The reason you don’t see glamour anymore has more to do with the nerfs to the traits.
From the wiki:
- Blinding Befuddlement: This trait can trigger only once every 5 seconds on any target that is blinded by the Mesmer.
- Dazzling Glamours: If Confusing Enchantments, which also makes glamours confuse foes, is active, only one stack of confusion will apply.
The blind on glamour is still a pretty powerful trait on its own, but you don’t get as nearly many stacks of confusion as you used to.
Great idea!! I thought I’d offer some possible answers to the WvW Section as a starting point. I kind of reworded the questions a little bit for additional clarity. Feel free to edit as you think necessary.
5. WVW
- What roles can Mesmers fill in WvW?
WvW Mesmers tend to fall into one of following archetypes: “roamer”, “pick”, “train” and “pin-snipe”.
A “roamer” Mesmer is intended for solo or small group play (a.k.a. “havok squad”). The purpose of this archetype is to support the server efforts through guerilla tactics, such as taking under-defended objectives or cutting off enemy reinforcements.
A “pick” Mesmer brings strong burst damage to quickly take down high priority targets and disrupt the enemy back-line. The mesmer’s job is to punish enemies that over-extend or fall off train, relying on stealth and mobility to stay alive.
A “train” Mesmer brings group support to large scale engagements. These responsibilities include providing group stealth, projectile reflection, boon stripping, condition removal, and haste.
A “pin-snipe” Mesmer brings long range single-target damage and crowd control to single-out and kill enemy commanders. This mesmer typically focuses on boon stripping, CC and burst damage in a coordinated effort with other party members.
Some Mesmers may opt for a hybrid between two or more of these roles. Regardless of role, all WvW Mesmers will be expected to know how to use Veil and Portal as the situation requires.
- What builds work best for each role?
Roaming provides the greatest build flexibility and will vary depending on if you run solo or havok. Generally speaking, any of the PVP builds described above will work well in a roaming situation. In addition, condition mesmers can also make for excellent roamers and have the advantage of certain gear and rune-sets that are not available in structured PVP.
Shatter Mesmer is the most common build for a pick Mesmer, but Lockdown can be effective also. Pick Mesmers generally gear as glassy as possible, and often carry a gear swap to tank up as necessary.
Train Mesmer allows for some build flexibility, but a good starting point is the Zerg Support spec (26060). Coordinate with other Mesmers in the group to decide on a Veil order and bring complementary utilities.
Pin-snipe Mesmer’s main requirement is landing Moa Morph during the spike. Individual builds may vary, but a good starting point would be 66xxx with Empowering Mantras and Triumphant Distortion to assist with burst damage from range.
- What’s the best way to gear up for WvW?
If you levelled in WvW/EotM, you likely have a surplus of a Karma and Badges of Honor. Vendors in each of the WvW maps sell exotic level equipment with a variety of stats for a combination of gold and badges. If you can bring yourself to PvE, you’ll save some money by visiting the Karma vendors in Orr first. Note that equipment acquired in this manner cannot be salvaged, so use cheap runes for now and Mystic Forge it once you can afford a proper set.
If you are looking for a combat use, I’ve played around with it for this use and not found a good practical combat purpose. Would love to see if anybody has any advice there.
I mainly play WvW where portal definitely has combat uses. It’s arguably the best escape tool in the game and gives you a safety net in outnumbered engagements while roaming. With a good commander and voice comms, you can also use it to open up great flanking opportunities in larger scale fights (note: you’ll need to coordinate multiple portals if your group is larger than 20).
It might be good to just “jump in the deep end” and go with a 4/4/0/0/6 shatter spec. It’ll be difficult at first, but you’ll learn some important things about the class along the way.
It’s approximately the range of a fully zoomed in minimap. It may help to place a waypoint when you drop it at first. You have 60s to drop the exit. If you aren’t going to use it and are out of combat, you can always swap to another skill before it expires to avoid the cooldown.
It’s one of those tools that takes a lot of practice to work with, but eventually you’ll learn where the good portal spots are on each map.
This is just a suggestion, but have you considered running toxic crystals and/or swapping in a couple pieces of Giver’s? The increased condi duration could more than make up for the loss in condi damage. You obviously won’t benefit from it if its cleansed, but it might also help you bait the cleanse a little earlier in the fight.
