It’s easier to just go back to your childhood. Did you induce injury or death to any small creatures including but not limited to cats, dogs, kittens, puppies, bunnies, and/or a variety of insects?
Hahaha, I was thinking about something like this as well. ^^
Since Chaos Archangel proved his survey construction skills, could we ask him to make a mesmer version of the ICD-10 to answer the OP´s question?
Basically, you made a normal CI lockdown build with Defender runes. Although this provides a very strong heal with Ether Feast, it doesn´t use Aegis on heal that well. I mean, the 6th rune bonus is quite nice, but not the reason for using those runes on mesmer (at least for me). It´s the on-demand Aegis to block strong hits and secure important skills like Mass Invis or mantras.
A few weeks ago I had a lockdown vs. lockdown duel where my opponent used Defender runes. The other mesmer´s timing with MoR was really good so I was unable to interrupt e.g. his Mass Invis due to his use of Aegis mid-cast. This was my inspiration to suggest a somewhat similar build.
My prefered offhand weapons are torch/focus at the moment (in contrast to you, I love stealth ^^). I used to play with offhand sword for a few hundred hours and it´s solid, but my preferences shifted towards more utility (focus) or defense (torch). I still use Blade Training for iLeap´s immobilize and of course Blurred Frenzy, though.
So I think we got a rather different playstyle, but I will definitly use your build as well to see what works best. Thanks for your feedback!
Mirrorblade → Blurred Frenzy → MindWrack should still deal nice damage, especially if you add Air/Fire sigils. Using CS instead of CI could be another option to get at least Halting Strike and vuln stacking. I will give it a try this weekend…
What about something like this? I´ve used a similar build for a short amount of time, but came back to mantra lockdown for better cc and on-demand condition remove. At least it was fun to play and ok in terms of effectiveness. ^^
Trail of Knives bounces, so it might hit you, a clone, you… That´s why a downed thief still deals a lot of damage to mesmers (most are full berserker as well).
A lot of condition remove, defensive stats, decent mobility, cc and might stacking. I´ve played something close to this for at least 2 months and it´s a solid solo roaming build.
If you test this in PvP, the damage will be mediocre at best, but the WvW output is pretty high due to guard and bloodlust stacks.
Have you tried something like Shatterlock with CI instead of CS yet? My attempts to make it work in wvw usually failed due to lack of condition remove. Maybe it does work in pvp, where most mesmers seem to be crazy enough to run without any remove all the time…
Hence the suggestion of adding quickness to chaos armor.
Its a change to chaos armor, which is a staff skill. So yeah, staff players would benefit more often. But it wouldn’t be ONLY staff. You can also get chaos armor from sword/focus/veil, torch/glamor. Also, since staff’s auto attack isn’t all that fast to begin with, those 2sec of quickness would help but wouldn’t be too over the top. And Staff #4 chaos armor is on a long 35 second cooldown.
Or is 2 seconds of quickness NOT ENOUGH to make a difference??? Should it be 3 seconds?
2 second should be fine, but I would prefer to add quickness to other skills than Chaos Armor. Its 35 second cooldown and the necessity to use staff (or the not so often used Glamour skills + combo finisher) decrease the use for a greater variety of builds. As I said, reliable quickness would benefit mantra builds the most. There is no place for Glamour skills in those builds and there are a lot of other interesting weapon options besides staff.
Furious Interuption on the other hand would be interesting if it had a lower cooldown. It´s not tied to specific weapons or utilities as well. That´s what i critizied on your approach, it´s not really accessible for a lot of builds.
When I used Furious Interruption I had the impression that I cannot do that much with quickness as a mesmer. Most skills are already quite fast and our autoattacks aren´t that strong for spamming.
Mantras could benefit from more quickness for sure, but at the moment our sources aren´t reliable enough to build on them for fast mantra recharges on a regular basis.
Your idea sounds interesting, but imho it´s too much focused on staff users. You mentioned our glamour skills. Yes, they´re open for every weapon set, but if i had to use several glamour skills to improve mantras, there isn´t much room left on the skillbar for Decoy or Blink.
