Guild Wars 2

They seem to be quite intent on nerfing Mesmer’s long-duration stealth application. It started off with the nerf to Prismatic Understanding from 100% increased stealth duration to 50%. Then Chrono was released and perma stealth became possible until alacrity was nerfed. After that, they introduced those crappy extra attacks to phantasm casts which reveal you if you were in stealth. Finally, this change to the cooldown reduction behaviour further nerfed Mesmer’s ability to maintain stealth.

Since ArenaNet don’t seem to like communicating their design and balance direction for classes, we can’t say for sure what’s motivating these changes, but if I had to guess, they want to make stealth Thief’s thing and widen the gap between Thief’s stealth application and Mesmer’s. This doesn’t bother me too much. I’m going to miss the stealth shenanigans that Mesmer was able to pull off around HoT’s release, but if they want perma stealth to remain something only a Thief comes close to pulling off, then I can understand that.

It is not intended – it’s definitely a bug.

Here’s a GIF of it in action.

http://giphy.com/gifs/26xBPXLsgDFEBBhZe

Hey! I’m a hobbyist music producer and big fan of Guild Wars 2 and Super Adventure Box. As such, I decided it would be a great idea to make a tribute to SAB. CLICK ON THIS LINK TO HEAR IT:

It’s a chiptune arrangement of the song Battle on the Breachmaker by Lena Chappelle (you hear it in the Nightmare Fractal’s Ensolyss encounter), but you’ll also hear a few nods to Lena’s awesome World 2 Zone 3 SAB soundtrack, Storm Top.

If you enjoyed this, feel free to check out my other Guild Wars 2 arrangements:

Warp Worm

Tarir

Fun facts:

1. This took 18 hours and 10 minutes of work over the course of about a week.
2. The program you’re seeing in the video is FL Studio 12. It’s a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) used to produce music.
3. 90% of the software I used is completely free: BiT BOX, Bleep, Magical 8-bit, DSK ChoirZ, 3xOsc. The only things you need to pay for are FL Studio (the actual music creation software, of which there are some free alternatives) and Omnisphere (which I used for two instruments).
4. This isn’t true 8-bit music. It has some things like bitcrushed strings/choir, reverb, etc, which is basically impossible to emulate in 8-bit on a PSG sound chip. However, it’s very heavily chiptune-inspired and SAB-inspired.
5. I wasn’t going to make something this year for SAB due to time constraints (last year I made the Warp Worm arrangement), but one Guild Wars 2 player who’d heard my arrangement last year showed an overwhelming amount of support for another arrangement this year, which motivated me to make this arrangement.
6. This was made entirely from scratch, transcribed by ear.

I hope you enjoy! Thanks for listening.

Is the way Thief’s new Vault works completely intentional? I noticed that now it gradually moves to the spot where it’s meant to land, which leads to some clunky camera movement, whereas before it would sort of quickly jump to the place it’s going to land and then do a vertical slam.

There are also bugs related to the placement of the final Vault slam when with quickness.

I’ve been feeling the Greatsword #2 extra bounce in PvP. It’s great. GS is a solid power burst weapon with decent pressure at ~900+ range and some utility with a boonstrip and knockback. One thing’s for sure though; be sure to build power stats if you’re using GS. It’s completely ineffective for condition damage.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

So this is why I think the damage modifier changes would work well: Runes, sigils and food also affect chrono buffs. Rune of chrono is a big part of group quickness but prevents scholar bonus. Sigil of concentration prevents use of force and accuracy(or night/slaying for dungeons) at the same time. 20% boon duration food is mutually exclusive with 10% salad or other DPS stat food.

Domination has 15% and then another 12.5% vs vuln.
Dueling has p.fury, 15% and 150 ferocity and requires spamming MoP.
Illusions has phantasmal haste and 9%

Chrono and inspiration are both used in the support build. It’s about the choice of picking all 3 DPS trait lines and DPS gear or only being able to pick one DPS traitline and support gear. If all those modifiers affected phantasms: (1.125*1.15*1.09*1.05*1.07*1.1*1.1=90% more phantasms DPS) and then also p.Fury and p.Haste and ferocity need to be factored in for around a ~150% more phantasm damage that wouldn’t be available in chrono support build. This isn’t including grace of the land and other team buffs that aren’t raw stats.

Summon 1 duelist and 2 swordsman with this build in the DPS testing with the most basic off buffs (vuln, might and banners)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAra88msICloBUrhFVDqsDlYAkBYE7EtLpJKA-TBBXgA9q/As/o8LU/wjSQSBMwYA-e
About 7.8k dps for just phantasms. 7.8k * 2.5 = 19.5k dps from just the phantasm. Add some auto attacks, sc 3 and MoP spam and it wouldn’t be half bad and you hit about 30k in the most selfish mesmer DPS build. Add party buffs like spotter and grace of the land affecting phantasms too and the Mesmer now has a good DPS build that is selfish. Could theoretically go higher with staff phantasms and enough conditions. No major rework to separate PvP, WvW and PvE. Mutually exclusive with the chrono support build.

That works… assuming that the build won’t change with the DPS changes you’re proposing. It’s quite likely that if phantasms start being affected by damage modifiers, then Mesmer will swap to something like Illusions / Domination / Chronomancer. It’s a well-known fact that Mesmer doesn’t need Inspiration and all that boon duration just to share quickness to 4 others, so I’d wager that giving Chronomancer better DPS like that will encourage people to drop certain utility for those sweet damage modifiers and migrate to having two Mesmers in raids.

My point is, while your change will work if the build remains the same, we can’t discount the fact that the build may very well change to accommodate such a change. The surefire way of ensuring we’re forced to drop Chronomancer support for DPS is by dumping our damage to a new elite spec.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Here is where we differ though and where I think most of the issue stems from for other people. If I want to go selfish DPS, I should be able to on Mesmer. This is why I really want damage modifiers to affect phantasms. PvP and WvW and PvE support builds don’t stack % modifiers but a PvE DPS build would. It doesn’t require a balance split, just a change in phantasm function.

If I want to go domination, dueling, illusion and spam Mantras for a 15% buff while providing no DPS buffs for my allies and no distortion share, I should do MORE theoretical dps than a staff ele. Staff eles are aoe and can spike hard while Mesmer phantasms are single target and have wind up time so in practice it would be less than an ele. If I want to go Domination, Dueling and Inspiration for reflects and distortion share but no alacrity/quickness, I should do as much as a guardian that brings equal amounts of utility.

TLDR: Yes the utility makes Chrono worth it despite abysmal damage. Otherwise, you wouldn’t see a chrono in 4 man VG kills or other raid speed runs. HOWEVER, if Mesmers want to forgo that utility, Mesmers should be able to do much better DPS than they currently do.

I see what you mean, and I don’t think I can disagree with that… it would definitely be nice to be able to drop most of our utility for the ability to deal great DPS.

