Guild Wars 2

Triumphant Distortion and the new MoP in a zerg mantra+phantasm nuker build (6/6/x) seems like it’d be super good. With the Berserker not insta-dying and MoP spam now doing AOE damage, suddenly you actually have reasonable dps vs blobs too (instead of just single-target).

Have you tried pressing 5?

You don’t need 25 in Illusions anymore since Celerity moved down to the Master minor. The new setup is 0/30/0/25/15 or 10/20/0/25/15.

Nice build, I like the concept!

As far as tweaks go, I’d definitely drop Mirror Images for Blink, far far superior. Mirror Images is more a shatter burst damage skill than anything else; I see what you’re going for with the clone-death procs but Deceptive Evasion and weapon clones should be enough for that.

With that, I’d switch Mirror of Anguish out for manipulation cooldowns, since you have two of them — faster recharge on your condition transfer, and 24 second blinks. Mirror of Anguish is pretty sub-par; far too long cooldown and in a 1vX situation mirroring a single CC does almost nothing for you. Bountiful Interruption and the Staff trait are also both good options worth trying out.

For condition removal, you could consider moving 10 points from Illusions into Inspiration to get Mender’s Purity.

The only other thing that comes to mind is trying to maximize your Perplexity runes by dropping the Signet of Domination for Mantra of Distraction. If you combine that with Mantra Mastery (instead of Phantasmal Fury which only really benefits the Duelist), and also take the Mantra of Healing with Mender’s Purity, it really boosts your confusion output and condition removal. The downside would be losing a fair amount of Duelist bleeds, you may want to switch some Dire gear to Rabid to get crit chance back.

I’d be happy with just getting the guaranteed Protection back.

Assassin is only a couple percent better than berserker right now even in ideal circumstances. When they nerf crit damage it’s likely pure zerk will win out.

I’m in the same boat and I’m making my last zerk piece tomorrow.

Bloodgruve.6038:

I won’t argue the the damage output or utility of reflects, they’re great but you need someone shooting at you to utilize them for DPS.

They’re amazing when someone is though; I hit the Legendary Archdiviner for about 80k every time I put a feedback on his ring attack in my last fractal 50, and that was without even being particularly buffed.

Stealth doesn’t transfer aggro very well, neither does distance really. They’ll zero in on you again as soon as you drop out of stealth.

Mesmer clones are more for shatter fodder than meatshielding; phantasms work somewhat better for that since they do a lot more damage, but in general in open-world PvE you want to just kill stuff quick.

What level are you and what build/weapons are you using?

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

Having 3-4k less health isn’t worth the loss, and, by having lower vitality, your healing becomes more effective.

I have to correct this. Lower vitality doesn’t affect your healing at all. Higher toughness would make your healing more effective, since each point of hp is worth more (i.e. absorbs more damage), but healing effectiveness is exactly the same whether you have 10k hp or 20k. Just because you get more of your bar back doesn’t actually mean it’s better for you.

That being said, precision is good for Sharper Images, Critical Infusion, and any crit sigils you may have. Mixing in a bit of Dire wouldn’t hurt, though.

“lalalala I can’t hear you” isn’t a particularly effective argument strategy.
Just sayin’. :p

You only really need Inspiration for the focus reflections; sure the regen is nice but it’s not really necessary. If you don’t want focus reflects, 25/30/0/0/15 is better dps. 15 points in chaos is nice for WvW survival but in PvE it’s entirely unnecessary.

And the duelist is in no way “highly superior”, they’re both very good offhands. Duelist adds more bleed pressure, but the swordsman has a higher single damage packet, and the line daze / block+counter can sometimes be more useful than Magic Bullet.

The other nice benefit of offhand sword is that it gets traited for “free” with blade training.

OF course, ll of this depends on whether the OP wants a build for PvE or PvP, which he hasn’t stated…

EDIT: Trebor – you do know that the number getting added up on the duelist channel is the cumulative damage, right? Also, the swordsman attacks faster unless you’ve traited for Phantasmal Haste, so there’s that too.

It really is a great sword.

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.

Nothing beats Sword/Focus + GS for leveling. Sword and Pistol offhands are both far too single-target to be very useful in the open world (unless you’re doing specialized things like soloing champs); comparatively, the warden and the berserker chew through entire crowds really fast.

Just go with the regular zerker phantasm build and use a staff and Knight’s gear instead, or take a couple of Cavalier trinkets. You don’t need to trait the staff for it to be useful; Warlock and Chaos Storm are good regardless.