It’s not that healing is a bad thing; it’s just not a mesmer’s strong point. The water field blasting works because of the timing (on or between hits), placement (the melee train), and the quantity (each blast can heal 5 different targets). The mantra heal is a PBAoE with a long cast time, a 5 target limit, and we don’t have the armor to push with the melee where that healing is needed the most.
If you only run with a fixed 5-man and they really need the support, then run whatever you want! It’s just that a mesmer needs to sacrifice a lot to bring that support when the role could much more easily be filled by a guardian.
No amount of healing will save you if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time in WvW. Rather than trying to heal up damage after the fact, it’s far more effective to concentrate on preventing damage in the first place. This is where the utility of a mesmer can really shine: reflects, stealth, condi/boon removal, and interrupts.
Also, don’t forget that death is the ultimate CC. Bring as much damage as you can survive with!
Celestial is very niche on Mesmer. To make it worthwhile, you need to have a build that makes use of all the stats. You might be able to pull it off in certain support-oriented builds (i.e. 2/6/0/6/0 or 0/4/0/4/6), just don’t expect to win many 1v1s like that.
I think you might be spreading yourself too thin with the Inspiration line here. The Inspiration minors all buff phantasms, which are notoriously unreliable in Zerg v Zerg. I know that the map control aspect of the Warden’s Feedback sounds nice on paper, but sometimes it can also be a liability in WvW. If you drop a temporal curtain on that 80 man zerg at the wrong time, there’s a distinct possibility that you can get insta-gibbed by retaliation damage if you’re not prepared for it.
For what it sounds like you’re trying to do, I’d suggest playing around with a 4/4/6/0/0 or 2/6/6/0/0 variant. This would buff your mantras and shatters at the same time. Use reduced condition duration food to make up for the loss of Mender’s Purity if you need to.
Had to test myself to believe it, but it seems you’re right after all.
I’m sorry, but these two 30s videos are not enough to convince me that power is not a factor in reflection. Anecdotal evidence is no substitute for statistics.
I think the difference in damage of these two videos is due to the fact that the Ranger’s Long Range Shot varies with range. You can see this effect clearly in the “High Power” video. The reflected shots deal way more damage when the bot is shooting at you than when it’s aiming at the warden.
I found that adding a Sigil of Fire to my GS helped improve my tagging rate by a good bit with new beam mechanic. If you can position yourself to hit 3 targets, that’s 3 different chances for you to crit. Even with a modest crit rate, that adds up to a lot of procs. What’s nice is that sometimes it procs on a close target and sometimes it procs on a far one, so you end up tagging different players.
The build you linked looks like a great roaming build, especially if it was paired with a small group composition with lots of regen. It’s a “burst them down before they burst me down” kind of spec that’s probably pretty effective in the right hands. However, I think in larger scale fights you’re actually giving up defense instead of gaining it by dropping IP. An extra 1s of invul is priceless in WvW and staying alive is even more important as a commander because you’ve got to lead “the zerg”. Zergs tend to fall apart when they lose their commander.
I’d recommend experimenting with variations on the x/20/x/x/30 for a while and gearing more defensively instead. You’ll want to keep a good crit rate because of the vigor on crits, but replace some of the zerker trinkets with more defensive options when you decide to tag up. Instead of re-traiting for Mender’s Purity, you can run Lemongrass Poultry Soup instead. That would open up other options for your GS sigil as well. Fire is nice for tagging people, but Restoration or Stamina could work quite well for keeping you alive.
You seem to be spreading yourself a little thin traitwise. It’s like you haven’t yet decided on whether to go with a shatter spec or phantasm spec. You took Illusionary Persona, but don’t have Deceptive Evasion which is typically a major source of clones in a shatter build. You took Empowered Illusions, but none of the other phantasm traits like Phantasmal Strength, Phantasmal Fury or Phantasmal Haste. It might be a good idea to spend some time with both a shatter spec and phantasm spec to decide which style you like more.
