Guild Wars 2

I’ve been having a lot of success with the following PU build in the past week.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW7fnsICNqh9pB2qBcrhlXjqeYP2l1sDmhRANAypnD-TZRHABB8QA8uMgQ7PAwFAYgjAAA

There’s a lot of room for switching things up for personal playstyle, but the important things are keeping PU and the Pledge, of course.

Windwalker.7421:

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

SlimChance.6593:

NEW: Sigil of Ruthlessness: Gain 5 might (3 seconds) when interrupting a foe.

Although, I’d be the first to add the “on interrupt” sigil to my build. This screams for an ICD!!

Agreed.

Yeah OK, but then please also consider balancing the duration of the Might stacks in relation to that CD! Three seconds is very short and even a 1-2 second ICD means most AE interrupts will only be able to fire this sigil once even when interrupting multiple foes.

Let’s not get too carried away here, as currently we don’t even have a viable interrupt focused build in the game. Let’s not kill the idea before even testing things. (Like it seems you have done to the Reveal already. Sad. It was actually a refreshing new aspect to this Sigil rework, and not just a series of heavy handed nerfs to existing sigils as we’re pretty much back to now. )

Yeah, I think an internal cooldown would be a terrible idea. It’s worth noting that Mistrust doesn’t have an internal cooldown, and nobody can really justify using that in a mesmer interrupt build. The cooldown of interrupt based abilities would balance the proc rate of interrupt proc sigils. Even without an internal cooldown, they aren’t worth taking.

Please take a look at the Sigil of Paralyzation currently in game. As it is in game, tooltips don’t update properly to reflect the new stun duration. Additionally, it doesn’t appear to stack with other increased stun duration modifiers. If you could correct these issues with the next version, I think it would be okay.

I like the thought behind the interrupt based sigils, but are these what interrupt based builds really need? None of the “on interrupt” type sigils help with the omnipresence of stability in this meta. I’m fond of interrupt builds. I don’t imagine I’d ever use either sigil on an interrupt build for that reason, and I certainly won’t use them on a non interrupt build.

What’s this all about? Did anet announce something?
EDIT: nevermind, I found the sigil proposal thread in the PvP forum. I’ll repost here what I posted there.

I like the thought behind the interrupt based sigils, but are these what interrupt based builds really need? None of the “on interrupt” type sigils help with the omnipresence of stability in this meta. I’m fond of interrupt builds. I don’t imagine I’d ever use either sigil on an interrupt build for that reason, and I certainly won’t use them on a non interrupt build.

Ithilwen.1529:

Update: I went and played my placement matches on core PU Mesmer. won 4 and lost 6, most of them close. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have done a lot better on chrono.

Is core PU a reasonable build for PvP? Not really. I win some 1v1 and have some mobility but the lack of alacrity and slow shatters are huge hindrances.

Still, I want to play a Mesmer, not a warrior in light armor. I’ll soldier on and see if I can find a niche somewhere.

I don’t know about core, but I’ve had some moderate success with Chrono/PU.

If I were going to drop chrono, I’d probably work dueling in there, likeso

Viper can be substituted for something with some survivability. Portal can be substituted for something like veil (which can act as a lesser mass invis), but I wouldn’t recommend it.

For interrupt builds, what I’ve roughly been testing has been

There’s a lot of work to do with it though. I’ve had trouble with guardians and warriors while playing the interrupt build, but after some testing, I think that you can usually beat both if you know what you’re doing. I’m not sold on the worth of mistrust yet. It’s definitely a fun build, because of just how long you can keep someone disabled.

I’m terrible at this game, but I’ve played a lot with PU builds. They’re excellent when you’re playing with people like me. I’ve also been experimenting with interrupt builds, with mixed results. Against some lineups, they’re amazing. Most, you’ll get more mileage with the meta build.

What specific questions do you have about either?

Carighan.6758:

• Classes cannot be “created equal”. You’d not have an answer to some attacks. That’s fine, someone else has. Group up. But it’s not how the devs designed GW2, and while the current devs do sort of “get it” (from recent changes), the whole “equality at any cost” is baked too deeply into the system at this point, IMO.
• Currently, abilities are weak individually and strong in concert. Look how single abilities have to provide 5-10 stacks of Might, or 5-15 stacks of a condition. Everything is weak by itself. For something like the old “pure Debuffer” Mesmer to work, they’re need to make individual abilities strong again. Don’t see that happening, we’re moving the opposite direction if anything.

