I personally haven’t seen people hogging temple events but I do think the temple events should be more telegraphed. For example maybe the statues across Orr that are linked to a temple should flicker on and off when the event is in progress so people can tell what temple events are up even if they aren’t in the zone. Just a thought.
I did already, but not because Mesmers get nerfed (like everyone else, besides that this patch is not bad at all) I just like to have a easier character to play sometimes lolgreatsword.
It’s the general consensus on this board that until you hit ~40 leveling a mesmer can be a pain. I used Staff and Greatsword for leveling and that also seems to be what everyone else suggests when leveling a mesmer. The combination of the staffs defense and the greatsword offence and knock back lets you handle larger mobs pretty easily. Have fun!
As far as I know, there seems to be 2 sets of condition gear out for thief, a power/vit/condition set and a prec/tough/condition set. Ideally we would want a condition/tough/vit set but as far as I know, that doesn’t exist.
That being said, are the karma vendors and dungeons the best source to acquire these sets? Currently I’m chasing the power/vit/condition armor, im farming CoF for this set. Are there better condition armor somewhere out there, or is this CoF dungeon set the best choice of exotics for a condition thief?
Here is my condition thief. All the armor is the same set up. Blades have 10% each bleed duration. Focus on Healing and condition damage.
You have 10% bleed duration on both of your daggers? If so you should change one to a different sigil, they do not stack with each other so the second bleed duration sigil is a wasted slot, maybe sigil of energy would be a better good choice? That’s what I use anyway :P.
Actually they buffed mantras slightly on dec14 patch
“Decreased all Mantra cast times by one second.”
I haven’t tried it yet though, but I have seen people running mantra healing builds (restorative mantras in the inspiration tree) before this patch and it seemed ok. I can only assume its performance has improved now.
You may find advice hard to find on this board considering how everyone rips on them but I’m sure google can help you.
D/D Ele. Bunker stats for increased survivability. Pbaoe destroys clones, mitigating mesmer effectiveness while also hitting you. High mobility that allows the profession to swoop in and escape. Control and condition removal.
try one. even as a beginner and you can faceroll 1 to 5 with attunement spam and still do fairly ok. Not great of course but you’ll be surprised. The great d/d eles take it to a complete shock and awe level
Everyone keeps saying ele this ele that i have an 80 ele aswell bunker speced and i got to say its easy to kill people if you know wat ur doing and ive faced so many bad D/D eles on my mesmer it was a cake walk killing them all they ever do is attack my clones half the time they never even get me below 18k hp x.x so not all new people playing ele can wreck a good mesmer its just not going to happen im sorry to break it to you.
Did you even read what he wrote? He said “do fairly ok” and “Not great of course” no where did he say noob ele wreck mesmers.
1) I use either arcane thievery or null field, these usually do the job just fine for me. But maybe someone else with more PvP experience can chime in here for a more in depth answer.
2) Runes of the undead have been working great for me. Remember that increased condition duration from runes/sigils is NOT transferred to clones so getting those runes/sigils may be a waste considering how the number of conditions that come from staff clones/phantasm crits.
3) I don’t know if the trade off would be worth it, but I also haven’t done any testing on it. Maybe you can try going into the mists and testing out rabid vs rampagers to see the difference in bleed stacks and damage.
4) I’ve never used vit on gear so i wouldn’t know.
Is there a reason the drop rate is so insanely low? I know its needed to create a set of gear with a new stat config but it’s not like it’s legendary or something. You need 75 flowers for ONE piece of gear at 25 silver in the auction house, that is way too much. I figure that either the number of passion flowers needed to make the gear should be decreased or the drop rate should be increased.
Just seems like ANet is limiting player build variety for no good reason.
So does anyone have a valid reason why they would have the drop rate set so low?
At first reading your post I though “QQ more dude”, but thinking about it more I completely agree. Either the blindness needs to pass to the summoned illusions and they miss the first sttack OR blind needs to start blocking entire skills, meaning when a warrior uses 100b when blinded it makes him miss the entire time.