PvE, sPvP and WvW also require completely different mindsets. In PvE, generally the only thing you need to worry about is doing as much damage as possible. In PvP/WvW, you generally need to play/trait/gear more defensively. Be prepared to develop separate sets of gear for each situation.
first of all, we got 2 traits that reduce the CD on our illusions, do they stack?
andif they do, how? i mean additively or multiplitevly (not sure if this is the correct way to worte it)
The CD reduction between the 5pt Illusions and any of the weapon CD reduction traits is additive. If you take both, you’ll have 40% CD reduction. Note that Phantasmal Haste in Illusion doesn’t reduce CD of illusion skills, but rather decreases the time between attacks. Also, the tooltips won’t accurately show the reduced CD with both traits.
and the same question about the 2 traits that increase damage, one from phantasms, and the other one from illusions in general
They work exactly the same. The wording is different because at one time in beta clones actually dealt damage.
the last one, is about the trait that increases our damage for each active illusion- does it increase the damage of the illusions themselves? I mean, if i have 3 active phantasms, will they all do 9% more damage?
I’m not so sure about this. Might need to do some testing in the mists to find out.
(edited by SuburbanLion.8095)
IIRC, karka have a horribly low drop rate to begin with. Might just be bad luck.
Dulfy.net has a nice guide to the karma vendor options here: http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/
I’d recommend starting by mix and matching a Power/Tough/Vit set if you plan on doing a lot of WvW. For PvE, you’d probably want Zerker stats which aren’t available in Orr. However, the PTV gear will still work fairly well in PvE while you work on dungeons/crafting/gold for a zerker set.
Portals make siege more fun because it adds a fear of uncertainty. Simply putting a wall up doesn’t make you completely safe. It’s one of the few mechanics that encourages people to defend, rather than just zerg from node to node. The game needs more ways to make defending interesting, not less.
I think you need to look at the play-counterplay issue in the broader rock/paper/scissors context. In WvW, you’ve got zergs, havoks, and defenders. The zerg easily runs over defenders at one node. Havok groups beat the zerg by putting pressure on multiple nodes at once. Defenders beat havok groups by providing accurate scouting reports.
To me, portals fall into the havok category. They provide a means for a small group to break up the zerg. Your point that the counter strategy to havok, defending, is unrewarding is mostly true. Defenders get the short end of the stick with regards to in-game rewards and have a boring job to begin with. Not to mention that their counterplay, zerging, seems to be the dominant strategy. Of course playing scissors isn’t fun in a population where everybody plays rock, but thats no reason to nerf paper.
Yes, mesmers active defenses are great and let you run a glassy build in small group stuff. However, I’d disagree with gearing like that in WvW. The problem is that large fights also come with skill lag which can prevent you from using those active defenses when you need them the most. You need to have enough passive defenses to survive long enough to break combat if you can’t use your heal (it happens).
Stat-wise, there’s a sweet spot to “effective health” (largest single hit you can take and live) that you can use to decide between toughness and vitality. As a rough guideline, take your armor (base+toughness) times 10 and compare that with your current HP. Whichever is less is the one you’d benefit more from. It doesn’t need to be exact, but might be handy if you’re having trouble deciding between vitality and toughness.
Reflection Mesmer: Shatter/Support for WvW
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Reflection-Mesmer-WvW
Pyro offers some really sound advice here. Minor runes with Vitality and Toughness are dirt cheap on TP. The extra defense goes a long way in WvW.
Understood. But then wouldn’t it be smarter to try to kill ALL of us vs. just the uplevels? I have zero issue if they’re trying to stop supply, that goes with the territory, but they’re not even killing Yaks!!!! They’re just ganking uplevels….that’s the “sad” part. The overall strategy of preventing supply I totally get.
The 80s often take too long for them to kill. A lot of WvW-ers run very tanky specs. What ends up happening is that the thieves run into a stalemate, where neither party can kill the other. In this situation, whoever gets reinforced first wins. Whether or not you should engage depends on how far you are from your teammates.
That looks like a nicely balanced hybrid. One thing that I might suggest is moving 5pts from Chaos to Illusions. With your toughness, Chaotic Transference is only giving you 77 condition damage. By moving those points into Illusions, you get 50 condition damage, 5% shatter cool-down reduction, and Might on shatter.
