Showing Posts For Wisler.9485:
Afaik the tooltip is bugged, only CS shows in tooltip. As for Daze duration (1 sec base):
1. 1,25 secs Daze
2. 1,5 secs Daze
3. 1,75 secs Daze
I think someone proved that two Sigil of Paralyzation stack. According to the wiki Sigil of Paralyzation works on both Stun and Daze.
I tried a few Lockdown builds because it is something new. Have to say I like your Shatterlock the most. I ran MindCrush for a while and it was fun but lacked the burst necessary to defeat some oponents.
For now I use Shatterlock only in PvP (still lack some gear pieces for WvW) and I have to say it is very fun and effective. Personally, I like disenchanter+mental torment+decoy better than shattered concentration+blink+decoy.
I run with the Valkyrie Amulet for now, because it offers more defence, but once I get better I will try the Berserker one.
And I have to agree with some of the others that it really shines in 2vs2 or 3vs3. You call a target and over the next 10 seconds render him/her nearly completely unable to do anything. It is nearly impossible to survive such a scenario (the only ones who have were 2 hambow warriors + 1 bunker guardian).
1. Mesmer
2. Elementalist
3. Ranger
I think the current attack speed of iMage is to high for daze/stun/fear. Every 6-7 seconds (or less with Phantasmal Haste) is way too fast for this kind of cc.
Personally I would like it if the iMage got a breath attack (like the ele’s dagger fire 2 skill) which deals damage and applies a condition (preferably confusion) on enemies and a boon on allies (no idea what, maybe retaliation).
I honestly don’t think the position of this trait needs to be changed. Most Mesmers who use this trait run a condition build and take 10 points in Domination (Crippling Dissipation) anyway. The power gained helps a little with the damage, but the 20% condition duration is the main reason why this trait is so popular (plus of course the cd reduction).
The condition cleanse for iMage is also fine since it cleanses with its bouncing attack. The only thing that needs to change is the cleanse in combination with The Prestige because 1 condition removed every 24 seconds is lackluster. I personally like the suggestion for an aoe cleanse.
From my experience (even if it’s quite a while ago) power shatter is best for open world. The weapon choice lies entirely on you, every weapon is viable with power gear, even staff and scepter (a little known fact: it is proven the scepter auto attack at range 600 or less is stronger than the greatsword auto attack at max range). I personally like the sword/sword + greatsword combo.
As soon as you reach lvl 40 take Deceptive Evasion, it is THE best trait for leveling, you need 20 points in Dueling for it. 10 points in Domination for Mental Torment(Mind Wrack does 20% more damage) is also quite powerful.
I’m not sure how the decrease in damage, however big or low it eventually will be, makes zerker mesmer useless. I don’t think there will be much difference in the builds played especially if the way conditions work remains unchanged.
As for what to do, I will wait for the patch before I make a decision on what ascended armor I will craft, but I don’t think it will look much different than what I have in mind at the moment.
As far as I know Mesmer are welcome in dungeons – primarily because of Timewarp. As for tips, phantasm builds are generally better in dungeons than shatter builds. Because of our quite effective active defences it is possible to run with full berserker gear and still survive easily.
The only “problem” phantasm builds have are high amounts of trash mobs, because illusions die when the corresponding mob dies. On the other hand phantasms become very powerful against a single enemy. When there are three iDuelists shooting the same target, we deal quite high damage.
For ideas/builds look in the stickied topics, the one from Fay is a collection of builds which are mostly updated. (I think the only one which is no longer vialbe is Pyro’s Immortal Mesmer)
Because of the bug I can’t say which I like better. Sometimes I think the moving one would be more useful if the fight moves around a lot, but as you said if the enemy is moving the iWarden follows and can’t start his attack. I learned to reduce this problem with Sword 3 but more often then not the bug prevents the iWarden from attacking then.
I see this bug as even worse than the iBerserker bug and would really like to see this fixed. Then we will see how well it really works.
Huh, I honestly forgot about Centaur runes. I think I will use them and see how I like them. Thanks for your help.
I plan on using this build once I have the necessary trinkets. I want it to be a direct damage PU build which uses bleeds as additional damage source (primary from sharper images). The on-clone-death traits provide help to prevent enemies from leaving (cripple) and to reduce their offence. This build is for WvW solo and small group roaming.
This is the build
Now the question: which rune-set(s) and sigils would you suggest I use? I’m thinking Sigil of Battle for both weapon sets but I have no ideas regarding the rest.
a little note: please ignore the ascended/exotic differences in armor/weapons, haven’t yet decided if I want to bother with getting ascended armor/weapons or not.
