Guild Wars 2

The game is still downloading, however it is playable. When I login and try to create a revenant, there is a sign on the icon “Update to guild wars 2 heart of thorns in order to play this class” or sth. like that. I’ve pre-purchased the game and I do not know why I’m getting this. Perhaps I have to wait for the whole game to finish ?

Dear John,

Your response on the topic brought a little light in our dark tunnel known as the iBerserker. As you can see you have an active mesmer community on which you can relate to do an extensive QA testing on this topic. I remember a few patches ago we had a similar issue and then I think it was you that told us and I quote “Worst case scenario I will just try and readjust the numbers based on the new functionality but that is harder because I don’t have the old data” (link to the comment https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/All-phantasms-now-utterly-broken/page/2#post920861 ). Then again, I remember plenty of responses on your issue with detailed information on the subject. Feel free to ask for any feedback and we (the community) will be really glad to help you. After all, you’re taking care of our profession.

This is not normal. They know about the bug for quite a while. Why isn’t there an official response ? Why isn’t there any statement after the recent patch with an explanation to why it is not fixed or at least to say it was intended. kitten even a reduced time of the attack of the iZerker from 5.6 sec to 3.6 sec will be a temporary solution. There are many ways ANET can compensate on the low damage, but they are not doing it.

Currently, with the IZerker gone, the GS becomes unusable. It is by far my favorite weapon for the profession and I assume many other mesmers think so too. At least an official response from ANET will do fine. The last time they wrote back to the mesmer community regarding the IZerker issues was back 1 month ago prior to the patch of 26 of March. It is unacceptable.

3.2 Bunker setup
Build

• http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8fl0zSqHTTqGbNJiJF9Gyhqw1RSRp9alUwbXIA;TgAg2CrosxYjwGrNObk2A

Domination

• Crippling Dissipation (Clones cripple nearby enemies when killed)
• Cleansing conflagration (20% reduced recharge rate of torch skills + torch skills cure ALL conditions)

Dueling

• Blade training (20% recharge or all sword & spears skills, +50 precision when wielding sword)
• Deceptive evasions (Summon a clone when you dodge)

Chaos

• Illusionary Defense (3 % reduced damage for each active illusion)
• Chaotic dampening (20% reduced recharge rate of staff skills + 50 toughness when wielding staff)

*5 free points left

Stats
The stats are shown below (S/T + Staff, Shaman’s amulet)
2116 attack (877 condition damage)
14~16% crit chance
3059 armor
15582 health

Bonus
+ 2 leap finishers (on 8 seconds cooldown!)
+ 2 ethereal fields (on ~30 seconds cooldown)
+ Can stack chaos armor for more than 12 seconds (on 30 seconds cooldown)
+ Healing skill will heal you for + 7k at worst
+ Boons, tons of boons!

To sum up, you have extensive duration of Chaos armor, invisibility and 3000+ armor. You have almost constant cripple which makes melee opponents unable to reach you and range opponents unable to kill you.

3.3 Glass (not completely) cannon

Build

• http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8alwzaqHTTqGbNJiJF9GFiqA2RSRrlalUwbXIA;TgAg0CnowxgjAHLOOck4A

Domination

• Empowered Illusions (15% more damage to illusions)
• Greatsword training (20% reduced recharge rate of GS skills +50 power when wielding GS)

Dueling

• Blade training (20% recharge or all sword & spears skills, +50 precision when wielding sword)
• Deceptive evasions (Summon a clone when you dodge)

Chaos

• Illusionary Defense (3 % reduced damage for each active illusion)
• Mirror of Anguish (when disabled, reflect the spell back to its source)

Illusions

• Compounding power (3% more damage for each active illusion)

Stats
The stats are shown below (S/P + GS, Berserker’s amulet)
3068 attack
54% crit chance
2036 armor
18372 health

Bonus
+ A heck load of damage (berserker + duelist + blurred frenzy)
+ Stun in order to apply your combo
+ 2k armor (not so bad for a glass cannon)
+ 9% increased damage against foes and 9% decreased damage deal to you when you pop your iZerker, iDuelist and dodge roll

To sum up, you have extensive damage output, ability to disable your opponent and invisibility. FYI if you have 2 iDuelist and 1 iZerker the average damage output when the 3 phantasms attack will be 6k+

3.4 Condition mesmer setup
Build

• http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8fl0zSqHTTqGbNJiJF9Gyhqw1RSRp9alUwbXIA;TgAg2CrosxYjwGrNObk2A

