Guild Wars 2

@Crowley
Running pistol over shield would be viable in 1v1 scenarios, but when you’re getting focused in a team fight the shield is absolutely necessary. GS5’s knockback is nice but is on a really high cooldown, and don’t forget sword #4 is a 5-target daze too, on 1/3 the cooldown. As to the AOE, well scepter #3 is also a small AOE, but you’re right there isn’t much AOE damage. Then again, the damage that GS put out isn’t really much to begin with, and we’re better off focusing one person and leaving the AOE to necros etc.

I agree that phantasmal haste is a good choice, but illusions master is a bit of a crapshoot for me. I don’t take phantasmal haste simply because my phantasms usually don’t last long.

@draxynnic
This build does indeed work better with mercenary’s, as it puts out quite a lot of conditions as well, but I wanted to stick with power. I take OH sword for the phantasm and the block. Pistol #5 is nice but in today’s meta where everyone has stability, you’re not going to be stunning a whole lot. Sword #4 can do more than 4k on a crit with 1/3 the CD of pistol #5, and can be turned into a daze if needed. The sword phantasm is also more difficult to dodge than the pistol one, and can’t be LOS’d easily.

Staff is a great, but can’t work as the offensive weapon for a power build.

I’ve been running a power chronomancer build since the end of last season to fairly good effect. It did well in unranked, and is doing quite well in ranked play this season too. Just thought I’d share it for those who would like to play a power mesmer.

The biggest problem with power shatter in today’s meta is that it is too squishy with all the power creep and CC going on, while not bringing enough sustained damage of its own. This build aims to address that; here it is:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse7clknhy0YjawWNwsGLPH1ZBEAHW9geoLK6i1YHAA-T5wHAB2XGAgHAA77PAA

Perhaps the most unusual thing about this power build is the use of the scepter. I was initially not sure about this as well, as greatsword skills are quite essential to a power mesmer’s burst. However, the recent buffs to scepter can really be felt here, with the autoattack dealing significantly more damage than the GS at close range, and skill #3 capable of doing 6-7k to light targets. Having so much power also means scepter #2 and OH sword #4 do absolutely massive amounts of damage. These two blocks are also significantly faster after the last patch, and actually land their damage reliably now.

I feel the most important thing here is how well the build makes use of the illusions line. PoM and reduced CD on shatters and illusions are huge boosts to our survivability. Scepter #2 has a cooldown of just 4.75s with malicious sorcery, and sword #4 sits at 9.5, allowing you to be blocking almost all the time. This means that even in our offensive weapon set, we still have a fair amount of defence.

Survivability is boosted even more with inspiration, chronomancer, scrapper runes and sigil of energy. I know the sigil has been nerfed, but I still like it. Sword and shield are still used when things really get rough. I find that the toughness from demolisher is more important than the vitality from marauder, as inspirations has quite a lot of cleanses.

With the two hard-hitting but singular blocks, where this build really excels at is in duels, and I’ve had success fighting all the classes on point. The biggest counter to this build is actually another mesmer, as the clones negate the two blocks.

All in all I find it’s a decent build with good roaming capabilities, but isn’t too bad in team fights either. Whether it’s better than a condi mesmer with the recent nerfs is debatable, but I like power mesmer, and this build works in the current meta.

Lol melandru and phokus, how are you falling for this?

@Exciton: Yeah, I agree moa still has its place.

Exciton.8942:

So with this change, you will have to use moa when the enemy is already low.

That sounds like a good change to me.

From experience if the moa isn’t already dead or locked down within 6 seconds, it would usually have run away already. So while it is a nerf I think it’s acceptable if it suppresses at least some of the QQ about mesmer. That said, they should have reduced the CD to make it more palatable for a core mesmer. A CD buff wouldn’t really affect a chronomancer anyway.

This is a very useful guide. Thank you for putting it together

Sorry to be a downer Syric but our summons are actually called Phantasms, not Phantoms, which are two very different things

Fay.2357:

Overall I think you’re correct, but something you may have neglected to consider is that a shiro revenant is as effective if not more effective than a thief at chasing down and applying heavy pressure to a mesmer. There’s a reason you still see nobody running power mesmer. It’s simply too fragile to match up to a lot of the meta classes, not just thief.

So, there’s still pretty heavy restrictions on what can and can’t be run as a mesmer, thief just isn’t the limiting factor anymore.