The glamor confusion traits don’t stack well anymore, confusion is a terrible condition in PvE in general, and you have no reliable way of continuously applying serious conditions in the first place (unlike Necros, etc.).

Don’t do condi mes in dungeons, it just doesn’t work.

If you do want to experiment – you need to vastly increase condition application. Scepter doesn’t attack fast enough for Earth sigil to matter much(also, you can’t stack multiple crit sigils — yet), you need to grab a pistol instead of the torch to take more advantage of Sharper Images, and you need Deceptive Evasion so you can burn dodges for more Debilitating Dissipation procs (move 5 from Shattered Strength since you don’t want to shatter much anyway).

I’d swap Blinding Befuddlement for either the staff bounce trait or phantasmal haste for faster duelist attacks, and probably move the 20 Domination points into Inspiration for the Scepter trait for another +200condmg. Take dual Geomancy sigils for more AoE bleeds, and Corruption on the pistol to build stacks (swap to Bursting when maxed).

All that said, you still wouldn’t hold a candle to a meta zerk phant build in dungeons.

frifox – that’s interesting, good to know. How did you test? And can you throw in 0/30/0/25/15? I’m curious how much of a difference EM makes over EI.

Also, to be fair, that’s expected in a non-reflecting scenario. Inspiration is taken more for utility (glamour / focus traits) than anything else; Phantasmal Strength is really just something to mitigate the damage loss from putting so many points in a non-DPS trait line.

If you don’t need your Warden to reflect then moving those into Domination will certainly be better. If your enemy is projectile-based, then suddenly Warden dps goes way, way up.

Thanks for the confirmation Sandy!
When are you making new solo videos for us?

Just another reason why all Ascended gear should be stat-selectable by default.

Down with legendary discrimination! Down with the 1%! Occupy Anet!

It’s the basic problem with model size and run speed in this game. When the biggest norn to the tiniest asura all have to run at the same speed, the norn and charr look like they’re running in slow motion, and the asura look hyper-animated.

There’s really not much that can be done about it; if you feel the need to run slower, just take off your helmet or swap it with a non-Traveler piece so the 25% bonus doesn’t apply anymore … :p

And it’s not just a problem with the runes, all classes with a speed signet or trait equipped would have the same issue.

I think warden reflects are boosted by Empowered Illusions and Phantasmal Strength but not by player-based % bonuses — those only affect player-cast reflections; Feedback, Temporal Curtain, etc.

Could be wrong though, I’ve been meaning to test.

PvE – full zerker, all the way.
WvW – Rabid or Dire if you go conditions, else Zerk/Knight/Cavalier mix.

And yeah, Restorative Mantras scales abysmally bad with healing power – don’t take cleric. Sorry.

@Chaos – Keepers is just the Ascended prefix for the same combo.

Here’s the problem I see:
- Ether Feast Healing: 5,560 (1.0) ==> 18%
- Mirror Healing: 3,915 (0.6) ==> 15%
- Signet Passive Heal—3 Illusions: 980 (0.125) ==> 13%
- Power Return Healing: 2,620 (0.4) ==> 15%
- Restorative Mantras Healing: 2,600 (0.2) ==> 8%
- Regeneration: 130 (0.125) ==> 96%

The percentages I’ve shown are how much more healing you’d get if you had 1000 Healing Power instead of 0 – which is actually more than you’d get with HP just as a secondary stat. 30 points in Inspiration + Full Zealot + HP runes gets you to just about 1k.

As you can see, across the board, besides the regen boon we have absolutely nothing that gets more than an 18% bonus. In my opinion that’s absolutely not worth it compared to having those 1000 stat points in something useful.

We have no skills that actually benefit strongly from a healing power investment – on a level comparable to a Guardian’s Selfless Daring or an Elementalist’s Cleansing Wave.

Note that I’m not saying we can’t heal/support. Going for full boon duration and a support build can absolutely work; Mantra of Pain spam with Restorative Mantras is a 2.6k AoE heal every ~5 seconds (huge!) … but all of that is just as effective with zero Healing Power.

tl;dr – don’t go Zealot’s.

Healing power kinda sucks on mesmer, it’s not worth it just for Regen. I’d take Cavalier/Knight any day over Zealot.

Good idea! Here’s my list:

1) Could we get the Warden fixed please? Pretty please? As it stands it’s more than likely to fail right when it’s most needed, and that’s just terribly frustrating.

