Guild Wars 2

Serraphin Storm.2369:

There are lots of problems with enlarging.

Yes but it wasn’t a problem before the patch, as it was kinda vital to my build to be able to enlarged swoop

I never had any issues with Swoop in the past, but after this update it seems like it keeps missing if I traverse any kind of uneven ground at mid range, even at the pvp dummies. Short range works fine.

Can someone confirm this for me? I’m not touching pvp until it’s fixed if it really is bugged, since it’s a core skill for my build

EDIT: It seems like being enlarged is causing it to miss as well, will need to do further testing

BM Melee Ranger is always fun

My pvp build got a nice big buff with the update, and quickening zephyr feels somewhat relevant again

you have to use the ability before you use Sic’ Em, even with the Jaguar.

I haven’t tested to see if I can prime my drake’s lighting attack with it, but I know you can pop signet of the wild while they’re charging their attack.

You can pop The Prestige, channel Mantra of Recovery, and if traited and runed, you can AoE heal twice from stealth, 3 times if you blast finisher into a water field

I play a ton of psytrance and the like while I’m playing, a bit of Kaminanda, Cybered, Radioactive Sandwich, Chemical Brothers

I personally love playing a Charr Mesmer, their Charrzooka elite combos with all of our fields and their other racials actually work with mesmer skills (Awhile back, I did a melee all phantasm Altruist build using Altruism runes and Battle Roar, it was pretty wild)
Also gladiatorial racial armor <3

Norn have their transforms, which with wolf form in pve you can potentially stack absurd amounts of bleed

Asura are harder to click on and have Pain Inverter, they seem to be a common choice for mesmers.

Lawl humans.

I prefer my charr to be honest, I can pull out the Charrzooka mid combo, fire off the #4 with it’s long knockdown and meanwhile issue a shatter command

I wouldn’t mind having the option to have my pet take on a Branded, Orrian, Steam, etc. look via a customization item, would love to rock the Branded look on my jaguar

I have 6 Charr, covering each legion, sire, and survivor

Sybol – Mesmer, Iron Legion with Reeva
Hawke Fullmoon – Ranger, Ash Legion with the elementalist
Relun the Blind – Guardian, Blood Legion with Dinky
Blacke Whisperkill – Thief, Ash Legion with Clawspur
Dresdon Honorclaw – Warrior, Ash Legion with Maverick
Darius Techedge – Engineer, Iron Legion with Reeva

jubskie.3152:

Added to the Compilation Thread!

hahah cool, I’ll have to dig through other people’s listed builds there and compare.

I might take this build and make an alternative longbow version of it, so it’s not just all-melee for players that prefer ranged (although I’d imagine someone’s probably come up with one by now)

yeah I agree it’s extremely annoying, especially since I name each pet of mine after various mythology figures.

I mean sure, Fenrir (wolf) and Ose (Bobcat) are easy enough to remember, but when you start slipping in lesser known names like Xbalanque (Jaguar) or Kamui (Bear) or Jormangandr (Devourer), it gets old fast.

Why is everyone here comparing this build for WvW? I believe I said at least 3 times in the video this is a SPVP build, not a WvW build.

Also on the movement, the 30% movement speed bonus surprisingly takes care of that assuming the target doesn’t go into stealth (which pretty much breaks all pet AI anyways). Generally if the pet is stealthed the target won’t know where it’s coming from so at least for that quick burst they won’t know which way to move

Robyn Yew.6072:

EvilZombie.6801:

Dear comet, first you made a video who a ranger can fight like thief and NOW you are telling us this ? dude what are you smoking ?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Hitting-like-a-Thief-Ranger-DPS-Build/first#post1830398

lmaooooo just figured out what was going on, you caught on thanks for pointing out roflllflol. no comet seriously what is it. Btw some complaints about rangers are legit while some are not but every profession forum has general complaints soooo…

How about you 5 year old kids learn to check timestamps on posts.

This thread is from 2 days ago, the build thread is from today.

I was getting rocked by thieves so I shifted builds, OH NO SOMEBODY IS LEARNING FROM THEIR MISTAKES.

jkctmc.8754:

lol….

