Guild Wars 2

Eh that “defence thru deception” part ain’t working against smart people since two months from start or even since betas and they won’t change their behaviour.
What I’d really like to see is unbound clone, one that doesn’t need combat to be summoned, make them follow you like pets. It won’t happen too though.

Instead of restricting this to wvw paddock where all this matter anyway they choose lazy way… again. ;_;

but colin said esports are better than taxi confession ads

AlphatheWhite.9351:

light the ship on fire, jump ship, and swim to your waiting pirate vessel.

Watch in satisfaction as your enemies sink to a watery grave.

Declare yourself the Pirate King, and reign with blood and terror upon the seas.

but there’s no water in pvp modes

Cobrakon.3108:

I’ve Never UnderStood Why Ele is Popular.

Flashy stuff of course! Boom Boom Meteor Shower.
As long as angernet keeps it’s visuals I’ll play the thing.
If you have human female as your elementalist(which you should), look at her face when casting this, after that look at famous Colinface, after that look at your own face and all questions of “why” will instantly fade away. Now go and blast things.

It took them 3 years to split skills in first game give them more time plox

Hey at least they buff shatterstone, right? right?:c

I’d like to see someday recreation of baldur’s gate teleport field arcane spell that randomly teleported everyone around in area

apharma.3741:

Edit: @winds ele still is one of the few gods of dps even without ice bow. This is in no way comparable to the icebow nerf.

Awww and here I was with my compassion, you know that you just mind spiked my heart dearie? Underdogs should stick together :c

Riz.8925:

Lol. You guys are such cry-babies. According to your logic, its okay that you guys can live through 3v1 indefinitely. And now that you are slightly being nerfed you cry hard…bahahahahaha. Come. Be a thief and see what its like to have every class counter you lol.

you walked into the wrong neighbourhood burglarboy

Nice!

There will always be min-maxers, and there will always be a meta. Nerfing alacrity is only going to shift the meta, and then people will be right back here claiming that something else is breaking raids. It never ends. Reductio ad Absurdum. When do we stop nerfing things just because it happens to be the meta?

I do like your analogy though with the mesmer trickery, clever. :P

But it will still be mandatory to run, this is what bugs me with all this. New content released yay but suddenly your old core mesmer becomes unwanted and it’s perfectly justified with many reasons because why not, alacrity is nice and trait line is nice, but this is my biggest problem with HoT: you have no choice but to run it(it’s even worse with necromancer which has one exact skill “Rise!” which is unusable if you’re not ripperino but breaks old MM builds this “Rise!” thing would fit perfectly and don’t get me started on elementalist which has silliest trait line ever but you have to run it to overload stuff to bits).
I don’t have problems with buying new content, what I don’t like my old traitlines becoming less desired with new ones, I liked the game because it offered good amount of customisation, but now I am confined, I have to run chronomancer of run alone. I’d like to see fourth trait line for elite professions – no doubt we will have more elite options later, they should not interfere with older ones.

Xenon.4537:

Seems to me like alacrity isn’t breaking raids at all, but if you have actual evidence instead of anecdotes and hearsay, I’d love to see it.

Since we are in mesmer forum, all my evidences are hearsays, gossips, fabricated, faked, anecdoted and made generally to spread more chaos, confusion and misdirection you can get the idea, but I’ve never seen a raid without chronomancer, and in game filled with minmaxers happy to kick my mesmer outta group when it’s not meta enuf it says something.

I hope they will do something with autos, fire auto cast time is atrocious and they know it, also fingers crossed for fire 2, there’s no way they’ll do something with only kekerstone(not that it’s bad I like how it looks but eh)

Levetty.1279:

Considering part of the reson for the preview was to get people hyped for the next patch and the way they decided to get people hyped was to stick up a giant middle finger to Mesmers, I’m not sure why you would be expecting more.

Because I’m positive and optimistic!!!

…and have two classes to fall back in case of nerfhammer, metas come and go, thieves relay their Underdog of The Month torch to mesmers only to get it back next big patch and so on and so on
Gone the times when I mained memer. Too frail to main.

Levetty.1279:

You mean the tiny increase to the attack speed trait that will bearly effect the auto attack of the weapon because of how badly its designed isn’t enough for you?