2) How many mesmers are actually using the signet heal in practice? Is the dev team OK with how it is right now? I feel like the base cooldown is too high, and clones die too often, for it to be viable at all competitively, or even very viable in PvE.
- Consider that warriors signet is HIGHER hps (and still will be post-nerf) without doing anything, and we have to maintain three illusions to even get close. Impossible in any kind of team fight, and even 1v1 against good players. Ether Feast with NO clones out beats Signet with 2 clones constantly by a handy 26% (276 vs 220hps); and it’s REALLY easy to bust out an image or two to buff Feast for the split second you need to.
- Further consider that the moment we use the active, we have ZERO healing for 35 seconds! Warriors currently are known to be dead when they use their signet active, and it’s usually on a 16 second cooldown – less than HALF ours. Mesmers have much less durability in general, going more than twice as long with no healing is literally impossible. I understand that the active has a lot more utility, but that’s not enough.
Every single mesmer player I know has tried it out and then gone back to one of the other heals.

3) What is the reasoning behind nerfing Deceptive Evasion or the clone-death condition traits? Mesmers aren’t exactly overpowered in PvP or anywhere else; I thought nerfs were meant to address issues. What issue do devs see with the current state of affairs? Maybe if we understood the cause being addressed we could propose alternate solutions. (Note that the Critical Infusion change was anticipated and is totally acceptable to me and most others.)

4) Can we get mantra AoE upped to 600? The Mantra of Conc/Resolve changes to make them affect allies were great, but they need more range; right now they’re like inferior shouts that need to be charged. If the stack meta is to be broken, our support abilities have to affect people more than two steps away from us.

Will add more as I think of them.

/signed.
Warden needs fix ASAP.

Probably Battle+Force for PvE.
Likely Energy+Hydro for PvP.
Possibly Hydro+Doom for WvW?

I’m just already scared of Air + Intelligence killshot warriors. And Air + Fire + Hidden Killer backstab thieves. Dat Burst. x_x

Dante.2510:

OS something or to be oneshoted, thats is the question, pretty well sumed up but very low skills meta .

Hardly. There’s a fair amount of skill involved in timing your reflects, evades, distortion, blink, sword block etc. to stay alive while also doing damage. Most of the fights in fractals can’t be “one-shotted” anyway.

If you want to test your skill, try soloing some of the bosses.

Sadly, you’ll be a burden. That build looks like it could be great in WvW, but it’s a horrible idea for fractals.

Reflections are paramount, specially in fractals. You have none. Also, mesmers are a really terrible class for condition damage to begin with; staff doesn’t apply nearly enough, torch just has the single burn, and … that’s it. At least with duelist you could maybe stack some bleeds, but it’s nowhere near the condition output of a necro or engineer.

Going invisible half the time so you can put out a little bit of protection and regen is fairly useless, specially if you have a hammer guard around who can keep it up permanently, for free, while also doing serious dps. Not to mention you can only share it once every 36 seconds. The meta phantasm build provides better perma-regen already.

Might-stacking with BI could be useful but you have no interrupts except distortion and the occasional chaos storm, not really sustainable. Torch phantasm sucks, Warlock is ok but he’s power based and you have none.

All told, low damage, low support, low healing, zero utility. The PvE meta builds are meta for a reason…

At this point you’re just whining about whining, Alasteir. People will react how they want to, and your lecturing them about being overly emotional just comes off as holier-than-thou and insulting to the rest of the community that are actually presenting well-reasoned and logical arguments.

You can’t really use the same set in WvW and PvE…

Full berserker (Zojja) is still going to be best for PvE, and if you plan on doing high level fractals then you should make that (because more Agony Resist is the only real reason to need ascended armor).

My current setup is exotic Knight with Traveler runes in WvW, and ascended Zojja with Scholar runes for dungeons and fractals.

Also, I’d be very wary of making Celestial/WupWup right now because the Ferocity change is likely to make it even weaker than it is at present.

No, but you don’t understand, they did nerf warriors’ healsig a whole entire 8 percent. How will they ever manage? Won’t you think of the warriors? Those poor, poor warriors. Eight percent. It’s unconscionable.

Awesome video. I should make a similar one of fractal 49 grawl shaman, where it’s a blessing and a miracle if mine decides to actually start spinning when there are grubs all around it.