The difference is that I can escape taking damage on my Theif, while you’ll end up dead, needing a rez, while I continue to fight. But you can go out to WvW with me, and prove me wrong. <winks>

Because thieves love to run away from a fight

And tbh, rangers can’t fight thieves…pets just go derpmode and do nothing once you enter stealth >_<

Ever wanted to hit for tens of thousands of damage in pvp? Give this build a shot!

This video shows my melee spvp build designed for absurd burst damage and heal denial, bring a spare pair of undergarments you will need them

ps: Yes yes I pve with a healing bunker Mesmer and pvp with an all melee Ranger, screw logic

I’m starting to become convinced the game’s matchmaking has a sick sense of humor, it keeps throwing me in teams vs a team full of thieves and mesmers.

My pet becomes utterly useless against those two classes as they do next to nothing and turn into ammo for C&D all day every day, and I can’t seem to land a single hit on them without them vanishing on me and moving somewhere out of range of my attacks.

Seriously…what the hell Anet, this is what you consider balanced?

ps: This is further compounded by the fact that apparently if you do any kind of CC on my bear when I use Protect Me, it immediately stops working

edit: that screenshot is pretty much what I’ve been consistantly matched up with for the last few days, not cool.

You’re not alone on the all melee build, I run one myself on Hawke Fullmoon in spvp

I usually work with flame traps and run flame legion runes, but lately I’ve been expirimenting with the signet traits and running stone+protect me for 12 seconds of not taking damage while in melee

you’re most likely missing the wurm baubles

I love the longsword, I love how it has a ton of evasion with dagger offhand and I love the inability to escape the 1 attack chain once contact has been made, and I love how I can keep poison active all the time….the problem is I just can’t seem to nail down a good all-melee spvp build.

I’m running longsword+Dagger/Greatsword with Hyena/fear wolf on my setup, running healing spring, flame trap, viper’s nest, guard (to set up for fear howls and to double team knockdown with hyena) and rampage as one.

30 skirmishing – 30% pet crit damage, placeable traps, trap duration
20 wilderness – shared anguish, sword/GS cooldown reduction
20 beastmastery – F2 recharge, shout recharge

Running Valkyrie with knight gem, flame legion runes for more damage vs enemies hit by my flame traps.

Any suggestions on what I should do with this? I want to keep Guard but I can ditch the traps if there’s another setup that would work better

edit: shifting my traits to survival cooldown and swapping the snake trap for mud seems to be doing wonders, although I still want to hear from you guys on this

I’ve been running a healing bunker build since September/October, still super relevant and fun.

The build is 30 inspiration 30 illusions with the remaining 10 wherever it feels relevant for the weapon set of the month (right now it’s Staff/GS with 10 in Chaos with damage reduction per illusion).

My utilities are Mimic (reflect my own projectiles for te defensive benefits), Feedback, and Mantra of Concentration/Phantasmal Disenchanter/Phantasmal Defender/Signet of Illusions. Mantra of Recovery is my healing skill.
I run The Water for my runeset and my armor is a combination of Magi and Cleric.

The build is centered around using my shatters with or without illusions for heals on top of my already huge heals. On top of that, I have mimic and feedback for excessive reflection to shut down ranged fighters, and I can build up chaos armor and retal quick

Fun stuff, I can be a decent support healer in the group with water and restorative mantras triggering at the same time as well as supporting fields

I’ve had some mixed success playing all ranged in spvp, and I am enjoying it.
I’m built full zerk and focusing on getting a killshot into someone’s back or side (thief runeset), and following up with some quick damage output (or cripple if they’re quick).

I run Rune of the Thief for the runeset, zerk stats, rifle/bow, both have the quickness sigils (may exchange for some kind of damage output sigil) which are combined with quickness traits I can use for a rapid fire killshot.

My issue is I’m getting alot of strange moments where skills won’t fire off and just go on full cooldown against moving targets and rifle butt just straight failing against thieves…any tips on that?