On the other hand, this would allow some interesting combos in coordinated large scale wvw. Imagine 1 Nullfield + 1 thief for blasts + backline → BURST.
Mantras aren’t too bad to charge vs a P/D thief. Obviously steal is a really strong interrupt since it’s instacast from range, but it’s on a long enough cooldown that you can just instantly start charging a mantra once steal has been used and generally be safe from interrupts since a P/D thief will only have that one interrupt.
You´re absolutly right, p/d isn´t much of a problem in terms of interrupts. I refered mostly to this “too risky to use out in WvW solo” part.
You´re right about the vulnerability to interrupts, that´s why I use torch (to replace Decoy) and 1200 range Blink. If you know your enemy´s interrupt skills, you can wait until they´re on cooldown or you interrupt them with MoD. LoS is another option, wvw is full of useful terrain. Nevertheless, I will always run mantra with at least 2500 armor so I can take some hits while charging.
Honestly, I would say don’t even bother. On paper, there isn’t a viable way to beat dire condi p/d. It’s the cheesiest build, and will give out heartburns.
I don´t have much trouble with p/d thiefs when running hybrid lockdown with iDisenchanter. They won´t kill you anytime soon plus you´re able to interrupt CnD and their heal. Add guard stacks, bloodlust and 10 might, and you should be able to kill them if they don´t run.
Focus, lots of damage, cc and it´s not glassy. I won´t use it for solo roaming due to lack of condition remove, but if you got your personal condi remove slave aka Guard, it works fine. ^^
Sure, some fight in OS to have completely even matchs. More often though, they just join the borders. The majority will help to defend important objectives or team up if necessary. But if there are only 20-30 assaulting players, a lot of guilds prefer to fight them on their own rather than killing them most effectivly with the help of 20 other guild players, 25 guys from our public lead and 5-10 roamers. :P
Ok, that´s a much better strategic approach to ganking. Your first post seemed more like mindless killing and farming to me. As you said, there are a lot of “good” reasons to kill roamers from a PPT point of view.
I just mentioned GvG because (from my experience) a lot of gankers ruin the fun for us smallscale players but they would never do the same with larger (guild) groups. Their “red=dead” believe often seems to be only an excuse to kill outnumbered players.
By the way, there are quite a lot guilds on our servers that play for fights rather than objectives. If numbers are even, most of them prefer no other guilds interfering with their fights. You prefer to play for objectives rather than fights, which is ok for me.
What I don´t like are groups of players who don´t do anything but ganking – usually those guys are dead in a matter of seconds when they have to fight with even numbers.
1v1 exists for a very simple reason: To be farmed by groups of 3-5 players.
You don´t have to play 1vs1 if you don´t like, but why disturb other people´s fights? You neither get much loot nor do you improve your skills as a player. Do you interfere with gvgs as well? I bet you don´t, because an angry zerg would farm you…
Such an idiotic statement, and completly off-topic as well. -.-
On topic: I´ve been playing mantra lockdown builds in wvw for quite a long time and killing a shatter mesmer isn´t that hard, you´re more tanky, got more condition remove, more heal and more cc. But since you were fighting some sort of condition build, you got a serious advantage: range. A shatter mesmer´s greatsword should be ideal to pressure the mantra mesmer while staying on range. Sooner or later, your opponent will run out of mantra charges – save your interrupts for this moment and end the fight with your burst.
This is what i think the problem u guys having: the new iLeap works like a ranged attack that bypasses terrains (which makes it a huge buff compared to the old one). However, the Swap skill is a teleport skill which means you can’t Swap to where you normally can’t Blink to even though the iLeap connects and the clone is created at target.
If Swap is not bound by the normal teleport rules like Blink does, you could teleport up enemy towers and keeps in WvW and that would be game-breaking.
You´re absolutly right, I just wanted to point out that there is another option besides Pyro´s list
-out of range
-in range but bugged
-clone is dead
-beam me up is not possible at this location
It does fail sometimes when you try to swap to a target that´s at a place you can´t blink to. The clone appears, but you won´t get teleported to it (see screenshot). You can´t blink up to this hill, and it seems like iLeap can´t teleport you down.