That being said, as it stands, there really isn’t all that much ArenaNet can do to give us the option to deal comparative DPS in a way that forces us to drop our utility (especially utility of the offensive kind, such as alacrity and quickness). If they buff either of our offensive trait lines like Domination and Dueling, there’s nothing stopping us from taking those trait lines along with Chronomancer and having better DPS while still being awesome support gods of timey wimey stuff.

Point is, Chronomancer is like 80 – 90% of our group DPS buffing, so if we’re not forced to drop that trait line for better DPS, then ArenaNet will undoubtedly be very reluctant to give us those DPS buffs (and rightly so). There is a simple solution though; force us to drop it, and guess what feature does exactly that? Another elite spec! That’s why I’m hoping the next elite spec gives us great DPS. I don’t think we’ll ever reach the kind of numbers that the powerhouse classes such as Elementalist can output, since core Mesmer is still built upon a lot of good utility, which has to mean some kind of trade-off in damage, but I do think there’s room for the next elite spec to give us some more damage.

Sure, another elite spec is probably a long way away, but I really don’t find this a big deal. Let’s face it, Mesmer is in a really good spot in a lot of PvE. Dungeons, fractals, and raids all want Mesmers, and in raids people consider them practically mandatory. Very few other classes have that kind of luxury, and some aren’t even guaranteed to be accepted in a raid. We’ve also got respectable mobility and survivability for open world PvE and are the universally-respected gods of jumping puzzles and porting people around. They are definitely not useful in just a small niche; they’re useful nearly everywhere.

1/6 of the DPS of other classes is a laughably exaggerated statement. That qT video is simply a showcase of the rotation, and with only realistic buffs too, mind you. If we dropped half of our support we could easily double or triple that DPS, but instead we take Inspiration and Chronomancer for quickness sharing, shield phantasms for alacrity sharing, and spend half of our time casting wells and signets and phantasms instead of actually trying to deal any damage. No wonder the DPS is so low.

Mesmer has always been a support/utility class since its conception. It’s what we signed up for. The fact that one Chronomancer alone can keep the whole raid party topped up with quickness, on top of alacrity, distortion-sharing, reflects, and great active defences, is the reason why our DPS is crap. You can argue that Druid, Warrior, and so on, i.e. the other support classes, bring better DPS than us while providing the same utility as us, but that’s not true. They can only effectively buff 5 – 7 players, which is why you often need to take two of them in raids, and that’s not even mentioning all the other more niche utility that Mesmer provides, such as boon strip, portals, and so on.

Mesmer is a utility class right now. They don’t need a DPS buff. I wouldn’t mind some QoL changes, bugfixes, and so on, but DPS buffs aren’t needed. Every MMO since time immemorial has support classes which are crappy to solo with, and Mesmer isn’t even that bad. It has good burst and AoE to deal with mobs, and a very easy time soloing thanks to a ton of evade/block/invuln frames and half of its damage being passive. Yeah, some classes have an easier time, but that’s fine. The sooner we try and make Mesmer like other classes, the sooner it starts losing its identity.

I’m fine with the next elite spec being more damage-oriented. In fact, I think that’d be awesome. But as it stands, Mesmer’s DPS numbers feel very fair to me.

I like to run Sword/Shield or Sword/Focus + GS in open world, and I gotta admit, sometimes I do that by mistake. Like, I’d hit weapon swap so I can instantly press 5 to cast a focus phantasm or Tides of Time on shield, but my weapon swap would have a couple of milliseconds of its cooldown left, so I end up not weapon swapping and instead knocking a bunch of mobs away.

#FirstWorldMesmerProblems

I don’t think it’s all that effective. With the frequency of boon generation in PvP through things like pulsing stability/resistance, stability on dodge or Scrapper gyro destruction, protection/regeneration/vigor per Tempest aura, etc, 1 boon every 5 seconds really isn’t all that much. Not to mention, actually stripping the boon is tied to critical hits so it’s useless without a build that uses precision!

It’s not a bad choice, but it really doesn’t compare with Doom, Generosity, Air, etc IMO.

Oh man… nice catch. I hope ArenaNet does something about it. Have you submitted it as a bug report?

Inb4 next patch: “The duration of the Duelist’s Discipline trait has been altered to 10 seconds to resemble Sharper Images”.

I play almost this exact build in PvP (different traits in Chronomancer and different sigils). It’s great for a lot of things and definitely a hidden gem, but… honestly, it has its problems. Stability screws me so much, and classes that puke it out like Warriors, Scrappers, and Revenants (all popular and meta classes right now) give me an immensely hard time.

It’s also extremely unforgiving due to the complete lack of any condition removal. Get hit by one primal burst from the Warrior, let the Necromancer stack even a couple of bleeds on you, let the enemy condition Mesmer hit one good condi bomb on you, and you’re done.

Also, DHs are an absolute nightmare, for the same reasons that they’re a nightmare for Thieves. Even though they’re considered underpowered, largely due to projectile defence and their predictable nature, they are just as unforgiving as fighting a condition class, if not more unforgiving. You need to dodge every true shot, trigger all the traps with your clones, bait out their million and one blocks and their automatic stunbreak trait, and make sure that under no circumstance do you get hit by the F1 pull.

Aside from all that, the build has its strengths, one of the more significant strengths perhaps being that it’s a build not many people expect (I still enjoy the occasional “wtf” that my enemies write in /say chat when they realise I just ate their health bar in a second and that I’m not on a condition build, lol). I consider it very difficult to play and “high risk low reward”, especially compared to the condition build, but it’s definitely a ton of fun to play and I play it almost exclusively in ranked PvP. Got to diamond with it but I’m struggling to get to legendary haha.

Hey! This here is an orchestral arrangement of the Super Adventure Box Warp Worm theme composed by Maclaine Diemer. I consider that theme a hidden gem in the soundtrack. It’s so incredibly likeable and quaint. Couldn’t help to give my own take on it!

It took me around 16 hours to make, using FL Studio and East/West orchestral sample libraries. It’s nothing ground-breaking, but I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks!

Basically, you need to ask yourself: are people staying in range of the shield phantasms? Remember that the shield phantasm’s range is very short and only works when people are practically in melee range, and the only reason you’ll be using them is to give alacrity to your team… so if half of them are bearbows or staff Elementalists standing a mile away from the boss, or if you’re against a boss where you move around a lot (Thaumanova Reactor Subject Six / Anomaly, for example), then it’s not worth taking shield.

If you’re sure everyone’s stacking up in range for your alacrity, then the next question you can ask yourself is; do the classes even benefit from alacrity? If your team is full of Revenants, Thieves, Power Necromancers, other Mesmers, hammer Guardians, etc, then alacrity won’t be much of a DPS increase, and you’re likely better off with more damaging phantasms.

Having said all that, in most scenarios, shield is definitely useful to have. Most classes do benefit from alacrity and it absolutely makes up for your loss in personal DPS. Plus, having that extra alacrity helps you too, since your wells and CS will be off-cooldown quicker, meaning more quickness for your party, and quickness is something that every class benefits from.