As irrelevant as Azukas’ response to this post of yours, pyro, I have to disagree as well. I’m among the small handful of people who ran power shatter this season, up to mid-diamond before I got stuck. The limiting factor was very much still thieves.

Your points on stealth and sustained-dps are correct but the most difficult part about facing a thief is their ability to teleport AWAY from you, allowing them to reset at any point and return at their leisure. This is something revenants can’t do, and I’ve found that I have far less trouble with power revenants than I do with a good thief.

I’ve been running this build since HoT started, with the exception that I use mental defence. and gravity well. The others are right, you want that trait.

As for MoD or portal, I find that it depends a lot on your team. In solo queue MoD is more useful for me as it helps a lot in combat effectiveness. I carry portal in an organised team as you can communicate its use and they can bail you out if a duel goes bad.

Stability is prevalent but I haven’t found it to be a problem. You can strip them, but sometimes the sheer amount of dazes the build has allows you to just burn through stab.

How is stalling different from bunkering?

Actually, if you’re level 80, you should be able to unlock everything immediately. As for traits, dom/duel/inspr is great. Sometimes I substitute illusions for dominations if I’m running alone and am shattering often.

Klonko.8341:

You guys are discussing with bad faith. If you are bringing nothing to the table, I suggest you to leave the discussion.

I was gonna explain but pyro beat me to it. Basically your ridiculous claims show your abysmal understanding of the class. Until you stop making hugely exggerated claims like being able to 100-0 someone, having ranged DPS even approaching a ranger, stealth like a thief or running a 6/6/6/6/6 build, you’ll simply be dismissed as another clueless whiner, which we’ve largely run out of patience for since you guys pop up almost daily nowadays.

Maybe make it such that our phantasms won’t die upon target death if the commander is active, and thus capable of acquiring new targets that would be quite something.

Lol okay, that was a joke. What Ross meant was that illusions die in one hit anyway.

I’ve never felt something like that was necessary, but I suppose it would be a nice QoL change, like others’ suggestions about different colours for illusions and phantasms.

Shatter sustained DPS is too low for dungeons. But it is good for clearing trash in the open world.

Okay you’re a little confused, perhaps I could have chosen my words better. You get hero points from hero/skill challenges and levelling up to 80, period. There are no other sources of hero points. All specialisations consume hero points.

When I said you’ve completed half the world map, I meant you’ve gone and done half of the skill challenges available on the world map, of which there are 214 in total. So you’ve actually only done about 1/3 with 60, not half. You get 398 from levelling which is just enough to unlock all your core specialisations. Any more you need to unlock the elite specialisations will require you to do more skill challenges: 175 challenges for 175 points. No vistas, no POIs, no hearts, just hero/skill challenges.

As I said, you get HPs by doing the hero challenges, defeating a certain monster etc. If you only have 60+ HPs that means you probably only completed half of the world map; don’t forget that your core specialisations consumed some HPs too.

Hero points are tied to your character by the way, in the same way that map exploration is and skill points were tied to your character. So doing these challenges with new characters will not earn your old characters any HPs.

Menadena.7482:

Yes, going through some of my characters the highest anyone had was 64. Most were in the 30 or 40 range. Why they have such a high HP requirement and why you need HPs to buy skins are two things I hope are wrong.

If you unlocked all of your traits by doing stuff before the change of course you will have plenty of HPs … you never needed skill points. If you spent skill points to catch up you are hosed, especially since they turned all your scrolls to spirit shards and removed them from the game, rather than replace them.

For example, I used to get a 3 pt scroll from Teq often. I do it almost every day. If they had not taken them out it would ‘only’ take me, what, a year and a half of grinding teq?

If I do old content it is in the normal course of events. I do not seek it out to grind my characters.

Hero points have nothing to do with the skill points you used to have. Hero points are unlocked by doing hero challenges, which are the old skill challenges. If you find that you don’t have any hero points now, it’s probably because you never bothered to do any world exploration, not because you spent your old skill points. Your old skill points were converted to spirit shards.

IGN: Kyrios Cephei
Play: PvP, PvE, WvW
Server: Desolation
Role: Scholar, Tester
Time: GMT and GMT +8:00

Thanks

If you don’t want to turn off autoattack, deselect your target by clicking somewhere else on your screen, then your AA won’t fire. If you’re trying to run past a mob you don’t need to target it anyway. I do this when spawning phantasms from stealth in PvP as well, do it while the phantasm is mid-cast.