Also any builds out there for this playstyle? I’d like to see how other warriors do all-ranged.

I actually ran a pure longsword phantasm build for a short while, longsword has ALOT of utility and damage output when played with other effects.
In my case I’d run dual swords for damage, and sword/torch for defensive stealth and retaliation, and built heavy into dueling and inspiration for phantasm regen.

The clones you make can stack up vulnerability incredibly fast and prevent any kind of boon usage, the offhand sword phantasm hits like a truck, and on top of that, blurred frenzy! <3

I use restorative mantras myself for my healing mantra, if you stack it with the Water or Flock runesets, it actually does turn into a pretty nice heal (mine pops for two bursts of 2.5k or so, maybe a touch higher).

I think the big thing with it is that you need synergy like that to get the most out of it, although I will agree that the heal is on the weaker side.

Because people keep griping about what I consider to be a very potent skill.

if you’re too lazy to listen to how the skill works skip to 1:55.

Each one has a use, and you will more than likely be using all 4 of them.

F1 is your DPS shatter
F2 drops large amounts of confusion, and if traited, gives you retaliation
F3 is a stun, good for interrupts if you have Illusionary Persona traited
F4 to dodge everything 1s per illusion

I think they’re fine, I’m coming from a mesmer so I see the dual shot combo finisher the bow has as MUCH more potent than a single easily removed bleed from the rifle per AA.

1 rifle shot can trigger 1 bleed+1 traited bleed+1 rune+1 combo, the bow’s AA can trigger 2 traited bleeds+1 rune+2 combo. That’s 1 extra potetial condition per auto-attack. When you throw in fun things like quickness (which my spvp all ranged build takes advantage of), you can pile on a terrifying number of conditions with the auto-attack alone if there’s any fields to run on.

I run healing power as my primary stat, it’s one of those stats that unless you dedicate your entire build and gear set around it, it doesn’t have any kind of effect.

Personally I run Mantra of Recovery with the Water runeset, so when I use the mantra, the heal when it triggers water is like a full power ether feast, with an additional use

As far as traits go, you have a few options:
-Restorative Mantras and spam Mantra of Pain, it works alright.
-Mantra of Recovery+Mantra CDR, stack on rune triggers and you can get creative here since it’s on an 8 second cooldown.
-5 pts Chaos, regen is regen, always helps.
-Phantasms grant regen, this is godly with high healing power, combined with some source of aegis and protection (IE: staff fields and chaos armor), you can be VERY defensive)

I use mimic in my current build VERY frequently and I think it’s fine as it is, it’s an amazing interception and suppression skill (I use it to shield my party between feedback bubbles since I can get in between the attacker and my party)

The only thing I think it needs is a buff in the damage of the echo’d attack. Unless you stored a zerk killshot (which is hilarious fun by the way), anything you throw back will hit for less than a GS auto-attack hit in full cleric, which in my opinion renders echo fairly useless in most occaisions.

If anything, either buff Echo’s damage scaling OR have the echo’d attack act as an ethereal combo finisher or something to that effect.

ps: If you’re using a staff or GS, you can mimic your bounced projectiles coming back to you for your intial absorb (1 on staff, 2 on GS), so you can set yourself up for the block and reflection if you can time everything

I personally run the precision banner for the 10% crit damage along with 3 signets with the precision trait while I’m levelling, giving me a crit rate betweeon 80%-105% depending on where I am and getting the 10% bonus damage :P

this “band-aid” fix really hurts my healing bunker build…I need to be able to fire off shatters quickly to act as an on-command heal on top of my other heals

As someone who mains a mesmer and subs a warrior, I’d say that they’re only a bad matchup if you’re melee focused or rely on the rifle’s killshot.

The big thing vs a mesmer is to just control yourself, if you hold back when piled on with confusion and DON’T FIRE KILLSHOT INTO THEIR MIMIC/FEEDBACK BUBBLE OF BUBBLY DEATH, you should be able to wear them out.

Other than that I don’t really have much else to say, mesmers are great at keepaway and harrassment with alot of condition removal for the defensive end (I play a tanky mesmer)

Being a member of Kaineng since about 2 weeks after release, I know the feeling.

