Guild Wars 2

You don’t have to face the target anymore?

I tested it, it’s true. This is good news!

They must have changed this at some point (maybe this patch?), because I remember you had to face your enemies to make it work. Otherwise it just went on cooldown doing nothing.

@Jurica:

regarding Traveler runes:
Without the 25% speed boost you can’t flee from situations where you are outnumbered (again, WvW roamer here). Sure, you can fool many players by doing some stealth + blink tricks, or outrun some slower classes with clever use of phase retreat. But against a competent group or a zerg, you’ll die, as simple as that. I’ve tried roaming without Traveler runes, it takes longer to reach your destinations, but also I often have to respawn and run all the way again. Whereas with Traveler runes I manage to escape from anything except maybe a nuclear bomb dropped onto my head.

regarding PU/stealth:
Indeed using PU + stealth is a better way to generate retaliation from blocks. Aegis will do that and you don’t even have to think.
You can split the combat time into two phases: stealthed and non-stealthed.
- Stealthed: they can’t see you, thus can’t hit you, you gain Aegis/Protection/Regeneration
- Non-stealthed: you came back with Aegis, you block, you gain Retalitation while you still have Protection+Regeneration up. Yeah, hit me baby!

Much, much better than that single block from #4 sword.

regarding iDuelist:
About iDuelist and bleed stacking, it’s true that a single stack of bleed is very easy to remove. On paper the iDuelist might do most damage with rampager gear, but in reality you better use berserker. This thread however is about a condition or hybrid build, not about a pure power build. And this build does produce enough different conditions to give enemies trouble keeping up with cleansing. He might cleanse the bleeds, but then maybe doesn’t have cleansing ready when he stumbles into that scepter block torment …

Jurica.1742:

Traveler in condition build???

Actually, Traveler runes are viable in a condition build (WvW player/roamer here). It gives both boon duration and condition duration, which is both very nice, along with some stats and the really really needed 25% speed.

And remember, his build is not pure condition. He runs with rampager stats, using power too. The “+x to all stats” from traveler is very welcome here.

Just like Jurica, my first thought about this build was: "omgosh, it’s basically a ripped-off PU condi “blackwater” build but much, much weaker". Since this point is already settled, I’ll skip the rant and just ask some detail question.

Why offhand-sword? Why even bother to cast iSwordsman in a condi-build?

In a pure condi-build this phantasm is worthless. In your build – since you use rampager equip – it will hit for mediocre damage only.

The iDuelist from pistol on the other hand really shines with rampager stats. In your build it will create a ton of bleeds, while doing direct damage comparable to your iSwordsman.

I assume you took offhand sword because of the #4 block to gain more retaliation via the Retaliatory Shield trait. Honestly, that’s not worth it. Especially in a build like yours, where you try not to get hit at all (many dodges, blocks, and all those distortions from signet activation), retaliation is weak. And you don’t have enough toughness to deliberately let them hit you for a while when retaliation is up.

A rampager iDuelist on the other hand will wreck your enemies, especially thieves. They might outmaneuver a iSwordsman, but they can’t outmaneuver a iDuelist. The iDuelist keeps firing even when the thief is already stealthed, and the bleed stacking (while they are already stealthed) gives them additional trouble. Combined with #5 pistol stun this is really deadly for thieves.

With the – otherwise awful – Healing Signet you might even cast double iDuelists in an instant. This would be a very risky gamble but has a huge damage potential.

Amethyst Lure.5624:

Anyone else have this wish that Illusory Elasticity should be baseline for staff, somehow? Whenever I use it, i feel like #1 works -so- much better, but that it sits where it does is such a huge build limiter.

Illusionary Elasticity shouldn’t be baseline for staff, but I agree it would help if it was in a different trait line or being moved down to adept in the Illusions trait line.

Two simple fixes would make staff viable:

- increase projectile speed (autoattack and iWarlock projectile, no more misses on moving targets please)

- fix Illusionary Elasticity (as promised already, it should work for staff clones too)

That’s all.