I’ll wait for official and final patch notes before deciding, they said some sceptre love, we’ll see how much is it

Ithilwen.1529:

Except that Alacrity was the big sell for HoT Mesmers…

Looks like HoT hype is over. Plus it was bound to happen: whole raid\group depending on one class mechanic is not a good thing at all.
They’d better compensate it somewhere else though.

So if I understand it correctly first they made us dependant from this new stuff in chrono to the point when core mesmers are kicked outta groups and treated like noobs in general simply because they didn’t spent cash on amazing circus of 66% alacrity and quickness galore, and now, when we finally tasted our purple mist poison and found it delicious, they take it away with giggles. Large part of mesmer community is under withdrawal atm
I feel for your pain guys
I was there when that monster of a man snapped ice bow
pls endure

F4 shatter should give aegis instead of invulnerability too cmon anet be consistent

well of guardition never on my bar again

It has neat shaders

chibbi.3706:

Yeah that whole system is kinda weird. I don’t think a single traitline should give access to weapons/utility.
Or if they want this mechanic, then do it for all the trait lines, for example curses would give you access to corruptions and scepter, etc.

Maybe it’s because of paywall… will never know why they decided it to be like this. Well it makes some sense with chronomancer, those wells are based around it’s flavour after all. But Rise is clearly MM thing.

chibbi.3706:

Yeah that whole system is kinda weird. I don’t think a single traitline should give access to weapons/utility.
Or if they want this mechanic, then do it for all the trait lines, for example curses would give you access to corruptions and scepter, etc.

Maybe it’s because of paywall… will never know why they decided it to be like this. Well it makes some sense with chronomancer, those wells are based around it’s flavour. But Rise is clearly MM thing which is death magic.

I don’t like new DS even if it has stability and rush and other probably cool stuff. I don’t want to melee stuff in shroud.
I’d like to drop reaper… but then I’ll lose “Rise!”.
Thus, whole utility skill set is not available unless you waste trait line on this new profession. I’m ok with losing greatsword, but why limiting utility? It surely does not promote build diversity, I’m now running blood-death-reaper and I don’t even use greatsword, I use only one skill from the whole traitset – Rise. And funky new shroud.
If I could go something like blood-spite\curses-death and still retain Rise, I’d do this in a second.

reikken.4961:

smoke field? so that ele can join every other class in having access to stealth? lol (except necro)

We already have access to smoke field underwater.

That actually was like salt in open wound. :c

Ancestral Grace is skill from elite spec that you have to buy with your emonies, RTL is not.

StickerHappy.8052:

A Very Simple Solution to Improve Warhorn

ditch it and give us a sword kittenmit

spite-blood magic, staff\dagger-warhorn, well of suffering and summons(I use golem, exploding boys and shade) with all berserker is which works it for me. It feels and plays as unstoppable juggernaut, basically wherever you go, everything around you cannot even scratch you and just… dies.

Yeah it would be nice if overloads did something different depending on what weapon you use… oh one may dream

But I use conjures extensively and I know at least two tempests who use them too, in raids
They are not as awful as you think, ice bow is huge BB damage and if boss is big it’s still nice deeps
LH is noice too
Shield is situational but tank ele probably might use it
Axe is kinda meh but it was like that in betas

http://i.imgur.com/uyPyveU.jpg
Anet are you srs?

And how much Pact forces we see in Fireheart Rise?

Entire north part of it assaulted by priory mad ice elementals for instance.

colesy.8490:

I want an example. And if it involves more than five mobs, I want it to be an example where it even matters whether you pull them or not, not like the svanir around the first HOTW p1 boss where they all just melt or the trash mobs at the start in Arah that die immediately. Because I seriously can’t think of any, either in dungeons or any of the fractals.

Dredge in dredge fractal, where packs of melee mobs are spiced up with scattered ranged mobs that also like to run around like their pants are on fire. Pinning packs to nearest wall speeds otherwise tedious fractal up. SE p2 scattered pack right after you rammed door with vehicle. Forum won’t let me list other examples and surely I might forget some.

The fact that it’s not knockback is a good thing.

