Been messing around with D/P and S/D sets on a ~0/20/30/10 (moves around between CS and Acro). Solo roaming in WvW I’m finding that D/P is really only useful for finishing. Black Powder just doesn’t mitigate as much damage as I thought it would, and a lot of people don’t mindlessly stand in the circle. Any thoughts?
I totally disagree with not using staff in small man. Staff is what I use to live when 2 thieves jump me, it is what I use to get away when 4 people all turn on me at the same time. I roam a lot it is quite common to run into 2 -3+ thief groups. Without staff 2 and chaos storm I’d be dead so often my head would spin.
Not sure youre on the same topic. Im talking about something like 5 man (guild, on vent) vs 15-30 (maybe not an ideal situation for most, but if im small manning i want to take on the extreme odds), where staff provides minimal benefit over player positioning when kiting another PvDoor guild or a pug zerg. GS is more useful in getting adds off your group members that get pulled, CCd, left behind via phant/knockback. You also need 1200 to pick off priority targets. Staff is great for solo roaming or vs smaller odds.
Btw, If you have sloppy positioning and focused by a large zerg guild in vent, staff isnt going to help – its GG.
Burst Shatter bomber w GS / SF – small teams is the bread and butter of this build. Staff is a waste of time in small man. You want 1200 for kiting and focus for pulling front lines to bomb/warrior spin attack etc. Synergizes well w guardian stability/might stacks, thief Dstorm, etc. Maybe confusion bomber for cleanup if you have another mes running shatter bomber. This is how we ran mesmers in AoN (typically 1 guard, 1 staff ele, 2 mes, 1 warrior) when i was in it and was quiet succesful in taking on pug zergs/pvdoor guilds.
I run your second build, traited the exact same way, except I switch sword/dagger in for short bow. I found that after I got used to d/p I rarely switched over to my shortbow anymore unless I was spamming cluster bombs; sword #2 just works better for me when targets try to escape, as I like to keep my signet passive up as much as possible.
I can’t even play without fleet shadow trait anymore, it’s great for getting behind targets AND keeping your swiftness up getting across maps
I honestly don’t find with the way d/p works you need the extra 20% deception recharge. Most of the time those two utilities are used as defensive escapes for me anyway. We already have tons of on-demand stealthing with proper initiative management (and in my case c+d on my second weapon set adds another stealth). If you use the #5 on pistol well, you’re already being very annoying with blinds either way.
I also find lately that as I get more and more used to d/p, my game-breaking skill is whether or not I headshot the opponents heal. I feel so much glee in my chest when I can feel their heart breaking on an interrupted heal
D/P S/D 0-10-30-30-0 sounds really interesting. Couple questions (im debating dusting off my thief alt):
- whats your general strategy for 1v1/1vX?
- ever consider Hard to Catch or Fleet of Foot vs. health in stealth?
- which runes/sigs? Would u consider something like energy/hydromancy on S/D for chasing/fleeing? Force/air on DP?
- I like that you run I-Defense in Chaos. Not enough people run this trait IMO. It pairs really well with Deceptive Evasion.
- 0/20/20/0/30 – Going glamour blind/confusion on blind with 2 fields is better for small team play IMO, for solo roaming I’d take Elasticity/Ilusionary Persona in Illusions and either Blade Training if you’re going to use S/F or Far-Reaching Manipulations for Sc/T; swap glamour fields out for Decoy/Blink. You can confi bomb w/ sword the same way you shatter bomb, just slightly delay BF until you start getting hit – deadly against WvW bads/unaware players.
- As I said, the build is a lot of fun for wvw. confusion is the single best ability in the game vs. PvDoor sheep. you’ll just run into a few hard counters as with any other but, but “shattercat” in full zerker is not one of them. between confi/condi blds, phants, pvt etc it’s the weakest 1v1 mesmer bld vs. other mesmers.
I actually used SF as well pre TP buff; didn’t see too many others running 0-20-20-0-30 for confi. Fun vs wvw masses but will get torn apart by a phant mes, PVT tank mes, exceptional PD thief etc. Eg. Melandru runes + -40 condi dur = GG.
Thanks for everyones reply. I’ve been doing SE p1/3 and HOTW as someone suggested. AC is total RNG depending on who you get in your group. SE/HOTW are at least idiot proof.