Chaos Storm alone gets so much better with CI, it easily outweighs the 20% cooldown reduction (anyway, you can have both if you skip on BI, and I say CI is better than BI for sure).

Recently I dropped a CI-traited Chaos Storm on the enemy zerg while they were stacking might. Right before our zerg hit ’em. Holy crap, the fight was over before it even began. They had no condi-cleansing water fields because all was full of fire combo-fields, half of their zerg was stuck in place because of CI interrupts. Our zerg simply roflstomped them. Stacking corpses instead of stacking might.

Another great, great use of a CI Chaos Storm is when they try to rezz someone. Drop a Chaos Storm on the place and you are guaranteed to cause some nasty interrupts. Usually your teammates will drop additional damage on the spot, so when the dust settles you’ll see about three corpses instead of one lying around.

Sometimes I had the impression, my iWarlock misses on moving targets.

Well, seems it was not just an impression …

(And in my current build, where I use both staff and torch, I deliberately AVOID casting iMage and iWarlock. I did that even before watching the video above, but now I know for sure I’m doing the right thing.)

I was running a similar build in WvW zergs long before the patch. After a while I found Empowering Mantras (the 4% damage increase per charged mantra) not worth it because it doesn’t affect my phantasms. Your build here is more shatter-oriented, and shatter does benefit from Empowering Mantras. My build was more a phantasm build with full berzerker equip.

I’ve decided to drop Empowered Mantras and go for Restorative Mantras instead. That was a way better choice for me, giving me extra-healing whenever I recharge a mantra. Mantra of Pain works great for that, you can even heal your fellow players with it.

So my suggestion: Make it a 4 6 0 2 0 build instead.
(edit: of course it should be 4 6 0 4 0 instead, the new system still confuses me)

PU is not really needed when you run with a zerg or group. Multiple stealth abilities and blink should be enough to get out of ugly situations.

Seems I was mistaken at this point. Did some tests in the mists, no speed debuff included.

Sorry for the confusion and thanks for the clarification

@keenlam:
I think poison has some tiny slow effect built in (not just the OOC vs. infight speed difference). After I started using Doom sigils on both weaponsets I was able to chase more runners than before.

Yes, MoP can proc fire and air sigils. This reminds me about another unconventional use of MoP in my old build:

- slowing down runners

I had sigil of doom in both weapons (GS and staff) to slow down runners. But with staff they often outrun your autoattack projectiles, Phase Retreat doesn’t work against runners, and the iWarlock is way too slow. But MoP can fix this problem.

If someone attempts to run away, you’d always try to catch ‘em with GS, it’s the perfect weapon for chasing. But if iZerker and autoattack is not enough, you switch to staff and nuke him with MoP. That’s instant poison on your target at 1200 range, slowing him down. After that you might be able to kill him with an iWarlock, or at least you should be able to keep up long enough to switch back to GS. That’s instant poison again, followed by a iZerker soon after …

Works as well with sword/xxxx instead of staff.

I agree with BlackDevil, this build isn’t as good, it doesn’t deserve the hype.

Did quite a bit of WvW roaming with the napalm build today, and yeah it’s a fun idea, offers a new playstyle but it performs almost always subpar compared to a 0 6 6 2 0 build with clone-death traits, PU and mantra heal.

It might be useful if you want to run a condition build in WvW zerg fights. Mesmers lack AoE damage, the burn proc from the balthazar runes helps a lot in that case. I’ll try to combine it with a bit of interrupt build, thinking about Bountiful Interruption, Chaotic Interruption and the interrupt mantra. At least it’s worth carrying my second equipment set with the balthazar runes around, because when I stop roaming for a moment to join a zerg, I just have to switch my armor and change two traits to become a viable “zergling”.

