Guild Wars 2

So for fun I went to HoM, and stood in the same spot killing the light armor target dummy with nothing but my illusionary beserker. My trait setup is 20/20/0/0/30, with phantasms have fury and +15% illusion damage. I’m using divinity runes, and no sigil on my sword. The only source of damage is the beserker’s attack, and the bleed stacks.

For my methodology, I cast illusionary beserker, then just waited until the target dummy was destroyed, counting the number of passes the beserker had to make to kill it.

4,4,3,3,3,5,6,4,3,6

During the two times that took 6 passes, I clearly saw the beserker completely miss on a pass, doinkittenage, without the health bar moving a single pixel.

Could you post your traits? So far you’re the only person I’ve run into who has said the beserker is working. I’d like to try your specific trait set up in HoM against the target dummies.

For the record, I’m an 80th level Male Norn Mesmer. I usually run shattercat (10/30/0/0/30). When I use greatsword I usually run either 20/20/0/0/30 or sometimes 20/0/20/0/30.

Okuza.5210:

Post your character details and target details please. All my tests and observations on Berserker have it working great again — all the time. No zero or low damage passes. I routinely get crit passes of 4k+ per target with berserker stats.

And yet there are a number of people witnessing behavior like Vendris’. Something is going on such that some mesmers are fine and others are not. I’m suspecting a subtle obstruction issue peculiar to character parameters such as race, gender, and size; eg. my mesmer is sylvari, female, minimum size.

If you’re making observations on this bug, post your character details. It may show a trend that would help get things fixed.

Jon Peters is incorrect.

I tested this over and over in heart of the mists. I could cast a beserker at a light armor target dummy, and between the the initial attack of the beserker + great sword attacks get it to a sliver of health.

On the beserkers second pass, it would completely miss.

If the attack was connecting and the issue was only floating damage numbers, then the second pass would have killed the target dummy. It clearly missed, and did 0 damage.

I have no doubt that there is also a bug with floating combat numbers – but it was easy to see that the beserker was flat out 100% missing.

Dastion.3106:

Jon Peters mentioned in another post that the issue with Berserker isn’t the hits connecting but an issue with the floating text.

Since Illusion damage doesn’t appear in your combat log the only way to test it would be to get a friend to help you and compare their log to the floating text.

If you want reliable swiftness you still need to either use a focus or rune a full set of runes of the centaur unfortunately.

The fact that anet has not responded to a bug that makes it impossible to use a mesmer in a tournament with at least an acknowledgement of the problem is causing me to severely rethink my decision to play this game, honestly.

This is a pretty good way to say “we don’t care about our customers”. The message may be unintentional, but that’s the message.

Noince.7364:

Ok, first time poster here so bear with me. I took a general look around the forums but found no other thread, so here goes:

Mesmer clones/phantasm sometimes spawn naked and does nothing in tournaments. This effect lasts through the whole match.

My speculation on this issue:

I highly believe this has something to do with illusion coding related to PvE/sPvP gear. Pre-14 Dec. patch, the coding split and clearly identified PvE/sPvP gear codes… and come 14Dec. patch, some bug appeared in it.
The result? Illusions attempt to spawn using PvE equipped gear in sPvP, fails, bugs out and spawns naked doing nothing.

-Details: This bug occured in a free-tournament match I joined, and lasted throught the whole match. Tested ONCE in a normal sPvP match and the illusions worked properly. Not sure if related to hotjoin/free/paid tournies.

Needless to say, I looked & felt like a total kitten doing pathetic damage the whole match. I almost felt as if the clones spawned with Rick Astley’s face and most famous music playing.

Edit: Screenshots and details.
Did some further testing, and came up with new speculations on this bug. I did another free-tourny and the same bug occured again. Now I believe this code is related to the new “no weapon / trait swapping restriction” introduced to tournies.

A picture paints a thousand words…enjoy

No, they are not actually doing damage. If you’d bothered to read the thread, you would know that Jon is incorrect. Multiple people in this thread have tested, and posting results.

Jon’s assertion that they are hitting and doing damage, but the floaters are not appearing, is wrong.