Just curious if dungeons (AC?) still the quickest way to get PVT gear or if something like farming COF for the gold and just TPing it is quicker? Thanks
From what I’ve noticed, there are very few 5/10-man teams as you get into the higher tiers. Fact of the matter is majority of the WvW population are PvErs that like to PvDoor. They have no real interest in even/small fights. If you’re looking for true 5-man competition look in TPvP. However you’re probably like myself and still cling onto WvW for the open world aspect since structured just doesn’t interest me.
It’s actually does if you trait for it…. aegis/regen/protection every 4 sec is a lot. Blind lasts 5 seconds with the spam rate of 4 second. 2.3k burn every 4 second. Cure all conditions every 4 second. 2 blast finisher every 4 second. and on top of it all stealth every 4 second — suppose you’re not in combat you’re exposed only for 1 second.
If you’re using it offensively, you have to include stealth cooldown. Have you actually tried doing it every 4 seconds in combat?
Thank you for finally “fixing” Prestige as it should never have been a channeled ability.
Now if you could only lower the CD on it. Torch CD reduction trait is just completely not viable for the current builds that actually utilize a Torch. Alternatively, extend the stealth time.
The problem with most of the suggestions here is:
In a 1vs2 fight you probably need all the suggested skills to down one of them, but when it’s time to stomp him you have no cooldowns ready.
Time Warp + stomp sounds cool, but if you can down a player in a 1vsX fight without using Time Warp, you’re fighting against noobs. Doesn’t work against smart ones.
Sigil of Rage is really an awful suggestion. Doesn’t matter if the sigil is good or bad, it’s just an awful example for stomp. Sure, you might get lucky once a day and do a quick-stomp, but how are the chances to get the proc in the right second in the middle of a 1vsX fight … ?
Osciat made some good suggestions, good because they are on short cooldowns and there should be multiple of these in every typical mesmer build. In other words: The tools are not perfect, you might have to improvise but at least you gonna have some of them ready when you need them.
On my mesmer I often use F4 shatter for stomps, but it only works against certain classes. Great against guardians, warriors, necromancers, hunters. Doesn’t work against thieves and elementalists, for example. Unfortunately you often need F4 to stay alive in 1vs2 so it wont be ready when the first one is down. How did I solve this problem? Well, my build is tanky enough to handle two (or even more) enemies without using F4. It takes me a while to down the first, but stomping is easy then. On the other hand, my tank build cannot burst the downed player to death, I don’t deal enough damage, I have to stomp them.
btw, F4 shatter is also good for revives in bad places.
My suggestion for Sigil of Rage was with respect to Sigils only. It’s a helpful tool in your arsenal to which you are dedicating 33% of your sigil capacity for an extreme benefit for builds that use MH sword setup bursts (confusion or direct dmg). Saying it procs once a day generally leads me to believe you have never used it. Majority of our weap/shatter abilities can get revivers off a corpse but aren’t going to get you a stomp, causing you to blow cooldowns such as distortion when there’s a high probability the 1v[x] will just reset. Quickness + Distortion is one of the few guaranteed stomps in the game.
Again, these are just all my opinions based on many hours of solo roaming across various builds. The downed state presents the biggest challange in this game to solo roaming, which is amplief tenfold against good players/small guild groups.
That sigil is horrific, never use it. Heres why: Being the on-crit type of sigil, when this proc goes off it locks out all other on-crit effects for 45 seconds. This means that you have to choose between 3 seconds of quickness once every 45+ seconds or something like sigil of earth, sigil of air, sigil of fire, or any other on-crit sigil that has the normal 2 second cooldown. In short, there isn’t really any comparison, any other sigil would be massively better than sigil of rage.
Have you ever actually used that sigil long term or are you making a paper analysis? This isnt meant to be sarcastic, as I thought it was total trash too until accidentally using it in a solo roaming session after buying a new MH rabid sword for my confusion bomber that was meant to get a Earth sigil.
The question at hand is what’s going to help vs. rezzing, especially against players with awareness. I admit the +DPS of the 3 sigils you mentioned is great. However, the amount of times I’ve had quickness proc right in the middle of a BF bomb into a “Press [X] to finish them” has been absolutely astounding, and against good players, especially a small guild group, far outweighed the benefit of additional DPS of anther bleed stack or a 1-3k air/fire proc. Vs bads, you can 1v[x] with Luck sigil for all i care – a sigil isn’t going to be your trump card in that situation, its just a quicker means to an end.