Intersting fact about Balthazar Runes:
The aoe burn not only procs when you use a mantra charge to heal, but also when you recharge your healing mantra
(many other “on heal” effects don’t trigger from that)

I was running a max-range/max-damage mantra build for a while (before the patch, with 30 points in Domination for Harmonious Mantras). Had MoP slotted for extra burst. Also good for tagging some extra targets when zerging in WvW.

The damage from MoP is nothing spectacular, but often it was the last missing bit to burst someone into downstate. My favorite burst combination was iWarlock + iZerker + MoP. The iWarlock from staff has a delay, its damage doesn’t come instant (it often has to move a bit first and the projectile speed is slow). You can immediately switch to greatsword and cast a iZerker so they’ll hit both at the same time. Add a MoP nuke and watch them drop from full health into downstate in an instant. (best used when sneaking up from behind on unaware or otherwise distracted enemies, because a single dodge roll might ruin your entire burst)

Aside of that, I often found myself using MoP as a healing ability (with Restorative Mantras trait). Being able to heal my group members was really helpful. But that’s impossible to include in a 0 6 6 2 0 build, you’d have to give up PU for that (or give up Harmonious Mantras, but mantra builds without HM aren’t viable).

Of course I was using the mantra heal with Menders Purity. It’s simply great. (I was even using this before Menders Purity got buffed, had the cleansing mantra slotted for extra condi-removal, but that’s obsolete now.)

Conclusion:
In my old mantra-build MoP had 3 different uses.
- extra burst
- tagging enemies
- (group) heal

Now I play a different build and I do not miss the burst, but I do miss the tagging ability and the group heal.

Today it was raining mesmers

Dagraan.2854:

you can’t be insta killed due to the downed mechanic you’ll always have 3 seconds of invulnerability transitioning to downed.

so its impossible for that to happen.

I thought its only one second invulnerability.
Chaos Storm has 3 seconds duration and deals damage every tick.
We talk about 40k damage PER TICK, it’s absolutely possible to get killed by that.
I saw it happen a lot.

I even saw a bunch of mesmers jump on enemy golems at our garrison gates. Even omega golems died in an instant. (happened on the inner water gates)

Flame rams got crushed instantly by a single mesmer jumping on them.
We switched to using catapults, trebuchets (against walls) and ballistas (to shoot at the darn mesmer). Ranged siege was the only way to go, and you had to kill the mesmer(s) first otherwise they’d wipe you when you run through the open door or broken wall.

A mesmer on our homelands said he managed to break 100k damage on a player. Impressive!

Another managed to hit a rabbit for 7.6 million damage. Now this is what I call overkill!

And it seems there was no max. 5 target AoE limit, because after the jump you could see on the ground where exactly the mesmer hit the zerg. Lot’s of dead bodies in a circle. More than 5 bodies.

Looked like meteor impact craters.

Hilarious. ^^

Indeed, that would be helpful. Many times you try to block someone near you, but someone from far away shoots into your block, and doesn’t receive the counter-effect because he is too far away.

Another possible solution: Apply the Scepter #2 counter-effect to your current target, no matter who triggered the block.

AndrewSX.3794:

My point is that if you’re in a zerg, you should NEVER drop Feedback and Veil (swap to Portal for golem rushes). This means that 2 utilities out of 3 are locked, and in glamour.

Add Nullfield to that list.

It’s great to remove boons from the enemy zerg (especially losing stability hurts when they rush through a choke point with a combination of Nullfield and guardian blocking walls).

So we are supposed to zerg with 3 glamour utilities and nothing else?

Well, let me add some comments …

- glamour utils are our only AoE utils, that’s the simple reason why they are the best ones for zerging (especially since we have almost no other AoE skills)

- every glamour skill except Feedback is pure support. You don’t get loot bags from Veil, Nullfield or Portal.

- the glamour TRAITS for blind/confusion are worthless garbage right now, so even if a mesmer runs around with a utility bar full of glamor skills, he doesn’t run a glamour build.