Thanks for the advice, I suppose I need to get used to predicting when the PU burst is about to come too, since they go into stealth for so long.. Glad to see I’m not the only one with this problem though, those PU mesmers are indeed the most annoying things around.

On topic, I love this build The double mantras make it quite clunky at times but the sustain is fantastic and it always feels good to stop stomps, resses and heals and do damage on top. One thing I’d add though, that because of the lack of stealth and the long cast time of the heal, during which we can only run around, the build doesn’t do too well if focused by a lot of people in a group fight. So positioning is important.

I’ve run almost the exact same build since the balance patch, except I use an OH sword rather than a pistol simply because I like double swords. I find that power block better than mental anguish because the build doesn’t have a large amount of clone generation, and MW isn’t as big a part of your damage output as a DE build.

The biggest problem I have with the build right now is that I cannot fight PU mesmers. When faced with a good one we just trade bursts and defenses until we’re left with stealths, and I’m completely helpless to his further bursts. Them being in stealth doesn’t leave much to interrupt too. Maybe you can help me with this.

I agree that the pull needs to be restored, even if it’s just a single pull at the start or near the end. The pull was what made it unique; a 2 second CC with a 3 second wind-up on a 90 second CD is simply rather useless.

Has anyone noticed the new dueling minor? We get permanent fury on enemies at less than 75% health. That’s just amazing.

Direct damage modifiers don’t affect phantasms.

I know you’re very proud of your skills as a mesmer but don’t change the conditions of a fight. I did say all things equal, including skill. If you’re going to bring all sorts of other builds into the picture we can do the same for the necro. But you get my point so I won’t harp on that.

You haven’t addressed my second paragraph, which is a point I’ve been making since I started posting today. There is nothing special about the moa-lich counter. Other high CD elite skills can be completely negated, so can lich. So can moa, by a dodge, especially in 1v1 since I know when he’s in stealth and when he’s casting. It’s not easy, yes, in the same way that it’s not easy for anyone else to fight a lich head on.

I no longer have the time to debate with you. I see where you’re coming from, but I still disagree and I hope you can see the single point that Pyro brought up and which I’ve been trying drive across to you all this time.

StickerHappy.8052:

Think of it this way, 1v1 on a node, You are playing a necro and the mesmer has Moa, What is the reason for popping lich in that fight where the mesmer can just cancel it? So what is the point in using lich? Nothing right?

it makes you kinda think would you still slot it..

You can’t distill things down to simple situations like that. If that’s the case then don’t fight the mesmer on point if you can’t beat him without lich.

Think of it this way, 1v1 on a node, with you as a mesmer and your opponent as a thief. All things equal, you’re probably going to lose to him. Why play mesmer at all then? See things aren’t always that simple. In your scenario I can see why you’d think it would be balanced, but if you take it out of that scenario the mesmer becomes disadvantaged, and the necro faces absolutely no risk at all popping his lich whenever he wants. This extends to any transformation, which are frequently, by design, incredibly strong.

The thing is, you and TyPin are trying to raise the point that the moa-lich counter is something that is especially bad. This is what the rest of us simply don’t agree with. There have been numerous examples given of elite skills with huge CDs being negated by far less meaningful skills, such as a 240s CD banner made useless by a simple poison. The only circumstance under which I’d agree with you is if the necro is totally reliant on lich form, and is completely helpless if he doesn’t use it. But this is not the case, and even if it were, that is a problem with the class, not the moa-lich counter.

I’m sorry, I still don’t see why it matters that the target is transformed. Is it because you think the elite skill is negated? The same applies to everyone else. Any class can use whatever elite skill he wants; in the end if I moa him he’s still a moa. What stops elite skills from being negated anyway? If I put down by 180s time warp the enemy can just run out of the area and it’s useless, since according to you it’s likewise okay to run away from a lich. Should time warp apply immobilise then? A thief guild’s summons can be killed immediately if my team drops some AoEs, should they be invulnerable then?

As I said before, if what you suggest becomes a thing, transformations will counter moa. Unless you think it’s a good idea to let the lich attack my teammates for 20s then moa him afterwards.

I also don’t understand why you bring up lich countering moa now. It doesn’t. Isn’t that the point? It’s good at doing other things.

The point is that a necro when moa’d is exactly the same as anything else when moa’d. There is no difference. Anything that is moa’d, becomes a moa. You are the one suggesting that necros should now be exempt from this.

