Guild Wars 2

Just get a bunch of exotic trinkets and add platinum doubloons.

Something like this might work: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+cncfC9fiFoBmfCEgiFVj6MIWiprOZn2qlMAGhiD-TViFQBAQJozm/IwHAwRWYweqQAn9BohyvBp+yZ0LIKgAD-w

EDIT: I didn’t see that you’re mainly concerned with fractals. 5 stacks of the mist mobility potion at 150 AR adds 15% boon duration. With a superior sigil of concentration (33% on swap), you only need 52% boon duration. If you’re willing to pop 20% boon duration food, you’ll need 32% from gear to reach full boon duration.

How about something like this? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+cncfC9fiFoBufCUrhFVj6MIWiprOZn2qlMAGhiD-TliSABCruhmzAmRvwELM48DAAAlB8sPwTqkEiSQJU6JKgAD-w

Can I see a video?

If what you claim is true, I’ve added sigil of concentration to give more room for condi damage runes and ascended trinkets. This should do even more damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8Nn0nBlfi9fCGohlVjqcDGhAo+Yj2p98IauoD-ThSAQBBV9nfqfYoKfmmSQvsPw4mwAgTCw6WY4iPBAhqEiUAAusC-e

I have my doubts because the current condi mesmer build from qtfy has higher power, condi duration, and condi damage, but under realistic buffs, only does 25k dps. That’s with three pistol phantasms out too. A video would be very persuasive.

Let’s start with leveling. I haven’t leveled a mesmer in a very long time, so I’m just throwing out how I might approach it with what I know now.

In open world, since things generally die pretty fast and due to illusions not being able to re-target, I would probably go with traitlines that help with illusion generation. I would start with Dueling (1 1 3) for the access to fury, blinds on shatter, and clone generation on dodge. At slightly higher levels, when your second traitline unlocks, mobs get a bit tougher, and you might have a slightly more extended fight. The Illusions traitline (2 1 2) gives you access to quicker phantasm generation, might on shatter, and a bit more damage for shatters. Last, when you’re near the end of leveling, grab Domination (2 1 2) for general increased damage for shattering.

Generally speaking, you can start with any of those three traitlines and really be fine. It’s a full-glass approach though, so you’d be relying on blinds and dodging for most of your survival.

Things get trickier in the HoT maps since everything does increased damage, takes much more damage to kill, and condis run wild. I have a condi set I like to play for the map metas, but in general, I’m more survivable using the raid set up—the heal and condi clear on shatter in Inspiration really helps with sustain. Due to the longer fights, clone generation once you have chrono isn’t as big of a problem imo.

If you’re looking for a set up that would allow you to do fractals, raids, and open world, I would avoid minstrel and go with one of the berserker set ups. Minstrel doesn’t really work for fractals and open world because you pretty much don’t do any damage. If you don’t WvW or run dragonstand like a madman, go with the full zerker + 4x Traveler +2x Platinum Doubloon set up. Your biggest cost will still be the sigil of concentration.

While it can be helpful to have a minstrel set for tanking in raids, the reality is a) not all encounters require a tank; b) you can tank some encounters with the zerker set up; and c) you won’t be tanking when you first get into raids. Tanking requires some experience with the encounters so that you’re familiar with how the fight goes and how to do your rotation and save it when it goes wrong (at minimum). As the tank, you have more responsibility than the second chrono, and you likely won’t be taking that role straight off the bat.

While having a minstrel’s set for tanking difficult encounters such as deimos or xera can be helpful, you can tank vale guardian, gorseval, and keep construct with your zerk set up + some toughness trinkets. In fact, it’s probably better to tank these with the zerker set up because you’ll still be doing damage. If you’re doing no-updraft gorseval, the extra DPS can make the difference (especially if you PUG). You would also probably start learning to tank at those encounters as well.

Since chronos generally don’t do a ton of damage, you also have the option of going marauder’s for some extra vitaility for survival in high level fractals. It’s not “optimal” but if it means the difference between keeping quickness for your party at 100% vs downing and having that drop, I’d go with the slightly less optimal build. You do have a ton of access to evades, blocks, and invulnerability, so if you’re good with using these active defensives, you should be able to go full zerker without an issue.