I can understand why they did it, but 1 second is too long.

Focus #4 was a tool to interrupt stuff, but you cannot interrupt anything anymore with the 1 sec delay. Not in a game where cast times are usually way below 1 second. (if you actually interrupt something then it’s their next cast after the one you originally wanted to interrupt…)

Same with thieves hideout. Can’t pull them out anymore, unless you get extremely lucky with your timing. And if they are stupid enough not to dodge within their hideout. I don’t even try it anymore, because the success rate is abysmal low.

You could pull ppl back when they tried to run away. You could pull ppl away from you when they were charging you. Both is no longer possible, because after 1 second everyone is out of “Into the Void” range. They don’t even have to react or dodge, they just keep running and that’s it.

So, aside of the pulling ability (which is mostly worthless right now), what is left?
- Runspeed from Focus #4
- immobile Phantasm from Focus #5
Both have very limited usages.

Focus is no longer worth it, unless you absolutely need the speed, and/or you trait it for reflection.

Something needs to happen.

Examples:

- reduce the cooldown from 1 to 0.5 seconds (still gives them a chance to react, but gives you chance to actually interrupt or pull something)

- longer duration on Temporal Curtain (so you could lay it down on the ground and wait for them to cast something, then instantly interrupt it with Into the Void)

- longer duration on speedbuff (if you really wanna destroy the interrupt/pull thing and leave it that way, then give us at least REAL speed, e.g. a speed boon with equal duration to the cooldown of the skill. Other classes have skills like that, they just use one skill over and over and get 100% speed uptime from it. Mesmers get only 50% from Temporal Curtain, for no obvious reason.)

- shorter cooldown on Temporal Curtain (the result would be similar to making speed boon duration longer, allowing us to reach almost 100% speed uptime)

One of these changes would be enough to make the Mesmer players happy again.

Even before the confusion nerf, a typical glamour/blind/confusion build was only viable at zerg vs zerg. It was never good at 1vs1.

The glamour skills (Nullfield, Feedback) itself are still fine, just the confusion/blind traits are garbage now.

Oh well, it’s Chaos Armor this time. The casted one from Staff #4 was different to the combo generated one, for no obvious reason. Today they made both equal – by downgrading the better version.

Iavra.8510:

Honestly? I think they will remove Sharper Images or change it to only have a chance to apply bleeding.

No, I bet they will change it to a 1 second internal cooldown.
Phantasmal Duelist will proc only 1 or maybe 2 bleeds then …

edit: I forgot about GS clones with their triple attack, only 1 bleed then …

Sometimes I run a 30/30/0/0/10 “hardcore glasscannon” mantra build in WvW.
Berserker equip and greatsword. Maximum damage, zero defense.
My utility bar is full of mantras to increase the damage further with Empowering Mantras (Dueling XI) trait.

MoP deals a whopping 3k damage per shot – in a typical situation, not just on a lucky crit. Never saw 4k from it, but it doesn’t fall below 2k either. I’d say 3k is the average damage of MoP in my glasscannon build. (I have three charges per mantra in my build.)

GS autoattack deals about the same 3k damage (at max range) in this build. So you could say 1x MoP is equal to 1x GS autoattack.

While this build is fun when running with a zerg, you have zero chance to win a 1vs1 with it. Once your pre-charged mantras are depleted and your enemy is still alive, you’re done. Recharging mantras in a 1vs1 situation will break your neck. Recharging a mantra means 3 seconds of doing nothing, not even a dodge roll. Any competent enemy will kill you in these 3 seconds. That’s the weak point of mantras.

No, clones do not benefit from might stacks on them.
I tested this before and after the patch.

(after patch this got somewhat complicated to test. now it’s tricky to put a might stack onto a clone, since they no longer receive bounce boons unless there is absolutely nothing else in range)

Bouncing logic of iMage is somehow different …

I haven’t figured out exactly how. Seems it refuses to bounce back to a previous target. Or it simply avoids enemy targets.