Of course it also procs in the middle of a fight, which obviously isn’t going to help you in downs but still helps in maximizing combo field setups from sword/[x] into staff/GS, etc.
Hopefully the explanation was helpful to see the angle im coming from.
The phantasm is too easily dodged vs people that know what they’re doing. #4 doesn’t compare to all of the other non-phantasm OH abilities in any dd or condi dmg builds.
I’m gonna put up vids of me killing bads with no OH at all; its sure to become the latest fad!
Yes the damage is better.. sword phantasm is easy to dodge, and iDuelist is impossible to dodge as it is 2-3 seconds of straight dps which follows invisible targets while also being ranged and not subject to being rapefaced by anyone throwing down any sort of aoe.
That’s the phantasm, now the 4 skill
Block damage is pretty strong I’ll agree but is it better then a ranged CC ?.. Hell no.
I see 0 mesmers playing Sword/sword mid-tier paids.
I don’t know what the pve, pve+ perspective is, nor do I care :/ sorry.
Nice burn Soyboy.. I wish I played Greatsword/sp.. I play staff s/p though..
I’m always up for a duel if you want to teach me something….
Agree with you re: iSwordsman vs iDuelist. MB however is way too easy to dodge vs people that know what they’re doing. The retal uptime alone makes focus IMO a superior OH for sword main. Sword OH blows.
Sigil of Rage – extremely undervalued given its usefulness in finishing downs in solo roaming/small grp play. You usually get the proc right after you down somebody from blurred frenzy and shatter burst.
Generosity is good on paper but never comes through when you need it.
The current zoom out max is extremely detrimental to solo play in PvP, especially in WvW with respect to seeing adds, kiting, etc. You should be able to zoom out the same as you can in PvE boss fights e.g. Jade Maw.
Looking to get my hands on a good video capture program – any suggestions for GW2 in particular (not sure if this matters)? I’m looking to get 720p output and make sure the game does not lag like crazy/the file output isn’t huge.
I find Sigil of Gen is a bit overrated. It doesn’t have on demand removal for when you already have [x] stacks on you and need to kite away from a group, which is the situation where stacks will really hurt you. 1v1-2 it works much better, but it’s also much easier to avoid conditions in the first place.
Food wise you are going to be losing way too much DPS if you use negative cond duration/removal food.
Torch is cool but there’s too much BS that gets through stealth and you lose way too much control/damage mitigation that focus/OH sword/pistol offers.
I personally recommend a higher HP pool and running null field. Just my 2 cents
Downed state makes the game easier. There is nothing about removing it that would make the game any less difficult. Stop making assumptions about my abilities. It’s silly. It’s also silly that you’d hop into this thread and try to brag. Iirc, can’t pets res a ranger when it’s downed. No wonder you love it.
It’s not often I’m downed, and if you can’t finish me off while I’m solo before my number “3” down state ability is ready to use, then you do need a big can of learn to play.
Again, I’m sorry the downed state is hard for you, truly I am.
If removing the downed state wouldn’t make the game easier for you, there would be nothing to complain about, now would there?
The only time that pet is going to save ya is if you’re in a zerg and the zerg pushes forward, you’re underwater, or you’ve managed to die while inside a keep.
1v1….It won’t ever save ya, if you’re zerging 2v1..Chances are your team-mate can res ya before your pet will be available to do it.
I cant imagine any situatuon (short of luck) where regardless of your class/build you will have the cooldowns to stomp in a 1v3+ vs a semi organized group. Maybe a aoe bomb followed by quickness but that’s about it.
Solo roaming/PKing has been a large part of my gameplay since UO days and ive yet to encounter such a full stop mechanic where i had to walk away from fights due to chain rezzing.
Why does no one on CD or IOJ ever roam?. Its impossible to find a 1 or 2-man to fight.
Hel, KH, TL, NoX and a number of the other message board pros all keep run when they see a lonely mesmer with an afro until they get numbers. Bags CD guild is probably the closest thing ive seen out of this tier for roaming capabilities.
The downed state is the most detrimental mechanic to solo roaming in WvW, and also makes large scale battles drag on forever. It has no place in a OPvP environment.