I often swap in Blade Training or Desperate Decoy in that slot when I feel I need some extra defense. The reason why I like the Phantasmal Fury is because it helps compensate for my modest crit rate. Since the zerkie only seems to hit twice on average, I wanted a 50% crit rate to average 1 bleed per target as a cover condition for the cripple. My base crit chance from gear is about 30%, so the Fury makes up the difference.
I run a shatter/support hybrid build in WvW, focusing on project reflection: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Reflection-Mesmer-WvW/first
The nerf to retal in the last patch makes this play-style even more viable.
Updattte; Decided i’d like to go with a shatter build, suggestions on that front, remember, main weapons being Sword/Focus! <3
My WvW build is a shatter spec with the primary weapons being Sword/Focus. You can check out my guide here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Reflection-Mesmer-WvW/first
In a PvE environment, you’ll want to use Berserker gear instead since the survival isn’t as much of an issue.
Yes, this is arguably just the x/20/x/x/30 meta with those 20 discretionary points spent in Inspiration. However, you often hear mesmers talk about how awesome Warden’s Feedback is without ever really talking about specific builds with it. Usually when someone does go Inspiration, they’re going for the 25pt minor in a phantasm spec. The general gearing guide is “zerker or go home”. That works great for small group stuff, but in large scale group fights I think control and support are arguably more important features in a build. This is a hybrid shatter/support spec that happens to be work well in a variety of WvW situations. Take it for what its worth.
@Tiger That sounds a lot like my sPvP build. That heal on shatter is very nice if you gear for it. In WvW, I find it hard to rely on phantasms for my damage because of how easily they die.
@Tek
Sigil of Energy is superior in a small group setting but Stamina is amazing in large fights. If the cost isn’t an option, you could have both and switch as appropriate.
reserved space
Sieging Template
Food: Lemongrass Poultry Soup
This template is designed for large close quarters fights, such as a siege situation. Here you can’t make use of the surprise element from Veil and the cripple from the greatsword is less important, so I swap in Null Field and a staff instead. Chaos Storm helps to hit arrow carts on the walls and also can help lock down a choke point. Picking up the blind on glamours trait helps provide additional defense in the event that the defenders try to push out through their portal. I typically try to drop Null Field and iWarden at the same time, as the blind will help him stay alive longer and the whirl finisher spreads around some additional confusion.
Solo Template
Food: Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew
This template is designed for situations when I’m all alone or in a small group. Typically this what I use when running supply or sniping yaks. The goal here is to have enough burst to kill the roamers that will try to pick you off, while also providing sufficient escape options to run away if you encounter a larger force. Facing off against a bunker build will often result in a stalemate, so pick your fights wisely.
Portaling Template
Food: Lemongrass Poultry Soup
The main purpose of this template is to provide an offensive portal into dangerous territory. If possible, have a thief give you shadow refuge and a guardian give you aegis and stability before making your push. Expect to use two dodges, Distortion, Decoy, Mirror, Blink, and Mass Invis to get through the choke point. I typically drop Temporal Curtain first to shut down projectiles, then double dodge through it and blink to skip over the heaviest regions of AoE. Try to save decoy for its stun breaker property. Cripple, Chill and Immobilize are the other big threats to making it through alive, so use Mirror if you get afflicted with any of them. Weapon swap to the staff once you get through and Phase Retreat will create some additional space between you and the enemy before dropping the portal.
Reflection Placement:
The most important part of learning to play this build is knowing where and when to drop your reflects. In this spec, you’re using Feedback primarily for the projectile reflection and this means using it slightly differently than a glamour spec. For example, a glamour mesmer will usually drop Feedback on the enemy to spread the blind and confusion. With this build the best place to drop Feedback is on your allies— specifically the “frontline”. If you drop Feedback on an enemy, they can just move out of it and suffer no penalty. By dropping Feedback on your allies instead, they’re safe from projectiles as long as they stay inside of it.
Since this build uses the focus trait, Temporal Curtain and iWarden both reflect projectiles also. Like Feedback, you want to use Temporal Curtain defensively by placing it between your allies and the enemy back line. Temporal Curtain will continue to reflect projectiles even after using Into the Void, so you can use the pull to disrupt the enemy’s frontline while still reflecting projectiles from their backline. Temporal Curtain also works great at choke points, such as a broken wall piece. iWarden is a little bit harder to use because it dies easily, but the general idea is to use it on a nearby enemy and then stand next to it for the duration of its attack. This not only will protect you from projectiles, but also give you regeneration.