I’m a full time sceptre user. While I’m all for buffs, as a clone creating confusion tool the sceptre is powerful at what it does. If you look at the clone creating third attack on its own, the spawn rate appears very slow. But if you’re managing your CD’s, traits, utilities, and keeping your auto attack going constantly, slotting in your other skills at the right time, your clone creation rate is constant allowing for a constant stream of shatters to be sent at your target.
I think a lot of this comes down to play styles. I see a lot of mesmer vids/phantasm builds etc where players like to summon and keep their clones on the ground, firing off attacks, doing their DPS, or whatever it is they do. If you want to create a heck of a lot of clones and do a hell of a lot of shatters, then the sceptre is amazing if only because of its clone spawn on 3rd attack. You’ve just got to build it right, and get very good at managing your fight around the 3 attack chain.
Just to give some examples: You want to fire your sceptre #2 skill (for confusion stacks) the moment after the clone is created, and preferably when you’ve got three clones in the works. You can use skills like iMage or temporal curtain in between auto attacks without breaking the chain, so long as you go straight back to #1. You just gotta play smart.
The problem with the chain is that in almost all shatter based builds, you will have clone on dodge roll, as well as a lot of precision for high crit rate. The crits provide you with almost constant vigor uptime, which means lots of dodging. Using a sword, you have a very short cooldown double leap combo finisher clone creator packaged into 1 skill, and you get a lot of vigor+ decent damage from blurred frenzy, though you do lose confusing images. The final result is that from dodge rolls, utilities, and other weaponskills, you have more clones than you know what to do with, certainly more than you can shatter even with maxed shatter rate. The clone from the scepter autoattack simply isn’t needed, and you’re left with a sub-standard attack chain that is both slow, and does low damage.
In addition to this point if you have the scepter for condition damage all you want is confusing images and the auto attack kittens you. The reason being if you’re smart you’ll have staff clones up and why would you replace staff clones with scepter clones in a condition build? Also in shatter builds you typically want power not condition damage so confusing images becomes useless to you and as pyroatheist stated you get more clones than you need when using clone on dodge and main hand sword.
The scepter seems to be a mediocre weapon that doesn’t mesh very well with any build. I use it on my condition mesmer but only because I have no other decent choice.
lol i haven’t studied it myself but i believe the only useful skill you’d have is the screech stun thing if you manage to land it but it takes a while to cast/wind up. The rest are dumb physical pecks and attacks that you probably can’t actually land. I think they changed the moa skills in the last patch so i’m not sure what the skills are now.
regardless it’s probably much more subpar than what a normal player can do so i would just say run and dodge and don’t try. just stay alive til it wears off LOL
This last patch they changed the moa skills into things that are supposedly not complete garbage. Although I can’t tell you exactly what to do because I haven’t tested it fully myself.
Your build sounds fun! I run 0/25/25/0/20 or /020/25/0/25 condition damage spec staff/scepter-whatever . I hardly ever die and I never let up the pressure on my target, it’s really cool.
It has pros and cons, definitely. The idea is that you make the clone and the enemy will go focus on that instead, giving you time to heal yourself or confuse him to death and get a second wind.
There are no pros, only cons.
The enemy can easily figure out which one is the downed player, and which one is the clone. This is because the clone ALWAYS appears first, followed by the downed player.
Feel free to test this yourself when you down a mesmer who uses this ability. The clone always appears first, ignore it, and wait for the downed mesmer to re-appear (occurs 1 second after the downed clone appears).
Then your team mates should be able to do the same yes? So your point is moot.
I love GS/Staff, I usually run rampagers (main stat is crit) gear and at least 20 points in dueling for the 15 point trait sharper images (illusions inflict bleeding on crit) and the 20 point trait deceptive evasion (clone on dodge). The GS clones are great for stacking bleeds because each auto attack hits three times meaning they have more chances to crit. The staff, as tqhx said is an awesome defensive weapon and the clones can stack bleeds from criting and their normal auto attack.
My build I’m trying out right now is 0/20/25/0/25 and I’m having a lot of fun with it. If i were you I’d mess around with your traits and play some matches until you find something that suits how you like to play.
