Showing Posts For TheOOB.7428:
I like null field, feedback, and mirror image personally.
9/10 – Feels right, pronounceable, fits in with the lore.
I just rolled up my male Mesmer named Tharlious.
Mesmer is one of the two classes I’ve tried the most, and I’m on the fence about it(leaning twords no). I’m not overly fond of the random nature of many of their abilities, or their reliance on blocks and interrupts. Also how useful illusions are seems to vary greatly depending on how the enemy seemingly randomly decides to deal with them.
Necro, Elm, and Engineer are currently looking the most promising.
I honestly prefer attribute names that are very descriptive of the game effects rather than being flowery or cool. As for trait line names I personally couldn’t care less, as they are not really a feature you interact with a ton.
I’ve been playing for about a month now, and I’ve tried a few professions(I’m kind of an atl-a-holic), but I decided I needed a profession to stick with and level up so I can see decent level content.
I’m looking for a class that has some decent control and interesting utility abilities. I generally prefer ranged combat, but I’m not adverse to melee when need be. I kind of like the idea of winning a fight more through conditions and control than purely damage, and I like a little versitility. I’d prefer if the class was a little faster paced, and doesn’t rely mainly on a short one or two attack chain, or any sort of one note tactic(guardian hammer bored me half to death). I enjoy summoning minions or having pets, but it’s not required of the class.
The class needs to be able to play well solo(I solo more than I group, and I don’t want a class that relies overly much on interrupts or blocks(my comp can be a little slow at times). I mostly care about PvE, but PvP would be fun too.
Also if it matters, I prefer human or sylvari, and dislike charr and asura, though I know race doesn’t matter too terribly much.
Thanks in advance for the assistance
It depends on what you’re looking for. With those two weapons you could use any one of those three for your damage and it would work fine. Going power will make your greatsword very strong, and make your iWarlock hit like a beast during team fights, it’ll also make your conditions last longer, which is a nice bonus.
Condition damage alone works best with the staff. At Illusion 20 you can take illusory elasticity, which basically doubles your staff damage output at close range, and really get good use out of those conditions and shatters.
If you go precision, you also pretty much have to go condition damage as well. The dueling line give’s you sharper images which makes your illusions crits bleed, which makes condition damage really strong as well. Add in that greatswords clone gets three attacks every cycle, and you can get a lot of damage. However, this requires heavy investment in two traits lines, and is a little inconsistent, though it might be the highest damage output you can get.
Yeah, most of a mesmers weapons don’t have confusion, only the scepter does IIRC. It’s true that the f2 shatter is a confuse, but unless you’re a confusion build it’s not all that great outside of PVP.
Staff does some heavy condition damage, as it can cause bleeding, poison, and burning(and it’s clone can cause bleeding and poison), and any weapon can do condition damage with sharper images(sword, greatsword, focus, and pistol use sharper images to the greatest effect).
You’re pretty much dead wrong. The majority of a staffs damage comes from conditions. The auto attack can put vulnerability, bleed, or burns on the foe, which means is more likely that not to put a damage dealing condition on, and staff 5 is likely to put at least 1 stack of poison on the foe. Considering the clones of the staff also add conditions(and may add extra bleed in a sharper images build), no weapon gains more from condition damage than a staff.
It is true greatsword clones can stack bleeds very vast, but sword clones are not too far behind(their attacks are a little slower, but they also stack vulnerability, and hit multiple targets which makes up for it), and iduelist is better than iBeserker for bleeds on a single target, and iwarden is the best bleed phantasm if you are good at using focus4.
Greatsword is great, but I think it gets a lot more out of a power build than a condition build.
Sword/pistol synergizes better with a greatsword, scepter/sword or focus syngerizes better with staff. Sword/pistol doesn’t help as a condition damage build.
I can accept that you may not think it’s as good as other options, but it does help a condition damage build. Remember that Sharper Images stacks a bleed for every time an illusion crits, which means it rewards lots of attacks more than strong attacks. Sword clones make three attacks a rotation, which gives lot of chances for bleed, and pistol phantasms do several attacks which can stack up lots of bleeds, as well as confusion through combo fields. Those weapons are good for condition damage builds.