The build looks good. The torch vs. pistol thing is preference, torch is better for aoe, pistol is better for single target and of course has the stun.
I have to admit I never used the fall damage reduction. If you want to drop it I suggest staff cooldown reduction.
And in regards to the condition remove mantra, I use it too and I think it’s quite popular.
First a tip for you: look at the stickied topics, there is one from Fay, where you can find most builds. There are quite a few condition builds which are very effective.
Now to your build
Traits which increase damage (like Empowering Illusions and Empowering Mantras) only incease direct damage and don’t effect condition damage.
Switch GS with Staff. Staff is for condition builds far superior.
Don’t use Mantras, they aren’t very effective for a condition build.
If you want to use Prismatic Understanding you should switch the pistol for a torch and take 10 points for Dueling to Domination for the torch trait. If you add Veil and Mass Invisibility you have four skills for Stealth and can get near perma Protection and Regen.
Glamour build is no longer effective. The nerf to glamour and confusion combined was to hard. I suggest you look at osicat’s shatter builds, there is at least one which is viable for frontline combat.
In PvE you can play what you want, it will work. Some builds may take longer to kill something but you will win. Be prepared that others will expect you to play full zerker gear (or near full) if you play dungeons/fractals and let’s be honest: It’s possible to play this way and don’t die. One of the best PvE builds is a Phantasm build and there are many variations. If I play PvE Phantasm, I prefer the one with Mantra Heal.
In WvW it depends if you want to play in a zerg (which is very difficult to do effectivly since the glamour nerf) or solo/group roaming (where we are quite good). Osicat has very good Shatter-builds and the Blackwater build is also quite good for roaming.
Can’t really help you for PvP, because I don’t play it.
The best tip I can give you: Look at the stickies at the top of the Mesmer forum, Fay’s Build List, Osicat’s Shatter Guide and Chaos Archangel’s Mesmer Guide are quite useful.
Didn’t try this in a while but I remember it worked in Summer when I played with my brother who played ele. The clone used the weapon I would have equiped if I hadn’t picked up the ele weapon.
Of course it is possible it got nerfed/changed since then.
IGN: Dyshana Wisler
Server: Abaddons Mouth (DE)
Playstyle: PvE, WvW
Role: Scholar, Tester
Playtime: in the evening UTC+1
The most difficult part of being a mesmer is to get to lvl 40. Once you get lvl 40 and can get Duelling X trait it gets soo much easier.
Here are a few “guidelines” which I find make lvling as a mesmer easier:
-> first 5 trait points in Illusion (20% cooldown reduction for ALL skills which summon illusions) after that it’s personal preference
-> at lvl 40 get 20 points in Duelling (for trait X) and of course the 5 points in Illusion, rest is personal preference
-> staff and sword/sword (can change with pistol) are really good at the beginning, both offer good damage and utility
-> I personally don’t like Greatsword for lvling, it is a good weapon if you are in a group with a few melee chars and you can keep max distance but otherwise I don’t use it
hope this helps to get your mesmer to lvl 80, because there you will finally feel like a god (I still find it interesting when I’m the last one alive in fractals, even with warriors or guardians in the group)
That explains it. Thanks for the answer.
I “discovered” something interesting. I play a shatter build and as a consequence I apply confusion to the enemy, sometimes up to or more than 10 stacks. When the enemy (player or npc, doesn’t matter) attacks sometimes I see one big damage number (most often about 1500 to 2000) for confusion and sometimes I get many smaller damage numbers (about 3 or 4 times 500-800, but all simulatiously appearing numbers are the same). The smaller numbers appear all at about the same time (like bleeding).
Now I want to know if someone can explain to me why this is happening.
it’s not just mass invis, every kind of invisiblity works (discovered this when playing together with a thief and he cast some of his aoe stealth skills)
I still think since our Greatsword is a magical ranged weapon (instead of physical melee) our scepter (or staff) should be a physical melee (instead of the normal magical ranged) weapon. Would increase our weirdness factor.
Please note physical or magical has nothing to do with condition, just the look of the attacks.
They corrected the tooltip. Signet of Illusion already gave a 200% health increase. The only problem with this signet is, that it “pulses” its effect once every 10 seconds (but doesn’t stack on an illusion). This means it’s possible that an illusion gets the effect nearly immideately or that you have to wait quite a while until the illusion gets its health increase.
