Guild Wars 2

Diovid.9506:

As has been mentioned by others many times before, the core necromancer needs more support. The necromancer shouldn’t get that change via it’s elite specialization or else everyone will be forced to be a reaper. It seems like Arenanet has listened to this remark and is reworking blood magic somewhat to fit that ideal.

I completely agree with this and I’m curious to see what ANet will do with the Blood line. I proposed that skill as a shout because that’s likely something they are still iterating on. However, it could work very well as a Corruption skill if the damage and chill are removed.

It just seems to me that sacrificing your own boons to give them to your allies, while receiving their conditions, is something that fits the Necro very well.

As we know, Necromancers in general are a very self-sufficient profession. This should become even more true with the fast attack of Reaper Shroud (compared to Death Shroud) and traits such as Reaper’s Might.

How about replacing a shout such as “Rise!” or “Suffer!” to instead provide some sort of support while keeping true to the Necromancer in general? I propose either of those shouts because “Rise!” is just plain bad (and no matter which summon is chosen, AI isn’t great to begin with) and the shout I’m proposing would be similar to the current “Suffer!”.

So here’s the shout:

Damage and chill foes around you. Transfer [number] condition(s) from allies to yourself. Send your boons to your allies.

Damage: 259
Chilled: 1½ s
Conditions Transferred: 1 per Ally
Boons removed

The damage and chill are there to keep some sort of offensive aspect to the shout, to stay similar to other Reaper shouts. The general idea, however, would be to stack up boons on yourself (such as Might from Reaper’s Might or Fury from Furious Demise) and then sacrifice all those boons to send them to your allies (leaving you with none). Instead, you end up with some conditions on you, which you can then cleanse using one of the many Necromancer skills.

Mesmer here! I run a Shatter build: 60% crit on Mind Wrack (50% otherwise), +20% damage on Mind Wrack, +75 crit damage.

Honestly, the profession that’s the easiest to kill for me are Guardians because of their low HP pool. Usually, they are dead after my first burst (17~20k damage in 5 seconds). HOWEVER, if you do survive, clean out confusion right away. I usually end up putting 8 to 12 stacks of it throughout my attacks, so everything you do will hit you for 1.2~2k. I’ve seen people survive with 1/3~1/4th of their health, only to kill themselves with confusion.

The key here is Vitality/Blocks/Dodges/Interrupts/Invulnerability (your elite skill) to help you survive the first burst. Toughness might help, but I’ve not seen a big difference. If the Mesmer has a Pistol, the stun will tell you that a burst is incoming.

After that first burst, the combat might slow down for around 10~12sec. Chances are that a lot of the burst skills will be on cooldown, including clone-generating ones (except clone on dodge). This will be your best window to burst out the Mesmer. A lot of Shatter builds run on low HP/Toughness and minimal condition removal. Cripples/Chills work well, since a Mesmer’s defense is to keep a distance between him and his enemy. If the Mesmer uses a greatsword, pop Stability before going melee.

1) I believe you’ll have an easier time against a Phantasm build than a Shatter build.
2) Shatter-Mesmers are at their weakest after that first burst.
3) That first burst hits hard! Use anything you can to survive it.
4) Mesmers with a staff will be able to survive their downtime easier than the ones running with greatswords, but their initial burst is weaker.

First off, thanks Jon for communicating to us.

I think that one of the major reason that people are freaking out is that right now, any Phantasm skill has 2 cast times. I’ll take iBerserker, for example:

- Cast Phantasmal Berserker (3/4 sec). The character makes a very obvious movement, raising his arm. This can easily be blinded/interrupted/dodged.
- Phantasm is created. Stands still (1/2 sec) before attacking. As it is now, this gives a lot of time to dodge… or just move away. This is particulary bad with iWarden, who doesn’t move at all.

Yes, the 0 sec delay was a bug. But as it is now, we have an attack with a 1¼ sec cast time that can be completely evaded two times.

Now for what happens in WvW (I have completely abandonned the idea of PvE Mesmer for a while, now). Without Phantasms, the Mesmer only has Chaos Storm as an AoE ability. It’s nice to crowd control zergs, but I never really expect it to do any real damage.