Anyways, I’ve been trying sword/focus as my second weapon on my build and it’s working pretty good. iWarden is not as hard to use as I thought, it’s damage is so high it doesn’t usually matter that they are stationary.
A very important thing to note is that with sharper images iDuelist is very effective at stacking bleeds, which is why you see pistols in condition damage builds. Honestly I think Focus is better than Pistol for sharper images builds, but pistol is way easier to use.
In fact, I think pistol is, IMO the worst off hand a mesmer gets, Focus is way better in most cases, but it’s way harder to use, pistol is very simple and straight forward though. IDuelist provides a lot of straight forward damage that gives several chances to crit, and magic bullet is the easiest interrupt ability a mesmer has to use.
Honestly, if I’m going heavy melee, I’m going sword/sword or scepter/sword, the offhand sword adds a ton of defense.
The more I look at it, for a condition/crit build, I think eithe greatsword or scepter/focus is the best secondary weapon. Staff really works best at close range, and a condition crit build isn’t defense enough to use a sword properly imo. I’d either use scepter/focus to use iWarden for bleeds or scepter to leverage confusion effects with all that condition damage, or I’d use greatsword for extra damage at long range, and to provide lots of bleeds with it’s clone and phantasm(the GS clone I think makes more attacks than any other clones, ergo more bleeds, and the phantasm can throw bleeds on an entire group).
Pistol can be good with the right set of traits. iDuelist can do some pretty crazy damage with sharper images and phantasmal haste, especially if they fire through a combo field, and pistol 5 is one of best and most straight forward hard CC abilities a mesmer has, though like pistol 4 it works best 1 on 1. Pistol is basically what you use if you want to stack up ST effectiveness. I wouldn’t use it with a great sword, as GS is already pretty good with that. With a GS main, I would defiantly use sword/focus as my other weapon set if I didn’t want to use staff for some reason. Sword provides melee damage, and focus can keep you at a range.
I would go GS/Staff though, it is difficult to justify not having a staff on a mesmer right now. While it’s true staff1 isn’t all that great without condition damage(though with condition damage it’s damage is insane), the rest of the abilities are amazing. Plus illusionary elasticity works with both GS and staff, so there’s that.
I like null field a lot. It gets rid of all the stuff you don’t want immediately, and keeps them away for a little while. Foes can’t kill it, and if you have a staff, sword, or torch equipt you can make combo finishers with it and gain chaos armor, which is a big deal.
Also if you use iDuelist, null field allows you to add extra confusion stacks on your foe for more damage. Not too shabby.
(edited by TheOOB.7428)
I found just having a single mantra in my bar annoying. I had to spend 4 seconds after every battle, after every time I zone, even if I go from the overflow zone to the normal zone casting the mantra, or else I don’t get the ability for that battle. I get more damage and utility out of something like mirror images, and it’s always ready a the start of a battle, and in a long fight I may be able to use it more than once.
I’m not an expert by any stretch, but I’ve read the forums enough and watch enough videos to be able to put in some input. GS is fun, but make sure early on you learn all the moves for all the weapons, you never know when you’ll find a really awesome torch and want to use it.
That build is decent(though it lacks defense), though with 30 points in illusion you really really need a staff. Staves do the most condition damage and have arguably the best phantasm. Plus, illusionary elasticity makes the staff super strong. In fact, unless you really hate it, I think every mesmer should have a staff. staff4 and staff5 are worth the price of admission alone and it’s the most flexible weapon we have(I’m running staff+sword/pistol myself).
If you want to go heavy on the shattering, on the otherhand, you may want to consider scepter. Scepter is great on creating clones, scepter1 and scepter2 both create clones, with the auto attack doing it fairly quickly, and the confusion benefits from the condition damage in the illusion trait. You could go crazy and go scepter/sword, which will give you even more clone production(/sword is the only off hand that makes clones) giving you crazy clone making and defense in your main set, and you can have another weapon set for other purposes(I’d say staff, by GS can work).