On uneven terrain the skill shows unpredictable leaping behavior as well, much like the old pre-feature-patch version did. In this case, you can leap and swap but the clone doesn´t connect with the target. Still, the “new” iLeap works much better than the older one, so I´m ~80% happy with this skill.
First i am using Greatsword due to the fact my friend doesnt believe it is viable in a condition build second i have 1,5k power in wvw which isnt much but it does help.
Also with greatsword out i get bleed stacking close to that of traited bounce trident clones (20 stacks and up if i have an iduelest out with 2 gs clones). It is a lot stronger than most people think. The only skill on greatsword that doesnt work well with conditions is skill 3, and i still remove a boon with it.
I have played so much mesmer might stacking builds it sometimes gets old, and after mixing CI with focus traits a while back i fell in love with letting people interrupt themselves and cause the trait to trigger.
Torch is terrible with CI it is the only weapon you get 0 interrupts from, the only time i would use it in a non shatter build is for PU.
And finally i Made the PU varient for the extra mobility due to swiftness, if i am running solo. With a group or just 1 right complimentary build speed boosts become common.
I´m quite sure that most of your bleeds come from iDuelist rather than GS clones. Granted, they can stack some bleeding, but it still seems like a waste of skills 1, 3 and 5 to me (even more so in the PU version).
By the way, torch has some potential for lockdown builds, especially for hybrids. I´m using Prestige as a substitute for Decoy to get a free slot for something else (boonremove, for instance), burning adds some nice damage as well. Pistol+MoD+Diversion are enough interrupts, imho it´s not necessary to get another one from your second offhand.
What about 30-30-0-10-0 for double ranged lockdown? You would at least have some decent condition removal. It´s slightly squishy with those pvp stats, tough:
I´ve used this trait setup for a looong time now and for me it worked very well, both for power and hybrid builds (condition should be fine as well, i just don´t like the playstyle that much). What makes me wonder is your choice of weapons – why use a greatsword in a build that´s leaning towards condition damage?
If you truly want to play hybrid, you should use might stacking sigils and Bountiful Interruption instead of Mirror of Anguish. I´d still recommend other weapons (I´m currently using S/P, Sc/T with CI), but at least the power part of your greatsword wouldn´t totally wasted due to horribly low power.
Edit: Some form of mobility would be useful as well, Traveler or even Centaur, since you´re running mantra heal. Perplexity and Krait are so sloooooow. :P
I see why many of you like staff regarding your pvp setting (small maps, on-point fights, plenty of phase retreat spots…), but from my wvw perspective it´s a horrible weapon for power builds. No range, no cleave, no damage. Yes, CI+iWarlock gave me some instant thief kills but the majority of builds I encounter is not that glassy. IMHO the defense S+T provides for shatter is superior as well, while maintaining the ability to chase via GS. I´d rather call staff a burden than a crutch since a crutch should actually be helpful, and for me, its definitly not.
/hide in stealth
/charge MoD to interrupt harsh critique ;P
Playing Defensively Against a Thief I’m actually not looking for interrupts. I focus more on saving my mantra charges and CC to protect myself from the Thieves attack or to control them even while stealthed.
Using your illusions Since it’s hard to shatter on a stealthed opponent, it’s often better to make sure you stay CLOSE to your illusions to lead the thief into your shatters. Also, standing nearly inside of your illusions help defend against backstabs.
Interesting, I prefer to do the opposite most of the time. :P Playing agressivly forces the thief to use his cooldowns, so I may land an interrupt when he´s got nothing left. This could of course be build-specific, since mantra lockdown is strongest at the beginning of a fight.
Regarding your second point, I try to have as few illusions out as possible when fighting x/d thiefs to avoid easy targets for Cloak´n´Dagger. If I have phantasms out, I separate enough that they won´t get hit by cleaving attacks/sigil procs on me. The thief could kill the phantasms or damage me, but not both with the same attack.
What do you think, bad habits or just another approach that could work under the right circumstances? ^^
Hey guys, gonna work on videos specific to this guide since I’ll have some time to play this week. Had a quick question:
What classes/builds do you find the hardest to face as a Lockdown Mesmer?