Before the patch, you could throw an iBerserker into a zerg and make a good amount of damage. It would die after 2 seconds, but it’s work was done. Now, even with a small delay of 0.5 sec, that means that the iBerserker will die half the time before he actually attacked. I also used him a lot to cripple players trying to leave a fight. Now, if the player has swiftness, my iBerserker is barely a threat.

Same with iWarden. Before, I could summon him into a crowd and he would automatically attack, protecting himself from projectiles. Now… well, he simply dies. Even in sieges, people just back off before he begins to attack, making him totally useless. This is so bad that the Focus has gone from a weapon I liked to something I only use to move around the map.

Thieves have stealth-backstab attacks, Engineers have grenades (and Grenade Barrage!), Elementalists have plenty AoE they can throw in the middle of a zerg, Warriors have 100b… Yes, Phantasms hit hard (most of them, at least), butthey are not unbalanced compared to other professions AND they already have a cast time. They don’t need a delay. A delay simply means they will die before they even can do a single thing. Even 0.25 sec might be to much, I don’t know. Why not put the delay as 0­.01 sec, if 0 sec is impossible?

@Osicat Hehe, don’t worry I have about 500ish hours with the Mesmer and I consider that I have a pretty good control over that profession. I rarely die and when I do, it’s usually because I’m either reviving someone or because I’m trying to finish an enemy… right in the middle of it’s zerg xD

What I meant with “squishy” is that I have to keep an extra eye on my hp, compared with my previous build. It was focused on front-line zerg harass, so I’m used to escape very dangerous situations :P

Very, very nice!

I play that kind of build in sPvP and for some reason, it never occured to me that it could work in WvW (I usually go GS+Sword/Focus and work on reflecting projectiles and front-line zerg support). So I tried it this morning and guess what… over 50 kills in a few hours xD On a small group vs group fight at a supply camp, I ended up with 7 kills AND still alive.

And to come back on the numbers you just threw, I can confirm that I regulary did about 15 to 19k damage in a few seconds. This includes the 12 stacks of confusion the enemy ends up with. (iDuelist, Sword #2, Mind Wrack, Cry of Frustration, Confusion). I just don’t have Runes of Air as of now, because that’s a big gold investment and I already had to buy an exotic pistol x_x

I’m not used to be this squishy in WvW, but Mesmers are awesome at surviving anyway.

I also forgot to put it in my post, but I can’t even imagine the pain it must be to get a Story mode group these days. I don’t really care, since my main has completed all of them. However, I can see how painful it must be to new players who want to experience the story related to these dungeons, or even just to unlock the Explore mode.

I’m not the kind to have 1500 tokens of each dungeons sitting in my bank. I usually do the number of runs I require to obtain the gear I want. I also don’t have tons of gold.

My alt has reached lvl80 and he’s still wearing half Masterworks gear. Why? Because I can barely find a single “Old Dungeon” group. Sitting in Lion’s Arch for an hour, all I see is LFxM FotM lvlx. Don’t get me wrong, I got the monthly (7 Fractals) and I love the concept of this new dungeon. It’s just that running it won’t help me at all for the moment.

Another problem that makes me afraid for the long term is that people ONLY search groups for their FotM levels, since there is no way for them to level up otherwise. This effectively created an infinite number of new dungeons. I’m currently lvl2, but as I’m putting a stop to it while I get Exos from dungeons, I see the average FotM level getting higher and higher.

All that to say that especially since FotM was released, we really need a LFG tool. Something that would pop-up when we enter the portal and where we could choose a path (or level, for FotM) we want to do. The system would then put us in a queue, letting us do w/e we want while it fills the group.

Add Isle of Janthir to the list of bugged servers.

Yeah, that’s the only thing I don’t like about the Engineer, from testing him in the Mists. I guess I could go around with the bomb kit and switch to grenades when I really need them? They use similar traits anyway.

How is the bomb dps compared to traited-grenades (for +1 nade per attack)?

akamon.2769:

may i ask why you want to focus on AoEs? just out of curiosity. or even better for people here to help provide even more info.

Thank you all for your answers! I think my choice will go with Engineer.