When defending a keep, rotate between placing Feedback, Temporal Curtain and iWarden in front of the gate. Most zergs will just auto-attack the gate in a siege, and you can tag lots of people with reflection this way. Do not attempt this if you’re low on health, as you can be insta-gibbed by retaliation damage. Also note that you can place Feedback on the gate from behind. This can soften up the enemy forces before you Veil and push out through the portal.
Consumables:
I typically carry a variety of food choices in my inventory. Remember that you can switch food buffs while in combat, providing additional build flexibility at a cost.
Sharpening Stones – Provides more power and synergizes with the high vitality and toughness of the build. What else to say?
Omnomberry Pie – Since I usually run Mirror as my healing skill, I depend a lot on lifesteal effects to stay alive. Even with the nerf adding an internal cooldown, this is still one of my favorite foods because it procs off reflected crits as well. This is my primary food choice in Zerg vs Zerg because it helps negate some of the damage from dropping Feedback on a large group with Retaliation up.
Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew – This food is a nice choice in small group situations. More Endurance = More Dodges = More Clones = More Shatters. The might on dodge also synergizes nicely with the sigil of stamina.
Lemongrass Poultry Soup – There are situations where the reduced condition duration can be extremely valuable. It’s worth having in your bag just incase you go up against a condition heavy enemy force. Running this food allows you to drop Mender’s Purity for Glamour Mastery safely.
Omnomberry Compote – This food is most useful in situations where the enemy forces respawn quickly. It will keep you alive as long as enemies are dying on a regular basis. Very situational, but worth carrying just in case.
Templates:
The exact details of my build change from situation to situation. For lack of a better term, I’ll refer to these common skill, trait, equipment and consumable configurations as “templates”. Switching between templates is time consuming and error prone, so sometimes I only change the weapons/utility skills and not the traits. If anyone at Arena-Net is reading, please bring the template system back from GW1!
Open Field Template (Core)
Food: Omnomberry Pie
This is my typical open field spec. The goal is to provide support to the melee group by reducing incoming damage. With this build, it’s important for you to be at the head of the pack to Veil the initial push. Once the melee group hits, drop Time Warp to boost their damage and proceed to shut down the enemy backline with Feedback. I usually drop iBerserker at the same time as Feedback so the whirl combo spreads extra confusion around. Once the enemy has blown most of their cooldowns, it’s usually safe to push into melee range with the sword where you can put out a lot of damage. Use the focus skills to shut down ranged attackers while you push in, and be sure to finish off the downed to refill your endurance. If you have a necro in your group, call your shatter spikes so that they can Epidemic all the confusion stacks. Once you’ve blown all of your invulnerability skills, pull out and switch back to greatsword.
Gear:
Soldiers armor with Superior Runes of Air. Power, Toughness and Vitality are strong stats for WvW since they provide a combination of high effective health and decent base damage output. By using the Air runes and reduced focus cool-downs, this build has near perma-swiftness which is extremely valuable in WvW. For accessories, I run a mix of Berserker, Soldier and Celestial. While working for celestial, pick up some soldier accessories with Ruby orbs as a comparable substitute.
Why gear this way? First, the primary goal is to stay alive. Going with toughness and vitality on your armor gives you more time to react to incoming attacks. You won’t be able to stand and take hits for long, but it will give you enough time to dodge out of the way when you get flanked. Damage is a secondary consideration. Power is your most effective damage stat, and is important because it allows you to deal the most damage against siege.
Since this build goes for a balance of both survivability and damage, the Celestial accessories have a lot to offer. All of the stats synergize with each other, and you get slightly more stat points with +all stats than you would by mix and matching. As your vitality goes up, toughness looks better. As your toughness goes up, healing looks better. As your Power goes up, crit rate looks better. As your crit rate goes up, crit damage and condition damage looks better. Remember that reflected projectiles use your stats, so having a mix of direct and condition damage allows you to capitalize on a variety of projectile types.