The most frustrating part of trying to report the bugs that are crippling our class is the people who come to the forums to disrupt threads and mock and insult people, who have no idea what they are talking about.

Redscope.6215:

JonPeters.5630:

On the IZerker he does hit correctly now but there is an issue with damage floaters not always appearing the we are now trying to track down.

Jon

Hahaha. This one made me laugh.

So they’re actually doing damage but people don’t see numbers and complain? Anyone else see the irony of this and the philosophy the company takes of “not playing the UI”?

I know it sounds like I’m being harsh, but I truely do find this funny…

Not just in UB – in any area that you get transformed in, as RinKyu stated. Just did an AC run and ran into the issue there during the part where you are ghosts.

Jon – I ask that you double check your assertion that the problem is damage floaters.

I just got back from heart of the mist, and double checked. The beserker on it’s second pass at a target dummy is simply missing. What I am seeing is not a damage floater problem. I can tell, because when he misses the target dummies health does not drop, at all.

I have watched the beserker start his second pass on light target dummies with just a sliver of health left, with my auto attack turned off. The beserker whirls through it, completely misses, and does 0 damage. I know this to be true because if it did any damage, it would have destroyed the target dummy.

There may be a problem with damage numbers as well but that is not the problem I am seeing. I am seeing the beserker completely miss.

JonPeters.5630:

ddoi.9264:

I don’t get it. The new Prismatic Understanding is a great buff that would have given the extra push to use the torch over others in pve…and they decided to exclude it.

Even more buffs to shatter build. Looks like every mesmer will only be shattering now. Who can say no to 30~50 seconds of 3-stack might?
Underwater, signet, mantra buffs, blade training fix, all nice.

Prismatic boon part works with prestige, we just made it so the duration part doesn’t because a trait to increase cast time of that skill would be bad. Sorry unclear notes there. On the IZerker he does hit correctly now but there is an issue with damage floaters not always appearing the we are now trying to track down.

Jon

Beserker is still broken. I thought it was fixed the first time I tried it after this patch as well, but then I noticed it was 100% missing it’s second attack chain. Then I noticed it is often still missing some of it’s first attack chain as well.

Kilauea.4217:

Berserker is still broken but there were some nice improvements.

Yeah. It appears to be broken in a slightly different way – which is why I thought it was fixed at first

I’m reporting a bug, which I have just tested extensively, so that the bug can be addressed.

I tested it with 3 other mesmers in heart of the mists, for a good 20 minutes, and we all experienced the same thing.

Claire.4683:

ok debbie downer

The illusionary beserker now 100% misses it’s second attack chain almost every time.

So – do we have to wait another month for you guys to attempt another fix? Was it really impossible for anyone from anet to take a mesmer to HoM, cast a beserker a few times and see it’s broken just in a different way before the patch was released? Seriously?

Been testing it with another mesmer in HoM and we’re both seeing it. 100% misses are very common on the second attack run.

The beserker now seems to be reliably hitting the target dummies in HoM with the first attack chain. However, now it very often 100% misses on the SECOND attack chain.

Update – the beserker appears to be missing attacks in it’s second attack run now instead of the first.

Kumakichi.2583:

Vendris.4201:

Just tested against target dummies – beserker is wtfpwning the target dummies again without missing. Haven’t taken a close look at damage but at least he’s not whiffing anymore.

Good to hear. I’m also interested to see how the Warlock does. Maybe it was just me but the damage felt like it decreased some after the last patch.

Ok, I found the bug.

Illusionary beserker now reliably hits with the first attack run
And reliably completely misses with his second attack run

Just tested against target dummies – beserker is wtfpwning the target dummies again without missing. Haven’t taken a close look at damage but at least he’s not whiffing anymore.

Portal now has a cap on number of “uses” per cast (effectively limiting the number of people who can pass through it).

In light of this balance fix, please reduce the portal cooldown to what it used to be.

Aha! Thanks for the feedback – that’s actually good to know and makes sense. From 1 – 20th I think I can count the number of times I’ve actually bothered to cast heal on one hand. At times I wondered if there was a bug that was making me immune to damage, hah.