Feel free to send me a message in game if you have any more questions! I’m on NA.

I’m going to start off by saying that I mainly play mesmer/chrono. That said, mesmer in open world exploration—especially in the HoT maps—is kind of a pain. Like you mentioned, having to summon phantasms and clones for individual enemies and rely on cleave to kill mobs is kind of terrible.

That said, there are a few things for the build you’re running that would personally allow ME to enjoy mesmer more. Your mileage may vary.

a) I would take fewer mantras. Having to spend 2.75 seconds to charge up each mantra is an absolute pain in the butt, and the charges are spent quickly. Most mobs in the open world don’t require huge break bars; you can make do with a triple (+yourself) F3 shatter + temporal curtain usually. Or you could just kill the thing and ignore break bars. That would allow you to remove mantra of distraction at least.

b) For movement, I would just get chrono for the passive 25% speed bonus, throw on signet of inspiration for the swiftness (50% uptime passive, no boon duration), add blink for extra movement + stun breaks, and run through temporal curtain off cooldown. If you have boon duration gear, this can help with movement (it’s also great for group content). This would allow you to replace your runes too.

c) Abuse the pull on temporal curtain. Learn its range. Combo.

Example: Target the strongest creature near by, staff 3 for a phantasm (or 2 for a clone), swap to sword/focus, drop temporal curtain, start casting phantasmal warden, use the pull from the curtain (warden finishes casting after your pull), use illusionary leap (sword 3 x2) to engage, blurr frenzy while using mind wrack (+ cry of frustration if you want) near the end on your neatly stacked group of enemies. This combo creates 3 clones/phantasms, allows your warden to get some good cleave damage in before shattering on your stack of enemies, and leaves you cool downs on staff to follow up once you swap back.

d) I would take blinding dissipation over fencer’s finesse, especially since you feel “defenseless” after shattering. If you feel like you’re having trouble surviving at all, taking a more defensive trait line like inspiration might be beneficial. The condition clears + heal on shatters is particularly useful (if you’re low on health, just use your shatters!), and something I miss when I swap to a full offensive condi-mesmer.

e) Generally speaking, I only use F5 as part of a quickness rotation or to use utilities or elites twice/three times (if you use mimic). This is because, as it’s a shatter, it uses up phantasms and isn’t worth wasting what illusions you have up already to try to create more for shattering (most weapon skills). For example, I use it at the end of casting mass invisibility and immediately cancel f5 by pressing it again if I’m helping my fractal group skip some areas. For a double heal, you’d have to take healing well since your health reverts back to what it was. The well stays on the ground and the last pulse will still heal you if you’re done with F5 by that last tick (then you cast it again for more health).

All that aside, some of the reasons you mentioned (phantasm/clone re-targeting) are why mesmers shine not at damage, but utility. You can keep up quickness 100% of the time for a party of 5. You bring alacrity. You can bring shared distortion/invulnerability. But DPS? That’s a bit harder to work.

I have the most fun with my mesmer in group content like fractals and raids, but again, your mileage may vary.

I didn’t mention revenants because they currently don’t have a solid place in the raid meta, but would do fine for fractals and open world. Necros provide good damage, but don’t really roam well in WvW. All classes really work for open world, but support-heavy classes like mesmers take longer than others to kill things (take it from a mesmer main).

My post above really focuses on group content like fractals, raids, and roaming.

In PvE, typically speaking, the amount of damage a class outputs and the amount of utility they bring are typically inversely proportional. For instance, mesmers can bring a ton of support with perma quickness, reflects, pulls, etc. but they don’t do a ton of DPS even when fully geared and traited for it. Classes that do a lot of damage like daredevils and elementalists don’t typically have a ton of utility to offer. Not that these classes can’t provide some utility, but they take it at the expense of their damage and other classes can provide likely better support with less impact to their role.

Classes that occupy the middle ground—what you seem to want—are rangers, engineers, warriors, and guardians. Warriors, while doing a lot of sustained damage, also bring damage buffs for their allies with a full 25 stacks of might, banners, and empower allies. Rangers can occupy a variety of roles from condi ranger (DPS) to condi druid (less DPS, but great support) to healing druid (full support). Power for rangers is okay too, probably better for fractals than raids though. Guardians do a lot of damage and can change their utilities to bring support like protection, stability, reflects, more aegis, condition clear (again at the expense of damage, but the option is definitely there). I know less about engineers, so I’ll leave that to those who do play engineers.