- 50% thief increased damage
- Bubble guardians chain rezzing in 1v[x]
- Culling issues with thief/mes downed stealth
- Eles fighting by doors with zero consequence due to mist form
- Requires to blow stability/invul CDs in a 1v[x] to finish someone who you already clearly outplayed, unless of course you’re a thief
- Requires prioritizing of live targets by downed state abilities – no seriously
- Foregoing kills because you’re out of CDs and there is a large add inc
Etc etc etc
- EDIT – to the people saying the downed state will make it easier for zergs to steam roll… wow, you must be playing a different game. if you’re getting crashed by a larger group b/c you failed on your positioning/kiting, the downed state isn’t going to do anything for you.
I could have sworn i dodged the creation this morning (hit dodge right when the GS mesmer got his sword in the air during the animation). Maybe im going crazy.
Always wondered this. When can you get a guaranteed dodge vs a iZerker cast – hitting dodge soon as they raise their sword? Or are you better off dodging the spin attack?
@Volatility, most of my gaming (80% of the time) is in smal (5-15 player) strike times with Teamspeak and organicsation. And the spec realy shine here. I generaly get it to work in 1 vs x versus as you say non leet players and often feels like alot of the teams of 3-4 players roam in wvwvw is unused to advance players.
I feel thu the spec is kinda strong in 1 vs 2 full geared organiced players in wvwvw, just have to play smart. Fought alot of 2 player roaming teams latley, seem be a popular setup on the server Desolation fight atm to have smal roaming partys on the morning (my solo roaming time) of 2 players of same guild. I got alot of good fights.
I will post a video today of group fighting and 1 vs 2/x tactics when enemy is well geared and deliver a good fight.
You are totaly correct that in a 1 vs 2/x you should not go for a full bursts and its good to clarify this. Ty for this imput.
If you seen the Advance tactics video (if not:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xXw97Wz7R8) you notice that save cd,s and instead keep a constant preassur on enemy while juke back and forth and whne somone is 50% ich on hp then you do the burst.
/Osicat
Totally agree with you on the small team point, that has been my playing style for the last few weeks since switching servers and I’m having a blast with the shatter build.
I may have discredited the build a bit too much in 1v[x] in my previous post. When it’s 1v2 (good, organized players), you still have a very good shot of coming out on top given smart cooldown management. When you start going 1v3+ however, with a decent GC thief in the mix that’s not going to be dumb enough to get baited by a MW burst, it’s much tougher to stay alive given my point on the need to blow cooldowns. The latter is primarily my solo roaming experience on Maguuma against servers such as Ebay, Yak’s, etc.
- A thief can still gimp you if you Decoy/MI during his C&D cast
- Ranger arrows will still hit you multiple times unless you completely LOS them after popping Decoy/MI
- RTL does not lose its pathing after Decoy/MI
After much experimenting with various direct dmg shatter specs I’ve come to the conclusion they are great from a WvW point of view in:
a) small, organized strike teams
b) vs. bad players in a 1v[x]
Given b) can be done with any class/spec, a) is where the build really shines IMO
From an offensive stand point vs. good players, in a 1v[x], you’re going to blow through cooldowns way too quickly to be effective given good players will typically not die to a plain 4x MW/BF burst and you’re going to need cooldowns to maintain pressure leaving yourself way too open for adds/coordinated bursts. IMO a somewhat tankier confusion shatter spec is a much better choice given how OP confusion is in terms of damage mitigation/controlling a fight
Anyway that’s just my 2 cents and is not meant to derail the thread. The build is a lot of fun and has it’s uses primarily in small team play
Thanks guys. Completely understand the merits of staff vs. GS. I use a staff myself. Was just speculating that given something like Truffle Steaks (+200 power after a kill for 30 secs) and the +-20 stacks of might we’re going to have after MW/COF, Spatial Surge is going to hit like a truck to finish low hps/downs. Likely better suited for small team play, where I personally find the staff to be a bit lacking and you can have other players running support for you in better fashion. Of course the trade off is you lose some of the clone gen but given the Vigor buff it shouldn’t be as bad. Going to test it tonight.
I wonder if GS is interesting again. Given all the might stackage after a standard burst rotation, the auto attack is going to hit very hard. Thoughts?
Running mirror images and dodging into the enemy before shattering is definitely an easy but bad strat for bads. I agree with that. That’s an awful strategy. Even if you are going to run mirror images – which most good mesmers don’t these days – you would never want to use it that way.
Hitting mirror has its uses if you need extra on demand burst etc. I agree opening with it is not smart. Also I would not say a shatter build is a foo strat. What makes it any more or less foo than other builds? It all comes down to the individual player. A baddie shatter mes in GC gear is easy badges – espcially the ones that just cycle the rotation eithout even paying attention to the screen. Its the new D/D ele these days.