If the power curves are just very different between the two classes but it levels out later, that’s better.

dekou.6012:

Vendris.4201:

Running a simple greatsword build with healing signet,

That’s the “problem”. Healing Signet is a bit OP in the beginning, as I don’t think its regen scales properly. When my warrior was lvl 20 or so, she could kill a veteran mob without dodging or taking noticeable damage due to how much her signet regened. At lvl 80, that regen is barely noticeable, at least without heavy Healing Power investment.

In general, I don’t think my lvl 80 warrior is more powerful than my lvl 80 mesmer. Warrior has better AoE damage, but is much worse escape wise. If you screw up as a mesmer, you’ve got a thousand ways to escape, while a warrior who screwed up can just dash away and hope for the best.

To be clear – I don’t have any real problem with PVE on my mesmer (other than the current bugs which greatly hurt phantasm builds) – I enjoyed leveling up, and 80th level content while sometimes challenging doesn’t cause me undo frustration.

I’m not so much complaining that mesmer was too hard, as I am saying I’m astonished at how ridiculously easy the Warrior is by comparison, for the same PVE content that I played on my mesmer.

I can not speak to higher level PVE or PVP because I have only experienced that on my Mesmer, of course.

I played a backbreaker build in Guildwars 1 in PvP a lot – and a Mesmer / Warrior, so starting a warrior next seemed natural.

My mesmer is still my favorite, and I wait with held breath for our bug fixes!

I’m going to blow a little steam.

I have a mesmer, 80th level, full exotics, yada yada. I love the class. My favorite character in guildwars 1 was also a mesmer. He’s the only character I’ve really played. Leveled to 80th, then tons of WvW, and a dungeon now and then.

While waiting to see if the patch this month fixes some of our worst bugs, I decided to roll a warrior just for a chance of pace. I’ve played him to 15th level now.

It’s quite possible that later on in the games warriors drop drastically in the power curve – I leave open this possibility. But wow – right now? I actually started to wonder if my character was bugged and simply couldn’t take damage for awhile. Running a simple greatsword build with healing signet, I really can just auto attack my way through the game. I’m doing story mode missions a few levels above me and yawning through them. I feel like I’d have to actively try to die.

I enjoyed leveling up my mesmer. 1-40 were of course a bit of a pain as I learned the class and waited on the traits that really open the class up. I didn’t think it was TOO hard, and this is not a petition to nerf warriors. It’s just an expression of disbelief that the PVE class “balance” in this game could be THIS ridiculously imbalanced.

Ok, enough ranting!

I think it is becoming painfully obvious that the person or people who designed the original class and combat mechanics and wrote the code for it is / are no longer at the company.

The bugs in the last few patches that have been introduced smell of people trying to fix code that they don’t really understand.

Each release now they try to fix the fix from the previous release, and break it even more.

Do I have a chance to:

1) Keep the thief from ever initiating the attack at all, and putting the skill on cooldown, and then
2) After the thief has successfully initiated the attack, do I get a half a second to stare at him and ponder other ways to deny the attack he’s already successfully hit with?

That’s the state of our phantasms.

Embolism.8106:

Vendris.4201:

I’m going to pick on thieves a little – where is my chance to react to a thief backstabbing me out of stealth? It does far more damage than my phantasms, and I have no chance to deny the attack.

Well, you do actually have a chance to deny the attack, by using Riposte/Counter or casting Chaos Storm on yourself (which has a good chance of giving you Aegis and Dazing the Thief). You could also use a stealth skill yourself to prevent them from acquiring you as a target, use Distortion, etc.

It is more difficult than countering Phantasms of course, but it isn’t impossible.

JonPeters.5630:

Fyi, the delay on first attack has been present since BWE2. It is there for balance reasons to give enemies a moment to react to the powerful summon.

First off: thank you for giving an intended date on the fix for beserker.

Second off: your statement that the delay is there to give enemies a time to react to the summon makes 0 sense. An enemy can react to the summon of a phantasm by interrupting you, blinding you, stealthing, stepping our of range, or dodging you – thus denying the summon from being summoned and putting the skill on cooldown.