With Illusionary Elasticity I hoped it would hit the enemy, bounce to me and then back to the enemy. It doesn’t. Last bounce goes to the iMage instead, giving it retalitation.

If there is another player nearby, the bounce may go to him instead of the iMage.

If there is only enemies in range (me standing out of bounce range), it will bounce among enemies (but never bouncing back to a target who already got hit), applying confusion on up to three enemies.

You don’t even have to kill the mesmer. Just make sure he is in combat and thus cannot port back to the spawn point.

I was running a similar build for a long while. You can solo almost any champion mob out there. Just use staff, do dodge rolls and phase retreat, that’s all you need.

Under water it’s almost the same, use trident (benefits from same trait as staff), create a clone and do dodge rolls for more clones.

In your specific build, I wonder why you took “Signet of Inspiration”? It’s pretty much worthless if you run solo. Take “Signet of Domination” instead, it will at least boost your condition damage.

afaik it also works with Desperate Decoy

(albeit you probably want to go for Retaliatory Shield in that trait slot since you’ll block often thanks to all the aegis coming from PU)

I can also confirm this.
Doesn’t work on test dummy golems.
But if you go to WvW and use scepter on a mob, it will spawn double clones.

edit: just tested it in regular PvE zones, got only one clone.

The bounce will now always go to the nearest target, no matter if it’s friend or foe.

For a detailed explanation and a test setup, check out my posting in the other thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Game-Update-Notes-28-05-2013/page/2#post2114294

Ok I think I figured how what’s the new priority for bounce targets is.

Whoever or whatever is nearest will receive the bounce.

My staff WoC attack will always bounce to the nearest target. If that is another enemy, it will damage that enemy. If it’s me, I’ll get the boons. If it’s a clone, the clone will get the boons.

Subsequent bounces work the same way.

Pre-patch the bounce attacks went enemy —> ally --> enemy —> ally…

Example:
In a medium distance to a dummy golem, I place two clones next to each other.
Myself is standing at max range, shooting staff autoattacks (with IE traited)
The golem will be only hit once, but both clones get boons from bounces.
The bounces go: golem —> clone1 --> clone2

(hint: don’t use staff clones for this test, too much bounce attacks flying around. better use GS clones and switch to staff after you placed the clones.)

Embolism.8106:

It used to be quite obvious when Trident Clones inflicted Confusion.

Especially since the old Trident Clones applied a different type of confusion
(doing only 50% damage of the regular confusion in the old WvW days)

Phoenixfudge.5290:

The indication or “tell” of when an incoming Backstab is coming is after the thief goes into stealth. It’s quite simple. Usually a thief has 3-4 seconds after activating stealth in order to land a back stab. Within that 3-4 seconds you should have known what distance at which the thief activated stealth and when he did and proceed to kite and dodge at the right time according to those parameters. Evading Backstabs isn’t as hard as most people think, you really have to play the class in order understand and counter it.

HAHAHAHA!

No, really, no! When a thief goes into stealth, I know there is a backstab coming, but I can only GUESS when it will hit me. Maybe within a second, or maybe 4 seconds later.

Sure, many thief players have a rhythm of stealthing and backstabbing, and after I’ve eaten the first 2 backstabs I can ANTICIPATE when the next ones will hit me. But that’s just the player, not the thief class/ability. If a smart thief player varies his timing, I’m toast because I’ll waste my dodge rolls for nothing – aka at the wrong times.

Sorry, but your defending arguments for backstab are INVALID.

Just as INVALID as your arguments regarding “Into the Void”.

Actually, Into the Void already got “nerfed” with the previous patch. There was a timing glitch that allowed using Into the Void at unlimited range!! Yay, that’s what I call overpowered! It got fixed and is no longer possible. Now the Focus #4 skill is fine and 100% bug-free. Good work, ANet!