There doesn’t exist a stat combination like this. I thing it would be too powerful.
It is known that if you deal damage you lose your invisibilty. The problem is you still lose your invisibilty if attacks you launched BEFORE going invisible hit your enemy and deal damage AFTER you became invisible (most comonly these are Winds of Chaos and Chaos Storm). Fortunately Illusions don’t have any effect on your invisibilty.
There aren’t many players who play condition mesmer in pve, because of its weak tagging potential.
I would recommend either a shatter spec with at least Deceptive Evasion and Illusionary Persona or a shatter/phantasm hybrid spec where you use the Greatsword because the Phantasmal Berserker offers reasonable aoe, you should then get 5 in Illusion and 20 in Domination for the 40% cooldown reduction of Phantasmal Berserker. Of course both these specs are power based.
Until you reach lvl 40, it is generally advised to use your illusions to tank for you and only shatter if you know it will kill the enemy.
Once you reach lvl 40 you gain access to the master traits. This means you can get Deceptive Evasion (20 trait points in duelling) for a shatter spec (which is awesome) or you can get 15 in Inspiration so your phantasm give aoe regen for a phantasm spec (which is imo better for long battles, like bosses in dungeons and fractals)
But don’t be afraid to play around and test things, after all retraiting isn’t overly expensive.
It does trigger on:
- killed by damage
- replaced by another illusion
It does NOT trigger on:
- target dead (75% sure here)
- shatter
it does trigger if the target dies
Master of Misdirection increases the condition duration you inflict with shatters (Cry of Frustration and/or Illusionary Retribution). Means you get 4s.
Mainhand focus (as long as the focus gets a fan skin), whips (would that be onehand or twohand?), mainhand pistol, chakrams.
And I still don’t understand why we (as magical duellists) didn’t get an offhand dagger.
As far as I could observe “Confounding Bolts” message appears only if the izerker starts his spin inside a field, but I have yet to get a confusion stack on an enemy. I’m quite sure some time ago I got confusion on the enemy with izerker and i read somewhere on this forum that the confusion application disappeared with one of the last patches (I think it was the one from feb 26 or one of the following smaller ones)
I REALLY want a focus with a fan skin and MH focus, because THAT would be cool. Or the darkelf only weapons from sacred (forgot the name).
I run a shatter/confusion hybrid build.
Armor: Rabid with Undead runes
Weapon: Rampager
Trinkets: Berzerker with Exquisit Ruby thingies
everything is exotic (so no rares and no ascended gear)
Traits are 20/20/0/0/30
With this combination I get 1750 power, 50% crit chance, >1000 con damage and a little toughness for defence. Confusion ticks for about 350 per skill and with rare veggie pizzas and the trait for 33% longer confusion it works very well. And the bleeding isn’t too bad.
@Leuca: yeah 200% is way to much and the potential 10 sec delay is annoying and just unnecessary. If ANet would follow your suggetstion and buff the trait from 20% to 25% you could get an even 100% increase which isn’t overpowered (especially if you consider the low health of phantasms).
It doesn’t “take a few seconds to apply”.
Signet of Illusion “pulses” every 10 seconds (at least I think it’s 10) and applies its effect with every puls (but only once per illusion). So you can summon your illusion and have the increased health nearly immediatly or you may have to wait a few seconds.
Additionally it doesn’t increase illusion health by 50% but by 200% and I honestly have no idea how it stacks with the trait that increases illusion health.
If this effects are intended or not, only ANet knows, but since it is inconsistent with the tooltips it is listed as a bug.
reasons to like offhand sword:
the phantasm follows the enemy (warden does not) and hits pretty hard, it makes only one hit, which helps with enemys with retaliation and EVERY attack is a leap finisher (etheral field = 3 phantasms with chaos armor). since iSwordsman hits fast you can shatter him earlier then the others
the block helps save the dodge for situations you can’t forsee and generates a clone
As most OPs already said: Leveling gets easier once you reach lvl 40. What you can do until then: Every piece of equipment should have power and either toughness or vitality. Condition damage is supar in early lvls. Yes, even if you use staff, scepter and/or torch stick with power.
Get 5 points in the Illusion tree for the 20% cd reduction on illusion skills (clones AND phantasms count as illusions) this minor trait effects weapon AND utility skills. This should be the first 5 trait points you spend.
Greatsword is great. Use it. As second weapon set I would suggest Sword/Sword or Sword/Pistol or Sword/Focus, whatever you like more. If you have trouble with dying, switch GS with Staff, but keep the sword. If you use Sword/Sword get Blade training (10 points Duelling).