We’ll have to see how they treat the perma stealth trap thief build. Hopefully they allow it to remain, as something unique the thief can do. But given past history, I believe they will nerf it to the ground, rather than buff everything up to its level.

OriOri.8724:

I’d rather have the Pledge be a flat CD reduction on torch skills of 15%. I am not a fan of these conditional recharge faster traits. Either way, it would be nice to not have it encourage stealth camping.

I think you misunderstood me, but I wasn’t clear, so not your fault. You can keep burn stacks up on targets with far more uptime than you can stealth buffs on yourself as the Mesmer. Probably the same with blind, with the right traits. You could probably achieve 100% pledge cooldown reduction uptime. It would open up condi builds, but it would also really open up stealth builds, and probably make a stealth build viable without having to take PU.

Really, what the game needs is a return to every class having good, annoying, cheese. This is an important part of multiplayer game design: mastering the cheese feels good. overcoming the cheese feels good. Without cheese to master and overcome, gw2 sometimes feels like I’m playing a watered down version of a real game.

I would like to see a return to the GW1 roots of the mesmer class. There were lots of interesting debuffs you could put on your enemies, and it was quite fun. I would like there to be more interesting interrupt abilities, that can be used more often.

For some less crazy ideas: I’d like to see the Pledge reworked so your torch skills don’t recharge faster for being stealthy, but for blinding people and burning them.

I’d also like to see the movespeed buff from the Chrono trait line rolled into the base mesmer.

As an update, I’ve been disappointed with interrupt builds after extensive testing.

Mistrust does insane damage if you can land it in the right situations, it’s just that the right situations don’t crop up often enough in my experience. The meta has too many easy sources of aegis and stability.

I do think that the absolute best pure interrupt build is probably a domination/dueling/chrono. Domination just offers too much: boonstrip that we need, increased daze time+stuns, and Power Lock. Interrupting a heal with power lock can win teamfights. Dueling is great because mistrust is still a decent source of damage. Chrono is mandatory because it gives you the shield, which is probably your best interrupt skill.

Weapon wise, I’m torn between the mobility of the staff, or extra interrupts with sword 4, pistol, or gs.

Out of frustration with the very hit or miss nature of interrupt builds in this meta, I’m currently running a Chaos (PU)/Illusion/Chrono build with the slow traits, and it’s been working out well. I wouldn’t call it a complete interrupt build, but it does enjoy landing them.

Fay.2357:

@atlashugged: The problem with putting any sort of interesting mechanic on a clone-death is that clone-death is inherently bland and uninteresting. Lets compare it to your chosen examples. The druid has a thorns aura that they can use. However, it requires them to remain close to you (600 leash range) and pop it at the right time (before taking rapid hits). This means that the druid has to specifically play well to use that skill effectively.

The old clone death mechanics certainly were the opposite fo what I’m asking for. But that doesn’t mean that clone death itself is never going to be interesting. For example, the trait I listed above would reward precise timing with clones, almost like an interrupt build. It has interesting counterplay, but is not effective if simply spammed. I think you’re missing the forest for the trees: by focusing on the inherently bland and uninteresting version of clone death we’ve had, you’re missing the interesting possibilities that clone death can be.

I like the idea of clone death, but don’t like the idea of making it abusable. Clone death fits thematically with the Mesmer.

So the trick is giving counterplay to the clone death.

So a really simple idea I had was making a clone death trait that increased the cooldown of the ability used to kill it by 5 seconds, unless that ability has no cooldown. This has a few advantages to it over the old clone death traits. It isn’t an AoE anymore, so would only ever affect one target. It offers counterplay: if you can kill the clones with an autoattack, you don’t get punished. It also presents an interesting decision tree for opponents: Killing phantasms is important, but putting critical skills on a longer cooldown could cost them the teamfight.

I think the game would be better if it presented complicated decisions to its players. This is why I disagree with the attitude expressed here by Fay: "Killing them should be a reward, it shouldn’t have a punishment to it. "

Making everything black and white, and simple like that is some League of Legends type thinking/balancing, and has resulted in LoL game being one of the most bland, rounded corners type games ever. I won’t dispute League’s success, because there is no accounting for taste. DotA 2 is the superior game in my opinion, precisely because the developer isn’t afraid to present his players with complicated choices in gameplay.