StickerHappy.8052:

To anyone who doesn’t wanna read the first post again:

I have played some PvP with Necromancer lately. And I felt the pain over and over again, when Lich Form got canceled into Moa by Mesmer. I find that counter actually too hard.
So my suggestion is that Moa only cancels a transform. So if you were transformed, like Tornado, Lich Form or the like, Moa will transform you only back into normal form.
If the target isn’t transformed though and Moa hits, it could work as it does today.
What are your thoughts on that?

I have yet to see each side of classes, both pros and cons to start a very good talk.

We’ve given our points, but you have the habit of dismissing anything you don’t agree with as biased.

I personally find it ridiculous that you think it’s okay for us to use ALL of our skills, if they were available in the first place, to simply return a severely disadvantaged fight onto even ground. Except it’s not really even because now I’m a sitting duck, while the transformed class still has everything available to him. If that were the case I’d transform instantly in any fight just to bait the moa and all of the mesmer’s skills. The transformation becomes the counter to moa and not the other way round, and would render moa quite useless, don’t you think?

Yes, you feel the pain of being moa’d while in lich form. So does everyone else. The guardian does, the thief does, the warrior does, the mesmer does. I still don’t see what makes you special.

StickerHappy.8052:

How do you dodge something that you don’t see?

Another fun fact, you can just blink away from lich? Running away does not mean losing the game. While you do that, you can decap or neut other points?

Moa on stealth doesn’t apply to lich form only. Are you implying now that moa should be outright nerfed? Apply revealed on cast maybe? You’re also assuming I would blow my most important defensive abilities just to moa the lich, while the rest of the team will just sit there and let me walk around them afterwards.

I can blink, but the moa can also run away. Yes the rest of my team can lock it down but the rest of their team can also lock me down. There is also no guarantee that I will walk into a fight with all my cooldowns ready. In fact, unless I just died I probably won’t, but the moa will always have its skills off CD.

You haven’t addressed the previous point. What makes transformations so special that they get a free pass off moa?

It’s funny how you think 20s worth of lich autoattacks can be dodged and blinded but a single moa cast can’t.

Pyro makes the best argument here. Moa turns you into a moa no matter what you are, lich or no lich, and you deal with the consequences the exact same way. Having a very strong elite skill shouldn’t grant you an exception to that. On the contrary it should make you more susceptible to it. I’m afraid I completely don’t see your logic.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Nooooo. Don’t do this. You must place the exit before not after you start the stomp. Portal has a delayed activation.

Yes that’s correct, my bad. I just tested it and the delay of about 0.5 seconds after placing portal is about right.

It is definitely still possible. However as others have said there is now a delay between portal usages. This means you pretty much need to place your portal immediately as you start the stomp, or you won’t be able to make it back in time. I will try to put up a video later.

apharma.3741:

All nice ideas but what I’d rather see is the precision aspect removed and sword skills deal bonus damage to targets with no boons.

-20% CD, Sword skills do 50% more damage to boonless targets.

I love this idea. The devs need to see this.

I’d just like to add that MoP is not a DPS loss compared to sword AA, even including the charging time, so you’re free to spam MoP for that 20% boost. This is as long as you have HM and don’t interrupt your AA chain.

Also, Mender’s Purity will almost certainly proc on each charge, as that is how it works now. Making it only proc on channeling will be a massive, massive nerf. However they could make Mender’s Purity unable to proc HM.

Wasn’t there a link some time ago to a dev saying that classes that will only be getting a MH/OH weapon will be getting something “just as good”? For us this most likely means an F5 shatter, which could cause a slow/quickness effect to tie in with the chronomancer theme.

Just did a guardian test; for some reason I can’t add it to the first post. I’ll leave it here until I can.

Guardian
The build used is the S/T + GS build on metabattle, not traited for maximum damage. Guardian DPS is a little trouble some of tests as they gain 20% damage from conditions that I can’t apply solo. On the other hand unscathed contender is not likely to be up most of the time. To counter this, I removed the 2 on-condition traits and used unscathed contender as they balance out.
Mean: 16.33 ± 0.30s; St. Dev.: 0.93s

The guardian does more damage than a 2-phantasm mesmer and is nearly on par with the 3-phantasm one. If unscathed contender were to be maintained, which it probably will be in any situation where you can maintain 3 phantasms, the guardian will pull ahead. Binding blade has a significant impact on the DPS, reducing kill-times by about 2-3 seconds due to the short duration of the fight. So the DPS advantage is also partially due to the higher burst damage of the guardian. At this point there doesn’t seem to be any reason to bring a mesmer aside from portal or time warp.