Do a comparison between the opening attack of a phantasm, and some of the other spike damage skills in the game. Then please show us some concrete reasons as to why the opening attack of a phantasm is considered so powerful that an enemy should have two chances to completely negate the damage – once by denying the summons at all, and second by being able to kill it or dodge it after it’s summoned and before it does any damage.

I’m going to pick on thieves a little – where is my chance to react to a thief backstabbing me out of stealth? It does far more damage than my phantasms, and I have no chance to deny the attack.

Yes. “Phantasms Have Fury” allows the beserker to attack and miss immediately, instead of waiting for 1-2 seconds to attack and miss.

quote=882236;Wittle.5473:]

The 1-2 standby seconds the Zerker now takes to attack is also killing the skill.
Fighting a champion or a AoE player can easily make the skill useless as it will kill the phantasm before it attacks.

As we get nerfed every patch, I’m getting demotivaded every patch.

That is counteracted by selecting the trait “Phantasms Have Fury”[/quote]

They obviously have no intention of fixing this. At this point, I no longer consider it a bug – I consider it a deliberate nerf.

Knote.2904:

That skill is definately very very strong.

Although instead of reducing the pull range, I think a good compromise would be to make it suck targets onto the center point instead of yanking them past the curtain, this would nerf it’s ability to fling people off walls and ledges a bit but also make it much better tool for gathering things to be aoe’d, and would work much better with iWarden.

Yay/Nay? =p

Nay!

There is nothing wrong with this skill. It is not overpowered. It does not need to be changed because some person cried that mesmers still have one thing they can do to someone on a wall in a siege if they happen to be using a specific weapon.

Limnage.9581:

The entire Inspiration trait tree is just bad. .

No, it’s really not.

5 – Grants relatiation to phantasms I ’ll grant you is buggy and not so good.

For the Minors though we have:

• I. Create feedback bubble when reviving an ally. This is good.
• II. Glamour skills recharge 20% faster. This is really good. More Feedback, more Null Field (and more Veil but I never use Veil)
• III. Shatters give vigor. This is good support.
• IV. Remove conditions when you heal. This can be good in that it gives you more flexibility in your utility choices.
• V Phanstasms have 20% more health. This is pretty worthless I agree
• VI. Move faster for each illusion. More of a pvp trait arguably.

15. Next trait – phantasms give regen. It’s not awesome, and it’s a little buggy – but I’ve seen it help. If you’re going to inspiration 20 anyway, it’s not terrible.

Next, major traits:

• VII More malice when wielding a scepter. Scepter in PVE? Yeah, ok, this is not so great for a dungeon.
• VIII. Wardens Feedback – More wardens? How is this bad?
• XI. Glamour skills last longer – this is good.
• X. Heal allies when you cast a mantra. Some people here swear by mantra builds. I personally don’t like them, but I won’t call this trait trash when I see others having great success with it.

25. Phantasms do 15% more damage. This is definitely NOT trash.

Ok now for grandmaster

• XI. Shattering removes a condition. Never tried this one personally, so I can’t speak to it’s usefulness.

• XII. Heal a small amount when shattering. In theory, this combined with giving vigor on shatter sounds interesting with a healing armor setup – but I have not personally tried it so can’t vouch for it.

The inspiration line is a mix of traits that are good in pve, some that are great in pvp, and some that are sub par. The entire tree is certainly not bad.

I liked the GW1 meta game of “try to counter someone else’s build with a new build” better than the GW2 meta game of “whine on the forums about any skill that someone killed me with.”

I find that traiting 20 in inspiration, which gives you both “phantasms give regeneration”, and a cooldown reduction for casting iWarden is better for overall support than a mantra heal build. You of course do not heal as much as with the mantra build – but, you do give a little regeneration to your group and you can still do significant amounts of dps.

Also, inspiration minor trait III (give vigor to allies when shattering illusions) is a nice choice with 20 in inspiration as well. Toss in some runes of dwayna to give regen when you cast heal, and you have a pretty nice “support” set up that still packs a punch.

“Nerf everything in the game I haven’t figured out how to counter yet.”

Lumines.3916:

Aberrant.6749:

Lumines.3916:

Mesmers unlike a lot of classes also have a much bigger variety of viable specs

This made me lol.