As for the optimal phantasm usage… 2 avengers + 1 of any other phantasm should be enough for permanent alacrity on your group, but that assumes people stand in your wells. Without shield, assuming you’re on a power build, your best damaging phantasm is sword off-hand, so have three of those out if you’re not using shield. The focus phantasm does OK damage, but it’s used more for reflects (especially if you can get it so that when one phantasm finishes his animation, the other starts, since that allows you to perma-reflect, which is super useful for certain encounters).

Hope that helped.

Hey, I’m a little new to Tempest in PvP. I’m playing the cookie-cutter heal/bunker MetaBattle build because I’m not really experienced enough with the class to devise my own builds. I’m only really doing it for the profession achievement since I regrettably don’t enjoy the healing/bunkering playstyle very much. I have a couple of questions though.

1.) I feel completely at the mercy of my teammates. If the teammates are good, I can heal them up, we focus people down well, stomp, etc. If they’re a bit inexperienced or unfocused, we lose miserably and no amount of healing I do can save the game. Are there any general tips for turning games around with this build?

2.) I almost always stand around in mid point, even when there’s nobody there. Whenever I leave mid to help another point, some sneaky enemy player goes and takes it, and then I’m blamed by my team for losing mid. Is there any point roaming to other points beyond mid at all?

3.) What exactly should I be… doing? My focuses generally are spamming auras off-cooldown, trying to land at least one overload in the plethora of AoE dazes/stuns, healing allies when I see them low, and using CC on the enemy we target. That seems to work out, but it feels overly simple and “same-y”. Where’s the skill gap between good and bad Tempests? What do you see Tempests do in PvP that make you think “kitten that’s a good Tempest”?

4.) I usually urge my team to focus the enemy tempest if he’s used his Obsidian Flesh or just swapped out of Earth. Is that usually a good idea?

5.) Are there any general survival tips and tricks if you’re getting focused? Naturally aside from using Obsidian Flesh and usual kiting / LoSing.

Thanks!

Most people run Chronomancer with Sword/Shield + Sword/Focus (or Sword/Sword), keeping up three shield phantasms, and using Well of Action/Recall/Eternity, Signet of Inspiration, and Time Warp. With the right build (namely using Chronomancer runes and some boon duration from your sigil, armour, and/or food) you can keep up permanent quickness on your allies.

However, I find all that pretty redundant for open world and meta events. For those, I’d suggest Gravity Well for CC, Blink for mobility, Well of Recall/Calamity/Eternity for additional alacrity and damage, and Greatsword + Sword/X (where X can be any off-hand you want which isn’t Torch).

You won’t be doing much support (aside from the odd portal someone might need and a couple of bursts of alacrity/maybe quickness), but honestly, trying to go for maximum quickness and alacrity when you’re in a blob of 40 people, most of which are camping their ranged weapons and auto-attacking from afar, only to give your boons to a select four/five people due to the target cap… it just feels redundant. Not to mention, you spend so much time trying to cast your wells and whatnot that you might miss out on tagging trash mobs with Greatsword and getting their loot.

Of course, you may go for a more quickness-oriented build in meta events like Octovine or Chak Gerent, where there are distinct DPS phases and people generally stack together, but for zerging around in Dragon’s Stand or any other event chains, you’ll get more mileage from a more selfish build.

Your aim should be shattering often for trash mobs (possibly grouping them together with Gravity Well or Focus #4), and keeping three damage phantasms up for bosses (for a power build, Sword and Greatsword phantasms both work well here). During CC phases, such as when a wyvern is trying to fly away, your primary CC abilities are Shield #5, Greatsword #5, Sword #4, Focus #4, Gravity Well, and F3 shatter. Feel free to use F5 to double up on any of those, especially Gravity Well.

To be absolutely honest? I think taking a Mesmer condition build in HoT maps is shooting yourself in the foot. I mean, you can make it work, but it’s not really what the build specialises in. A Mesmer condi build deals probably the best DPS that a Mesmer can deal, but it has no burst, takes a long time to ramp up, and is completely single-target. In open world, where burst and AoE are so useful, it suffers.

If you really enjoy the playstyle, then I say go for it. Anything works in open world PvE. That said, my educated guess is that you will have a much easier time with a Greatsword / Sword+Focus/Shield/Sword power build, or with another class altogether.

Having said that, if you do go for it, I strongly suggest you take a pistol off-hand and the Duelist’s Discipline trait in Dueling, along with some crit chance in your build. This is not up for debate – confusion and torment are terrible conditions to deal in open world, because, as the guy above said, mobs are either standing still and attacking or moving and not attacking. They also don’t move or attack all that much to begin with. This greatly reduces the effective damage of confusion and torment. Pistol phantasms, on the other hand, can reach pretty great bleed stacks, and you can keep their uptime high thanks to Chronophantasma, so they’re definitely the way to go.

I don’t really agree with this to be honest.

1.) You can already play power shatter without Deceptive Evasion. You lose out on clone generation, but a strong portion of power shatter’s damage also comes from Greatsword burst. Not to mention, landing a shatter with all 3 illusions isn’t even that big a deal, since the damage scales down the more illusions you shatter.

2.) Yes, all our good traits are spread across trait lines. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? If all good traits were in only one or two trait lines, then we’d ignore the rest. I understand that that’s not what you’re after, but if you take Deceptive Evasion out of Dueling then that trait line will be almost completely ignored.

3.) Dueling is not a bad trait line to begin with. Deceptive Evasion and Blinding Dissipation are immensely good traits, and the fury/vigor you get from the minor traits are not to be scoffed at either. I run Domination/Dueling/Chronomancer with Berserker/Scholar in PvP and it’s a ton of fun.

Traits are supposed to be all about making choices and sacrifices. Putting Deceptive Evasion in Illusions instead of Dueling will almost completely cement an Illusions/Domination/Chronomancer build for power shatter, whereas right now Mesmers need to make a meaningful choice between a reduction in shatter cooldowns and additional clone generation.

StickerHappy.8052:

I have a much better idea.

Everytime you gain might, you transfer a condition to your foes ICD 7secs
You gain might for each illusion shattered

I’m not a fan of this idea. I’m fine with Inspiration being one of our very few ways to handle conditions properly. I don’t see it as a “problem” of the class. It’s a legitimate weakness, and instead of buffing us to get rid of that weakness, they should be introducing similar weaknesses in other classes, rather than allowing them to have builds bloated with condition cleanses, CC immunity, passive defences, etc.

Obvious weaknesses like these are healthy for the game, so long as every class has them. If the enemy sees a full glass cannon power shatter Mesmer on the enemy team, then they’ll be able to identify that condition removal is their weakness, and adapt their playstyle accordingly. That’s the kind of strategic thinking that a spammy PvP with bloated builds won’t foster.

Unfortunately, right now there are certainly bloated builds in PvP which give classes too many options and too little weaknesses. Spreading our condition removal around different trait lines to get rid of our reliance on Inspiration will allow us to stand up to these builds, but it isn’t solving the overarching problem. It’s like introducing snakes to fix a rat infestation. Before you know it you’ve got a snake infestation on your hands.