PS: Thanks to that glitch, quite a few poor dudes fell from very high cliffs. Also there were some JP campers (mostly thieves, of course) who had a very bad day …

PPS: The trident #5 skill with it’s pre-patch unlimited range also had some fun usages in the WvW JP. You’d swim in the water below and use it on some enemy while he jumps from one platform to the next … ouch! Again, this one got fixed. Was about time.

Here are my test results on bouncing attacks:

- Staff clones do not get an extra bounce (unfortunately that’s what we were hoping for)

- bouncing attacks can now indeed bounce off illusions

- bouncing attacks can now bounce enemy1 —> enemy2 —> enemy1
(this is new! and it’s good! before patch it was enemy —> ally —> enemy. if there was no ally near enough it didn’t bounce at all)

- the bounces will aggro nearby non-aggroed mobs (go try it at the test dummy golems in the mist. shoot staff autoattacks from 1200 range, you’ll hit an additional golem nearby)

- unfortunately, seems it can also bounce enemy1 —> ally —> ally
(or in a mesmer-typical situation: enemy1 —> clone1 —> clone2)

- but I’ve also seen the old enemy —> ally —> enemy pattern
(now possible as enemy —> clone —> enemy)

I’m not sure which pattern has the higher priority. That’s pretty confusing to test. I can only say for sure the enemy —> enemy —> enemy pattern has lowest priority. It only occurs if neither you or your clones are close enough for bounces.

- the mesmer itself doesn’t have higher bounce/boon priority than his clones. The bounces occur to whoever is closer to the target.

- as a result, clones receive a lot of the boons

- unfortunately, boons are worthless on clones
(might on a clone doesn’t increase it’s bleed damage)

- underwater trident clones follow the same patterns

I did what I wrote above in WvW.

One idea behind my change to cleric armor was the increased healing for myself and the other players around me. On myself it makes a difference, but it’s hard to tell how much it helps my allies.

A downside is the lower hitpoints pool. If you are in a zerg fight and receive too much burst damage, the healing doesn’t help because you are already in downstate. With a higher hitpoints pool (from soldier’s armor) you might survive it.

On the plus side, many zerg fights in WvW last very long, and having the extra healing power is great for those long, drawn-out battles.

Overall, this is more a 1vs1 build and not very useful in large WvW zergs, but this has nothing to do with clerics or soldiers armor, it’s the build itself.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I replace the soldier’s amulet with a cleric’s amulet. I lose vitality, but gain a massive amount of healing power. With that amulet, ether feast heals for an enormous amount, and regen ticks for 270. It’s quite fantastic.

Hehe, I did that too. Was trying your build with cleric’s instead of soldier’s stats. It’s incredible how much Ether Feast heals now, but what’s even more incredible is how often I don’t even use it. Thanks to all the defensive tools and permanent regeneration ticks my hitpoints usually stay at proper levels – without casting my heal!. I seriously consider using Mirror heal instead just for the reflection effect. On the other side it feels dumb not to use Ether Feast when you have 3 illusions up almost all the time.

I also prefer Mirror when fighting zerg vs zerg in wvw. This situation is not about healing numbers, it’s about getting out of hell. Mirror keeps you alive for about 2 seconds longer, and that’s the time you need to move out of the line of fire and make it back to your own zerg – alive! You’ll probably be at very low health then and your heal is on cooldown, but you can keep running. Run out of combat range until the auto-regeneration kicks in. Once your lifebar starts going up again you turn around and move back to the fight. You’ll have full hitpoints and your Mirror heal is ready.

The above doesn’t require any traits or investment in healing stats.

Mirror is a vastly underrated tool to escape from “oh crap!” situations.

Problem is, Mirror is not so good in other situations. It doesn’t help much when you only take mediocre damage and want to heal yourself back to full. It takes multiple casts of Mirror where often one cast of Ether Feast is enough.

Well, that’s where our traited healing skills come into play. With Phantasmal Healing you’ll have regeneration ticking almost all the time, which helps little but it helps enough to keep your hitpoints near full using Mirror heal instead of Ether Feast.