And for your question, it’s just that the Mesmer is really 1v1 focused. Not to say that they don’t have AoEs, but I feel like even as a Shatter build (the most AoE-centered build), I have to work twice as much as some other classes to do damage to group of mobs. So I’m searching for a profession that would feel as different as possible from the Mesmer, so they don’t overlap each other.

I’ve been playing a Mesmer for a while and I want to create an alt, but I can’t decide on the profession.

This is mainly for PvE and WvW.

I’m searching for a profession that can dish nice AoE damage, but that isn’t closed to that role only. As a Mesmer, I really enjoy being able to switch from dps-heavy to CC/tank and be as effective in both. Since I play a Mesmer, I would also prefer another armor class, so no Elementalist or Necro.

Right now I’m thinking Engineer or Guardian. Am I missing other profession that would fit the description?

You look like you’re new to PvP (with a Mesmer, at least). I would highly recommend what I did myself: before going in WvW, try sPvP. Imho, this is the best way to learn how to fight with your profession. With only 10 matches, you will start to be a lot more effective and you will be able to tell what weapons and what utilities you prefer for PvP. Just don’t forget to adapt your build to account for the big zergs of WvW.

If you were running the same build as your PvE build, that might have been the problem. You need a lot of CC, coupled with burst damage. I personnaly go with GS and Sword/Scepter (still testing which one I prefer) + Focus (with the reflection trait).

I’ll add my name on the list. It happened to me 2 times yesterday in WvW (both times during while fighting a keep lord).

It never happened to me before, even though I go to WvW often. I’ll have to guess it appeared during the last patch. I have Realtek speakers.

I’m having the same bug since yesterday (since the last patch, I guess). I never got it before.

I saw on another thread that lowering your sound quality might fix it, but I haven’t had the time to try it myself.

It does it to me too. However, attacking something seems to solve the issue.

55 trait points used, but I can’t manage to choose where to put the remaining 15.

- I play mostly GS and Sword+Focus/Pistol
- Is 150 Power (with the GS trait) really worth putting another 10 points in Domination? The minor trait at 15 points seems pretty worthless.
- I could put another 5 points in Dueling for either the Sword or Pistol trait.
- If I put 5 points in Dueling and 5 points in Illusions (+3% dmg), where do I put the remaining 5? In Inspiration for cond. removal on Shatters?
- What about 10 points in Chaos and 5 points in Illusions for the +3% damage/-3% dmg received? That would mean no weapon traits except for focus (is it a big loss?)
- Am I doing everything wrong?

My build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fgAQNAR8dlwzipHVzqGaNJxZGRf5oFQqgqLfA3A

Server: Isle of Janthir
Dungeon: Sorrow’s Embrace Story Mode.

Pretty much what everybody said. The group was able to get in the dungeon (though it was difficult for one of us), but then I got disconnected. I never managed to go back. I tried logging off, closing the game, going to other maps and back.

Clicking the pop-up did nothing. As for the portal entry, it seemed to work every 15 minutes or so and only for 1 time. Even then, it usually teleported me in another instance than the rest of the party.

Alright, I might retry GS+Sword/Focus when I get the lvl60 Manual.

Is the 20 traits in Inspiration worth the Focus’ reflect effect? That means you can’t go as far in the Domination and Dueling trees. What is a good ratio? 20/20/0/20/10?

Edit: I forgot to ask: If you go Power/Crit, do you use the Spear for underwater? I really hate that weapon :/

TL;DR : I use an illusion factory build that heavily relies on shatters and cond. damage. I do amazing. What am I missing about the GS+Sword/Pistol build? And what is the deal with Focus vs. Pistol?

I’m now lvl55 and since around lvl20, I’ve been running an illusion factory build with Scepter/Pistol and Staff.

Here’s the build I’m aiming for (i usually change my utilities quite often except for Mirror Image): http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fgAQNAraWlwzKo3UzqGZNJipCBHaGXX2RqQpVmBudhA

My strategy is usually to kite the mob while using the scepter/dodge/Mirror Image to create as many illusions as possible and shatter them. Even the phantasms usually don’t attack more than once before I destroy them. Shattering stacks confusion and the 3rd scepter skill does it as well, while providing some raw damage too. IDuelist stacks between 5 and 8 bleeds per salve. Staff simply destroys everything stuck in a Chaos Storm. I’ll quickly swap my weapons and spam any illusion-creating skills.