That said, I do agree that Shattered Strength is… not great. If it were up to me, I’d rework it into something a bit more “Mesmer-y”, like:

“You gain 1 might and steal 2 might stacks from your enemy for each illusion shattered.”

Of course, the above numbers can be tweaked, but I would be interested in a rework that pushes Mesmer’s boon-stripping/stealing.

Thanks for all the tips! I’ve been following them religiously, and I have to say that I’m definitely seeing an improvement. I think my biggest problem was being too hung up on trying to land backstabs. I’d tunnel-vision on it because I had this mentality that it was Thief’s main source of damage, but now I’m trying to play more reactively, using Shadow Shot and Headshot at suitable moments, and I’m having a lot more luck.

Thanks again! Very helpful.

You can possibly try mantras? Dueling + Inspiration with Harmonious Mantras and Mantra of Resolve is stupidly strong condition removal. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you take at least one other mantra, though (and for that, I’d recommend Mantra of Distraction).

Hmm… Why Domination over Dueling? You get some additional vulnerability in Domination which is nice, and boon strip which is amazing, but if you’re going to drop Inspiration, I think Dueling will be a better option. Mistrust puts pretty crazy confusion stacks on people, and you can take the Illusions GM trait Ineptitude which, with Blinding Dissipation, has really great synergy… not to mention all that vigor. You might even get away with swapping Staff with Scepter/Pistol and get Duelist’s Discipline if you want something a bit more aggressive.

Anyway, the main problem with this is the lack of condi cleanse, because nearly all of it is frustratingly tied to the Inspiration trait line. I think Power Shatter can sort of get away with this since it can burst enemies before they have a chance to react, but a condition build might have some trouble.

I would love an elite spec that touches on the following two areas that haven’t been explored enough on Mesmer yet IMO:

1.) Deception. What lured me to this class in the first place was the idea of being a slippery, deceiving class that hides behind the safety of his illusions. I loved the idea of giving my enemies trouble figuring out which one is the “real me”, and skills like Decoy and Mirror Images made me really excited about the class.

Over time, I realised that Mesmer’s trickery doesn’t work on all but the lowest tier of PvP gameplay, and that Mesmer was a different kind of beast to what I’d originally envisioned. I still love Mesmer’s support role and nifty tools like Portal, but I do admit to an irresistible smirk every now and then during the very rare moments that I manage to fool people with my clones.

An elite spec that pushes that deception facet further would be a dream come true for me. Skills like “Gain stealth, break stun, and leave a downed clone at your location”, “Swap places with your target”, etc would be great. I want to feel genuinely rewarded for attempting to deceive my enemies, as opposed to my clones being nothing more than shatter ammo.

Of course, an elite spec that focuses only on deception wouldn’t be particularly exciting for PvE, so on top of that it should also focus on some other aspect, such as…

2.) Sustained damage. As others have said, Mesmer is on the low end of the DPS spectrum. This would be fine if not for the fact that practically every other class with high support capabilities (Warrior, Ranger, Revenant, Elementalist) also has builds that provide good to great DPS. Granted, Mesmer’s support is arguably the best the game has to offer, but most of it is tied to the Chronomancer spec, so if a new spec focused on damage, we’d have to lose Chronomancer’s support for it.

More specifically, I’d like to see some kind of playstyle that encourages us to interact with our clones/phantasms, as opposed to dropping them near us and having them deal AFK DPS (as I presume that’s one of the reasons why ArenaNet seems so intent on not giving phantasms better DPS).

For instance, one idea I’ve been toying with is axe main-hand which has a skill that throws an axe which bounces off the enemy and lands somewhere near the caster, perhaps denoted by a white AoE that only the player can see, similar to the Chickenado event of Dry Top. If you catch it, the cooldown of the axe throw skill is refunded (think Draven from League of Legends).

However, axe clones you cast also throw an axe every couple of seconds, and if you catch THEIR axes, the cooldown gets refunded too. The more clones you have out, the harder it is to keep up with all the axes, but the more damage you’ll deal. You’ll even be rewarded for timing your clone casts properly in such a way that you can keep up with catching all their axes. The axe throw could also apply some kind of unique stacking debuff which is refreshed every time they get hit by the axe throw. This’ll give Mesmer high sustained single-target DPS that takes a while to ramp up and actually forces you to interact with your illusions as opposed to absentmindedly dropping new ones now and again.

Anyway, just an idea I’ve had. Would be cool to have an elite spec that focuses on the above two aspects, as it’ll introduce some options for niche areas in the Mesmer’s kit.

Super helpful post! Thank you.

So would you suggest that, for now, I just avoid 1v1s altogether? For instance, I cap close at the start of the match and if an enemy starts approaching me I usually at least TRY to 1v1 to avoid letting them take close. 99% of the time I fail and die. Do you recommend that I just book it and find somewhere else to be for now?

Hey, I come to you all with an explanation of my predicament. You see, I love Thief. I love the fast-paced, reaction-based playstyle. I love being mobile. I love dishing out a crapton of damage out of nowhere. It’s fun and rewarding when things go well.

My problem? It almost never goes well. I’m terrible. I’ve played hundreds of hours of Thief in PvE and a sizeable amount of games in PvP and I just feel completely helpless. Some problems I have:

1.) I run out of initiative way too much. It’s 9 initiative alone just to cast the stealth combo (Black Power > Heartseeker) and after that and a Shadow Shot / Headshot or two, I’m out.

2.) I have trouble catching up to opponents that are moving. All too often I’m in stealth, trying to land a Backstab, and I just awkwardly chase the opponent, swinging my dagger in the air a couple of feet away like an idiot, followed by my stealth running out.

3.) Speaking of which, I can almost never land a good Backstab. In the unfortunately rare occurrence that I’m actually facing the enemy’s back when in stealth AND I’m close enough to land it, it ends up getting dodged/blocked, I get hit by some random blind, or I’m hit by a CC attack out of nowhere.

4.) I don’t even remember the last time I faced a “fair” 1v1 and came out on top. It always ends in me running away or getting downed, even against classes/builds that Thief is supposed to be OK against. I know the class isn’t meant for 1v1ing but for +1ing and decapping, but even when I’m +1ing, I usually just jump in only to get roflstomped by AoE or by some hard-hitting attack (example of some footage from a match I played today).

I usually play power shatter Mesmer and got to diamond with that build last season. It has a playstyle very similar to Thief in that it focuses on avoiding damage, being slippery, interrupting, and bursting. I generally have WAY more luck on my Mesmer than I do on my Thief, though.

Clearly I’m doing something wrong, because I’ve seen some truly fantastic Thief players both on my team and on the enemy team. I just have no idea how they do it. I know Thief isn’t the easiest class to play, but I’m willing to put the effort in. I just need to learn to put the effort in the right places. For the record, I’m using the top-rated D/P Metabattle build. I’ve copied it to a T. I also know about the various Thief combos such as Black Powder > Heartseeker + Steal > Backstab, and stowing your weapon after the teleport of Shadow Shot to avoid breaking stealth.