I’d also add that GW2 already has skills that complicate the reward with punishment. In combat you should absolutely focus the druid for instance. But the druid has a low CD thorns aura that punishes you for doing so. Retaliation is an extremely common buff that punishes you for hitting people that have it. The Necromancer’s most popular PvP build is based at least in part on punishing you for dealing condition damage to it, by transferring those conditions right back to you. All of these are interesting elements that add to the uniqueness of the game. So complicating phantasms by giving them death traits wouldn’t be bad: in fact if done right, it would be good.

I’ve been trying to master interrupt builds on the mesmer. I’ve been having okay success with them so far, but not as much as I’ve had with more meta builds.

What has your experience been with interrupts this patch? What build do you run for interrupts?

I’ve experimented with every traitline so far in an interrupt build, and the most controversial thing I could say is that I actually like the Chronomancer Slow passives for interrupts. They have a lot of things going for them: Slowness halves damage output of most affected players (the skills do the same damage, they just take twice as long to do it, and the only exceptions are classes with lots of instant cast damage skills, like shatters, or pet based classes), slowness makes interrupts easier to land, and the slow crit rate increase represents a pretty significant damage buff for you as well. For instance, at normal crit damage, you deal on average 15% more damage to slowed targets.

Domination is probably the best interrupt line that I’ve experimented with so far. Power Lock is a really fun trait to use, and it also offers you your choice of quickness on interrupt, or boonstripping on shatter, both of which are fantastic. Finally, increasing the duration of your dazes, and turning one into a stun is also really, really, good.

Dueling is also great. Mistrust is fantastic if you have some condition damage behind it. Blinds on shatter is an excellent defensive utility. The pistol skill isn’t worth taking though, because the pistol isn’t worth taking.

Chaos is okay. Chaotic Interruption has been underwhelming for me so far. Both Prismatic Understanding and Bountiful Disillusionment offer more, and might be worth taking. Chaos does offer shorter cooldowns on manipulation skills, which I really like.

Inspiration is inspiration. you can justify taking it in any build.

Illusion is only worth mentioning for The Prestige, in the context of interrupt builds. Playstyle wise, I think a condition focused interrupt build is possible, with the prestige giving you defensive utility with invisibility skills. But if I were doing an invisibility build, I think I would prefer Chaos for Prismatic Understanding.

Skill wise, I’ve found you can’t go wrong with the Shield. Mantra of Distraction is also in an incredibly nice place with it’s 12 second cooldown. Between the shield and mantra, I don’t think an interrupt build needs many more interrupts.

What are your thoughts?
_

I always thought it would be cool if the player under the effects of illusion of life counted as an illusion for the duration, letting the mesmer have a 5th illusion for shatters.

I just experimented with a diviner build after reading this thread.
Basic build was this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJAR2msIilpBMrhlUj6MKaiqj8BOgAo+Zn2tF-TpQQABAs/A1lBAA

It’s strangely fun to share max might stacks with the entire team, while still having some great shatter based burst.

If anything, this patch was a buff to a different flavor of condi mesmer, that does use the torch. I was enjoying Dueling/Illusions/Chrono before the patch, and now I’m enjoying it even more.

So the patch buffed an off the wall condi build, and a power build. Seems pretty good to me.

The current phantasm build does require Chronomancer if you want to be optimal.

In this current patch, I don’t think you have to be a chronomancer to be competitive.

Try this out:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW7fnsICFrhNqB2qBcrhlXDCNA5sJlJo3RzcFLbEA-TJRHABeXGws9HA4JAEwFBAA

I’ve been having a lot of success with either Dueling/Illusion/Chrono, or Chaos/Illusion/Chrono, and its led me to believe that I would have a similar level of success with Chaos/Dueling/Illusions. You get to apply a lot of blinds, which in turn creates a lot of confusion stacks. I think Scepter/Torch is mandatory, but the other weapon can be whatever you want. Staff is good though.

The first build seems interesting from a support perspective, but not optimal. I don’t see what you’re going for damage wise. I’d change it to Illusions/Inspiration/Chronomancer. Illusions will let you generate a ton of might to share with your team, cast phantasms more often, which in combination with inspiration lets you share all your boons with everyone. That’s the main change, seen here:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAW7dncfClphlqB2fCEgilnj6sACgEDdxasGo+PT0FF-TJhGAB5XGAgDCw57PowRAAA

If you want to further optimize it, I’ve never had much luck using wells, and I think the Staff is a better weapon than the greatsword for this build.