I use a similar build for zerging, and while the basic playstyle is simple, it takes a bit of learn2play to get good results.

I’m not sure how useful the trait for longer glamour duration is in a confusion build. On a stationary group your Nullfield will only apply one confusion, no matter how long the Nullfield duration is. A longer duration on Feedback has obvious benefits, it will reflect longer and thus more.

But here comes the kicker: Instead of getting the trait for longer glamours I took the focus trait (“Warden’s Feedback”, it’s in the exact same position). Now my focus skills reflect projectiles, and I think that’s definately better than an extra second on Feedback.

wads.5730:

time to troll jp harder until this is fixed

This! ^^

I went to find some JP campers and ruined their day …

But honestly, there is almost no use outside of jumping puzzles. The glitch only works when you have direct line of sight, and that’s usually not the case when you try to pull enemies from keep walls or cliffs somewhere in WvW.

On the same day, I got attacked by iZerkers inside(!) of a tower. I was using an arrow cart in the courtyard behind the door, when suddenly an iZerker starts popping on me, and another one, and a third one …

Heh, the line of sight on iZerker got fixed long ago. How is this possible now? Maybe some related glitch?

Attack speed is fine, but projectile speed is way too slow.

Dog.1472:

Not ever class will have a passive speed boost just as not every class will not be getting portals. Giving every class the same abilities is not how to balance things. Technically, it would actually balance things, but it would make every class the same, which would be pretty dumb.

I disagree. In any other MMO game I played, they had equal movement speed on all classes. Different classes with different skills, but same movement speed. The only exceptions were things like blink or teleport. It wasn’t making every class the same, and it wasn’t dumb.

What is dumb in GW2 is having a lots of different weapons available, but in WvW everyone is forced to use one specific weapon with speed, otherwise he’s at a disadvantage.

Every mesmer in WvW is running with focus. That’s not variety, that’s monoculture.

Or in your words:

… but it would make every class the same, which would be pretty dumb.

Honestly, even a dead pet heals his master, so how do you CC a dead pet?

I’ve tried CC-ing the downed ranger, I’ve tried dragging the pet away with Illusionary Anchor (trident #5), and I’ve tried disrupting them both by pulling them into a Vortex (spear #5). It may stop the healing for a second or two, but that’s just delaying and not solving the problem.

Please note, the ranger can still switch pets and use his F-skills while in downstate. wtf? That’s like using my shatter skills while in downstate. Now that would be fun …

I wouldn’t complain about the unstoppable pet heal if the amount of healing wasn’t so friggin insane high. You can’t out-damage it, no matter what you do.

I agree, staff #1 should buff yourself if you are in range for the bounces, no matter who else is around. Only if you are not in bounce range it should buff others (who are in range).

@Esplen:
A pulse buff would be AoE, right? I think that would be too powerful.

Things get ridiciulous when there are lot’s of trash mobs around and the warrior has the trait which gives him a 100% rally chance when killing something with vengeance. Warriors kill mobs so fast, you can’t prevent it after he uses vengeance. Looks like a simple 100blades is enough to kill a mob.

I once fought a warrior who did that trick 3 times in a row. When he was down for the 4th time I finally managed to stomp him.

But what’s even worse are rangers under water with downstate healing from their pet. You can’t stomp under water, the pet outheals your damage and and the healing continues even if the pet is already dead …

Sure you can use any phantasm against downed players, but the iWarden is probably the best phantasm for the job since it deals the most damage and also hurts anyone who attempts to rezz.

If you just want to stop a downed player from self-healing, even a clone who deals 5 damage is good enough. But the iWarden causes serious pain to the victim and anyone helping him …

Yes, eles/thieves/mesmers will move away, but they’ll have eaten a chunk of the iWardens damage already, and the iWarden forced them to use their movement skill (in other words: they wasted their stomp counter). They wouldn’t use the movement skill when there is an iMage shooting at them.

btw, a downed guardian can kick the iWarden away, but after that you can go stomp him with no problems.