You’re a little confused Zenith. Let me remind you that this is the 6/6/0/0/2 build. This build is NOT meant to compete with thieves, it’s meant to be a guardian substitute and provide group condition cleanses, stability and portal/reflect/whatever else is needed. I used thief as a comparison because it is known to be one of the highest single-target classes in the game, and so gives an idea of where we stand.

It inherently has better survivability because of the slightly higher HP, the mantras mentioned above and Mantra of Recovery, which when traited is by far the most efficient heal in the game. I’m not saying you’ll die as a thief; yes sure you can evade if you’re good but you’re more likely to die because you have less tools to recover from being hit.

Thief DPS is also only that good if you use D/D and run the rotation perfectly. In case you’re wondering an S/P pistol whip thief takes about 19 seconds to make the same kill, which is longer than the 2-phantasm mesmer even including the summoning time.

Now if you were to use the 6/4/0/0/4 build with phantasmal haste, you would do more damage but the mantra utilities would come down. IIRC when I did some tests a while back it took about 13 seconds for a 3-phantasm kill including the summoning time, but that was with a rune. I’d argue it no longer competes with a guardian at this point, and unless you can keep 3 phantasms up doesn’t compete with the DPS classes either.

Regarding cleave; remember that the berserker also cleaves, although you lose damage while on the GS. Also, the warden’s channel is absolutely not low DPS. In fact during the channel itself it’s by far the highest DPS phantasm we have. The problem is that it’s rooted and the time between channels is very long.

We all know that Mesmers do bad DPS, but I wanted to find out just how bad/good it is, and how different setups may affect that. I did a series of tests on the heavy golems on HotM, with no amulet, no trinkets and no runes. This is to prolong the encounter for as much as possible to smoothen out random variations due to critical hits etc. The build I used is the Fractals build, without Phantasmal Haste.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQRAsc8al0npKtFpxVNcrNiqhgqukOQiIluTpBA

Each test was repeated 10 times and the amount of time it took to kill the golem was recorded. The results are presented below as the mean, standard error and standard deviation.

Sword AA Only:
As the title says, this was hitting the golem with only the sword AA. You may see this as a control.
Mean: 38.95 ± 0.57s; St. Dev.: 1.79s

Sword AA + Blurred Frenzy:
Blurred frenzy was used whenever it was off cooldown. This coincided nicely with 3 completed AA chains.
Mean: 36.28 ± 0.24s; St. Dev.: 0.75s
Blurred frenzy increases your DPS by a little, so you’ll want to use it if you don’t plan on dodging any big hits with it.

Sword AA + 1 Phantasmal Swordsman:
The clock was started after the swordsman was summoned, as it is common to summon it before reaching the boss and hitting it.
Mean: 23.37 ± 0.42s; St. Dev.: 1.31s
Unsurprisingly one phantasm hugely increases DPS.

Sword AA + 1 Phantasmal Swordsman + 1 Phantasmal Duelist:
The clock was started after the first phantasm was summoned. The duelist was chosen as it is the 2nd highest DPS phantasm after the swordsman.
Mean: 18.32 ± 0.48; St. Dev.: 1.52s
DPS increased again, but not as much as before, probably because of the extra time needed to summon the second phantasm. The Duelist also does less DPS.

Sword AA + 2 Phantasmal Swordsmen + 1 Phantasmal Duelist:
Mantra of Restoration was swapped out for the Signet, allowing 3 phantasms up. As before the clock was started after the first phantasm was summoned.
Mean: 17.18 ± 0.38s, St. Dev.: 1.20s
DPS hardly changed from 2 phantasms, which is not surprising since it takes an extra 3 seconds to summon the other 2 phantasms. So in short fights, 2 is enough. Comparing mean kill-times without the phantasm summoning time included is 17.32s for 2 phantasms and 14.18s for 3, so quite significant.

Greatsword AA:
This test was done at maximum range of the greatsword, which is our best ranged weapon.
Mean: 51.58 ± 0.48s; St. Dev.: 1.50s
The greatsword is significantly worse than the sword even at maximum range.