S/D thiefs – not much you can interrupt, and even if you manage to pin them down, they´ll most likely have Withdraw, Shadow Step, Refuge or Infiltrator´s Return ready to safe them. Hard fights, but nevertheless a lot of fun.
I think Ansau is right, most of the time I have at least 10 stacks, usually more, so the lower might duration doesn´t matter that much because I can reapply it faster (even more so with GS´s Mirrorblade, which is still used for my main build).
I haven´t used Focus for quite a long time due to it´s bugs, so i just wanted to try it again after the patch to have some diversity. This build was not aiming for hybrid damage with might stacks, it´s full power with additional condition damage when the fight lasts longer. My main problem with every lockdown build are thiefs, and I won´t kill those if I have to build up my damage over time with might, their boon removal makes this way even less reliable.
This would be a hybrid version of the Focus-build which would be close to your stats. To be honest, I have tried something similar to your build (it was a hint by Nubu from [BNF], he played 30-30-10-0-0), but I haven´t tested it in detail yet (time consuming RL ;P). I hope I can have a deeper look at both builds later.
I´m a bit sceptical about your mobility as well – no swiftness, no Traveler runes, no traits for Blink. Have you tried Runes of the Pack? They would add some speed and precision (+fury), so you could lower your base precision for more useful stats, your phantasms should care since they got fury themselves. Of course you lose might duration, not sure what´s actually better. My latest project uses Pack and I was quite impressed by the damage those +20% crit chance add, the swiftness uptime in fight without wasting Temporal Curtain was nice as well.
Those buffs to Scepter aa will make fights vs. PU condi even worse – boring and more dangerous…
On the other hand, more reliable iLeap + MoPain/Distraction buffed – what about mantra shatter? I fear it won´t be effective, but could be an interesting fun project.
Fixed iWarden (in addition to this awesome fight between Chaos and Chaos^^) will push Focus on my favorite-offhand-list. CI+Focus+MoD aoe? Yes please! Runes of Grenth instead of Traveler will be interesing as well since focus provides swiftness. At the moment I avoid iWarden, but after the patch, I´ll try something like this.
Is it possible to send gold from EU to NA (Chaos)? I tried yesterday evening, but it didn´t seem to work. At least i had not less gold then before – so either I can make clones of my money as well or Chaos got an empty letter. Or no message at all. ^^
I would love to see more videos from both of you as well, that was just amazing! Not using much condition remove and being succesful is even more impressive, it would be super cool to watch some of those matchs (even for me as a pure wvw player). I´d like to duel you as well just to find more of my mistakes, but there is this small gap between EU and NA…
Solution: Make more videos about this awesome gameplay, for those lockdown players out there that can´t challenge or even observe you directly!
BTW, what do you think about a change to Disruptor´s Sustainment?
Interrupting a foe steals one of his boons and transfers one of your conditions to him
I´m not sure about cd for such a trait. Without any cooldown, this would offer quite a lot of support potential with staff/fokus/gs + Signet of Inspiration. On the other hand, it´s still in a trait line I wouldn´t like to use for most interrupt builds.
I would prefer to get more traits for condition remove, to free up an utility slot for MoD or SoD. At the moment, Blink, Decoy and one condition remove is fixed for most builds. Mender´s Purity+mantra heal allows us to take MoD/SoD as well, but 2 mantras aren´t best for QoL in my opinion. The general amount of interrupts is fine if you ask me. ANet could lower the casttime for Counterblade tough, to offer a low cooldown interrupts that is reliable.
I did not want to say “OMG warrior mobility OP!!!”, I just pointed out where those complaints about warrior´s speed are coming from. For my lockdown/interrupt mesmer I use staff more often recently, although sword+pistol would be much stronger in a fight. It´s a tradeoff for mobility, the same way warriors have to do it. BUT if you compare warrior with other classes, they get really good mobility and a solid weapon. My staff gives me good kiting abilities but is lacking damage in a power build. Necromancers are even worse, Fleshworm, Spectral Walk and warhorn would be the most “mobile” setup i could imagine and it´s still easy to catch and offers mediocre fighting power for most setups. I hope you see what i mean, there are few builds in wvw that are as fast as warriors while hitting decently hard.