Mes is very limited right now. Staff+sword/pistol or focus. That’s it.

Scepter, sword offhand, and torch suck… and GS is bugged (mind stab will continue to suck even after they fix the zerk bug as well… not to mention the bug where wave doesn’t push back close up people).

Carry on rationalizing however you want to, won’t change what’s factual. Mesmers have shatter, phantasm, and condition builds going for them.

If you can not completely shut down and destroy a phantasm build mesmer you are simply not a good player in pvp.

Phantasms are summoned with easily seen “tell” animations and there are multiple ways, once a mesmer starts summoning a phantasm, to deny them that summon and put that skill on cooldown. If the mesmer does somehow manage to summon a phantasm, you can still dodge the phantasms attack as well.

In it’s current state, a phantasm mesmer build is one of the easiest builds in the game of any class to completely shut down.

Stratigo.1976:

Reading this and many other threads, I have come to the conclusion that what Anet needs most is a competent PR department

This.

Just some communication – an apology for the amount of time this is taking, the plan for addressing it, and an estimated date for the fix.

Unless of course they simply hope we’ll forget about it and don’t plan on ever fixing it, or have no one left on staff competent to fix it.

In WvW I’m currently running the “shattercat” build (10/30/0/0/30) with rampagers armor and jewelry and superior centaur runes. The +power on the centaur runes certainly doesn’t hurt anything. The +bleeding duration I doubt has ever turned the tide of a battle (especially since I believe it only applies to bleeds from you, and not your clones) but I do run staff so it probably gets in an extra bleed tick now and then.

I would say, if you’re getting the runes for the bleed duration it’s not worth it – go with +condition duration instead.

I personally think mobility is a huge advantage in WvW. Having a fast cooldown heal (mirror) allows me (and my group) to have swiftness almost permanently without having to use a focus is huge, and that’s why I use them.

I’m tired of people who think that the only thing mesmer players care about it power. A lot of us love(d) how unique our class was. It wasn’t about being OP – it was about having so many options and so many different ways to play.

Instead of nerfing mesmer to the point that a 20 dueling / 30 illusion is the only viable build in pvp, how about making every class as fun, refreshing, and original to play as the pre nerf mesmer?

Xom.9264:

Mesmers are still dominating and are so easy to play strong I have decided to make a PvE/WvW one to go with the easy wins I have been getting on my spvp tpvp Mesmer.

Honestly have you no shame? We all know Memsers are still gods of pvp or have you actually never tried other classes or looked at the team make ups of tpvpers….

I felt like making the most OP class I made a Mesmer I win.

Instead of nerfing something fun, how about add some other interesting tactical abilities to other professions then.

Kimbald.2697:

Vendris.4201:

“Change anything in the game that can be a tactical advantage for people who bother to organize!”

An organized guild that understands WvW, has clear objectives and communicates is going to have an “unfair” advantage in WvW no matter how many skills you get nerfed trying to turn this game into a brainless deathmatch FPS.

After “nerf portals they are unfair!” it will be “nerf siege weapons! people who are able to organize funds in order to purchase and use them have a game breaking advantage!”

difference is that sieges etc aren’t limited to a single profession.
Portals are, which is what annoys people.
No other profession offers a utility this strong.

Some people won’t be happy until WvW is nothing but two zergs facing each fighting with only their auto attack abilities. “Mesmer portals allow some tactics, can we get rid of that?”. “Thieves make me have to worry about stealthed players, can we remove their stealth?” “Sometimes warriors and elementalists get away when I want to kill them, can we keep them from doing that?”

“Change anything in the game that can be a tactical advantage for people who bother to organize!”

An organized guild that understands WvW, has clear objectives and communicates is going to have an “unfair” advantage in WvW no matter how many skills you get nerfed trying to turn this game into a brainless deathmatch FPS.

After “nerf portals they are unfair!” it will be “nerf siege weapons! people who are able to organize funds in order to purchase and use them have a game breaking advantage!”