You can check http://qtfy.eu/builds/ for builds for raids that typically also work for fractals and DPS benchmarks.

For WvW roaming, I’ve seen great roamers with a variety of builds and a variety of classes do great. It honestly will just depend on how your small group wants to run. Druids stack might well and have access to smoke fields and a bit of healing. Warriors can do a lot of burst. Engineers have a ton of sustain that, with some stealth from mesmers and healing from another class, can make them virtually invincible. Guardians provide a lot of support and can have good burst if you combo CCs well with test of faith (or burn guardian).

With all this in mind, if you’re looking for an “aggressive playstyle”, I would probably advise warrior. However, I would like to add that each class plays very differently and just FEELS different. While on paper, classes like warrior meet most of your criteria, you might find that another classes simply feels better to play for you personally.

Account-wide AR would be fantastic and would be a very welcome change. I would love to switch to my condi ranger when I PUG with another chrono, but gearing up another character is very much a pain.

“I am totally happy playing the game as is, I have no complaints, but I will never, ever, ever play fractals if there is AR”

This is a complaint against the grind for AR. You are not completely happy about the state of the game—just everything except for AR in fractals. Why is there so much stigma against complaining?

My thoughts:

The difference between the LFGs in fractals and raids is due to the AR mechanic and difficulty scaling. Generally speaking, players with less experience will have to work up to T4 fractals, making the pool of T4 fractal puggers generally better. If you take away the AR mechanic, you’ll get a bunch of people who have no idea what they’re doing flooding into fractals. The LFG system will begin to even more like the one for raids in that people will have to specify if they’re doing training runs—else you’d better be exp’ed or you get kicked.

For a better LFG experience in fractals, I prefer having the AR grind.

Beyond a personal interest in the LFG tool, new comers also have the chance to learn the mechanics through pugging if there’s a tiered system. Tier 4 fractals are not easy when you first start out. They’re not even easy coming from tier 3s. Having an AR system allows for difficulty to be slowly introduced to the player, while maintaining that there will be players at each difficulty rating doing fractals. Without AR, there’s no reason for people to not just do the most rewarding content.

There’s also an easy way around the AR “grind”—just buy them.

AR costs ~10g for a +9. So for 150 AR—17 +9’s for easy math—you need 170g. With full fractal mastery, I AT LEAST make 15g in gold maybe 5g in materials on average doing the dailies for T4 fractals. That’s 20 gold a day. I’m not even counting the ascended chest drops. Buying a set pays off in nine days of dailies. If you’re good, they’ll take you under an hour—some times half an hour.

17 +5 power infusions add roughly 2% DPS in an ideal setting. To give a sense of the scale of that, infusions add 600 DPS to 30,000 DPS. If I didn’t have a set of 150 AR already, I’d drop those for AR in a heartbeat seeing how much money I make off fractals.

Back to OP, if you don’t care about rewards and aren’t willing to give up 2% DPS to experience another aspect of the game, then continue to not do fractals. It’s not like you can’t afford the AR as implied by your previous posts.

Personally, I did find the AR grind and working my way up to full AR rewarding, and I have guildies who refuse to take free +9s from me because they want to work their way up. Don’t assume no one enjoys it.

It’s miscommunication.

Raids are not like fractals. The people using the LFG system in raids expect people to be experienced UNLESS the raid specifically states they are a training run. When they’re looking for a condi ranger, they’re looking for a very specific build with very specific gear.

You joined their group not knowing this, and they took you in not knowing that you didn’t know this.

Extra toughness at Gorseval moves the aggro to you, meaning you were likely tanking the first few encounters. If they were doing updrafts as it sounds like they were, the tank has to move Gorseval at the right times. If not, the entire party will fail. I’m guessing their frustration with you was partly because of you taking aggro with the extra toughness.

I would suggest looking for a guild that does raid trainings and start there. Alternatively keep an eye out for LFGs that specifically state they are training.