Regarding cheese builds in wvw you´re absolutly right, there are a lot of things that are worse than running warriors out there – but you also see a lot of people complaining about them. What I don´t like about warriors is this “I´ve beaten this stupid idiot but then he runs away without paying for his mistakes”-feeling. That´s a bit different to losing a fight vs. “cheese” builds, but still annoying. :P
Sitting on a capture point with low mobility builds may be fine for pvp, if you ever played wvw you would know where this “meme of the fleeing warriors originated”. Most warriors I see use hammer/gs, axe+shield/gs or mace+shield/gs. All of them have access to greatsword´s gap openers and speed, making it impossible to catch them if you´re not a thief, d/d elementalist or warrior yourself.
My mesmer wouldn´t catch them even if I build for maximum mobility (perma speed, Phase Retreat forward with traited staff, Blink with increased range and reduced cooldown). My damage with this setup would be absolutly terrible and I would be still slower than a warrior. This is definitly more of a wvw problem, but even in pvp, warriors are quite tanky, hard to cc due to Berserker´s Stance, Cleansing Ire and Dogged March and they have solid passive healing. Those features alone allow them to run from a lot of fights if they want to and it´s neccessary.
I always prefer CI over CS because of the longer lasting immobilize compared to the relativly short stun/daze.
And I also love the way all those traits in Chaos work together: CI for control, BI for might stacks, which will interact with condition damage from Chaotic Transference. Debilitating Dissipation (and Sharper Images) will profit to give some nice hybrid damage even in full power builds. CI works with every weapon as well, CS on the other hand would be useless for my greatsword.
Most of my builds were mantra-heavy lockdown builds lately (x-6-x-2-x), and 6 points in Chaos just feel more powerful. I can be a tank and still eat squishy targets with close to 3k power, thanks to might, guard and bloodlust stacks. A CS build could maybe deal the same damage due to vulnerability, but it wouldn´t be even close in terms of defense.
Sure, this is personal preference, and Chaos made some good points about CS´ advantages, but for me CI is the way to go.
I don´t play pvp, but from my wvw experience it seems like mantra beats most PU builds without trouble. If the PU player retreats early enough you won´t kill thim though. They´re just lacking interrupts (2 for condition PU, 3 for power PU, in any case quite long cooldowns) to stop your heal. The hybrid damage of mantra is higher as well.
But Pyro is right, if you compare my wvw build with a pvp version , it´s significantly weaker in pvp.
If you´re playing condition PU/Blackwater you could try to force your enemy into using his mantra charges for trash conditions from staff clones. Burst, and safe Diversion for a dodge shatter to interrupt the mantra. You could try to get a torment block on Chaos Storm if your opponent uses staff as well.
Power PU should be better since you have more and more reliable interrupts. Use an iLeap burst combo when the heal mantra is on cooldown, your enemy has to use Blink or other defensive cooldowns here to get out of it or he will eat a lot of damage. This opens up an opportunity for you to finish the fight – the mantra mesmer had to use a lot of cooldowns to survive your burst and can´t secure the mantra recharge with Blink, Decoy or Distortion.
These are just a few hints for you when I, as a mantra lockdown mesmer, got trouble with or lost to PU builds.
You could easily swap CI and PU and replace MoD if you like. For solo roaming Traveler runes are better, but if you got a group that provides you with swiftness Balthazar is interesting. 5/10 seconds aoe burning is nice, if you add 10-12 stacks bleed you´ll cause a lot of trouble with conditions alone.
I´ve theory-crafted a focus hybrid-ish build today (mainly for a guildmate who LOVES focus and greatsword) which uses 0-30-30-10-0. Grenth runes for even more lockdown potential than usual and condition damage (warden+CI==tons of bleeds). It´s untested (I´ve played something similar a while ago, but with Balthazar instead of Grenth) and slower than my usual roaming builds, but I think this could work.