Mantra of Pain:
It’s interesting to see how using MoP affects our DPS with these two weapons. The clock was started with no charges on MoP, so the first 2.75s are spent charging it; this is to simulate an extended fight. Note that I am traited for Harmonious Mantras.
Sword AA + MoP Mean: 38.91 ± 0.43s, St. Dev.: 1.35s
Greatsword AA + MoP Mean: 43.14 ± 0.69s, St. Dev.: 2.18s
MoP hasn’t affected the DPS of the sword at all, so don’t bother using it. However it has hugely increased the DPS of the greatsword, so it’s a good idea to bring it for ranged encounters like, say, Tequatl.

To see how we compare to other classes, I also did the same DPS test on a thief. The build used was the D/D dungeon build on metabattle. However I removed the quickness trait as it has a huge impact on such short fight times, and substituted Revealed Training with a +175 Power rune as I didn’t have the trait. All attacks were done from behind, initiating with Cloak and Dagger, Backstab, 1 AA chain and restarting the cycle – ideal conditions for the thief.
Mean: 14.63 ± 0.21s; St. Dev.: 0.68s

The thief seems to do a lot more damage than the mesmer, being on par with having 3 phantasms up on extended fights, while in reality we probably only have 1 phantasm up on average. In this case a thief does about 70% more damage than us. However it’s notable that the 6/6/0/0/2 fractal build has substantially more survivability than the thief and offers excellent group support. Nonetheless it is near the maximum amount of damage we can do. It also isn’t always possible to attack from behind or stay in melee range.

I hope the information is useful and gives people an idea of what kind of damage we realistically do. The test isn’t perfect as removing the amulets would reduce our critical hit chance, hence reducing the effect of on-critical-hit traits. However, these are not very significant to begin with, for a Berserker build. I believe it is one step up from calculations.

Let me know if you have any comments on my methodology or spot any significant flaws. I may update this with other weapons or scenarios in the future, but I have no plans for now.

Badwolf.9725:

I don’t sPvP, so I have nothing to say there. I think that Anet could make changes that PvE content adds in an AoE resistance, while sPvP doesn’t have that buff? I think that’s a fair point. In WvW, could you scale the AoE resistance(or maybe health) of minions/pets based on the number of players present? Similar to PvE bosses scaling depending on the number of players present?

I think your right, it is much simpler to do nothing, but doing nothing makes entire skill/trait lines completely useless as it is. I think if they aren’t going to do anything, they should just patch the skills out of the game.

Yeah, which is why you’re one of the few people who aren’t attacking the idea. Scaling each minion to the number of players present would be an ideal situation, but I don’t know how difficult that will be to implement.

The reason I suggested they do nothing for WvW is that the affected classes are sort of alright anyway, and by doing nothing you avoid a balance nightmare. Not every build can be viable for every situation, and in the case of WvW maybe we should just accept that minion-based builds have more of a place in small-scale skirmishes than in larger fights. In zergs mesmers and rangers do have places as ranged snipers, while necros and guardians are indispensable in the zerg itself. Engis are less used but it’s not because their turrets can’t survive. This isn’t the case in PvE, where you only take necros and rangers if you have no other choice, and mesmers are absolutely useless at bosses with any form of AoE.

This needs a fix. You may be able to patch out spirit weapons, minions and turrets but you can’t patch out phantasms and pets.

It’s funny how almost all of you here can’t seem to see past PvP. Minion health is no problem at all in sPvP and they’re fairly well balanced. The problem in PvE, where them getting one-shotted by AoEs every three seconds or so completely invalidates some builds and entire classes in some situations. The proposed changed will be a great idea in PvE, and can be kept out of sPvP entirely.

WvW is a little more troublesome, since we have both massive AoEs in zergs, in which minions could use a buff, and small scale skirmishes, in which the buffs would make the minions rather overpowered. An elaborate solution would be to have the game figure out which situation you’re in and apply the correction accordingly, but it’s probably simpler to just leave things as they are now.

I tested this 2 days ago and got the same results as you.

I think it’d be more interesting if you got your weapon traits replaced by phantasm skills, since that’s what transformations normally do.

So you’d have the leap from iSwordsman, whirl from the iBerserker, unload from the iDuelist etc. The cooldowns and effects could be the same as a regular phantasm and similarly affected by traits. Considering the amount of damage our phantasms do this could be quite powerful. We could even have 2 phantasm forms like Guardians do with their tomes, one with all the damaging phantasms and another with more utilities (absorb damage from allies like the iDefender, cleanse conditions, reflect projectiles etc.)

