;DR: I’m confident that these runes will be brought in-line so as not to provide overwhelming AoE confusion. However, if we want to actually talk about how this rune needs adjusting, we need to move past all the subjective, incredibly biased language about how this rune is somehow destroying the mesmer class.

Honestly, a simply ICD on the six-piece bonus would fix it being spammable without completely breaking them.

selan.8354:

first of all im a girl, secondly warriors had fear since beginning of the game. i never said that confusion is an only mesmer thing, but as it is right now it does what a confusion mesmer does, but way better. they nerfed bb trait on mesmers to make it harder to stack confusion and along comes a rune. plus none of our confusions evr lasted for 10 seconds. all of them have 3-5 seconds. and if u wantproof, go to wvw forums and check the sreenshots of warriors and thieves with that rune.

a mesmer has to give up a lot if he wanted to be able to viably stack confusion. we have no dps in return,especially as glam mesmers. thats why im concerned as a confusion mesmer has been replaced by a rune!
btw no need to point me out.gotta see that as a confision mesmer since start and way befor glam mesmers, this rune makes me very upset!

My apologies for using a male pronoun to refer to you. I assure you, I meant no offense.

Regarding Fear, I was making the comparison that it is a condition which a small number of classes get access to via skills, but which can be gained by all classes via runes. Saying confusion should belong to mesmers is akin to saying that Fear should belong only to necros.

You claim that you never stated mesmers should be the only class with access to confusion. However, you have the following statements strongly implying that you think other classes shouldn’t be able to access it via a rune.

selan.8354:

mesmers should be masters of confusion not only as a condition, but also in general. making confusion accessable like this to all classes…… im sure its not intended ANET!

selan.8354:

mesmers are not specialists in confusion anymore! i mean whats our role now? veil and portal bot?

Saying that other classes are not intended to have access to confusion like this and that these runes relegate us to “portal bots” strongly paints a picture that you believe confusion should not be easily accessible via a rune. Please explain how this doesn’t imply that mesmers should have semi-exclusivity to confusion.

You also seem to imply that glamour builds were the primary way for mesmers to stack confusion. While this was certainly true for ZergvZerg (and why Blinding Befuddlement was nerfed into the ground), mesmers can make perfectly viable condition builds which have confusion not as the primary source of damage, but as a supplement. For these builds, the runes are incredible. The increased confusion duration is a great boon for anyone using Confusing Images. And, quite frankly, any build that is focusing solely on confusion is going to be sub-par. In large groups, there will be enough condition cleansing to make it ineffective, and in smaller fights, any decent player won’t spam skills and will make an effort to cleanse such large stacks of confusion.

I play a mesmer and have come across several players using the Runes of Perplexity. I’ve seen thieves, mesmers, engies, and warriors using the runes thusfar. Of all those classes, guess which ones used the runes the best: engies and mesmers. They were able to use confusion as a supplemental damage source along with their other conditions. Thieves didn’t have enough interrupts to keep confusion on me after I cleansed the initial burst. Likewise, warrior interrupts are so easily dodge-able that they were barely able to get confusion on me.

I would be a fan of a 10-20s ICD on the 6-piece trait to prevent the rune from becoming Glamour 2.0. However, in the many hours I’ve spent in WvW since the rune was released, I’ve yet to see any situations where the rune was overpowered. If people are allowing 20+ stacks of confusion to be stacked on them and aren’t cleansing it, that is a problem with their build or their understanding of confusion mechanics, not with the rune.

Edit: Likewise, I’ve been a condition mesmer since the game’s pre-release. I have played around with many builds utilizing confusion to varying degrees. A mesmer needs to give up a lot to stack massive confusion stacks. However, as stated above, those builds aren’t going to perform well against any decent player. These runes benefit mesmers (and to a lesser degree, engies) more than any other class. If you think these runes destroy our class, you really ought to evaluate your build and how you’re using them.

Rodigee.7139:

What in the world is happening in this thread?

Mesmers do not own confusion. Have you ever heard of engineers? These runes are not an attack on mesmers. Yes, these runes give whoever uses them a good source of confusion ( including mesmers…). I think this is a good thing because they open up a lot of new and interesting condition builds.

Thank you! I don’t understand how or why some people think confusion (or any condition, for that matter) belongs to just one class. It’s like complaining about the fear from Runes of the Nightmare because “fear is a necro thing.”

This rune does not hurt mesmers in any way. We have just as much access to it as any other class. In fact, because we have lots of interrupts, a trait that increases confusion duration by 33%, and skills that inflict confusion, we gain more by using these runes than any other class.

Selan has already been very vocal about his concerns about this rune on the mesmer forum (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/New-Rune-for-condi-mesmers/first). While there’s nothing wrong with bringing this topic to a larger audience for discussion, I would challenge him and anyone else who thinks these runes are overpowered to actually try them out on the classes you think they would be overpowered on. Provide the community with a video of the runes in action, or at least with a numerical summary of what they did and why they’re unbalanced.

I’ve been using these runes since the patch, and while they’re a nice dps increase for me, I’ve yet to see them do anything overpowered. Maybe I’m using them wrong, but it seems to me that any skilled opponent I’ve faced so far simply cleanses the confusion or stops spamming skills for a while.

I killed her pretty easily with my 20/20/30/0/0 condition build. I used staff and sword/focus. Sword is for the extra evade and focus is for swiftness or pulling the Visions into the light wells. Also, I found that Moa-ing Liadri at the start of Phase 2 helped smooth the transition between phases. I also used Runes of Perplexity as well; if you leave clones behind you, she attacks quickly enough that the confusion damage isn’t half bad. Also, I used Mantra of Resolve as a cleanse because it was more reliable for quickly cleansing the two conditions she puts on you.

I haven’t beaten hard-mode Liadri yet with this build, but I’ve come very close (much closer than when I tried using a zerker build). So far I’ve been able to hit her with six crystals before I screw up and die somehow, but I believe that the build I’ve mentioned above can get the achievement and plan on getting it before the Jubilee ends.

I believe that it does work with Power Return. However, it has a 20s internal cooldown, so there’s not much reason to choose Mantra of Recovery solely because of this rune.

Aquilus.9423:

Just got on my lvl 19 Mesmer and spawned 3 staff clones; killed over a dozen mobs and haven’t seen a single Fear proc. Could it be a bug with the 4-rune-bonus for the Rune of Perplexity incorrectly proccing Fear when our Clones attack rather than or in addition to the confusion that we apply on hit?

I’ve been running Perplexity since the patch and I’ve yet to see Fear, so I doubt it’s the runes in a of themselves. However, it could be a combo of the runes and something else. Could those affected by this please post their builds?

I have never had this happen or heard of it happening. Do you have the ability to get some video footage and post your complete build so we can get an idea of why this might be happening?