Playstyle: Use a combination of phantasm and shatter: get a phantasm out, then 1 or 2 other clones and once the phantasm finished its attack, shatter.
Once you hit lvl 40 you can start using speciallised builds (phantasm, shatter, mantra, condition, …) and starting with 60 you can kill nearly everything solo.
It would help if you post more information about what you (want to) use. For example how many traits in which tree and what playstyle you (want to) use (shatter, phantasm, mantra, …).
Asuming you want to use phantasms AND have Sharper Images (even if you don’t have any condition damage) I would say phantasmal fury (especially if you use pistol or focus as offhand)
@roachsrealm: Jugding from your taits I asume you want to play with phantasms (If not please correct me). The “typical” phantasm build is 10/15/0/25/5 (with 15 remaining trait points, I put them in Illusion for Phantasmal Haste) with mostly berserker gear (bleeds from Sharper Images is just a bonus).
I used this build quite a while but now I switched to a mantra build from Fay (look it up in the sticky where all the builds are linked, I use Hecate) because it offers more support for group play. But I shatter much less and focus more on phantasms.
If you don’t like these builds, you should only use 20 in Deception, the last minor trait is mostly useless (in pve) and Empowering Mantras only shines if you have 30 in domination vor 3 charges and use 4 mantras (but then it hurts).
If you want a shatter build I would use Osicats but if you don’t like staff just use something else, it will still work.
@ Kandolo: I agree with Sarcasmic
I started with mesmer and I’m happy with her. But since she is already 80 and I had a phase when I didn’t want to play with her (always used the same build, which I don’t recommend, now I switch about every two weeks) I started trying other classes. And I have to say no other class was as fun (or difficult) to play in early lvls.
And I have to agree with Bloodgruve, Guardian looks straightforward but in reality has depth.
What I discoverd is that the real fun begins once you hit lvl 60 and you have access to all traits.
I played every profession (some more than others, mesmer is main and AWESOME) and I think no class should have a 25% speed signet except thieves, because they are THIEVES. In every rpg thieves are the fast class with high damage but low health/armor.
The mesmer especially doesn’t need a speed signet. We have blink and portal, we have veil and mass invisibility, we have time warp, we have iDefender, we have already very good signets and now you want a speed signet too?
We have probably the highest in-combat mobility and if you want to run fast outside of combat, run in a group. If there is a warrior or a guardian (or both) you can use focus (temporal curtain) and they can use their shouts/weapons skills for group perma-swiftness.
(edited by Wisler.9485)
I don’t exactly like the scepter but since it is our only ranged onehand weapon, well …
On the other hand it has a block (which is good especially in wvw/pvp but not so in general pve (I know sometimes it helps with bosses and their easily seen attack animations for some powerful attacks)). But I still think a block on a ranged weapon is unnecessary. But I love scepter#3. In pve it’s decent damage (direct and confusion, even thought confusion is not very good in pve) and in wvw/pvp it’s awesome: There are two possibilities: the enemy uses one/two dodge rolls to negeate the damage but then your shatter hits him or the attack hits which makes, well, the attack hit.
Of course I would really like it if the scepter autoattack would be changed (something like necro) but I don’t think it will happen anytime soon.
First I would suggest that you decide, if you want to play shatter or phantasm (I tried both and both are fun but still different).
I run a 10/15/0/25/20 phantasm build and I use a rampagers-set (at least the six slots for clothing) the trinkets are a mix of knights and berserker and the weapons are soldier (because I couldn’t yet be bothered to replace them with something else). Runes are undead.
This gives me decent power, precision, toughness, vitality and condidtion damage. And yes, I know that most people say phantasm should be played fully glass cannon (either full power,prec or full condition, prec) but I like it and I still think it is better to be alive and deal slightly less damage (and believe me this mix of direct and bleed damage DOES hurt) than to be dead and not deal high damage. Additionally this allows me to play pure trident in underwater battles because I absolutely can’t stand the spear.
I use this in both pve and wvw.
Weapons are sword/focus and scepter/pistol. Sometimes I swap sword/focus with greatsword (mostly for fractals with my guild because let’s face it: how often do you go melee in fractals?). In wvw I use the before mentioned weapon set but I use staff/gs if I run in a zerg.
Before this I ran a 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build with full berserker (at this time with rare equipement) with a few knight and valkyrie pieces (about 2000 armor and 16 – 17k health)