So, does anyone have any tips for me to make my life easier as I learn this class? I can record myself playing a full game on my Thief if it helps for analysis purposes.

Eh… I don’t think clones should generate more aggro than the player in PvE. That’d take all the fun out of it, and we have more than enough active defences to survive while being aggro’d anyway (just look at Chrono tank in raids). I do have this small hope that ArenaNet will make clones a bit more hard to distinguish from the actual player (like making them copy the same percentage of health that the player has when they get spawned), but otherwise I don’t agree with your qualms with clones.

Might I add: clones still have their uses beyond shattering. Sword clones apply vulnerability and remove a boon each time they do their auto-attack cycle. Staff clones apply random conditions. Scepter clones apply torment. Greatsword clones… don’t really do much, but at least they make it a bit harder for people to tell which purple laser is coming from the real Mesmer in PvP, and there’s also a trait that allows them to give you might. In addition to that, the Dueling trait line has a trait that makes clones apply bleed when they crit. Sure, none of these uses are particularly game-changing, but they’re there.

Cry of Frustration is not useless, by the way. It’s the core shatter for condition builds in PvP.

For PvP? Shield is probably what you want. If not that, then maybe Torch, or maaaybe Pistol if you’re taking a bleed-based condition build.

WvW… no idea.

And for PvE, pretty much everything has a use. Torch for stealth, Shield for party alacrity, Pistol for condition DPS, Sword for single-target power DPS, Focus for reflects/swiftness/grouping. You will probably get the most mileage out of shield if you do a lot of instanced group content (and I also find it quite nice for open world too), but Chronomancer doesn’t really have any off-hands that aren’t worth using.

Heya! Posted this on Reddit but I thought I could post it here too.

I’m a fan of Fractal 40 farm, and I’ve noticed that a lot of Chronomancers who run it aren’t quite being as optimal as they can be. A good Chronomancer can significantly shorten the length of a run, so I figured I should make a quick video showing you all how it’s done! Here you go:

If you don’t know what “40 Farm” is, it’s basically one of the methods in Guild Wars 2 to make gold quickly. A good team can net around ~30g per hour, along with tons of karma and fractal relics. A few things not mentioned in the video:

- My gear is full Berserker’s with a Superior Sigil of Concentration on my mainhand sword and Runes of the Chronomancer. I don’t have any additional boon duration, but you don’t need high boon duration for this fractal anyway as the bosses die quickly.

- The autoloot mastery is VERY useful if you want to get the loot from the mobs while using the portal trick.

- Your portal placement will vary depending on how good your team’s DPS is. The group I was with was pretty decent, so I placed my portal quite close to the start. Worse DPS means you might have to place the portal further down the ramp.
The team comp I’ve been running is 2 Tempests, 1 PS Berserker, 1 Herald, and 1 Chronomancer. If the Chronomancer doesn’t need Herald’s F2 then you may drop the Herald for a DPS Druid that provides the group with buffs and permanent fury. You can also swap a Tempest for another high DPS/burst class like Thief or Dragonhunter (recommended if you’re struggling with CC).

- On top of the consumables listed in the video, you may take the Large Fractal Mobility Potion which, with the correct mastery, increases your boon duration by 15%.

- Domination is a good alternative to Inspiration. It gives you more personal damage, but you sacrifice Illusionary Inspiration. If you’re like me and you screw up your quickness rotation sometimes in 40 farm since you’re watching a video on your other monitor, that trait gives you a bit of leeway. If you trust yourself, go for Domination 2-2-2.

I hope that helps, and happy farming!

I’m super late to the party but… this is extremely helpful, wow. You’re doing god’s work! Thanks a million. Bumping this in case anyone doesn’t know about it.

For me, Mesmer is my safest choice for HoT areas. The phantasms often draw aggro away from you, and even when you’re the one being focused, you have F4, Sword 2, Shield 4 (twice), two dodges (and nice vigor uptime with Dueling), etc. Plus, you have a crap-ton of AoE CC, which is great for pulling mobs together and cleaving them efficiently. I don’t think Mesmer’s AoE is that bad at all. With wells, shatters, and greatsword, you’ve got pretty strong AoE. The only problems for me are when I have to fight tough veteran/elite bosses… that’s when Mesmer’s relatively lower sustained DPS starts to show. But for most mobs, you’ve got enough burst, mobility, and damage mitigation to have little to no issues at all.

Also… stealth, portals, reflects, alacrity, all that good stuff. They all have roles in the new maps and whenever I play any other class I always find myself missing them.

Frankly I think Moa needs a full-on rework, but a duration nerf makes sense for now… 10 seconds was a stretch. I’m glad that this encourages Mesmers to slot Gravity Well instead, as I’ve always thought that skill was far more interesting and offered more counterplay. Moa’s a lame and oppressive skill that does not do justice to the rest of Mesmer’s considerably more interactive and exciting kit.

I still think condition Mesmer is too strong. Unfortunately it’s the only build that allows Mesmers to compete with other strong classes such as Revenant, Elementalist, etc. I hope ArenaNet shave down its power in certain areas while still keeping it viable, and buff other builds such as power shatter / interrupt / bunker / etc to promote build diversity.

Power shatter is not near useless. It’s underpowered, yes, but far from useless.

I think its biggest issue is that HoT just worked against the build overall. Classes got given more sustain, damage mitigation, evades, blocks, stunbreaks, stability, AoE, and in some cases (such as Revenant), horrible passive CC procs. Power shatter’s all about locking down your opponent and bursting them before they have any time to properly react, but it’s near impossible to do this when you’ve got Dragonhunter’s traps oneshotting your illusions, Revenant chaining together immense amounts of blocks/evades/invulnerability, Tempest healing up whatever damage you deal, etc. It’s a little too hard to land a proper burst, and a bit too punishing to miss one.

To bring it up to standard, I think the sustained damage of the build should be increased a bit more. The burst damage and frequency is fine, but if you miss it, you’re really going to suffer for the next 10 seconds or so. You just can’t keep up decent sustained damage pressure. I’d consider that a valid weakness for the build if not for the fact that any other class/build with comparable burst to power shatter also has the ability to keep a fight going even when the burst is on cooldown. Buffs aimed at increasing power shatter’s sustained pressure would bring it up to par. Things like greatsword’s Mind Stab ripping two boons instead of one, greatsword’s phantasm having less downtime between each attack, sword auto attack’s power scaling increased, buffs to the Dueling trait line, etc.

Having said that, I still strongly believe the build is very good at certain things and still works well if you put enough effort into it.

I play interrupt power shatter almost exclusively in PvP, and got up to diamond with it last season, with a winrate of around 60%. I definitely don’t think it’s terrible, but it is most certainly underpowered. HoT brought a lot of blocks, evades, sustain, and AoE, especially for Scrapper, Tempest, and Dragonhunter, which power shatter has always historically suffered from. Plus, the total lack of condition removal still hurts a lot.