@rogerwilko – The warden is low DPS but he reflects all projectiles (if traited), which adds up to a TON of damage against enemies who have projectile attacks. The duelist actually does a fair amount of damage – easily 1k+ direct dps (6k+ channeled attacks on a 6 second cooldown) per duelist, which starts adding up when you have 2 or 3 of them out. Being ranged, skilled players can also summon them out of harms way so they stay alive more easily.

They also both tend to put out a fair amount of bleeds due to the Sharper Images trait; 6-8 stacks per channel from the Duelist and even more from the Warden, which add a good chunk of condition damage even with no investment in the stat.

No, it’s clearly a nerf; the real question that baffles me is — what was the impetus behind this specific nerf? Generally speaking nerfs are targeted at things that are causing some kind of imbalanced or overpowered gameplay; nerfing DE affects almost everything. Did they just sit around and decide “oh, mesmer is too strong, we should nerf it”!? And if so — what universe does idea that come from?

Every time we get hit it’s a double nerf, far from the “slow and careful” adjustments they claim to aim for.

• Confusion damage was halved and glamour traits were nerfed: together.
• Blurred frenzy cooldown increased and changed to evasion: together.
• Now, vigor nerfed, and DE nerfed: together.

Whatever happened to making small, incremental changes and judging the effects?

“DE clone replacement doesn’t trigger on-death effects.” would be a much more reasonable way to go, if the intention was to nerf clone-death builds.

All they need to do is make it go back to 12 if you’re under 12 (modulo boon duration). No infinite stacking, you can only get max 12 seconds of swiftness going away from the curtain spot in any direction, and it’s still useful if you accidentally run over it with 1 sec left over from some other source.

Here’s my idea of a worthy grandmaster trait:

- 3 seconds of quickness AND fury on interrupt (cd 10 sec)
- 10% increased damage under Fury

That way, we get a) a semi-reliable way to get self-applied Fury (fits the name, eh?), b) more damage during the quickened period (to actually make it useful), and c) a DPS boost somewhat on par with Empowering Mantras for organized dungeoneering.

EM still wins for damage when group fury uptime is low, and can go up to 16% total, but with good fury from party FI would let you use your skill bar without gimping damage.

It’ll also synergize really nicely with BI.

It’ll basically be just like Precision is now — 21 precision gives 1% crit chance, similarly X amount of Ferocity will give 1% crit damage. The specific number X wasn’t mentioned, but I’m guessing it’ll be 11.

I live-blogged the stream notes on reddit, figured I’d cross-post here so everyone can see.

Critical Damage

• Crit Damage as a percentage stat will go away
• Replaced by a numeric stat called Ferocity
• Balanced to be about 10% less damage overall
• PVP crit damage won’t change – they feel it’s in a good place already
• Numeric amount same as “secondary stat” on gear (e.g. 90 power/60 prec/60 fero for berserker)
• Opens up potential for Ferocity to be a primary stat on new stat combo

Sigils

• Two sigil slots for two-handed weapons!
• No more shared cooldowns!!
• RNG reduced – percent chance on crit will probably just become 100% on-crit
• Still only one stacking sigil type (bloodlust, perception etc.)
• Dual swap sigils WILL both proc. (e.g. Battle + Geomancy or Air + Fire)

Runes

• Adding strong bonuses further towards rune #4/5/6 to give more benefit of having full sets
• Added more condi duration on early bonuses so 2/2/2 is still possible
• Examples: Strength:
  1) +25 power,
  2) 10% might duration,
  3) 50 power,
  4) 15% might duration and 25% might proc on hit,
  5) 100 power,
  6) 20% might duration, +5% damage under might.
• Fixing Rune #6 bonuses and other rune bugs (e.g. Ranger runes etc.)
• They’ve done a balance pass over runes and sigils to try to improve diversity.

PVP

• Adding new unlockable stat combos for PVP (similar to how new heal skills are being added)
• This is more speculative / for future, probably not in next build

Balance Preview – There will be balance updates in the next build:

Elementalist

• Signet of Restoration is restored to full power (no more pve/pvp split)
• Armor of Earth cooldown goes from 90s to 75s (pre-cantrip mastery)
• 3 seconds of Regen added to Water Trident (for up to 5 allies) – support+condi removal for scepter
• Burning Speed now evades during cast! (more melee survival for d/d)
• Frozen Burst is now a blast finisher! (can combo with Burning Speed)

Engineer

• Net Turret immobilize reduced by 1 second
• Poison grenades – poison applied per tick reduced from 5 to 3 seconds
• Toolkit – Box of Nails/Piranhas cast time reduced from 1 sec to 3/4 sec
• AED cast time reduced from 1 sec to 3/4 sec (may go to 1/2sec later)