Weapons:
Berserker Greatsword of Fire – By using the sigil of fire, the GS provides strong AoE damage from a distance even in “high lag” conditions. While the main purpose of this set is damage, the boon removal, AoE cripple and knockback all provide some nice utility.
Soldier’s Sword and Focus of Blood and Stamina – This is mainly a defensive set, but it can put out some nice damage at the risk of entering melee range. Since the sword naturally cleaves, I went with the sigil of blood for extra single target damage and healing. The sigil of stamina is highly underrated, and this build uses it to provide a steady stream of clones once the enemy starts dying.
For my underwater weapons, I run a Rabid Trident of Leeching and Berserker Spear of Leeching. The original reason why I went with Leeching sigils has been nerfed, but I’ve grown to appreciate having it in certain situations and the underwater set is one of them. Underwater fights are somewhat rare in WvW, but the Leeching sigil is useful because entering water while in combat counts as a weapon swap. Jump into water to gain the leech effect, then come back out and hit someone with it.
In addition to the primary weapons above, I also carry several alternate weapons in my inventory.
“Whatever” of bloodlust – Keep a secondary sword/gs/focus for Bloodlust stacking, then switch to the main weapon after reaching 25 stacks. Pretty straightforward.
Soldier’s Staff of Leeching – I sometimes switch the GS for staff to put extra pressure on walls during a siege. With the lifesteal on swap, it also makes a more defensive option as needed.
Soldier’s Scepter of Fire – In situations where its too dangerous to melee, the scepter is the only other main hand option. It’s not spectacular, but it has its moments. Rarely used.
Soldier’s Pistol of Leeching – In times when I run both sword/scepter, the pistol provides a secondary offhand. Rarely used.
This guide covers a WvW mesmer build that I’ve found myself coming back to again and again. Seeing as how none of the stickied builds run the same trait spread, 0/20/0/20/30, I thought it’d be appropriate to share my build and some of the strategy behind it. The basic concept is to play a mid-line support role with a focus on reflecting projectiles. With the recent nerf to the Glamour spec, my hope is that posting this guide will encourage other mesmers to experiment with new builds.
Without further ado, here’s the “core” build:
It’s important to note that this build is merely a starting point for the discussion. Part of being an effective mesmer in WvW is knowing how to adapt to different situations. I’ve previously blogged on general WvW tactics from a mesmer point of view, and this might be valuable reading if you’re new to the class: http://bit.ly/18qG7Ui
General Overview:
This build is kind of a “jack of all trades”. It has moderate damage output and moderate survivability. It has enough defenses to survive a typical glass cannon’s burst, but it’s also likely to run into a stalemate against a good bunker build. It has a little bit of boon removal and a little bit of condition removal. It focuses primarily on direct damage, which has its advantages in WvW, but also lays on some additional pressure through condition damage. It’s strengths are its high mobility and multiple sources of projectile reflection. It’s weaknesses are Necromancers and Guardians because of Dark Path and Retaliation respectively. A reflected Dark Path can drop you in the center of the enemy zerg and widespread Retaliation can drop your health quite rapidly if you reflect too many projectiles at once. I’ve made an effort to compensate for these weaknesses in the build, but it’s important to be aware of them.
It’s also worth noting that this build is designed to fit into a group. More specifically, it’s designed to complement the group composition of my guild. We typically divide our forces into a “frontline” and a “backline”, with one commander for each. This build fills a sort of “midline” role, and bounces between the frontline and backline as needed. In either situation, my main focus is on control. My goal is to prevent as much damage as I can through well placed veils, reflections, confusions and interrupts. When running with the backline, I can focus a little more on putting out DPS with the greatsword. Since both my phantasms spawn in melee range, this provides additional support for the frontline with regeneration. When running with the frontline, it’s important to stay tight on the rest of the melee to mitigate some of the AoE damage. Whereas other classes like guardians might stay alive in melee through healing, this build relies more on active defences like Blurred Frenzy, Distortion, and dodges. When your cooldowns are up, it’s time to pull out and rejoin the backline.
Traits:
I’m going to cover a number of variations of the core build. Each variation uses the same trait spread, 0/20/0/20/30, so you only need to respec once. The build revolves around three traits, each of which significantly changes the playstyle of the class.