The way I see it, the torch is mostly meant as a support weapon for group play, it’s not really designed, or good for solo use. The Prestige blinds first so you can use it to protect your group, you could, for example, use it right before you know your foe is going to use a powerful attack. The stealth and fire damage are little extras(though IMO, the best part of it is the blast finisher).
iMage also is better in a group. The confusion isn’t really that great, but the retaliation is, and the more allies you have, the more likely it’s going to buff multiple of them. As when a foe is taking confusion and retaliation damage, that can add up.
I’m rolling a new mesmer, and I did some research, but I figured I’d get some advice from the forums. Right now I was thinking of going human mesmer using staff+sword/pistol, going for a high crit illusion based build. I was also thinking of going jeweler/chef because those sounded a little different from normal.
Anyways, I was wondering what I should know, any tricks or pitfalls for leveling up, if my build, race, weapons, and professions are good choices, and to get any general advice you might have. Thanks in advanced for the help.
I’d agree that mantras need a rework. None of the effects are really worth 4 seconds of cast time in battle, so in 95% of cases you’ll only have two charges in a single fight, assuming you remembered to recharge the mantra. Remembering to recharge your mantras is kind of a pain, it feels like busy work, like in other MMO’s having to wait for your mana to recharge.
Basically, right now, Mantras are really good in a short fight, but the longer the fight is, the better off you are with any other skill.
I’d rather if mantras didn’t need to be charged but had a passive cooldown. The cooldown would be a little long for an effect of their power level, but you’d be able to stack up to two charges. So you’d start off each battle with two charges, like it is now, but if the battle goes on long you might get a few more uses out of it. This way mantras are still better in a short fight, but they have a use in a longer fight.
I like the shattering component, and I don’t see it to be counter intuitive at all. Mesmer’s rely on confusing and deception, they can use clones to distract their enemies, and phantasms to give their foes extra damage dealing targets to deal with. However, deception and a little extra sustained damage don’t always cut it, so shatters allow the mesmer to adapt to the situation at hand. We get two shatters that add some burst damage, one that’s like an emergency interrupt, and one that’s an OS button.
Personally, I find myself making some clones early on in a fight, shattering them, them summoning both my weapons phantasms and keeping them around until I either need the effects of a shatter, or they are going to die/I’ll resummon them.
Thanks, I was thinking it might be a hardware problem. The CCC doesn’t seem to be reporting any overheating, but I’ll try cleaning out my PC and running it open. If that doesn’t work I think my card is due for an upgrade, and I think I might be going back with Nvidia cards.
I’ve been having some problems where my screen will turn black for a few seconds, then turn back on. It mostly happens when I’m in the character creator or during a personal story dialog(it happens all the time in those places, and rarely in other places). Occasionally the screen goes black and stays black until I perform a restart, though i can still hear the game running in the background.
When this happens, if I go to my desktop I get a “Amdkmdap stopped responding” error. This is not an entirely new problem, I had similar problems with other games(City of Heroes, Fallout 3, Bioshock, and Trine to name a few) and it’s causing a lot of problems.
Some info. I’m using an ATI Raedon HD 4600 Series, Windows Vista 32-bit. I have updated the drivers and reinstalled windows and all windows updates less than a week ago(I had this problem before and after the update). I disabled the default overlocking on my video card, and made sure anti-aliasing was set to by application specifics.
Any help would be appreciated.
Sounds like something to contact support about.
I just got GW2 yesterday, and I played as a mesmer for awhile. I liked the class, but I thought I’d go for something a little more direct, and since I liked the Elementalist in GW1, I thought why not.
Anyways, I was just looking for any beginners advice people have. What stats should I build for, what early skills are good, what professions are good, hints tips and the like. I was kind of thinking going Water/Earth(I like support and buffs/debuffs and stuff), but I’m not sure what’s good.