Two targets versus five. Random bounce. It’s a good thing. On solo or duo targets.

but it’s not a useful line, it’s full of JUNK. THERE IS NOTHING A DUNGEON GUARDIAN WANTS IN VALOUR.
And you do not need AH for sustain, you have a ton of other, better ways … 400hp heal does not matter when boss is hitting for 20k.

Shield and mace traits are useful. Purity is good too. When boss is hitting for 20k and you have 20400, even 400hp would matter.

Blanking the next attack through blind > protection.

Multihit attacks, unblindable mobs and unshakable want to say hi.

A bad way to control them. You’re not pulling them, you’re knocking them away so they’re not grouped up.

No one in their sane mind will do that in the middle of mobs. You can and should knock them that way so their trajectory will cross a known obstacle, or previously pulled pack. No rocket science. Harder than GS5 and certainly harder than mesmer’s foci, but doable.

3%+ damage for your entire party is much better than a pitiful heal and poor projectile absorption.

Well, you see, guardian is not the only one that can stack vulnerability. Some other classes can do it much better. They can’t get partywide protection, heal and tons of projectile absorb in one pack though. Hovewer if your guardian is the only one who stacks and upkeeps vulnerability in your party(which is obviously not true, I hope) then be my guest and don’t use shield.

No, it’s never shield.

For your playstyle and party composition – perhaps. Just don’t let yourself think yours is the only true one – such attitude is first step on the short road to ignorance. I would be dissapointed.

A guardian near his allies with staff means 10 seconds on a low DPS weapon and giving an irrelevant heal which they could have given the team by popping their virtue.

So you don’t like staff because of it’s low innate DPS? Understandable. I won’t agree on “irrelevant” heal though. Even with 30 points in virtues, resolve recharges roughly two times slower than untraited staff’s empower, fifteen times slower than undetonated orb and roughly four times slower than detonated orb. All three skills combined heal more than virtue while also granting 12 stacks of might. You get ~two virtues and might for free when your actual virtue still recharges and you don’t even need traiting for that, the only drawbacks are range – which is avoided in melee groups and possible interrupts which can be avoided too. You also get awesome ward control, swiftness and Gandalf hat as bonus.

Except tanks are never needed in this game and it’s impossible to tank due to RNG aggro.

I’ll agree that it’s impossible to tank in this game, unless we get our hands on arenanet’s guild secret stash of aggro pills. Tanks are needed when party member screws it and need revival under fire. Pugs are prone to that.

It’s bad player friendly and is a crutch that any player intending to be half decent should get rid of ASAP.

Like it’s something bad. Before they get rid of it, it will help them feel the class, learn the ropes and find more suitable in the end.

Rarely relevant, rarely relevant, never relevant, never relevant, relevant, relevant, rarely relevant, only relevant if through virtue or pre-fight (immediately swapping out), achievable by any other class, relevant, achievable by mesmer.

Even that some of useful things you perceive as rarely or never relevant, it’s still much bigger and relevant than mesmer’s. That’s why we see more support guardians than support mesmers.

What if orb would grant advantage only if you carry it to your point, won’t work on neutral and grant enemy points on their?

I just thought how cool would it be if everyone received weekly random bonuses to …whatever. Like, “Week of buffed direct damage. Double growth for Warriors and Mesmers.” Imagine astonishing possibilities!

@Bloodgruve.6038:
It’s about choice between reliable smaller packets of damage and rather unreliable, but bigger packets. If I were to draw diagram comparing these two, shatter build’s wracks would look like larger spikes between overall lesser steady zones and medium drops needed for survival, while phantasm’s picture would look like steady ramp-up with each consecutive phantasm conjured with smaller drops needed for survival. Thing is, steady bits in both diagrams could drop down considerably if your phantasm stops working for any reason. This possibility is what makes shatters equal to phantasms. Of course, there’s always fight-specific variables, for instance in unpredictable aoe fights shatter would show better overall dps, while in predictable aoe fights phantasms will do better. Random nature of aggro still poses unexpected troubles though.

And when can they not be pulled with one curtain?

Any packs of more than five scattered mobs actually. Even lesser number will do the trick, if they are scattered beyond foci range. With greatsword you can crudely bump those to get them all in one foci pull afterwards.

Or… magic bullet.