Domination

• Crippling Dissipation (Clones cripple enemies when killed)
• Cleansing conflagration (20% reduced recharge rate of torch skills + torch skills cure ALL conditions)

Dueling

• Phantasmal Fury (Grans Fury to your phantasms)
• Deceptive evasions (Summon a clone when you dodge)

Chaos

• Debilitating Dissipation (Clones apply random conditions to foes when killed)
• Chaotic dampening (20% reduced recharge rate of staff skills + 50 toughness when wielding staff)
• Additional 5 points spend here (as you can see in the basic build, there are 5 points left) to get Confusion Combatants (Illusions apply 3 second of Confusion when killed)

Stats
The stats are shown below (Sc/T + Staff, Rabid Amulet)
2126 attack (1156 condition damage)
47% crit chance
2680 armor
15082 health

Bonus
+ Scepter skill 1 will summon an illusion on every third hit. However, most important is that once you have 3 clones, your auto attack of the scepter will overwrite your oldest clone, destroying him and apply trait Crippling Dissipation and Debilitating Dissipation . If you want to do a simple Mind Wreck, the above traits will also be applied to your shattered illusions
+ A lot of bleeding from your + 47%
+ Pretty good survivability with 2700 armor
+ Can do 9+ stacks of confusion for less than 5 seconds (a simple cast will do more than 2000 damage (I’ve done 2,3k in WvW)

To sum up, this build will not only damage your enemy, but provide you pretty good survivability.

4. Conclusion
As you can see above, you can have various examples of the usability of this build and how much can change by swapping 6 traits and 1 armor set. For example, put on S/P + S/Focus, go for Shatter build, pick up Mind Wrack bonus, pick up Illusion on dodge, put your soldier’s gear and + 10 crit on Mind Wrac. Now go and shatter whatever you want, you will have a balanced build with survivability, power, crit and many utilities.
I think this is something that mesmers have that no other profession do- they can be versatile and diverse .

Try the setup above and let me know of your thoughts.

For those who said <TL;DR> -> Mesmer FTW!

Hello fellow mesmers,

This topic covers:

1. Introduction
2. Basic setup
3. Pick your traits
4. Conclusion

1. Introduction
I’ve been playing this class from the very beginning (open beta that took place almost an year ago). Until now I’ve tried many builds on my mesmer, such as:

• Phantasm Build
• Shatter build
• Immortal build

However in none of them I’ve seen versatility and diversity that I required from this class. This is why I decided to analyze all the mesmer builds I can lay my hands on and find what is common and different in order to make a basic setup of traits that can later be adapted to whatever your play style is.

2. Basic setup
The basic setup I did is the following – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQBgEwkCAAAtASKAAgSKAAAA
The distribution is as follows:

• 20 points go to Domination
• 20 points go to Dueling
• 20 points go to Chaos
• 5 points go to Illusions
• 5 points to spare

The stats are shown below (without any equipped weapon or amulet)
1036 attack
14% crit chance
2036 armor
15082 health
This is the basic layout of traits that will allow later to build a balanced mesmer.

Why 20 points in Domination?
The answer is simple. This will provide you with 200 power, 20% extended condition duration, access to commonly used traits such as Mental Torment, Empowered Illusions, Great sword Training .
Why 20 points in Dueling?
200 precision, 20% critical damage, access to major and minor traits such as Blade training, Deceptive evasion and Sharper images
Why 20 points in Chaos?
200 toughness, 20% boon duration, access to Illusionary Defense, Chaotic Dampening
Why 5 points in Illusuins?
20% recharge rate of all illusion summoning skill -> This is a must trait.

3. Pick up your traits
This is where this build gets interesting. I wanted to see what this basic layout of traits can do against ranged enemies (such as rangers, engineers or warriors with bows). I picked up the following traits:
3.1 Reflection setup
Build

• http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRl0zipnQzgGbNJhJF9+4oK0dSKc9rLpg37G;TgAA1CtosxYjwGrNObk2A

Domination

• Signet master (20% reduced recharge rate of signet skills)
• Cleansing conflagration (20% reduced recharge rate of torch skills + torch skills cure ALL conditions)

Dueling

• Blade training (20% recharge or all sword & spears skills, +50 precision when wielding sword)
• Blurred Inscriptions (when activating signet grants 1 second of distortion)