Personally, I’d like to see some of these buffs:

1.) Buffs to the slow traits in Chronomancer, particularly removing the ICD on Lost Time and/or decreasing the amount of critical hits for it to proc. The slow traits were weak before the recent slow nerf, and now they’re even worse, but if they were buffed, they’d help power shatter a lot.

2.) Buffs to greatsword. In particular, Mirror Blade has an enormous cast time. Giving Mesmer unblockable CC in the form of Illusionary Wave would be nice too, but might be a bit too much.

3.) Buffs to the Dueling trait line. Replacing Desperate Decoy (the crappy trait that’s only good for interrupting your heals) with some kind of trait that allows Mesmer to dodge more for Deceptive Evasion would be great.

4.) I think Domination is a strong trait line that synergises really well with power shatter. The only thing I’d change is perhaps giving underused traits such as Furious Interruption, Rending Shatter, etc, a bit more strength.

5.) Power shatter just needs more sustained damage. The damage Mesmer deals when all his phantasms/shatters are on cooldown is just pitiful. Compare power shatter to any other burst build from any other class. Each one has sustained damage ranging from decent to great, even when its burst is down, AND none of them rely on illusions which get absolutely eaten up by AoE. A cooldown reduction to Mind Wrack or increased power scaling on the sword AA / greatsword AA would be very much appreciated.

6.) Why does Blurred Frenzy hit eight times? That’s eight procs of retaliation.

7.) Increased baseline health on illusions in general is sorely needed. Mesmer as a whole relies so heavily on its clones and phantasms. Condition Mesmers don’t need to worry about this as much thanks to them being able to afford taking Inspiration (for Persisting Images) and Signet of Illusions (for the passive), but power shatter can’t take either of those, especially the former, without sacrificing more than it’s worth.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

We’re talking about PvP? If so… Portal really is one of the strongest things you take as a Mesmer in sPvP.

That said, viable alternatives:

Mantra of Distraction – If you’re taking interrupt/daze traits (Power Block, Confounding Suggestions, Delayed Reactions, Mistrust, etc) this is a nice skill to have.

Mirror Images – Don’t bother with this if you have Deceptive Evasion. Without it, it’s a decent skill. Helps you set up illusions quickly to shatter, especially if you’re using Continuum Split.

Signet of Illusions – Not all that useful for power shatter, but condition shatter makes use of this, since it allows you to keep up condition pressure.

Signet of Domination – A 3-second, instant stun. Pretty crazy when coupled with Continuum Split. Especially useful if you’re taking Blurred Inscriptions.

Mantra of Resolve / Null Field – Some extra condition removal if you need it.

Well of Precognition – Stun break, three aegis ticks for you and your team, and a bit of endurance. I personally would not take this, since its nerf has rendered it very unreliable, but it can see some use I guess.

I wouldn’t recommend any other well except Gravity Well. Well of Calamity is probably the worst well you can take in PvP because most of its damage is tied to the last tick, and it’s not even enough damage to justify how rare you can actually land it without enemies running out of it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRnknBlph1oBOqBEgilTjqOar2ulMAWggqcEauwB-T1BFABIt/o8LhjAAAPAg00H02pA4KlgFq+DA-w

I run something like that. It’s power shatter, so in any long duel you’ll be at a disadvantage. It’s also very difficult to play, has literally no condition removal outside the Generosity sigils, and you’re squishy as hell. What it excels in is excellent ranged burst (and burst in general), decent ranged pressure with greatsword, stupidly high lock-down and CC capabilities, vulnerability stacking, lots of ways to guarantee stomps, and generally being slippery and hard to catch.

You might want to take Marauder’s over Berserker’s. Personally, I’ve had more luck with the latter. Your focus should be on catching people out, bursting them down, and stopping them from retaliating. The longer the fight goes, the more you’ll find yourself inhibited by cooldowns. The build has tons of interrupts at its disposal:

2x Mantra of Distraction
4x Diversion (with 3 clones)
2x Tides of Time (including the returning wave)
3x Gravity Well
Illusionary Wave
Continuum Split to do any of the above multiple times

This synergises well with Delayed Reactions and Power Block. The former, coupled with Lost Time and your Illusionary Avengers, keeps quite high slow uptime, which really screws with people. Since the slow nerf (and the fact that Lost Time is a pretty crappy grandmaster trait in general), I’m not sure how well this holds up. That said, due to the alacrity nerf and the fact that clone generation is more than handled by Deceptive Evasion, I don’t think there’s much reason to take any of the other traits… except maybe Chronophantasma, which you can try out if you prefer it.

I find the build tons of fun to play, and it does particularly well against classes with little sustain, such as Necromancers and Thieves. Make sure to abuse the interrupts and stop key abilities such as heals. Blinding Dissipation, Blink, Distortion, Gravity Well, and Decoy are all useful ways to secure stomps.

The biggest trouble I’ve had is against Elementalists and Scrappers, who have far too many heals and damage mitigation tools to give you a chance to burst them down fully.

Krispera.5087:

Levetty.1279:

Step.1285:

If you’re taking Scepter, you’re going to want to build condition. It deals rather abysmal damage if you go for a power build,

As far as Mesmer weapons go Scepter works quite well with power.

Yep. Confusing Images do more or less the same damage as Rapid Fire.

It’s pretty insane. Power Scepter is good.

Huh? I’ll take a look. Last I tried Scepter (a couple of weeks ago) on power, I really wasn’t happy with the damage output.

If you’re taking Scepter, you’re going to want to build condition. It deals rather abysmal damage if you go for a power build, but with condition damage you’ll be seeing some decent torment/confusion ticks. Unfortunately, both of those conditions don’t perform very well in PvE. The bulk of condition Mesmer’s damage comes from bleed ticks using a pistol off-hand and the “Duelist’s Discipline” trait.

If you want to commit to a condition build, then you’re going to have to put up with its downsides; the damage has a LONG ramp-up time, you have little burst, and the vast majority of your damage is single-target. In return, you’ll get superior damage over time and the safety of ranged combat.

Condition Mesmer plays quite different to power Mesmer, so I can get why you’d prefer such a playstyle, though I do need to stress that… it’s an awkward playstyle in open world PvE. You have a bunch of things working against you, especially the lack of AoE which is a real killer in open world especially. I personally run something like Greatsword + Sword / Shield/Focus with a power build and I have a lot of fun grouping mobs up with Focus 4 / Gravity Well and then eating them up with wells and shatters (that give me tons of quickness and alacrity thanks to traits and Chronomancer runes).

That’s my own personal advice. Some people swear by condition Mesmer and dislike the power weapons, and that’s fine! Whatever floats your boat.

StickerHappy.8052:

Moa is not the problem.

its CS.

You wanna nerf Moa and kitten core mesmer even more?

Okay.

I personally disagree very heavily with this.

I can see your reasoning; Moa was hardly ever used before Chronomancer arrived, and now most Mesmers worth their salt take it in PvP. Clearly it looks as though Continuum Split’s the problem, as Moa was never problematic before Chronomancer’s release.