It’s wonderful, but it’s not knockback and actually controls only 2 targets. Wave affects 5.

You don’t need to CC the last boss in dredge fractal except when it goes to regenerate, and interrupts work through defiant to stop the regeneration anyway.

Sometimes people screw up or boss suddenly finds guy on lever more appealing than anyone else. Having means to pull it back in that case never hurts. Speeds up things too.

You don’t need another way of sustain, especially AH when it involves 30 points in a pointless trait line for an ability you won’t even be using if you’re half decent.

More ways of sustain and points in useful line are always good things to have.

With shield you have a skill that provides protection (better to use a block or even hold the line) and a knockback bubble that absorbs projectiles. You don’t ever want to be knocking back mobs, and for projectile absorption you have shield of the avenger. On top of that, the abilities are on long cooldown. On the other hand, there is the actual good off-hand, the focus, which has a blind on 4 (+ 3 stacks of vuln which every dungeon guard should be traiting for) and the shield on 5 that detonates for a pretty nice burst if it hasn’t been used up within 3 seconds.
No decent guardian uses shield. No meta build involves shield. Shield is bad.

Let’s just say that more prot uptime you can provide for you party the better, knocking back mobs is another way to control them and another projectile destroyer(with nice heal) is sometimes much better than three blocks with blast finisher and blind even if that blind adds vulnerability. Cooldowns are near even too.
Any decent guardian(and I think any decent any class player) will use whatever fits best for encounter. Sometimes it’s shield.

I heard putting 30 in valour was bad and that you’re better off putting it in any other trait line because they actually have useful skills. Virtue of justice renewed on kill for 15 in radiance, blind exposure for 10 in radiance, one-handed mastery as your grandmaster radiance trait. Fiery wrath as your minor zeal trait, vigor on crit as your adept minor in honour. Faster consecration cooldown, traited virtue of resolve to remove 3 conditions. 30 in valour means you have to give up some of this. Note that all of these traits are actually useful to the party unlike AH.

Actually I don’t use AH in dungeons, my dungeon guardian build is more focused on honor/virtues, honestly this GM trait is better suited for wvw. However, guardian near his allies with staff and AH can still bring back most of his hp with one empower effectively making it second 6 heal and AH guardian with hammer is closest thing to tank we have in this game. In my opinion, AH is pug and new guardian-friendly and such guardian can effectively carry their teammates in any situation that gone wrong.

Not really. No boons on virtue activation, no condition conversion on use of shout, no vulnerability stacking on blind, no virtue refresh on kill. A completely untraited mesmer can still pull mobs better, can still double boons off of signet, can still portal players through certain points in a dungeon, can still boon strip through null field and disenchanter and can still apply group quickness.

You forgot to mention that even untraited guardian can still reliably provide mass stability and protection, retaliation, regeneration, ward control, massive projectile destroyers, heal, might, swiftness, blasts, blocks, cleanses. Has party-wide quickness too, though not as effective as time warp.

@Ansau.7326:
I agree with you that there are different levels of play as phantasm build. However, this also applies to shatter builds as well. Ultimately it is player’s decision of how to use one or the other. I will still insist on that if both played well – they will be equal. Main difference will lie in amount of effort and awareness needed though. Therefore phantasmal builds are better suggested for new players. Hell, even I will advise phantasm build if someone asked me about new mesmer’s build.

colesy.8490:

If you think GS is even close to focus in positioning mobs, then you’re wrong. Do you think you can use greatsword to position the three golems in SE p1? No. You focus pull them together. Beyond the initial pull you don’t need to use any CC either, so defiant doesn’t matter. Also, sword cleaves so that can be your AoE weapon, you’d know if you stopped using the trashsword.

Actually, I use staff as my secondary weapon and swap to gs only in particular areas.
And it looks like you don’t understand what I’m trying to say. GS is by no means replacement of focus. It wonderfully compliments it though as backup herder. You can concentrate in one point great many scattered groups of trash – one of those that couldn’t pulled all with one foci. Two cc is better than one most of the time. GS5 has faster activation too. I like, for instance, doing that on cof p2 on three shamans right after devourer nests – foci to wall first, then interrupt them all with GS5.
Also, SE p1 is not the only dungeon path out there. Right now out of my head I can tell you about some applications of coordinated defiant stripping: pulling last dredge fractal boss right into lava pots, shutting down shukov melee golem and getting mossman out of stealth without that much pain.