I’d like to see a return to class diversification. DotA is a great game because all the heroes in it are so different. While it seems like in GW2, all the classes have been hammered down to be superficially different, but only superficially. Give me a mesmer class that can do fun things with illusions, instead of just summoning DPS pets or bombs.

Also, and this is just a general thing: reduce cooldowns on skills across the board, for all classes. Cooldowns on everything are too kitten high.

sPvP.

In conquest I’ll work with the team to control mid, and try to be a nuisance on far with decaps. Teamfights are usually won with lots of blinds helping to cover the team and slow down the enemy’s damage, or using Moa with invisibility to cover the animation. The hard part is not getting too predictable about that.

In Defense of the Lord, I’ll usually try to disrupt the enemy’s supply and chain of archers/doorbreakers. But I really have no clue what I’m doing in DotL.

The only things I really have trouble with are bunker type builds if Moa is down. Everything else I can get a reasonable amount of burst and condi pressure on, while preventing them from dealing damage to me or teammates.

I thought a lot about seize the moment, but I felt it was less useful with invisibility to hide the animations. Chronophantasm helps keep clone production up, and the burning phantasm is actually decent.

I’ve also switched the staff out for a scepter/shield bar (i may shift the weapons around a bit yet, so it may end up being sw/sh & sc/t) What you lose in mobility, you gain in tankiness, more alacrity, and more reliable blinds

As far as veil and portal go, I’d replace mimic with portal first. Veil and decoy are on there to reduce the CD of torch skills, while providing more ways to escape. Torch skills are your only form of condi cleanse in this build, so that’s fairly important.

I’m not great, or possibly even good by any measure. But I’ve been having fun lately with this build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAsfWnsICFrhNqBmpBMrhlXjqeYT2lFNAypmoMB6toB-TJRHABCt/QAnCAAeCA1XGAA

I like the synergy between blindness and confusion. Blindness is good against singular, high damaging attacks, and confusion helps to punish spamming to break through blindness. Having the trait that causes confusion on blindness makes the synergy even better. Having blindness on demand with shatters also helps.

I don’t know if it’s any good, but it has been working with me, and it’s fun, so I thought I’d share.

Thoughts on improving it?

I feel like PU is held back by virtue of being in the chaos tree, which is very weak compared to other offerings for the Mesmer. The best parts about the chaos tree are all things that don’t necessarily synergize the best with invisibility.

If you have mimic, you can get a really nice uptime with portal. Cast the first portal spell, creating the entrance. Then, before you cast the 2nd spell and create the exit, cast mimic. This will result Portal Entre being off cooldown almost immediately after you create the exit.

Cool, thanks for sharing.

Did you at any point test the staff in your build? I’ve been doing some testing myself, and I think it’s secretly the best bunker weapon available to mesmer.

With Chaotic Dampening and alacrity, you can have a pretty high uptime of chaos armor, and chaos storm, while generating warlocks and winds of chaos clones at a high rate.

At the very least, it’s a lot of fun.

I can’t get a screenshot of the game itself when it’s doing the error (black screen, cursor visible, music playing). The screenshot function doesn’t work, either the one built into my computer, or the one built into the game. There’s not much to show anyways.

But here is a screenshot of right after I ctrl+alt+deleted to get out of the game’s window. The process is still running, as I haven’t ended it yet (I also figured out how to get the task manager visible, enabling “always on top”). As you can see, the game seems to be running in the original resolution of my laptop (3000×2000), while now my laptop seems to be stuck in the resolution I attempted to set the game as (1600×900 in this screenshot, though I’ve tried with others as well).

Guild Wars 2 runs fine in borderless window mode though at a really crappy framerate, due to my computer having a way better screen than it has a video card. Because of this, I would like to play in full screen mode, where I can adjust the resolution to boost performance. However, whenever I try to adjust it, the result is a black screen, with music and game sounds playing, and a visible cursor.

Alt tabbing while this happens is also pointless. My computer’s desktop is now dominated by a grossly enlarged and zoomed in guild wars 2 screen. Essentially, it looks like the game is still in borderless windowed mode, but for a resolution about 4 times that of my screen. Trying to bring up any programs doesn’t work, because the game window is always on top.

The only workaround I have right now is to reduce the resolution on my computer manually whenever I want to play Guild Wars 2. But that’s not a long term solution. I have played Guild Wars 2 in full screen mode on this computer before, so I know its possible. I’ll try to provide screenshots of what I’m talking about, but since the only way I know to restore functionality to my computer after this happens is to sign out of it, I don’t know that I can.