Chaos

• Illusionary Defense (3 % reduced damage for each active illusion)
• Cleansing Inscriptions (when activating signet removes a condition)

Illusions

• Masterful reflection (Distortion grants reflection)

Stats
The stats are shown below (S/T + GS, Soldiers amulet)
3139 attack
14% crit chance
2845 armor
22022 health

Bonus
+ 2 seconds of Distortion from Sword skill 2 (on 8 seconds cooldown!)
+ 2 seconds of Distortion from 2 signets (on ~30 seconds cooldown)
+ 1~3 seconds of Distortion from shatter skill 4 (on 1 minute cooldown)
+ 2 seconds of Reflection from healing skill (on 15 seconds cooldown)

To sum up, every 16 seconds, you will be invulnerable for 4 seconds and reflecting projectiles for 6. For the rest 10 seconds you can be invisible, flanking, nuking or whatever you want. I tested this in WvW and sPvP and it works like a charm.

“Out of the 3 illusions I had , the thief picked me”
Chorgom, the Mesmer

XiL.4318 I tend to agree with you.
When you play PvP (sPvP, WvW, tPvP) the wells come in handy, but the most important is their placement. For example try the following placement when in WvW and sieging a keep:

• Place all marks from the staff just in front of the entrance near the gate.
• Watch as the player that appears starts to run in fear while your marks do damange
• With the trait Focused Rituals you can place your wells the same way you place marks (more damage and support).

This way you can combine your marks and wells to do an enormous amount of damage. IMO I see the ability to place wells and marks on the ground as an advantage, not as a restriction.

PinCushion.7390

FYI if you pick dagger, change the last trait in Spite to Close to Death
If you want AOE in PVE, this is what I do:

• Swap Spectral walk for Well of Suffering (you will be fine without the stun breaker).
• Change the bone fiend to bone minions

Then it goes as follows:

• Activate the Well
• If you have a staff, place your marks
• Blast one of your minions
• Go into DS and start Life Transfer

Here is the interesting part, if you play with staff when you have finished with the life leech, you most probably have Chilblains and Putrid Mark ready (or at least 5 sec cool-down left on them). You can again place your marks and explode your 2nd bone minion. At this point there is nothing left out there.

PinCushion.7390:

I’m not a fan of staff and marks, and I wonder (with as much siphon as you have) if you wouldn’t be better off with Dagger/Warhorn in your off-hand. Warhorn #5 is great for building quick Life Force in groups from the AoE Cripple.

Or is staff there for the AoE Regen on your minions?

Edit: Just re-read your OP. You swap back and forth between Dagger depending on what you’re doing. I’ve gotten kinda spoiled from 30 Soul Reaping for stability. How’s the Blood Fiend after the fix?

I use the staff mainly for the chill condition (combined with 33% reduced healing from the poison) and the regeneration from the blood mark as you said. If you want a more detailed analysis, here is what I gain from staff and from dagger/warhaor:
Dagger/Warhorn

• Burst damage with 1st dagger attack
• Life leeching with the 2nd attack (with the trait Dark Armor it grants me more survivability)
• Immobilize the foe
• Daze for 2 second (which is important for quick interrupts)
• Cripple/swiftness

Staff

• Blood mark grants regeneration (healing myself and my pets)
• I have chill + poison on 20 second cool-down (reduced movement speed, reduced recharge rate speed, reduced healing by 33%)
• AOE blast finisher (if properly placed within chilblaines grants AOE weakness which reduced damage output of the foe by aprox 30% and reduces possibility to dodge)
• Fear for interrupt

As you can see, the dagger has bigger damage output while the staff lowers your opponent’s ability to survive drastically. With the +30% condition duration from the spite tree it becomes really useful.

glock.2089:

Thora: could you post a link to your power build? thanks.

Find my build linked below (copy the URL and paste into the browser):

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-08cZ-FKtHkH0s3wI-K0;9;4T-JJ-18A;102-16;253H7-NV0OZG5OZG56gS

As for anyone who wants to give an advice about it or enhance it, I will be glad to hear your voice.

Hello fellow necros

My main character is mesmer and I recently started playing necro. The difference between the 2 classes is enormous (in terms of gameplay).