However, I would argue that Moa was always a problem, and Continuum Split just showed how big of a problem it is. The only reason it wasn’t used before was because the 180-second cooldown didn’t justify an ability that’s extremely unreliable because any random blind/aegis/block/evade/invulnerability/stability will waste it. Now that we can basically cast it every 90 seconds (down to 72 with the Illusions line and down even further with alacrity), it’s finally being taken.

Why is it a problem? It’s a one-dimensional and extremely oppressive skill. When the enemy Mesmer casts Decoy, places a big red target reticle on my head for his team, casts Moa on me, and then I get burst down by everyone and their mother, I don’t feel like I got outplayed. I’m locked out of everything that makes my class what it is… I can’t heal, I can’t dash away, I can’t enter stealth, I can’t stunbreak, I can’t remove conditions… and all for what? Because I’m not psychic and couldn’t read the enemy Mesmer’s mind to know that I had to dodge? Even if the Mesmer doesn’t cast it in stealth, with all the particle effects flying around and classes like Asura that make even the supposed obvious animation difficult to see, it really doesn’t feel like I’m to blame for getting Moa’d.

Frankly, I’d like to see the skill reworked into something entirely different. It’s the most unhealthy elite that Mesmer has in its kit when combined with CS. Sure, double Gravity Well isn’t particularly weak either, but at least you’re not locked out of your whole class when in the well, and frankly, with all the stunbreaks and instant-cast abilities that classes have access to, it’s a definite rarity that you have absolutely NOTHING available to get out of or at least mitigate the effects of Gravity Well.

What I like about Moa is that it promotes “play-making”, and can be a real game changer if it lands, which is certainly a healthy aspect to have in a PvP game if balanced correctly. In that light, I would absolutely not be against a rework of the skill that still maintains those aspects while still promoting fair, non-cheap tactics. That, or it gets nerfed so that other weak aspects of Mesmer can finally get properly buffed.

Sword/Shield: ~8k DPS
Sword/Sword: ~17k DPS
Staff: ~20k DPS

I used the Chronomancer trait line for each, and assumed maximum boons/effects on me and all possible conditions on the golem.

I would love to see some condition Mesmer numbers here too.

EDIT:
Before I forget; using full Berserker’s and Illusions/Dueling/Chronomancer (except for Sword/Shield where I used Illusions/Inspiration/Chronomancer to better match the build I use for raids).

Shinja.5642:

A lot of good points made by the three of you.
I see where you are coming and special thanks to step. almost forgot how it felt when the whole party screams and cries because the chrono who is playing is not as good as you.

IMO is just has this different feeling of rewards. Most of the time you as Chrono are just as good as the other players you play with. You can carry the dps somewhat but if ppl are bad and dont know how to use their cooldowns you feel more lost than any other class.

For example: Your team is doing bad in gorseval split phase and you manage to pull the small trashmobs together and cleave them down. if you are alone you get reminded of why plaing mesmer in open world is just a pain.

That the Core Mesmer is underperforming atm is not even up for debate imo. if you have the power to cast everything twice in a row things have to be tweakd for it not to be straight out broken.

Well, you need to keep in mind that in a raid environment, you are trading a significant amount of personal DPS for alacrity/quickness. For open world I take a power shatter build with Greatsword, Deceptive Evasion, Well of Calamity / Gravity Well, etc, and I don’t find it annoying at all. It’s got good burst, AoE damage, personal quickness/alacrity, and mobility. Of course I won’t be meeting the numbers of Elementalists and Thieves but I get by very nicely with it.

Regarding your first paragraph, I think the most rewarding part of Chronomancer (and Mesmer in general) in PvE is how extreme its utility and support is. It feels like my team rests on me heavily. They rely on my reflects for a projectile-heavy boss, my stealth for a stealth skip, my boon stripping for fractals 41 – 50, my portal, my condition removal, etc. I’ve had complete strangers compliment me for my good work and remark on how amazing it is to have permanent alacrity and quickness on them. My friends don’t even want me to take any other class into raids because they’ve come to expect what I provide on Chronomancer so much and don’t trust any other Chronomancer to do it as well as I can.

My point is, it feels like I’m making a huge, noticeable difference to the outcome of any fight, and that’s what I love about Mesmer. As if that’s not enough, the class also has a very high skill floor, and there’s a huge leap between a good Chronomancer and a bad Chronomancer. I can take pride in the fact that I’ve invested so much time into the class, know it inside out, and can cast combos using muscle memory at this point. It makes me significantly better than the newbie who looked up a PvE build on metabattle and practised in Heart of the Mists for a couple of minutes.

Of course, the class isn’t for everyone, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s an unorthodox playstyle. Having said that, I think there’s plenty of satisfaction to be had playing Chronomancer.

I agree that the Chronomancer spec is absolutely more powerful than core Mesmer, but we can see that with most other elite specs too. Perhaps it’s not to the extent of Mesmer, but the power creep happened across the board, not just to our class. I’m more worried about how on earth they’re going to top Chronomancer with the next elite spec, but if I had to guess, it will likely be focused more on damage and deception, two facets of Mesmer that were hardly explored with Chronomancer.

I find Chronomancer very rewarding to play in PvE. DPS is low but it’s impossible to overstate how useful Chronomancer’s buffs are to a group. Permanent quickness and alacrity is crazy. I also don’t think Chronomancer without Commander’s is reliant on a Herald, as long as he has Superior Sigil of Concetration, but the price on that is pretty steep…

The one thing I’ll agree is that we only ever need one Chronomancer to keep 5 players’ quickness and alacrity needs more than covered. Stacking more than one just doesn’t make sense.

Still, I think that in PvE Chronomancer is in a very healthy spot right now. DPS is generally decent if they don’t throw all their eggs into the alacrity basket and take a different off-hand than Shield. Condition Mesmer can output a pretty respectable 20k DPS or so, if not more (source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43ixzz/mesmer_dps_calculator_v_14_rise_of_the_condi/), and Power Mesmer still has good burst, CC, and AoE for general open world. I wouldn’t say no to better damage options, sure, but I signed up for Mesmer because I like utility over big numbers, so I’m not bothered.

It’s a terrible skill now, and the unjustifiably long cast time doesn’t help its case. In PvP there are far more useful stunbreaks on much shorter cooldowns that provide more defensive and offensive utility without needing to stand in one spot for a couple of seconds, and in PvE it’s FAR too unreliable with all the random blockable skills flying around everywhere.

It needs a rework, but if they insist on keeping it as it is, then it should have a significantly shorter cooldown and cast time for sure.

Xyonon.3987:

I doubt that to be working without a Rev as it is the discussion of this thread.

It was in fractals, I was without a Revenant, and I was using Chocolate Omnomberry Cream + Fractal Mobility Potion (with the mastery), which gives me 35% boon duration. Everything died too quickly for me to keep up quickness for more than ~40 seconds, but I noticed that, each time a fight was over, my allies would have one or two more seconds of quickness left than the seconds it would take for Continuum Split to go off cooldown again (alacrity included). So, for instance, they’d have 7 seconds of quickness left while my Continuum Split cooldown was at 5 seconds.