1. The shortest cooldown Phantasm (when traited – 9 seconds).
2. A Phantasm that hits incredibly hard.
3. A Phantasm capable of avoiding some damage, due to its leaping in and out of combat.
4. Two leap combo finishers for the mesmer (amazing for applying Chaos armour).
5. A block (which deals good damage) on a short cooldown (when traited – 9 seconds) that also provides a clone.
6. A daze (when traited – 9 seconds).
7. A requirement for only 1 trait to reduce both weapon sets cooldowns.
The S/P setup provides:
1. A much lengthier Phantasm skill (iD) (when traited – 12 seconds).
2. A Phantasm that hits incredibly hard.
3. A leap and projectile combo finisher.
4. A stun/daze/blind (when traited – 20 seconds)
5. A large amount of bleeding through the iD/Sharper Images.
I really don’t see any reason to ever go with the pistol if you want the highest damage output.
I’m sorry but you’re wrong. It completely depends on your gear and traits. If you have full berzerker maybe S/S is better in some cases with the 20% CDR, but if you have SI and rampagers/rabid then S/P is probably much better.
I agree! It took me maybe 3 hours total to complete it the first time, with breaks so I wouldn’t get too frustrated. Too many people QQing about this event!
If you’re going to use the scepter learn how to play with it dude. I like scepter how it is, its great for on clone death effects as well as stacking confusion.
GS is hardly a speciality to phone home about, it shouldn’t be so indirect (more so since GS trait is in Domination, not Dueling).
So to sum it up, our Clones which have no secondary function:
Scepter
Greatsword
Our clones which have extremely marginal secondary functions:
Spear
As far as adding something to Scepter clones goes.. how about, you know, if they summoned clones? And I don’t mean clones under my control which I shatter. I mean extra clones bound to them (and no, those in turn do not summon more clones :P ), which just disappear if the Clone is shattered away.
That way in theory you could have 12 Clones out with Scepter. Sure you can only shatter 3, but imagine the amount of confusion you could cause.
Hell yes that would be awesome, it would make my on clone death build much better!
I’m pretty confused by the precision love here. Have I misunderstood it? Can conditions crit? I have a couple traits that trigger on criticals but they aren’t nearly that vital.
I didn’t think precision mattered that much either way tbh, especially since I have ~1200 from my duelist traiting alone. I personally go for condition damage – toughness – healing power. I recently realized how unbelievably better ether feast is when you’re loaded with toughness, healing power, and no vitality. I heal over half my health with a 20s cooldown and it takes a lot to bring me down that far in the first place (not to mention the time I buy pumping out clones and teleporting). This is with a pvp perspective btw.
The reason everyone loves precision is the 15 point trait in the dueling tree, with high crit you can stack bleeds like nobody’s buisness.
Attached a picture of my personal story quest log, as with the others who have posted It is still bugged in the same place after the patch.
Character name: Arcanus Blackspore
Race: Sylvari
Order: Priory
Level: 80
Did all of my quests solo except, I believe, for Striking off the Chains.
I hope this gets fixed soon because this was one of my favorite parts of GW2 and the fact that it’s been a month since I’ve been able to make progress is extremely disheartening.
The main issue you will have with not keeping a 1h sword on a weapon swap is the inability to output high sustained damage on-demand in close quarters.
Without factoring in any of the other skills available to the sword, at close range the auto-attack greatly surpasses the sustained damage of both the staff and the greatsword. There are many locations in the world that are simply not conducive to kiting.
Furthermore, the ability for the sword to dispel boons off the target makes some fights much, much easier. For example: it can take the regeneration off of Skale-type enemies, making them trivial kills.
I’m not saying that it isn’t possible to level without a 1h sword on a swap, but it certainly can make some situations very difficult.
Oddly enough I’ve found the staff to be pretty decent when in close combat, it’s all about keeping up chaos armor as long as possible, it works pretty well especially when you have 20 points into chaos for extra cd reduction for staff.
OP I’ve been struggling with the same problem, I love the staff and the greatsword but I cant seem to find a build I’m satisfied with for having both of them. I was doing 20/0/20/0/30 for a while but I’m still screwing around with different builds.
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