And don’t forget, the reason why you should use Focus is the #4 skill. As we are talking about downstate here, Temporal Curtain stops multiple enemies from rezzing their friend. It’s one of the best anti-rezz tools in the game if you ask me. The iWarden isn’t as good, but can be useful as well.

athuria.2751:

IIRC Feedback lasts the full duration, its graphic is just shorter than the effect.

That explains why you can Phase Retreat from a Null Field shortly after it’s graphic is already gone and still get Chaos Armor from the leap combo finisher.

samski.5194:

I much rather have Winds of Chaos bounce, not only to apply additional Burns and Bleeds and get me additional Superior Sigil of Earth Procs, but also for its Fury and Might stacks on myself further increasing the base damage of Winds of Chaos.

Uhm, Illusionary Elasticity does not give you:
- more might stacks
- more fury
- more sigil of earth procs (but this doesn’t even matter, since you’ll hit the internal cooldown anyway)

Another issue with Illusionary Elasticity is the reduced range of the bounces. I play with staff and that trait too, but I’d say half of the time there is no bounce because the distance between me and my victim is too high. If you are kiting and/or your enemy is kiting, that’s a big issue. And against cowards running away from you, the staff attack will never bounce.

Thus, Illusionary Elasticity sounds great in theory, is great in PvE, but isn’t that great in real PvP situations.

If it worked on our staff clones … ohhhhh yeah, it would be no doubt a very, very powerful trait. Probably overpowered.

The mathematical calculations you made in your posting are valid for a PvE situation, PvP has different rules – not because of the game mechanics, but because your enemy has a brain. You don’t kill ppl with a confusion here and there, you kill them by suddenly overload them with a huge stack of confusion, so they go down before they realize what’s going on.

In PvP/WvW, you can drop iWarden on a downed player. Unless it’s a thief or ele, he won’t move away

And Temporal Curtain is just incredibly good. There a so many great uses in WvW for it, I can’t even count them. The pistol stun is really weak compared to this.

Best thing about pistol: It’s straightforward. You simply read the tooltips and know how to use it.

Focus on the other hand has a learning curve. When you try it for the first time you think it’s utterly crap, except for being our one and only source of swiftness. Uuugh! But if you give it a real try, you’ll find out how powerful it actually is. I’d say focus is one of the most complex and hardest to master tools on the battlefield out there.

And with Illusonary Persona you can apply one extra confusion every time you shatter, or two with the F2 shatter. Alongside with many other benefits you get from this trait.

But if you plan on keeping chaos armor up, mostly with ethereal combo fields, you should drop Illusionary Elasticity and get the blind-on-glamour trait instead. You’re putting down the glamour fields anyway. Together with confusion-on-blind the extra confusion is better than the extra bounce from staff auto attack.

As I said: You take them both or none!

Mesmers: you have to stomp them twice (they blink away, but after that they are doomed).

Thieves: you have to stomp them three times, at least (first they teleport, then they stealth, and if they are lucky or you are too slow their teleport is ready again by that time … ).

My tip:
Condition mesmers are dangerous in downstate because they apply confusion with every attack (and I think the downed clone does it too). You’ll suffer a huge stack of confusion and thus you may blow yourself up if you keep attacking them. That’s why stomp is a valid option, you don’t suffer from condition damage but still finish the mesmer.

Another tip:
If you throw AoE on the downed mesmer, he’ll use his blink to get out of AoE radius (since it’s random he is often out of luck but he’ll still try). After that you can stomp him with no problem.

And a tip for thieves:
The downstate #2 skill (blink/clone) requires a target to be used. Use stealth to stomp mesmers. A good mesmer will use another target (trash mob, other enemies) to blink anyway, but if it’s a 1vs1 and you are invisible, the downed mesmer is doomed.