Guardian

• Litany of Wrath cast time reduced from 1 sec to 3/4 sec (may go to 1/2sec later)
• Vigorous Precision cooldown increased to 10 sec (so only 50% vigor uptime)
• Healing Breeze rescaled so 50% self-applies on cast, then 10% per tick for 5 seconds on allies

Mesmer

• Critical Infusion cooldown increased to 10 sec (so only 50% vigor uptime)
• Deceptive Evasion will no longer create a new clone if you already have full images (no overwrites)
  (yeesh, that’s huge. RIP clone-death builds.) :’(

Necromancer

• Putrid Explosion is no longer unblockable
• Training of the Master damage bonus reduced from 30% to 25%
• Dhuumfire changed to make only Life Blast apply 3 sec burning with 10 sec cd – no longer split pve/pvp
• Less passive — controllable application, and makes for active counter-play possibilities
• Vampiric Master changed (didn’t catch the specifics)

Ranger

• Spirit of Nature healing was bugged – changing to 320hp / sec
• Considering adding combo field to all trap skills (Viper’s Nest => poison field, etc.)
• Empathetic Bond will no longer remove conditions when pet is dead
• Making steps towards allowing dodge during sword auto chain (server-side fixes involved)

Thief

• Positive things coming that won’t be discussed yet (same for ranger)
• Pistol Whip possibly split into two-part skill with separate ini cost (stun and then slashes separated)

Warrior

• Healing Signet passive reduced by about 8% (~30hps), active may be improved / altered
• Pin Down has new animation / tell, cast time increased from 1/4 to 3/4 sec

~This is a non-exhaustive list, full set will be in patch notes.~

FINAL: Welp, looks like that’s it for balance folks.
Let me know if I missed anything in the comments and I’ll include it!

Look at Blackdevil’s or Osicat’s PU roamer threads.

Just use the LFG tool to get more, advertise as “going slow / watching cutscenes” or something and you should find plenty of like-minded folk.

Actually, for an even sturdier variant you can try 15/15/10/20/10 and take the +150 more toughness for party trait too.

Condition necro bomb tends to be Scepter/Dagger bleeds, then Signet of Spite (instantly gives you nearly every condition) followed by a fear-chain (staff mark, spectral wall, DS #3).
Blink away, stealth, then come back and hit ‘em with phantasms; Fear alone ticks for 1100+ usually, but you can stun-break out of it and if you get out of 1200 range they can’t continue the chain.
If you’re >900 range, or if you’re stealthed, they can’t continue to load you up with conditions (Sc/D both are 900, they can still hit you with staff but that’s MUCH lower pressure) and you have time to recover. Kiting them at max GS range tends to work really well.

Just a question — have you tried the balanced 15/15/0/20/20 variant from obal’s thread? It’s more dps and I’ve found it still very sturdy. If you’re having trouble with conditions and Shelter usage, you could replace Blind Exposure with Signet Mastery instead and use Signet of Resolve (+Signet of Judgement for the passive) — that greatly increases your healing and damage reduction, and gives you passive condition cleansing.

Carighan.6758:

Torch trait makes sense where it is because it comes with +Expertise from the trait line. Plus Domination needs some reason to spec into it as a condition-build, no? Scepter in Inspiration feels misplaced, but is it really?

Eh. The Domination trait is generally about damage while Inspiration is about support, healing, and phantasms — the scepter, being a mainhand, doesn’t even have a phant. And adding condition removal (as opposed to condition damage) is definitely defensive vs offensive in nature.

Also, the scepter applies just as many conditions as the torch does, and they’ve got longer base durations so they’d benefit more from the expertise than the torch does. Thematically I think it makes a lot more sense for them to be swapped.

And I can think of some really strong scepter+pistol condition builds with 20/20/10 as a base if that happened.

Interrupts and shatters are sadly pretty useless in dungeons. Trash mobs don’t last long enough that interrupts would matter, and bosses have defiant which makes only one in every five CC skills even do anything. Similarly, shattering is good for burst damage, but you want sustained dps in dungeons.

This is heading towards a good build concept for PvP and WvW, and you can look at Shatterlock and other lockdown builds to get some guidance, but for a PvE/Dungeon build you really want to go for the standard berserker phantasm DPS setup.

I agree it’s misplaced; tbh I think Malicious Sorcery should be swapped with Cleansing Conflagration. Torch skills removing conditions doesn’t really fit thematically with Domination at all either; swapping them around would make for some very interesting builds, I think.