Rich Fuel.7253:

HO kitten WE ARE GETTING AN EXPENSION

And here is his point of revelation

I’ve been playing a guardian since I started the game about a year ago. But after watching a samurai show recently, I was looking at my chaos sword and I decided, kitten , I have to dual wield these.

So I made a mesmer because I like them more than warriors. I tried a few builds in pvp, and didn’t like phantasm builds because my sword phantasms kept dying and the gameplay was rather passive. After bursting my first opponent with the standard shatter build, I decided shatter was the way to go.

But the standard shatter build lacks condition removal, which really irks me. It’s not the condition bombs that I’m annoyed about, as we have null field and arcane thievery, it’s the single stacks of chill, cripple and fear that aren’t worth blowing a long CD on yet prevent me from doing what I want to do. So I came up with this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAscRl0npMtNqxGNcrNyqxcqlQ9WdlWpHJ7AA-TJBFwAy3fYxTAoaZAAnCAA

It’s quite like the standard shatter, but I’ve given up some damage for better heals and condition removal. I have mantra of distraction in the third slot now, which is great for stopping heals, rapid fires and such but I also run the stability mantra sometimes for the stunbreaks and guaranteed stomps.

On the upside, I’ve found that I can handle conditions much much better, and I rarely run into situations where I’m bogged down by them (only against engineers at a point, necros or when i’m zerged). The mantra heal also heals more than ether feast, and if I’m dying I can disengage and reengage fairly quickly.

On the downside, I’ve lost quite some damage. It’s not just from the loss of the power traits, but also because I need more time to recharge my mantra when I use it up, and I won’t be pressuring my opponent when I’m doing that. Sometimes when I lose duels I wonder if I’d have been able to kill them with the standard shatter build, but I often find I have better results with my current build.

I’m new to mesmers so I’m hoping you more experienced people can comment on the build. It’ll be great if you could recommend more sword/sword builds too I’m aware of the interrupt builds but I’m a bit apprehensive of using them because I’m not really that good, and I sometimes play from asia where my ping is more than 200ms. Thanks!

Is this considered non-standard?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASRl0ApboVDxcI8DNBBRZVAgdLsCv51ZQFMBA-TJBHwAEeAAAuAAm2foZZAA

It’s a hybrid meditation build but despite a year of playing I cannot get myself to take shelter over signet of resolve. I’ve traited such that I get that heal every 32 seconds and have 2 passive condition clears. I also love the hammer/GS combo for its aoe damage and control, but yes I do get kited more easily.

The standard medi dps build probably works better, but I like this.

BlackDevil.9268:

Mix of power and condition gears is usually better than celestial and much cheaper.

He’s talking about sPVP.

What weapons are you using? The effectiveness of a guard in duels is affected strongly by whether you’re using primarily 1H or 2H weapons, I’ve found. Sceptre/sword is a lot more resistant to kiting than hammer/greatsword. Dank’s build is an example of the former; it’s a great duelist build but it falls flat when there are more people around. I ran something like that for a while, but it is frustrating when there are 3 people around and you can only hit one of them, and you have to watch the others take your teammates down.

The build I’m running now is a hammer/gs build with 20k hp. I can duel, the hammer gives me some control, but it’s not too difficult to kite me. Where I excel is in team fights, where the two weapons put out massive AoE damage and I don’t really die that easily. That’s a niche of a DPS guardian I think.

So you basically have 2 options: duel centred build that falters in team fights, or team-fight centred build that falters in duels. I personally wouldn’t choose the former, as a thief/mesmer/warrior/engi can all do that very well. Guardians are always framed as team players rather than soloists, and it’s interesting how this characteristic has made its way into the way we do damage too.

I’d just like to say that I’m running a similar build to this in sPvP, except I’ve taken the signet cooldown trait (for the heal) and a berserker amulet.

It’s working pretty well so far The extra vitality massively improves survivability without taking much out of dps. I’m winning most of my duels (much more than before) and of course, hammer and GS are beastly in group fights.

I’d say stick with the Travelers. I find the biggest problem we face is getting kited since we don’t really have too many cripples/chills/immobilises. Travelers lets you stick to your target like nothing else I’ve found and greatly improves your effectiveness in melee combat.