Took us a LONG time to dig out of T8 when we started winning every week by huge margins, at least 2 months (this is after being curb stomped by Devona’s Rest until about December)

It’ll come with time, but I do agree that T8 really digs itself an embarrassingly deep hole.

There’s one head shape where the teeth are barely visible, I used it on my warrior.

These aren’t even minimum size teeth either.

I’m kinda surprised it isn’t the PC being the commander of all that, then again, I’m still bitter about Tybalt’s arc ending (I loved tybalt, he was a character they fleshed out so much and then….graaaaah)

I havn’t finished the full story yet, although I’m close, so I guess I can’t complain too much yet…thar be crap on the horizon

Tybalt!

…

…-hides-

While I am very tempted by the prospect of getting Bolt and watching as lightning strikes every time I make a clone (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*incomprehensible schoolgirl noises*), I can agree on the armor particles being a bit annoying.

I’ve gotten pretty sick of the CoF fire armors at this point, they’re everywhere and the look just gets old after you see it long enough.
The only time the animations are alright is if they’re subtle touches to the design like the chain on the greatsaw or the rotating gears on the Whispers gear

Here’s my Charr Mesmer, made him about 2-3 weeks after release

gone from newbie to the old white/red armor, to the current monklike look and full exotics (also 1650 healing power lol)

I’ve taken Mimic to WvW and it’s safe to say I’ll be running it there from here on out

My Observations and Tips

-It’s another layer of reflection for my build (running reflection on distortion, Feedback, Mimic)

-Pop mimic when a zerg is rolling towards you, it’ll buy you 4 seconds to maneuver yourself since you will inevitably be hit with a projectile

-Drop a portal, then rush in with mimic up if you start to get targeted. When that wears off, lay down the second portal and port to safety after softening them up and distracting the melee fighters

-Stealing Killshot (it’s horribly telegraphed) is a BEAUTIFUL thing, blasting a warrior for 5k+ damage from their own attack is satisfying as hell

-If you run Runes of the Guardian, you can Burn everyone who melees you if you catch the projectile

-Works great when assaulting camps, the AI scouts will handle the projectile absorption so you can reliably use mimic against enemy players defending the camp

-Devastating against condition mesmers, absolutely shuts down staff users

-Retaliation on Block trait gives you a ton of retal if you use mimic in a group fight after getting their attention

-You can trait it down to 20s cooldown (although normally you don’t really need it if you’re holding onto shots)

-You can absorb ballista shots o.o

-I’d suggest bringing the stability mantra if you’re up against CC classes like Necros, it’ll let you absorb those annoying attacks with knockdown/fear/stun

-You can shield your teammates if they duck out behind you, even if you aren’t the target, you still intercept projectiles. Extremely useful if you’re heading the charge.

-Make sure you are facing the ranged attacker at first, only shots to the front absorb, but after that you’re safe in all directions it seems.

-Mimic followed up with feedback can deal ALOT of damage to Death Blossom thieves, just rush them when they pop it and watch the numbers pile up!

-Nobody seems to recognize Mimic due to its minimal use, use that to your advantage when engaging ranged fighters

-Instant cast spells don’t cancel the channeling of Mimic, so you can use Mantras and Feedback while you’re mimicing

-If you absorb a fireball from an elementalist or a necrotic grasp from necromancers, hold onto it for the next engagement. You can fool your opponent into thinking you’re another class by opening with that and dropping decoy immediately after that, letting you sneak in a surprise burst from behind.

-Engineer weapons are mostly shut down by Mimic with the reflection, not to mention you can steal the immobilize net and use that against them

-In 1 on 1 fights, don’t open with mimic, save it for clutch recoveries especially if you run the healing mantra

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by how useful mimic is, I’ve been using it to make me even more tanky that my build already was, and even offer protection for my group by intercepting shots with it.

After you absorb a projectile (you take the hit), it reflects ranged and blocks everything else for the remainder of the channel.