I find your statement that glass is only good in a zerg to be contrary to my experience. I run shattercat with full rampager gear and I mostly attack and defend supply camps in WvW.

juno.1840:

I’d recommend a stat distribution of:

> 2000 power
> 1800 precision (>45% crit rate)
> 1300 toughness
> 1200 vitality

Glassy is great until you get hit then you’re dead. I love running into glassy mesmers on my GS mesmer because I know I’ll win.

Also glassy is only effective in a zerg where you can “hide” in the crowd. Get into a real fight (which you will at some point I guarantee it) and you’ll die quick. Then you’ll be like “<insert profession here> needs to be nerfed!!!”. In reality you just built your toon to die easy.

The portal cooldown nerf did absolutely nothing to change the situation of portal bombing in WvW – it just ruined portal as a skill for anything but portal bombing in WvW.

I used to love using chaos II (chaos storm on falling damage) + portal when defending keeps from sieges. Drop a portal on the wall, jump into the zerg creating a chaos storm, drop a feedback bubble + another chaos storm, heal a downed teammate, drop another portal and portal back up. Just me, not taking 20 people through with me.

Now, the cooldown on portal being nearly as long as an elite skill makes it worthless to have on my bar – yet people can still portal 20+ people with it just like before.

There was no thought put into this “fix” whatsoever.

Osicat, I have a glamour anti zerg build I use from time to time when I need a change of pace in WvW – glamours recharge 20% faster, glamours traited to blind, blind traited to cause confusion, then also use the signet that does an AoE blind + the pistol, and running with Feedback and Null Field.

I killed a phantasm spec mesmer with it last night and I felt so guilty after

Osicat.4139:

I been running into some other mesmers from (FR) vizunah this morning and If anyone read this I must say i almost feel sorry for film but the phantams spec is so weak now vs a shatter mesmer. Was 2 vs 1 a mesmer and a thief and in a 1,5 min fight the mesmer didnt get 1 phantasm out.

See this chain and try throw a phantasm out. 2 sec sword (immune to phantasm, dodge (immune again) 4 sec disorsion (immune) dodge again (immune) and now sword off cd… 2 new sec etc etc

I not sure how arena going to fix it but atm shatter mesmer deffo i a hard counter to phantasm mesmers.

Osicat – I tried vigor on shatter today for a bit – very interesting. I’m going to take it out for a longer spin in WvW tonight. With a sigil of energy on my staff and sword, and that trait, I feel like a perpetual vigor machine. Being able to generate clones faster than I can shatter them is not bad – since staff clones manage to get in an attack or two sometimes before the next shatter, they end up adding some conditions.

I’m also finding that dropping the Illusionary Warden when someone closes into melee range while I hit shatter for distortion, then following it up with sword #2 is a really nice combo. It’s an interesting shift in gameplay from the Illusionary Duelist. Which is not to say “better” – just really different.

Yeah – I’m really not having much trouble getting my phantasms actually out, outside of the “obstructed!” messages that pop up on perfectly flat terrain due to general line of sight bugs in the game.

The ibeserker attack bug however definitely affected one of my builds. The opening for the greatsword shatter build I used to run was pistol 4 (duelist for initial burst) + pistol 5 (for stun) + iberserker (for initial ibserker attack damage) + GS #2 (for damage and then shatter.

The ibeserker routinely missing on it’s first attack reduces the damage of that opening quite a bit.

The “can’t summon when blocked / blinded” I can live with. It hasn’t affected me that much in WvW. The ibeserker attack bug however makes me sad, as it reduces the flexibility of the class until it is fixed.

Osicat.4139:

Shatter specc is not in anyvway as affected by the phantasm generation change. I also by some use of stunns distraction, cripple etc nerly always get my Iwarlock and duelist out, then ofc after 1 st attack I shatter them.

I dont say al have to be shatter spec or that even the shatter spec is the only viable way, not long ago we were a minority that overcomplicated the class and destroyed the fantastic phantasms that ppl saw as the source of renegation, dmg and condition. Who knows soon somone find a way that works fantastic for them that not alot of ppl play and wirk well with bew game changes,

In general, I played MMOs for 8+ years, I have always sticked to 1 class and adaped to whatever changes they throw at us, sometimes I have totaly changed playstyle etc. Its about exprement constantly.

Think they said it best in 300

- our nerfs wil darken the sky
- then we will fight in the shadow.