20 Dueling – Deceptive Evasion is the main draw here, but the Sharper Images and Critical Infusion minors complement the build also. Illusions are a mesmers primary resource in combat, and DE provides the most efficient means of generating them.
20 Inspiration – Warden’s Focus is another main component of the build, adding two additional reflection skills to the mix. This trait is what differentiates this build from other “shatter specs”. The 15pt minor also allows you to provide regeneration with phantasms, providing additional support to your allies.
30 Illusions – Illusionary Persona is a real game changer. Having on-demand access to Distortion is a life-saver in WvW. This also complements the 1-hand sword quite nicely as you’ll be in melee range to get the 4th shatter effect. The minor traits in this line further complement the shatter oriented playstyle.
Aside from those three, the rest of the major traits vary from situation to situation. We’ll get to some of those variants later.
(edited by SuburbanLion.8095)
No. Generally speaking, any effect that grants +Damage% only affects direct damage and not conditions.
…would this also affect mesmer boon removals? Arcane Thievery seems quite similar in functionality. Making Mind Stab unblockable might actually make it useful.
I used to run Vamp runes, but the 6pc bonus seemed to get me killed more often than it saved me. I moved to Air runes and never looked back.
The thing about these two rune sets is that similar effects can be gained with food buffs. I usually carry both Omnomberry Pies and Lemongrass Poultry Soup and switch between them as I need too.
@Thorment
I’m glad you found my blog helpful, but the information on it is horribly out of date. Things have changed substantially since BWE3 when I put that together. I’ve been meaning to put out a follow up post with more accurate info, but haven’t had the time.
Crit damage does not have have “diminishing returns”, but rather a varying “opportunity cost” — you give up varying amounts of other stats to get critical damage depending on the equipment slot. “Diminishing returns” implies that you get less out of each successive stat point, which is not the case. 1% crit damage gives you 1% crit damage whether you’re starting at 0% or 110%.
Regarding the boon issue, I think the guru post you linked meant to say “boon duration” instead of “boon effects”. I’m pretty sure that Might transfers over to phantasms, since it increases your stats, but I’d need to do more testing to see if Fury works as they described in the podcast.
Edit: Also, the second half of that reddit post you linked has some inaccurate info. Specifically, the part that says “Your DPS is optimal when (1) = (2) = (3)” is completely false.
(edited by SuburbanLion.8095)
To be perfectly frank, I’d try to stay away from large open field fights until you reach the level cap and get your exotic gear. You’d be a much more valuable asset to your team by scouting, running supply, and manning defensive siege.
A good place to grind would be the cannons in Stonemist. You’ll probably tag kills at a much faster rate than you will by zerging and the defense events provide nice XP and Karma. Seriously, those cannons are like little bag factories!
Hold on. You want to make it easier for a zerg to wash over smaller forces by limited line of warding, static field, etc.?
I see.
I’m not saying I want these skills to be capped. I’m just pointing out the inconsistency in how these AoE skills are handled. I’d hate to see confusion nerfed across the board just because one trait that applies it is imbalanced.
I agree that some of these line skills are a small groups only defense against a larger, and play an important strategic role. However, I also think there’s a legitimate argument that these line skills make mesmers, guardians and elementalists too important in WvW relative to the other 5 professions. Why take a profession that is AoE capped at 5 targets when you can take one that is not? On the other hand, limiting the targets could destroy the utility of those professions. It’s a very difficult issue to balance and merits further discussion.
I thought stability beats a line?
It will break a guardian’s Line of Warding, but it won’t do anything against a mesmer’s Confusing Enchantments.
I’d like to have a civilized discussion here about what I think is a major balance issue in WvW, which are certain effects that trigger when targets cross a line. Balancing the potential impact Area of Effect skills was obviously taken into consideration and the 5 target cap was implemented to limit them. However, skills/trait that trigger when crossing a line seem to bypass this AoE limit because its highly unlikely that more than 5 people cross the line at the same time. As a result, these “line” skills become extremely valuable in Zerg vs Zerg combat. A well placed Line of Warding or Static Field can quickly change the outcome of a fight.