My build works wonders in PvE, since the mobs are too busy fighting my illusions to attack me. It also does a LOT of damage. Same thing in sPvP (to my surprise). I don’t see a lot of other Mesmers running around in Confusion/Illusion Factory builds, so the other players just don’t know how to react to it. By the time they spot the “real” me, the other clones are shattered in their face and 3 more illusions have taken their place (to be shattered in a few seconds as well). I lost no 1 vs 1 and even won some 1 vs 2 or 3.

The only place it doesn’t work well is WvW. I need to be close to my foe and it’s just not possible there.

- I tried a GS + Sword/Pistol build for some time, but I simply hate the 1H-sword for the simple fact that you need to stand still for Blurred Frenzy. If the mob (or the player) moves, you wasted that skill. Also, the range on Illusionary Leap seems far less than 600? I feel like I need to be 2 meters from the mob for it to work… How do you survive with beeing semi-melee? And how good is that build in close quarters? From what I see, GS just becomes useless, while my Staff/Scepter/Pistol build works fine.

- Random question, but what is the deal with the Focus? I see many posts here with Mesmers that use a Sword/Focus combo. I just don’t see how it is better than the pistol. The phantasm stays at the same spot (again, useless if the mob moves) and it is melee, meaning it will die in 2 hits. What am I missing?

This bug only happens once in a while, but it is really annoying.

What happens is when I’m fighting in a very small room (i.e. Barradin’s Vault), Phase Retreat has a chance to teleport me under the map! Once there, I get stuck under water with combat mode still on, so I can’t even teleport back. I have to deconnect and log in once again.

Very annoying, especially during a boss battle

Oh and I forgot to say…

Another suggestion to #1 would be to keep it the way it is right now, but add some AoE damage or a random boon/condition whenever the illusions shatter because you just killed the target.

And for my mega-suggestion to #2 and #3, I forgot to mention that the phantasms would have a maximum number of attacks (something around 3) before they automatically shatter.

Keep in mind that these suggestions are aimed for PvE, not PvP. I love this profession, but I think there is room for improvement on their primary class mechanic.

I’m still very low level (15), but I’ve already seen a few problems regarding phantasms and clones which could be resolved with pretty simple changes.

1) Clones and phantasms disappear too quickly in groups of weak mobs, making them pretty useless unless you destroy them as they get created. Sometimes, the mob will die as quickly without a phantasm and since it will disappear right after, I don’t even bother summoning it.
This problem is also true on groups of 2 or 3 mobs. If I go all out on one mob, I’ll find myself stuck with everything on cooldown for the other ones.
Suggestion) Make them stay a couple seconds after your target is killed. If you start attacking a new target, they stay “alive” and switch to your new target. This could be as low as 2 or 3 seconds.

2) Clones can overwrite phantasms. This problem usually appears against a boss or an elite (because of the problem stated in 1). If the battle goes on for a certain time, I’ll usually get comfortable with 1 to 3 phantasms. At that point, I’ll need to refrain myself from using attacks that create clones, even if they do good damage or CC. This can get pretty frustrating.
Suggestion) Phantasms can overwrite clones, but clones can’t overwrite phantasms.

3) The F1 to F4 skills destroy everything. Pretty much the same problem as #2. Those skills are good enough to sacrifice clones, but not phantasms! Even if I only have one active phantasm and 2 clones, I’ll feel bad about using those skills.
Suggestion) Have to skills sacrifice clones only.

Mega-suggestion regarding problems 2 and 3) Nothing overwrites. This would make you have to plan your skills (to have the good combination of clones/phantasms out at the same time) AND would create an incentive to use the F1 to F4 skills.

4) Hard to know what is currently summoned (especially in zerg rushs)
Suggestion) Have the circles (on the UI) be a different color for clones and for phantasms.

5) Not really a problem, but it would be nice to see the clones move, dodge and use other skills, instead of staying at the same spot and spamming Skill 1! I think this could be good for PvP to create that “mindblown” state the Mesmer is supposed to be all about.
I haven’t been there myself, but I think the training Mesmers in the Mists are pretty good a mimicking the moves of a real player? Couldn’t their code be transferred to the clones?