/osicat

Im sure this posetive attitude will anoy some ppl but I think its alot more effective to adapt and find ways that work thean go al depressed by every change. Mmo,s change al tine. Its about swim thru a river not thru a lake.

fadeaway.2807:

Man, I wish people like Vendris would actually play the class in question before commenting.

obvious troll is obvious.

What I really don’t understand is what must be going on behind the scenes with the code. It’s not like delay = delay * 0.8 should be that difficult to do for each phantasm, right?

Osicat.4139:

Seems like a solid build mate and Fun to see ppl in the community accualy theorycraft new ways to play instead of dig themself down after GS got nerfed.

Have you thought of use “vigor to you and allys on shatter”? Would grant nice survival with close to perma dodge + clone generation due to vigor on crits with 89% crit chanse + vigour on shatters.

I haven’t tried that trait yet because I like how menders purity covers for not running with a condition removal utility – but I’ll give it a shot. Mass Invis + Runes of Lyssa is a pretty good condition removal panic button although the cooldown on Mass Invis is pretty long.

Runes of Lyssa + + Signet of Inspiration (transfer boons to allies) is great fun in a dungeon group in a boss encounter with this setup as well.

I played with the build in WvW last night some more, and had a fantastic time with it. I’m going to settle into the build for awhile and see what I can do.

Now you’re simply trying to change your original argument. You started out by saying that people were upset that an exploit had been fixed.

Do you want to have an actual discussion about the real bugs in the last patch, or do you want to invent straw man arguments so that you can “win”?

Pyrial.2917:

Vendris.4201:

Oh, and to clarify – that was obviously not directed at you porter – it was directed at Pyrial.

This is for both you and Porter. The rep clearly states it was associated with the bug fix which allowed boomerang abilities to do too much damage. They do not say it is related to the los fix. Perhaps you both need a dose of take your own advice

First I’d like to thank osicat for breaking me out of the mindset that I had to take Chaos X if I was using the staff. Experimenting with the Shattercat build taught me that the staff is still an excellent weapon even without the 20% cooldown trait.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with various shatter builds (my personal requirement for a shatter build is Dueling X and Illusions XI) and found one that really clicked with me. The build trades some of the up front burst potential of the “shattercat” build for some increased survivability and a few interesting tricks.

The build is here:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8dl0zKq3UTmGb9IyJFQ3yh6R3ldfXJF82FC;T8Ag1yqEUJpSVliKqiMFJKyWkrIZRrRGFs/A

Staff + Sword / Focus
Healing: Mirror
Utilities: Decoy / Mirror Images / Blink
Elite: Mass Invisibility
Dueling 20 (IV Blade Training, X Deceptive Evasion)
Inspiration 20 (IV Menders Purity, VIII Warden’s Feedback)
Illusions (IV Masterful Reflection, VII Illusionary Elasticity, XI Illusionary Persona)

Gear: Light Mortal Armor (replaced Grenth runes with Lyssa)
Rampager Jewelry

This build gets quite a bit of survivability from a few things:

1. Mirror is a low cooldown heal that reflects projectiles
2. Heal removes a condition with menders purity
3. Heal gives a random boon with Runes of Lyssa
4. Mass Invisibility removes all conditions + gives all boons with Runes of Lyssa
5. Chaos Storm / Chaos Armor
6. Distortion from Illusionary Persona
7. Distortion from Sword #2
8. Phase Retreat (Staff #2)

The build obviously does not do as much up front damage kittentercat- but it does hit pretty hard.

I’ll be doing some tests with full rampagers once I can afford another full set of Lyssa runes – but I find I’m liking the balanced mix of traits from Light Mortal karma armor (which I initially picked up just because I liked the looks).

Anyway – I love the mesmer class (I don’t play anything else), and I wanted to share in case someone else might enjoy this build. Any questions happily answered!

Oh – I call it shatterpong because the multiple ways to reflect projectiles back at attackers (mirror heal, temporal curtain, and illusionary warden) made me think of playing pong.

Have fun out there.

Oh, and to clarify – that was obviously not directed at you porter – it was directed at Pyrial.