I don’t care what you like. The game doesn’t care what you like. I can brain afk, cast phantasms and then 11111111 (plus whatever utility skill is required, normally signet pre-fight and feedback in fight) while you have to do some moronic rotation to even get damage close to a phantasm build because you keep destroying your sources of sustained DPS, the phantasms themselves because lolshatters.

If you don’t mind, I will answer your escapade with my own performance.
Tremble before all-mighty shatter’s gameplay promoted by the game itself, when phantasmal snails stands and brain afk as always, glorious shatter overlords show exceptional movements right out of Esports and Kimchhi Fraternity, dealing with any encounter in stylish and skillful way, shattering their phantasm peasantry right after it done it’s job and is about to die anyway and doing equal damage in the process.

Not at all. I’m saying AH is bad, which it is.

In your book only. It’s just another way of sustain. Nothing wild or touchy. And no doubt justified as grandmaster trait.

A guardian using shield is bad. You thinking cdr on shield is something worth investing in makes you look incompetent as well.

I suggest that before making such rash assumptions, you should learn what shield actually does. If you don’t like shield, it doesn’t make shield universal weapon for “bad” guardians.

I heard pure of voice was pretty good. Or traiting your virtue of resolve to cleanse three conditions on the group, yeah that’s nice too. It just so happens they’re not in valour.

Actually I heard that you can put 30 valor and still get one of these. What a fascinating discovery and absolutely astonishing breakthrough in guardian buildcraft, isn’t it – not new, though. Them guardians should be proud regardless.

No, the guardian sticking 30 points in a selfish trait line does not make them supportive.

Playing guardian class alone with no traits at all already makes them more supportive than mesmer.

Here’s a tip, learn to actually play the game and then argue back, it’s not fun beating down someone who is repeatedly wrong, it’s not stimulating for either of us.

Are you telling me that all this conversation was actually you trying to beat me with emotions? Well, I am trying to be generous and polite person, so if that brings you sense of relieve, you can get your cookie.

colesy.8490:

Any phantasm player who doesn’t suck can sit in melee quite easily. Why else do I constantly tell people to stop using the trash weapon greatsword? It’s because melee lets us deal more damage, and it’s easy enough to stay in melee that it’s not like your DPS is dropping from being out of range.

Greatsword is far from trash weapon. Second focus in terms of herding trash\stripping defiant with decent aoe. It has it’s uses.

You think shatter builds are better because you have to jump through hoops to try and even get damage on par with phantasm builds who just drop phantasms, whatever utility skill and then 11111111 for the win.

I don’t like mindless gameplay even if encounters are built for these. If I wanted boringness, I’d roll another class.

No decent group uses an AH guardian. No decent guardian uses AH in dungeons. It’s a grandmaster trait which does absolutely zero to help your group in a bad trait line and doesn’t even help with sustaining yourself since there are far better methods of damage mitigation. It’s basically “stick 30 points in valour for 300+ toughness and 30%+ crit damage”, and any decent player knows you don’t put points in to traits for their stats.
Again, you just sound like you’re bad at dungeons.

You just sound like you want me to stop liking what you don’t like. No deal.
People put points in valor not only for toughness and crit damage, but for cdr on shield and passive cond removal. AH is controversial, some may like it, some may not. Yet even AH guardian will support better than support mesmer.

LordByron.8369:

As i said in dungeons most phantasm mesmers go for 2 offhand weapons and a sword.
So yes almost Always melee.
i’ll tell you again….
GS is a BACKUP weapon….for versatility…..look at the build:
0/20/0/25/25
ever wondered why sword is traited and GS is not?
As i said as a player who played both and started with shatter for months…..shatter is not harder….is just less effective…..
If you mess up with a shatter mesmer you die.
If you mess up with a phantasm mesmer your party wipes.
Also remember…..phantasm overwrite illusion….and this build is based around reduced CD this is the key.
Try to go coe with a good mesmer player……
Coe is easy but uses most phantasms mechanics so you will see how it works.