I figured that if I can manage one single rotation from the start of Continuum Split’s cooldown till the end keeping permanent quickness on my allies, then I can manage it for any number of rotations, since by the time CS is off cooldown again, all my important quickness-giving skills (Time Warp, 3 wells, Signet of Inspiration, and Tides of Time) are all off cooldown once more.

Note that I had nearly permanent alacrity on me and was using Illusionary Inspiration (which, after the quickness stacks discussion in this thread, has me doubting its usefulness). It needs a perfect rotation each time to keep the quickness up permanently. I’m also not able to maintain permanent quickness on myself with just 35% boon duration, but it was working on my allies, or at least the ones who stood in my wells and in range of Signet of Inspiration.

Anyway, I haven’t tested it properly yet. I might try and find a proper testing environment, grab a friend, and see how low I can get the boon duration without losing on permanent quickness, but I swear I was able to just about maintain it with 35% in fractals.

Xyonon.3987:

Heya,

Nope, it does NOT do that.

You simply become immune to quickness if you currently have 9 stacks. You cannot override it. Did you never notice that you wanted to share quickness with SoI and “immune” popped up everywhere? That’s when you want to share more stacks than they can hold. Otherwise skills like Time Warp could REDUCE your quickness wich would be silly …

Same thing for swiftness or stealth, etc.

You can sustain 100% quickness with 30% boon dura already. The trick is it to not spam your wells right after CS again. Always wait until your CS cd is around 65s, then continue with spamming wells on cd.

Never miss the concentration proc. If you don’t own concentration you’ll require around 60% boon duration.

Greez!

Hm, I’ve definitely had that “Immune” error pop up when I use Signet of Inspiration.

However, I’ve managed to sustain permanent quickness with 35% boon duration without Sigil of Concentration. It’s very tight; people need to be in your wells at all times and they might need to even touch your Tides of Time waves too. It is possible though.

Fay.2357:

Quickness stacks 9 times. The stacking behavior is a First in, First out list. Once the list has 9 entries, the oldest entry will be pushed out in favor of a new entry, with no preference given to duration. Signet of inspiration conserves stacks, and simply adds on your current stack list to everyone elses in the same manner as if you had manually applied each stack separately.

I always wondered about this; good on you for testing it. Not sure I understand exactly what’s going on, though.

So if, hypothetically, the rest of my party had 18 seconds of quickness – one stack of 10 seconds as the “oldest” stack and then 8 stacks of 1 second – and I shared a single stack of 2 seconds with Signet of Inspiration, would that pop out the 10 seconds and push in 2 seconds, dropping everyone’s quickness from 18 to 10? If so, then in practice there are times when using Signet of Inspiration must do more harm than good, no?

I’ve managed it with around ~45% (in Fractals; 30% from food/utility buffs and 15% from the Fractal Mobility Potion), but it’s VERY tight. I’ve also never tried it with Illusionary Inspiration, so using that might help.

EDIT: Can confirm it’s possible with 35%.

everyman.4375:

Condimesmer in PvE ? WTF the only conditions on mesmers are useless againsts monsters …

Mesmer can stack bleeds with Duelist’s Discipline and Sharper Images, which is where the bulk of condition Mesmer’s damage comes from in PvE. The recent quality-of-life changes that Mesmer got (Mistrust/Malicious Sorcery buffs, scepter auto doesn’t override illusions anymore, and Duelist’s Discipline’s bleed chance buffed form 33% > 50%) were quite nice to condition Mesmer’s DPS, so much so that it likely surpasses power Mesmer’s DPS over long periods of time.

Is this for PvP or PvE? For PvP, I would keep Domination and scrap Illusions. Domination is great for stacking vulnerability, which gives you stronger duelling and burst in PvP, but in PvE, unless you’re solo, whatever you’re fighting will likely have 25 stacks of vulnerability on it by default from the other players. Domination also has some neat interactions with interrupts and boon stripping, which both don’t mean much in PvE. I would take Mental Anguish over Imagined Burden if you’re taking the trait line in PvP, or Power Block if you’re taking a bunch of interrupts (it has amazing synergy with Mantra of Distraction).

If it’s PvE, you can drop Domination and go for Illusions. The main reason for Illusions is the reduced cooldowns. You get to cast phantasms more, you get to use your shatters (especially Continuum Split) more often… it’s super handy, especially in a group situation which is where Mesmer’s support tools really shine.

One thing… if this is for PvE, you may want to consider dropping mantras once you get Chronomancer. Chronomancer’s wells, with the exception of Well of Precognition which is beyond useless since its nerf, are just excellent. If you eventually set up your build for quickness sharing, then there won’t be much space for mantras (except maybe the heal mantra) either way. For solo PvE, mantras are passable, but I personally find them rather tedious and clunky to use in long fights. It’s up to you, though.

As for whether to use shield or not, it really boils down to what kind of content you’re playing. I find shield great for dealing with large groups of trash mobs. It’s also hands down the best support off-hand that Mesmer has access to, since it enables you to maintain permanent alacrity uptime for yourself and your group. Sword off-hand is the most reliable single target DPS that Mesmer has access to, thanks to its phantasm, and I use it when I’m pugging fractals/dungeons or when I’m soloing any kind of difficult content.

Hope that helped.

Xyonon.3987:

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, I always tought it reverts because of the CS itself dying wich could be the cast in the first vid (but there are 2 damage numbers so it’s not), but the 2nd one clearly shows that I am wrong!

Well thanks for that, the more you know. Strange …. I tought they really said “it’s not gonna work like this” but apparently it really is.

Thanks for the nice vids btw! Very helpful!

Yeah, in fact that’s why I made the second video. In the first it kinda looks like the Continuum Rift object gets destroyed, which is what reverts me, so I made another video afterwards where I cast CS safe from harm.

You’re welcome for the videos! Unfortunately, as I said earlier, this doesn’t happen all the time. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, I actually get downed while in CS. I managed to take a screenshot of one time where I died even though I was in CS – as you can see the rift was still open, but I still got downed upon taking lethal damage.

I have been trying to figure out why this happens, but so far I can’t consistently replicate it. It seems to happen randomly and very rarely.

Xyonon.3987:

Step.1285:

Isn’t this already how it works? If I take lethal damage while in Continuum Split, it almost always automatically ends and reverts me back to the original timeline, so to speak.

If CS itself dies, it will revert you back to the original timeline, but not when YOU die during CS, because …

SlimChance.6593:

When ANet announced Chrono and Continuim Split, ANet specifically designed CS so that it would NOT affect the downstate.

… this

I’m actually quite sure about this… If I take lethal damage while in CS, it automatically reverts back.

Here are two videos showing this:
https://vid.me/8yRk
https://vid.me/D41n

In both cases, I cast Continuum Split with 3 illusions, take lethal damage a couple of seconds later, and without pressing F5 again, it automatically reverts me back. This happens in 99% of the cases for me, the 1% being random, rare instances when it doesn’t work, in which case I assume it bugged out.