Recently there’s been a lot of complaints about confusion in WvW. As a mesmer, I don’t feel that the confusion damage is the real issue, but rather the fact that the Confusing Enchantment trait doesn’t seem to have a limit on the number of targets it can affect. If an entire zerg crosses the line, then the entire zerg gets confusion. I could be wrong about that though as it’s incredibly hard to test (can any dev comment on this?). The problem is that not having a limit on the number of targets affected means that this one trait arguably has a higher potential damage than any other effect in the game.
On the other-hand, I can kind of see how putting a limit on all of these “line” skills would nerf them into oblivion. For example, Feedback and Wall of Reflection would be rendered nearly useless in WvW if they only reflected projectiles from the first 5 targets. Given that these skills are already easily countered by Dark Path, it would seem unfair to nerf them further.
These line skills present a tough game balance decision, and one that I’m glad I’m not responsible for making. Do you guys feel that these line-crossing skills are balanced as is? Or are some changes needed to bring them in line with other AoE effects?
Personally, I think the damage aspect of confusion in WvW is fine as is. The problem is with certain skills/traits that bypass the 5 target AoE limit by triggering when enemies cross a line. Confusing Enchantments needs a cap on the number of confusion stacks it can apply.
Deceptive evasion is of questionable utility in any zerg, and even more so for a low level. This is a bad idea.
I disagree with this assessment. The main reason for taking DE at level 40 is not about group utility, but about personal survival. A double dodge followed by Distortion can get you out of many sticky situations in WvW.
It’s hard to answer this question without knowing anything about your build or play-style.
As Pyro said, you’ll want a least one weapon with Corruption on it and then you should swap it out once you reach 25 stacks. I wouldn’t really recommend the bleed duration sigil unless you have more condition duration from another source, because you only get more bleeding damage in 1 second increments. If Winds of Chaos is your only source of bleeding, it means you need 15% duration to see any effect. The bleed duration also doesn’t transfer to illusions, so it really only benefits your auto-attack.
If you’re going for a crit-based build, you get several more options. Earth (more bleeds), Strength (Might = more cond dmg), and Generosity (Transfer condition to foe) could all work well. Remember that the “on-crit” effects share a cooldown, so you can only run one of them.
The other sigil of note is Doom, which applies poison after weapon swapping. This is nice because a condition mesmer normally relies on RNG for poison. Battle is another good option for the Might stacks or Energy if you have Deceptive Evasion. Again, you only want one “on-swap” sigil because of the shared cooldown.
I don’t think you guys are understanding the OP’s question. When a projectile is reflected with Feedback, the reflected projectile combos with the Ethereal Field. This means that if the enemy’s shot is reflected and hits, they also gain a stack of confusion from the projectile combo.
I don’t normally run condition duration gear, so I haven’t tested it explicitly, but I would expect that answer is (A).
Veil is most effective when you can drop it at the front of the zerg. If you find yourself at the front of the zerg, you can quickly swap one of your utilities for Veil before engaging. It can double as an escape tool if necessary, but Decoy tends to make a better defensive option for small group roaming because of the stun-breaker property and lower cool-down.
Portal is a lot more effective with an organized group using voice chat. People avoid taking portals from strangers, and for good reason.
For now, I’d recommend that you start with Blink/Null Field/Feedback as your utility skills and Time Warp as your elite. This will help you work on your positioning and AoE placement as you learn the ropes. As you get more comfortable, swap in Veil or Portal to experiment with in the appropriate situation.
It’s been a while since I did my damage tests, but according to my spreadsheet the iWarlock will out DPS the iSwordsman at ~4.5 conditions normally or ~2.5 conditions if you run Phantasmal Haste. That’s not including the Sharper Images trait which adds a whole slew of additional variables.
As the other replies indicate, mesmers don’t really have a great condition damage build for PvE. The reason is that the only condition mesmers excel at is confusion, which doesn’t work as well in PvE because most mobs have slow speeds. I’d recommend that you lean more towards a hybrid spec using Rampager gear (Precision/Power/Condition Damage) and the Sharper Images trait in Dueling (Illusion inflict bleeding on crit) if you want to get the “condition damage feel” while still killing stuff relatively fast.