Shatter builds are equally effective with phantasm builds. If you know how to pull them out.
Honestly should tell you, did not understand string about messing up. Care to explain why should party wipe if phantasm mesmer messes up?

LordByron.8369:

False (fact)

Your word vs my word, not a fact until careful studies will show otherwise. I’ve seen this behavior. I believe you in that you’ve definitely seen other. Maybe I’m jinxed or my phantasms are so appealing that mobs rush for them the moment instant. Maybe you are jinxed too. It’s all about aggro mechanics that are still mumbo-jumbo to us, players. We can’t even be certain about what causes mob aggro – one year after release. I think it has some deal of rng involved.

Most Phantasm builds don t use stuff that affects phant HP…not to mention PVT.
Phantasms differently from pets dont facetanks mobs that is why they don t get hit at all most times.

Yep, but when they are hit assuming berserkers gear, they are dead fast. And random. That’s my point – phantasms are too much random and unreliable for me at least. Some people may think and experience other results, but hey, it’s how rng works.

What are you talking about?
Phantasm mesmer use sword/X more than shatter…….out of fractals some phantasms players doesn t even equip a ranged weapon at all.

Extensive usage of sword occupies at least one illusion slot for swap clone which certainly hurt phantasm build’s damage. Yeah, you can still go melee as phantasm build. But will you sit there most of your time?

check on the forum who posted first the build 0/20/0/25/25 with tests and explanations….wrong once again
take those info not as a personal attack but as a way to try something you clearly don t know anything about.
Also try to be less rude and biased.

No offense taken nor I am being rude on this matter.
I just thought it is crystal clear to any player who played both shatters and phantasms that shatters are way harder to pull out. When you deal with phantasm build, your primary concern is whether your phantasms survive long enough to deal damage. Obviously their survival most of the time doesn’t even depend on your actions – only right time and place to summon matters, what happens next depends on situation and aggro rng. Ideally played, you just throw them out and sit back enjoying the views. Yes, you can shatter phantasms too. Though I almost never seen phantasm build mesmers doing that(not talking distortion), perhaps some people even when they see phantasm knockout is coming for sure hope that it will survive and deal more damage.
Meanwhile with shatters you have magnitude of your short bursts which strictly depends on how many alive fodder you have – and they all have to survive before you decide to shatter them. So you need a right time and place to summon them, pay close attention to them while they are alive, and then pull out shatter when you see window in mob’s attack. Failure to do so drastically decreases shatter’s damage. Exceptionally executed rotation allows shatter builds to be on par with phantasm builds.
This is why I think shatters are superior.

colesy.8490:

The fact that you don’t think a phantasm mesmer can focus on damage and your mention of AH guardian just shows that you’re bad at dungeons.

In civilized conversations people don’t call other people “bad at something” because they don’t share their points of view.

Drakkon.4782:

That’s because you’re a lore purist. Those are the boring people at parties who kill conversations by being experts on whatever topic people are talking about.

News Flash: Lore changes. You aren’t the final arbiter of fact. So if we want to discuss hypotheticals, we can. However, many of them have already been discussed, so we don’t have to rehash them. Lighten up. There are only two lore-bunnies I care about here on this forum, and that Dustfinger, whom I do not always agree with but I do respect… ish, and Konig, who is really just god of all lore for most purposes.

If you’re not having fun with the discussion, stop reading it. Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this. Well, don’t do that. Duh.

Nah, I’m not some of those lore purist or whatever, I’m just trying to point out that you should consider all, even if that could hurt your point. Actually, why not?
I could say palawa joko’s minions are already building steampunk railroad to orr, but that would be silly. Fun, but silly, because we know nothing about what the hell our undead friend does right now. We know what charr do right now though. Struggling in their own internal problems, like branded, separatists, renegades, flame legion, ghosts, ogres and one giant magical wasteland people call ascalon. It would be long time before they will even consider expansion further. And they will have to deal with dredge first to reach Orr.