A single mesmer running around by themselves is not OP – our popular builds have plenty of counters, just like any other class in GW2. It’s similar QQ you hear re: BS thieves, with players just sitting there and waiting to eat their stealth BS combo and hope the RNG gods are with them that day.
Most of the 1 v [x] you see are against bad players / unorganized players / players caught with their hands in their pants… you name it. A single Mesmer fighting against multiple competent opponents, especially using vent/TS, should simply not be able to win the majority of the time. Yes, there are times when everything you land is max critting in a TW bubble but that should be a rarity vs. the norm.
However, in group play, multiple mesmers synergize much much better with chain TWs/portals. If anything, that’s where the class is really OP, not single play.
Im all for a spam check but the UI shld be tweaked. The thin red line under each skill icon is pretty weak. Simple solution is to make the skill icon change a shade when youre out of range. LOS mechanic on the other hand is fine (ie no CD reset) but the bugs shld be fixed.
This is fine if your a button clicker and stare at your hot bar all the time.
I am a key binder and I never look at my hot bar. But again, this goes beyond clicking when parts of the environment can obstruct your view for no reason because thier x and y axis is all messed up on the engine.
Don’t even get me started on fighting on ramps…..my favorite is when you can hit mobs with your auto attack skill, but get obstructed on Illusion/Clone summoning…..
LOL? Looking at your hotbar for CD timers / range indicators has nothing to do with being a clicker. I have enough of a IRL field of vision to see everything that goes on my screen. Unless you’re a MIT black jack card counter and can remember 15+ CD timers in your head you must be playing the game incredibly inefficiently, especially when range is concerned, by overcompensating for “feel”, so please stop trolling.
Im all for a spam check but the UI shld be tweaked. The thin red line under each skill icon is pretty weak. Simple solution is to make the skill icon change a shade when youre out of range. LOS mechanic on the other hand is fine (ie no CD reset) but the bugs shld be fixed.
i’m just wonderin’ in this so called “patch” every class was a little tweaked a little.
we got castrated for unknown reason.
lets look closer for other classes core mechanic :
warrior – adrenaline ,works fine warriors can fight without it
guardian – virtues works , also can fight without them
thief – initiative , steals , hide a little buggy but works
ranger – pet is useless addition in wvw to 5th skill barrage (lol) & it works too fine in pve and even without a pet ranger can fight
engineer – bugged but works
elemental – constant patches with comments “now works as intended instead of overpowered before” & btw core mechanic works fine
necro – death shorud works . btw can live fine without it
and finally “The Great And Powerful We!” : core mechanic – illusions . traits that works dont stack & goes buggy -> useless. half utils are bugged . skils on every weapons have summons illusions -> so i can say they at least ineffective . we dont have choice and make a build without illusions .
so 3 month have passed since release + no bugs fixed and core mechanic is broken to hell + nerfs to “patch” …
so conclusion of my post : MAYBE BEFORE NERFING U NEED TO FIX US AT LEAST?
Have to wonder if you have read the patch notes? The Ele had one of their builds completely nerfed full stop (see Evasive Arcana). The only item the Ele had “buffed/fixed” were tooltip typos. Go to the Thief forums for even more QQ, they also had another build (one used only by a handful of people i.e. not cheese) nerfed.
TBH iZerker was IMO never a super dooper contribution to keep fighting. I have a Staff Ele that I run typically for WvW tower/keep raiding, and feel that class/build contributes a lot more w/r/t to breaking siege equip, even before the iZerker nerf. The most fun/usefulness I have with my Mesmer is taking supply camps/fighting 1v[x] – the Mes is IMO one of the best, if not THE best backstab thief counter in the game and that’s obviously still the most common enemy you’ll encounter in WvW roaming. Also, the Mes is one of the best classes at utilizing a glass cannon WvW build with our higher HP pool, and all of the damage mitigation/avoidance that we have.
Also, the PvE leveling in this game is EZMODE and I don’t see why people need to play only 1 class and expect it to be the jack of all trades. Not bragging but I rolled 3 80s – Ele, Thief and Mes (with last 2 being completely craft leveled 1-80 for ~20gp a pop) because I wanted to be able to play every aspect of the WvW game. If breaking siege is your main goal there are much better ways to do it than on a Mesmer.
. Its impossible to find a 1 or 2-man to fight.