Preacher.4836:

I have two side mouse buttons, and one is bound to doge.

Preacher

         much buttons
    so evade
       wow
:D

Yeah, I’m guessing the player never attacked you directly, you were just getting hit by clones. Probably a very defensive PU spec, hanging back and staying stealthed while doing nothing in particular.

Note: Your Fire sigil is useless right now, if you’re constantly weapon swapping the Battle cooldowns will prevent it from ever proc’ing. The same will apply to Generosity if you use it. Having both a crit-proc and a swap-proc on the same weapon set tends not to work well; I’d stick to a static (Force/Accuracy) or stacking (Bloodlust/Perception) sigil for the offhand.

For scouting you need speed, mobility, and escape capability. Traited blink, portal, veil, torch, PU, Centaur / Traveler runes, etc. etc. Being able to get around the map fast, and spy on the enemy zerg without getting spotted, immob’d and pulverized.

Answers:
1) Veil, Nullfield, and Time Warp are also useful during zerg clashes (or TW speeding up golems busting gates).

2) Depends on what role you want to play. Generally, getting some points in Supply and Build mastery is always useful. 4 points in Supply makes you have a chance to regen some supply when you’re out, which can be awesome when it helps you finish that last bit of a ram. Two points in Build makes you only take 2 ticks to fully utilize 10 supply, or 3 for 15 (since you spend 6 at a time); returns diminish somewhat after that.
Everyone likes to max out the Guard Defense and Guard Killer lines ASAP, it’s a long road (115 ranks for each line) but when you max it out you get a nice chunk of stats from killing guards (+250 vit, +100pow/con). Generally people max Defense first for that tasty 2.5k HP, it’s useful no matter what you’re doing.
Apart from that, it’s nice to pick one of the siege weapons and max it out; ram mastery is nice if you run around capping towers and keeps; AC or Ballista mastery are great for defending. Trebbing is generally really boring for most people but if you max it you can do great things (drain supply from enemy structures!)

3) Hmm, there’s a document floating around somewhere that some TC commanders wrote up, look for that for a good overview.

4) No clue; I haven’t actually met that many oddly enough.

5) Zerg – frontline (melee train, mostly war/guard – most mesmer builds are too squishy to survive it) and backline (squishy AOE damage dealers, staff ele is the quintessential example. 30/30 GS nuker builds can be fun here)
Roam / havoc – solo players or smallish parties running around stealing camps, killing yaks, getting ruins, harassing under-defended towers, reporting enemy zerg positions, ganking stragglers / cutting off enemy reinforcements, etc. etc.

General comment on your build – Boonstorm type boon dispersal has two characteristics: it’s limited to 5 people, and you need to be close to the recipients. This makes it a potentially really strong build for a small roaming squad, but its effectiveness will fall off hugely in a zerg. You’re probably not going to be able to execute your boon combo in the melee train – it’s both too mobile and too dangerous; and in the backline you’re probably more useful contributing damage and boon-stripping.

Scholar runes are generally considered to be the best.

Just so you know – if you’re running S/F + S/P you only need one sword equipped – you can put just an offhand in the other set and they’ll “share” the main hand. Having two swords is still good because you can run S/S that way which I often prefer over S/P.

Utility-wise – signet heal is nice if you use it to start fights with three phantasms right away; on harder fights where images keep dying you may prefer the reliability of the mantra heal though (and 4% more damage from EM).

Other than that, remember to always be flexible and use utilities appropriate to the situation. SoI for boon-doubling, Feedback for reflects, Blink for trash skipping, Veil or Portal to help your team where necessary, Disenchanter or Null field for condi-clear and boon-stripping, and so on. The best part of mesmers is team utility, so keep an open mind and always keep your utility bar flexible.

Rotation for S/F – drop Temporal Curtain against a wall or other obstruction, target the highest-hp enemy, start casting Warden, hit 4 again halfway through the cast to clump everyone up just as the warden spawns on them. Leap/Swap in to keep everyone immobilized and cleave them down with your team. So that’s 4, 5, 4, 3, 3, 1; save 2 (blurred frenzy) for a dodge if needed.

If your alternate is S/P you can swap and cast a Duelist, and use Magic Bullet to interrupt strong attacks. If the other set was GS then you should actually start with GS 4, 2, 3 (while you’re running in from afar) and then switch to S/F and stay in it until everything is dead.