• Builds: I run a shatter build with my mesmer (quite popular, FYI 20/20/0/0/30) and I run a power/minion build with my necro (30/0/20/20/0) and another alternative to life leeching with MH dagger (same specs).
• Stats : Mesmer is with Knights amulet (power,prec, vit) . The necro is with Soldier’s amulet (power, tough, vit).
• Comparison: As it seems the mesmer has a huge burst damage. However, his weakness lays in nuking down bunker build. Taking them down is quite hard with him (not impossible, just bloody hard). When it comes to the necromancer, with the build I’m using it is quite easy to take down an opponent, ignoring what type of spec he is running. If you fight against a bunker build, you need to stack your vulnerability to at least 15, 16 so you ignore some armor and keep the enemy chilled so you can keep him from healing himself. If you fight against a burst damage build (mesmer for example) I’m simply putting well of darkness on the ground and pufff -> no illusions coming from him and I can take him down easily.

The bottom line is: Necromancer class is good for PVP, it’s your expectations that are wrong. They are not the best at burst damage, they do not have the strongest tank build with healing, their condition build and support build are not the greatest in the game. However, in this class you can mix all of the above so well and in a way that it cannot be done in any other class.

For those of you who said to themselves TL;DR
Nercos are awesome!

Less new content, more bug fixing

Hello my fellow Guild Wars players

As seen in various subforums and threads, there are many bugs that still exist and many more caused by the recent content release. Since a beautiful holiday is about to come, I propose less new content and more bug fixing. As a player I will be thrilled to see:

1. Rangers/eles/mesmers/thieves fixed
2. No more stuck events/personal story
3. No more client crashes and disconnects.
4. Many more annoying little things that spoil your/mine gameplay

Because let’s face it: who wants to face new challenges with broken mechanics and limited trait specialization (because of not working/useless traits) or with constant disconnects. By fixing/balancing the existing content you (ANET) will have the opportunity to create a stable, steady ground for building content. Competitive and balanced environment is the key for this game and for its future (in e-sports). Also since the holidays are coming, this will bring the players back as well as attracting new ones.

Thank you for your time

Hello fellow mesmers
The thief counter really depends on the build you are running.
For example, if you are running shatter build with illusionary persona, as soon as you see the thief goes close to you in order to steal or vanish, you prepare yourself to hit Distortion (sword second skill or the last shatter skill). Either way, you will evade his/hers attack . The key feature is to apply your stun breaker skills ASAP. This means Mirror images (no casting time, quite useful against thieves) or Blink.
If you’re running full glass canon build (Legion build) then you do not need to wait for the thief to come close to you. Simply dodge roll or blink away as soon as you see him/her in range. This will occasionally prevent the thief from stealing or reaching you before his stealth expires. If the thief has the trait “apply daze when stealing” and gets you off guard then it gets tricky. Signed of midnight is a useful spell in this situation. It will break stuns and also blind your target, which if timed properly will make the thief miss his back stab (or his CnD).

However, take into account that the thief has a low health pool. A simple daze or stun, even cripple will do the job (Pistol skill 5, Diversion, Sword block ability, Mantra for 2 dazes +1 if speced, Signed of Domination even GS 5 ability, Temporal Curtain , iBerserker or even go stealth with Prestige → Totally confusing for the thief). The idea is that we have many abilities to survive and deal with such a class. I’ve tested many of them my favorite is (shatter spec with illusionary persona): Distortion, Mirror images, Mind wreck. Deals about 3000-4000 damage, scares the crap out of the thief and allows me to start nuking him.

Today I was playing with my staff and was able to put 12 confusion stacks on a mob. Guess what → it didn’t matter. All of them disappeared with 1 or 2 hits at most.

Perhaps a better idea (imo) is to make confusion as a retaliation.
* Instead of being 1 huge hit per cast, make it cond damage * X , where X is a constant
* Instead of building stacks, make it stack duration (will be definitely more helpful)
* Make it the opposite of retaliation (condition that applies damage to the caster for each attack)

This way the skill will be balanced and far more attractive to play with it.

Vendris, I couldn’t agree with your more.

I hope they (ANET) is not responding in this thread because they are fixing it right now. Otherwise I will be deeply dissapointed. After all , this is a bug, not a balance feature to be added.