If you’re looking for time efficient and not money efficient…

1) Get a full set of ascended trinkets for your daredevil (guild commendations for accessories, new maps for back piece).
2) Attune and infuse your rings.
4) Craft 3 ascended armor pieces (~180g)
3) Buy 12 +9s off the trading post (~120g) and slot your trinkets (108 AR)

Total cost: ~300g not including cost of getting your leather crafting up.
Both characters can do T3 fractals, continue getting AR until you can do T4s.

Obviously this is not cheap, but it’s the most time efficient. The cheapest way would be to continue doing T3s until you have enough +1s to get to 150 AR, do T4s until you get a bunch of ascended drops, convert the stats, and use your found +1s from daily T4 fractals to gear up your DD.

You can always do a mixture of these two methods to trade time for money or vice versa. Keep in mind that getting one character to be able to do T4s will up your ascended drops significantly.

Leveling a mesmer is a pain in the butt. You have low mobility because passive movement speed doesn’t come into the profession until you get chronomancer, and you do very little DPS (although the spike damage can be OK for taking out weaker mobs, vets and champs will be slow). I guess you can run blink and signet of inspiration, but it’s slowww. Take it from someone who leveled a mesmer, guardian, and thief from 0-80, has one of each class, and mains mesmer.

I would go with most other people’s opinions on here and level a warrior. They do great damage and have good survivability even when built pretty glassy. They have a lot of movement skills that can help you traverse the environment quickly, and there’s both melee and ranged options. Not sure about pulls, but there’s a ton of gap closers that aren’t “running” as well. Despite your non-concern with end game content, there’s just the added benefit that warrior are good in all game modes too.

As I’m working on grabbing skins, dyes, and a new hair style for my mesmer, I’m realizing that it’s really hard to get a sense of what everything looks like at the end because of how fragmented the preview system is.

Here’s the process I go through:

I go to the hairstylist in Lion’s Arch. The hair style preview doesn’t take into account whether you enable or disable certain pieces of armor, so I have to physically take off pieces of armor to get that effect. I can’t check out what dyes on my armor go well with the hairstyle colors, so I open another window with the dyes in order to look back and forth between the hairstyle and the armor.

Then, I have to completely move away from the hairstylist to check the wardrobe storage out at a crafting station/banker to try out weapon skins, which only lets me preview one weapon at a time (MH or OH, unless it’s 2H) and doesn’t let me zoom out of the character. It can be difficult to look at large weapons so zoomed in. To integrate the dyes back, I have to find the dyes—even ones I already have unlocked—in the trading post AND find the correct order to preview it to get a very rough estimate of what dyes I want where—all while imagining the hairstyles that I might want to switch over to.

May I suggest an integrated preview system that can do hairstyle, dyes like the hero menu, and weapons all at once?

I find that race-based skill animation actually affects how much I enjoy playing a character. Maybe you could experiment with classes and races, perhaps in the pvp lobby. I love the asura animations, but the trade off is gear that looks really tiny, so details can’t be seen as easily.

You might also consider the “meta-roles” of each class to see what each class excels at, and decide based off your ideal role (e.g. mesmer give good access to reflects and quickness and alacrity with a rotation that has you pressing many things; condi engineers feel like playing a piano; condi ranger is a mix of support/damage, etc.).

OP, you claim that nerfing PI will allow for a greater range of weapon choices, but yet you also say that it’s not a significant source of damage. If it’s not a significant source of damage, how will nerfing it put d/p in line with the other weapon sets?

This also assumes that the other weapon sets are not taken because they’re just not as good relative to d/p. I feel that the d/p prevalence is because other weapon sets require playstyles that other classes easily counter, either with reflects or AoEs.

And honestly, if I’m to give up one of my few condi clears, I’d want something that’s worth giving up for.

I just hope they don’t touch PI, because interruptions are so much fun with it! I don’t mind having less evades; I really do think dodge spamming is really boring to play/play against.

The meta build has mesmer use almost full zerker, so you’re well on your way there. You’ll need leadership runes, commander stat pants, an exotic backpiece with a platinum doubloon, and a superior sigil of concentration to easily spread quickness. Check out http://qtfy.enjin.com/mesmer for good visuals, a video guide, and a written guide of the rotation. I use the domi-recall build + rotation.