The Retaliation on Block trait works nicely with it

Is there a cooldown on the 1s burn on the 6th piece of this runeset?
I want to use this set with Mimic blocking on my mesmer but if it has a cooldown it doesn’t really have a purpose for this setup

You get some pretty unique looks from mixing the lesser used dungeon armors, karma armors, and order armors.

In this screenie (I’ve since changed the boots to one of Orr’s sets), I’m running the lvl 70 exotic helm, one of the normal torsos, karma gloves from somewhere on the way to Fort Trinity, Order of Whispers pants, and Cadecus Manor boots

I’d suggest if you’re running mantra of recovery, grab a runeset that has on-heal AoE boons like Altruism or Dwayna to give bonuses on command

oh I forgot about the signet of midnight…
I actually ran that signet for awhile, I used it as a confusion bomb and stun breaker, didn’t find it to be as bad as everyone makes it out to be, although I do agree that it could use a small buff.

I couldn’t tell you what needs a nerf though, I run a screwball tanky self-shatter heal build and I’m more concerned about that .25 global CD bandaid that is killing my build :P

So I’ve been thinking about the current state of the mesmer and the lesser used weapon skillsets, and have a few change ideas in mind.

Weapons
Torch
-iMage: Either return the phantasm to its original 1 stack of confusion with a longer duration, or extend the duration of the 3 stacks we have now.
-The Prestige: Give us the abiliy to break out of stealth with the blast finisher on command like how we can pop a stun using our sword block.

Scepter
-Ether Bolt: Give each shot a Projectile Finisher for condition builds.
-Block: The projectile could use some pathfinding tweaks, or make it homing.

Staff
-Winds of Chaos: Vulnerability gives 2 stacks instead of 1.
-Phase Retreat: When teleporting, check the Z of the ground vs the player’s Z position, and correct approprately so we stop going through the floor.
-Chaos Armor: Update the tooltip to mention the protection!

Greatsword
-Mind Stab: Increase the radius and increase the damage by about 50%, remove the rooted stance restriction.

Focus
-Swiftness veil: Allow it to be stacked with other swiftness boons, extend swiftness duration slightly.
-iWarden: Allow the warden to run into melee range with the target

Utility

Mimic: Enable blocking and reflection on skill activation instead of after absorbing a projectile first.

iDisenchanter: Summon beside the PC instead of in melee range
iDefender: Increase health

Mantra of Pain: Increase damage, inflict 3 stacks of Vulnerability
Mantra of Concentration (stability): Reduce the cooldown, add 5 seconds of retaliation

Mantra of Recovery: Increase base healing (not scaling) slightly to make it more relevant to non-healing power builds
Mirror: Increase healing slightly, increase reflection time to 3-4 seconds.

Well those are my ideas for many of the skills in the game, let me know what you think

I’ll have to update my Healing Bunker build walkthrough for the current state of the mesmer, I’ll make a fresh thread and link when I get around to that

the confusion stacks it puts down don’t last long enough, and compared to other phantasms it deals pitiful damage.

It’s only real use is retaliation but running other traits and skills such as the CoF granting retaliation work MUCH better for that purpose.

The only thing I use with them is the fact I can stand in them for regeneration, but I could do that duelists, disenchanters, and others that fight at range

I’ve taken to liking Mimic now that I realized it blocks and reflects after taking a projectile hit, and it got me wondering: What’s good on Echo?

I’ve mostly been using this to reflect spam projectiles, but I’m thinking down the lines of pve skills with crowd control and the like, any suggestions for things I should try to snag to use this skill offensively?

Mimic is my least used here, imo it needs to be on a much shorter cooldown if it’s going to be viable for my tanky builds, not to mention how niche it tends to be.

Second up would be Arcane Thievery, but that’s more because I need other skills on my slots.

for the most part you’ll want to run Deceptive Evasion under the duelist tree, and put the rest towards your ability to shatter for levelling up.

Personally not too fond of using shatter builds but they are our highest dps setup.

Alternatively you could go into Inspiration and focus on phantasms if you’d rather be a little tanky while you level, the regen adds up