Fellow mesmers

Raksha.8049 / Phloww.1048 I could not agree with you guys more.
The idea of phantasm is to be an illusion with major damage output. In order to make them conventional and understandable for all, I propose the following:

1 The phantasm should be a skill as the elementalist dragon tooth -> They will do 1 attack depending on the type of phantasm then vanish. For example:
* iBerserker – AoE whirl comboe finisher, untargetable, swirls only ones and is destroyed
* iMage – Grants 3 stacks of confusion to the target, untargetable, grants nearby allies retaliation for 3 secs and is destroyed
* iSwordsman – Combo finisher leap, doe X damage, then vanishes
* iWarden – Casts a bubble for X time that does Y damange on his location per pulse, untargetable, after the time has finished it vanishes
* iWarlock – Phantasm that does X damage + 10 % per condition on the target, untargettable then vanishes
* iDuelist – Casts comboe finisher projectile by unloading 2 pistols, untargettable then vanishes
* iDefender – Casts protection and regen bubble for X seconds (in order to reproduce the half the damage reduction) , untargetable, then vanishes
* iDisenchanter – Casts boon removal bubble for X seconds (not to overlap with the Null field), untargetable then vanishes

2 – The phantasms will be just a skill, not an illusion, therefore they must no be counted for Shatter purposes

3 – This way the phantasms looks more like skills rather then illusions and therefore will be easily understandable for the mass.

4 – Since they are attacks of some type, not illusions, they can be blocked/dodged/missed. LOS is a must, unless the phantasm uses buble (stationary phantasm)

5 – Since the phantasm is attack initiated by us, any demage by retaliation/reflection on the target must be redirected to us

I hope this gives some ideas. I will be glad to know what you think of this approach.

Fellow mesmers

Since the iBerserker is bugged, I tried to do a shatter build. However, I noticed that my damage output is quite low. Then I went to Lion’s Arch dummies in order to test it myself (FYI, I’m level 60, raised to lvl 80 for the event. I haven’t selected the + 20 % mind wrack damage trait). The results are as follows:

- 1 illusion -> Mind Wreck = 480 DMG (tooltip = 458)
– 2 illusions -> Mind Wreck = 2×386 DMG (tooltip = 2×572)
Note: Here the damage varies from 386 to 420
– 3 illusions -> Mind Wreck = 3×386 DMG (tooltip = 3×747)
Note: Here the damage varies from 386 to 420

Is this intentional/unintentional ? I never noticed it before the patch and suddenly, I have a massive DMG drop with my shatter build.
On top of that, I saw that if you cast a spell and the oponent does Dodge/Evade/Block/Reflect the illusion is not summoned (basically from what I saw you have to hit the oponent in order to summon your illusion, therefore all the skills that prevent you from doing so block the summoning).

ANET These skills now behave as normal attacks that the mesmer must connect in order to summon the phantasm, and they will fail if the mesmer is blind or the ability is cast on an invulnerable target

Does block/dodge/miss/evade still counts ? If it does, why it is not specified in the patch notes?

With the iBerserker gone, Shatter failing this class is almost dead. The only reasonable build is the condition build, however it does not suit my gameplay. I know the event is a priority right now, but I assume there are guys who are working on class balances.

NB: Can somebody else confirm that the issues with Mind Wreck are present?

Thank you Karl. It is nice to see someone paying attention to our bug reports.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

Soooo basically you’re quitting the class because they fixed a bug/exploit?
Alright.

If you feel useless, hanging around waiting for gates to break, why not supply run?
If you’re standing around being useless, you’re being totally useless. Build sieges to break the gate faster, run supplies to build up these sieges.
I can’t believe how many people have felt the need to quit Mesmers because we’ve been FIXED!

Darling, you don’t play mesmer, do you ? If you did you would know what we’re capable of and how do we do it. So prior to posting in this forum get your facts straight. Fixing LOS is 1 thing, reducing damage 60 percent is another (which is not a fix, not even mentioned in the patch notes).

Daisai.5879:

Just so you know , no they wont comment on this.
Yes its a ninja nerf which they probably did because they know it would piss of a lot of players.
They probably just did this because according to them the damage on the berserker was still to high.
And nerfing a skill twise in a row is just to much to post in the patch notes.

So either they are going to “fix” this later on by a little bit of a damage increase however still less then before this patch.

And before you use the customer excuse to arenanet, they dont care that much.
Its not a subscription based game and you already bought their game.

The saddest thing is that you’re right.

Fellow Mesmers,

I checked many threads and many forum posts for the IBerserker issue. The most frustrating about all the discussion we have is that ANET does not seem to react on it, neither give us any answer/feedback/sticky on the subject. As you (ANET) can see, we are quite annoyed by this fact. Can you show any support to your community by simply calming us down or notifying us that you follow these posts and that our bug reports are not in vein.

After all, we are customers and we want to be treated as such.