To maintain perma quickness, you probably only need ~80% boon duration, but that means almost no error on your part in the rotation. Unfortunately, bountiful sharpening stones are pretty expensive. What you can do if you’re on a budget is get exotic trinkets and add platinum doubloons until you cover the 10% loss from the bountiful sharpening stones. You don’t do a ton of DPS anyway with a build like this.

Note that you can also just get commander’s or wanderer’s armor/trinkets to get boon duration up, but these also give you increased toughness, which would put you as the tank of certain raid bosses. You’ll have increased responsibility! In fractals, this doesn’t matter as much.

A few tips with the rotation:

1) Continuum split at the end of casting Tides of Time to be able to fit all of your wells into the CS time frame.
2) Make sure you have quickness when you use signet of inspiration if your rotation gets off.
3) A good recovery combo if you’re out of quickness is weapon swap to s/sh, tides of time, well of action, signet of inspriation.
4) Try to proc the signet of inspiration on phantasm summon with your sword or focus off-hand instead of shield 4, because you’ll typically benefit from the sigil of concentration. You’ll get a feel for when you can sneak a shield 4 in and when you can’t with practice.

A guildie of mine also has a set of viper’s for DPS on Matthias and a set of Minstrel’s for select raid bosses as well. For him, these are rather situational, so I’d recommend the above build for general purpose use (it’s also great for fractals).

Hmmm… it really depends on what game modes you play, but I notice you’re missing boon duration stuff. I’d say Minstrel’s (chrono tank, healer/boon ele, etc.), Marauder’s (helpful for power builds in wvw, mixing and matching), and Magi’s (healer druid) might be useful.

Many people use full zerkers in PvE because if you kill mobs before they’re able to hit you more than once or twice, then you don’t take much damage. You’ll save overall time completing hearts and events, etc. and probably improve on your dodging/position faster. That’s the philosophy anyway. Having a bit more defense/health for these smaller fights can buy you some time to respond to incoming damage if your dodging/blocking/invuls aren’t enough to mitigate the damage.

With big bosses though, even if you mix and match, you’ll typically take the same number of hits to go down—the safety margin of toughness and vitality isn’t that high (if it is, you probably won’t kill anything in a reasonable time frame). That’s partially why people like to rely on active defenses like utilities + weapon skills. Rarely do you do bosses solo (unless you like that kind of content!) so people will be around to res you too. In raids in particular, this is true but also in non-speed runs, there’s typically at least one healer druid to make sure you’re topped off to get your scholar rune bonus. There’s also sometimes a tank to ensure that you can be toward the back of the boss, so you take even less damage.

That being said, you should experiment anyway! Keep your zerker’s armor (it’s not cheap), but obtain a few other pieces to swap in to test out. Try some toughness, try some vitality; see if it helps. I ran with some PPT and PVT trinkets on my mesmer until just recently in fractals. And even if zerker armor isn’t you for yet, it might be in the future.

In PvP, there’s an amulet system so your gear doesn’t really matter anyway. In WvW though, a full glass build is definitely really difficult to survive with.

I haven’t read all the replies, but has anyone brought up a possible compromise?

What if you could have the option of using an amulet that has exotic stat combinations that are fixed (otherwise, use only their own gear)?

Players who have ascended gear can still use their gear. Players who want to mix/match/customize can still customize. New players can easily get into the game mode, and older players can toy around with other stat combinations (i.e. I’ve never played condi, but I could certainly try it out at little cost and decide whether I’d like to invest in an ascended set.).

This would obviously upset the economy a bit, but having less start up costs could improve the wvw population a ton.

Fluffball gave a good run-down of the general pvp builds. I’d like to add that if you’re going to play thief, it’s generally used as a +1 for fights, and you don’t really take even fights. Mesmers are a bit more 1v1 oriented in the current meta.

For WvW, the game changes depending on the scale at which you play. For solo roaming, many classes work out, with thieves and mesmers probably the most abundant. In small scale roaming (3-6), people generally take classes that synergize well with other classes in the party. For this reason, thief is less useful, but a good backstab can still turn the tide of the fight pretty heavily.