LordByron.8369:

You tried them bad……
Phantams doesn t trigger melee stuff
They will be ignored by boss except for agony arrows (that will possbly be reflected back at him)
Phantasm don t die easily at all due to positioning (a thing that anet did really well in PvE) and stupid bosses
Phantasms are squishy only on paper for pve; they rarely die expecially at boss fights
A phantasm can control better the fight with 3-3 (low cd) and temporal curtain+izerker provide some nice cripple if needed.
Shatter in PvE is about pressing buttons, the only hard stuff is watching to not roll too much and waste your energy……
Phantasms= reaction + tactic in pve
Shatter = button sequences and lot of button pressing only risk is wasting energy for DE….also you are not useful.
What you say its clearly something you heard from PvP players (or maybe WWW), applied to the wrong game mode…….
p.S: i d like to say a thing about mesmers in fractals.
While dungeon is 100% skip to next boss and here mesmer shines
Fractals is often unskippable.
If its true that your dps falls against trash mobs its also true that your support and utilities will shine more than anywhere else….

First of all, let’s deal with shaman’s behavior. Out of personal experience, I’ve seen that plenty of times with no one in melee range except phantasms, he does his melee tricks. They have rather low priority, yes, but they are definitely not ignored, nor can they sit there for more than 2 activations.
I’d also like to point out that pvt mesmer’s phantasms are not squishy especially after IC update. Berserker’s phantasms die in 1-2 hits kittenter and 2-3 as phantasm build.
Calling shatters “pressing buttons” and phantasm build “reaction” and “tactic” could only come from someone who never played shatters and just copied one of those phantasm builds lying around in this forum. All thinking you need to do in phantasm build is how and where to position them. Then sit back in range, hoping they won’t accidentally die and using only non-clonegens, because clonegens would kill your third phantasm. Shatter build has to think about melee weave rotations(if you screw them, you deal less damage), right and bad time to shatter, when to clonegen(because if you screw this one, you lose huge chunk of your damage) all while paying attention to boss itself(because proper shatter best done in melee). You have to know encounter to play shatter effectively. That’s why people like easy ways, like phantasms. I must admit that I’ll never use shatter build if anet throws in some new srs encounters. I will use one of those nobrain phantasm builds for obvious reasons.

If you want to be a useful dungeon mesmer, you need to trait your focus.

If you want to be a useful dungeon mesmer, focus on damage and call in your AH-consecrations guardian buddy for true support, then slot 3rd utility according to needs, while providing it where necessary. Any build can do that.

Wardens can’t sit there forever. After some point, shaman drops melee nuke on them and they’re gone. Same goes true with everything. Phantasm damage is not sustained damage. It’s more like randomly-sustained-for-some-period-of-time-before-inevitable-shutdown-damage. I don’t buy it, nor like gambling for 50% chance of better sustained damage that could turn into no significant damage at all in the single blitz.
I tried hell of a ton phanatsm builds and found all of them simply subpar to glorious shatters in every aspect of game it’s actually unbelievable. Situation got sliiiightly better after they boosted their hp a bit. They still eagerly die however.
In conclusion, I’d like to point out that phantasms are for boring mesmers who want to 1-1-1 their way to glory. Shame on them.
If I wanted to faceroll stuff, I’d use a guardian.
Or elementalist.

I don’t see any “fun” in bending words and twisting lore for the sake of said fan’s interests.

No discussion on that matter, comrade!

…composed of old dredge sonic trucks and spawns even more dredge with big rusty
speaker on top of it, playing moletariate hymn and “A swing one-two-three” song.

I like it how [racename]-fans completely disregard anything that could potentially make their point moot.

Ryn.6459:

@Winds: Mind shre your build?

varies
10-20-0-10-30 general
0-20-0-20-30 for groups with no guardian

Sustained phantasm DPS > shatter burst

I dare you to get sustain on 48 shaman and higher. Full berserkers!

I used shatter build in dungeons since october 2012 and it was and is still way better than anything one of those phantasms-that-dies-from-sneeze could offer.

Skyy.1496:

Winds. Simply beautiful is all I can say ^^ Put a story behind the events by using in-game personalities. Love it! May just have to make myself a Charr and use what you said as his character basis now.

Thanks. Be advised though that no charr will call their species “furball”. I always thought that spvp commentator is norn or human. Kinda fits in, provided that most if not all in-game charr voice is mixed with subtle smacking noises and our guy there don’t make those.

Same woes as with other mantras: you’ll have to charge them. Very easy to rupt. And in our current situation, rupts are almost everywhere.