In large scale fights, guardians, warriors, revenants, elementalists, and necros are generally the most desired, and they make up the frontline-backline element of most zergs.

Guardians provide stability (against CCs) and protection when pushing, while also CCing the enemy backline for the zerg to push into. Warriors provide a good amount of front line damage, and some warriors will carry a banner for bringing back down-state allies. There are front and backline builds for revenant, so the role changes depending.

Elementalists and Necros are the damage dealers in the back with their huge, hard-hitting, AoEs. They’re generally very squishy and rely on their weapon skills + utility to re-position and stay alive. Mesmers typically become portal and veil bots (for those commanders who still like portal-bombing and using veils).

Thieves usually are on the sidelines of big fights, picking off out-of-position enemies and those fleeing. They can’t take the damage pressure from the main fight.

A few important things for when your guild begins to grow:

a) Weekly guild events (i.e. guild missions, raids, fractals, PvE metas, x training runs, competitions, etc.) can really bring people together regularly and help people get to know each other. If you’re all unfamiliar with the content, reading/watching a few guides can help you grow together with less frustration, and can still give some sense of direction. It can be difficult to retain members for events if events keep failing week after week (probably don’t start with raids, but fractals are tiered!)

b) Having a good group of officers/leaders in the guild can help you manage these events. Otherwise, very often members gravitate toward a single guild leader for events, and if the leader can’t make it on for whatever reason (travel, real life obligations, etc), people can start feeling disconnected.

c) I totally second JustTrogdor on setting up a TS/Discord/other VoIP.

d) Making sure members are on the same page about what they’re signing up for. If the guild prohibits talking about politics in guild chat, make that clear. If your kick policy is one month of absence, have that somewhere for people to see. If you require 50% rep, have that written somewhere. You’re looking to create a faith-based guild—make that clear when someone signs up. This is obviously a litttle easier with a guild website.

Oh wow! It’s so nice to go through the pages and just read all the posts. Definitely a nice change of pace in the forums.

Even though I’m working on my first legendary, it’s something I’m slowly making progress on and something I think I’ll eventually get. Something I don’t think I could ever justify getting for myself—but would be such a wonderful quality of life improvement—is a Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic. If anyone’s kind enough to gift me that, I’d even personally drop the gold for the shared inventory slot because I’m such a alt-o-holic :P

Desire: Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic
Server: NA

EDIT: Wow! Thank you so much, gifter It feels like Wintersday all over again!

Also make sure to practice your rotation on the golem by making a squad, entering the appropriate portal in the aerodrome, adding appropriate buffs, and going through your rotation. The chat box will pop up your dps, which is a good sanity check that you’re doing the rotation properly. It’ll help a lot with being able to focus on mechanics of the fight if the rotation is near second nature and groups will more likely take you too if you’ve practiced.

Some servers have been using Plates of Food to block tactivator usage when attacking an objective. In the interest of good sportsmanship, maybe implement a 600-900 unit radius where food can’t be deployed?

Bumping. Wanted to refine my WvW build after some testing, but I can’t change the stats on the armor pieces =/

If you play the metabattle d/p build, you shouldn’t be taking 1v1s against chronophantasma. Your role would be to rotate to +1 fights to quickly end them and decap points. Unless the mesmer is really bad you’ll be in a losing match up or a fight that takes way too long. That said, shadow shot to blind shield 4 from mesmer blocks clone generation if you do +1 a fight against a mesmer. The stolen ability gives you some resistance too.

If you’re doing a custom build, then all this goes out the window of course, and you should play to the strengths of your build.

I’ve just begun to pick up thief too, and it’s such a blast!

Some basics that were helpful for me (I play d/p, shortbow):

1) Stack stealth with black powder + turn camera facing downward + heart seeker. The camera facing downward makes you heart seeker go a shorter distance. Conversely, if you need to chase a low hp enemy with it, turn your camera horizontal to the ground

2) For unaware enemies, you can black powder + heart seeker + steal + backstab. The stealth comes after the damage in heart seeker, so you get back stab instead of auto attacks. You cannot, however, be in already in stealth and heart seeker + backstab, because the heart seeker damage will reveal you for a few seconds (it changes into heart seeker + auto attack).

3) Try to steal after a dodge. Most enemies won’t dodge twice in a row.

4) If you’re stuck in short bow and the enemy’s low, you can cast shortbow 2 + steal + shortbow 2 to detonate the shot over the enemy for 3 packets of damage.

5) If you see a blue glow on an enemy, it’s likely a heal, and you should interrupt with head shot. If they have stability, don’t waste your initiative.

6) If you trait steal with bountiful theft, it prioritizes stealing aegis, stability, and protection. That means if you also trait it with the daze (gm trait Sleight of Hand on trickery), you can use steal to interrupt any ability, including overload earth on tempest.

7) If you see a mesmer use shield 4 (the bubble block thing), blind it with shadow shot to stop the clone generation.

8) The trick to fighting other thieves is to land your steal, make them miss theirs, and out-stealth them.

9) Your auto attack will still progress if you hit enemies in stealth. This is can be very helpful to check for stealthed downed bodies.

10) Heart seeker through ranger’s stolen ability for healing. Use warrior’s stolen ability over black powder for semi-AoE blind + reflects (unless they have resistance on. run like hell if they do). Fear necros using their stolen ability + shadow shot in when their stability in reaper’s shroud runs out.

11) Safe stomp most classes with down-state interrupt skills with the blinds from black powder. Follow players who teleport away in down-state with shadow step or steal in the middle of your stomp to complete it over their body.

12) Basilisk Venom is shared with 5 other players in a 240 radius. If you’re working with other players, share the venom! You can also black powder + shortbow 2 for AoE stealth to start group engagements.

13) Watch Sindrener on youtube/twitch

apharma.3741:

This is another build quite a few in EU are running at the moment and it’s OK for longer fights imo, build in description.

I personally am running full glass cannon zerk scholar, domination, inspiration and chrono with improved alacrity and the pretty obvious good traits for PvP in domination. You can take anything from 50 to 100% of a person’s health off if you hit a good mirror blade and mindwrack and is excellent when something needs to die yesterday. Problem is the openings are very small nowadays compared to pre HoT.

Oh wow! This isn’t very different than the equipment I’m running right now. I’ve already starting getting some exotic dire equipment, but I’ll also check this out since it’s closer to what I’m more familiar with. I just didn’t know it was still viable (but I guess I still need to get up to the skill to pull this off haha). I’m kind of surprised this build runs illusions since it’s a power build.

How’s your build working out for you?

Thanks for the tip! I haven’t really run condi before, so this should be interesting haha! It sounds like larger engagements will have perma resistance up, and I’ll be relying on null field to do anything with a dire condi build.

Is dire condi only useful for smaller engagements? Keeping in mind my lack of boon share equips, should I be switching to power or something else if I decide to hop in with a zerg?

Hey all,

It’s been a good ten months or so since I’ve been on GW, and I’m a bit lost coming back now. I’m currently running a full ascended zerker with a few soldier trinkets thrown in for survivability, but metabattle (is this still a reliable source?) seems to advocate for boonshare armor, which seems to be prohibitively expensive or time-gated. I’m sitting on ~250g, and can probably spend 100g or so on my mesmer. How should I go about changing up my armor?

I’m also a bit confused in WvW on how servers are grouped up and all. I’m currently on IOJ, which had a dying WvW scene last time I was on. I’d expect to be mostly in smaller roaming groups (this is probably relevant info for the above armor question), but now I’m not entirely sure with server groupings. What’s exactly changed? I’d like to not spend money on gems if I could, but should I consider switching servers?

Thanks!

I’m also stuck at the “Downloading 0 KB/sec” or “Connection error(s) detected” screen. Oddly, the game was working three hours ago, and I did not have a problem downloading the patch yesterday. I haven’t touched my internet connection, and I can connect to the site and other games.

And I thought it was only me! Despite having a low end graphics card on this laptop, I never had this issue prior to the update.

Windows 8.1 64 bit, Core i7-5500U, 8GB RAM, AMD HD 8800M

IGN: Chaotic Port
Play: Still leveling, but I would like to get into WvW small group roaming
Server: Isle of Janthir (NA)
Role: Scholar
Time: Pacific Time (GMT -7:00)