Hey guys! Here’s a phantasm mesmer build I’ve been running for awhile now that uses staff + sword/pistol and I’ve been having great success with. It’s focused on high single target spike damage along with stunlock capabilities. I explain the build in detail in the video, but I also linked the build using the calculator from intothemists.com for convenience.
I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’ve been using D/D in high level fractals for awhile now. I’m not saying D/D is better than S/F or S/D, but it’s very much viable in PvE.
I updated my old double dagger build since it’s been almost six months and I’ve made some changes to it.
It’s quite durable and has good burst. The build offers great condi cleanse for yourself and allies, as well as big heals. Glass cannons are manageable with almost 100% uptime of protection. I’m currently running 75% boon duration which makes my might stacking more effective, consistent fury, longer regens, and again almost 100% uptime of protection.
The build works great for any aspect of the game, whether it’s WvW / PvE / PvP.
This may be buried too far in for any of the devs to read, but a prime example of how GW2 failed in horizontal progression was the ease of acquiring skills.
By the time a character is level 30, a majority of skills (utility/heal/weapon) are already unlocked. I would hope that in the future when introducing new skills, there will be some sort of system that would take time and effort to acquire them.
Skill progression/acquisition is one way you guys can truly improve on horizontal progression. Create elite quests that have to be completed to actually acquire elite skills. You get the idea.
I was thinking of mixing soldiers with clerics. Thoughts on this. I did a little testing in mists and using a soldiers neck with cleric stone was pretty effective and got my health nearly 30k.
Little unsure in wvw and pve where to split things though. How much HP do you recommend to be as effective for healing minions (I assume this is the main reason for it?)
any tips on keeping the bone minions up, they seem to have the shortest life span. Might just be a practice thing
edit: Considering going staff as well but then I think that defeats the purpose of this build which is to life steal.
edit2: I just realized while looking this over again. How do you deal with conditions? No removal? Is the goal to heal through it? I’ll have to seriously test that out.
Also Kopper, if you feel that you are struggling to remove conditions, you could use Lyssa runes, which cures all conditions and gives you all boons for a short time, instead of Speed runes. The charge on the flesh golem counts as using an elite skill. The build is fairly flexible in that regard.
This build is very easy to beat,I fight Vamp MM alot and they go down fast after you take out the healing pet.
That is the right strategy to beat them, but by the time you get it down, the Necro should have been able to put enough damage in to you to have a good chance of winning the fight. While you are going for his pet, he can root you, daze you, fear you, and burn you.
Yep that’s right. With the kiting abilities that the MM build has, we can buy time to get our healing pet back up.
I was thinking of mixing soldiers with clerics. Thoughts on this. I did a little testing in mists and using a soldiers neck with cleric stone was pretty effective and got my health nearly 30k.
Little unsure in wvw and pve where to split things though. How much HP do you recommend to be as effective for healing minions (I assume this is the main reason for it?)
any tips on keeping the bone minions up, they seem to have the shortest life span. Might just be a practice thing
edit: Considering going staff as well but then I think that defeats the purpose of this build which is to life steal.
edit2: I just realized while looking this over again. How do you deal with conditions? No removal? Is the goal to heal through it? I’ll have to seriously test that out.
The number 4 skill on your off hand dagger is deathly swarm which is on an 18s cd. It’s a powerful condi removal especially since you are applying it to your target. If you’re up against a LB warrior, wait until they throw pindown and fan of fire/combustive shot on you and throw the bleed/immob/burn right back on him. This is why I also bring Well of Power, not just for the stun break but for heavy condi removal. Between those two, I haven’t had any problems in the current PvP meta.
Pretty good video I enjoyed it. Been looking for a MM build for my wife as she enjoys them. I am going to have her give this a go.
As for the ones who said cleric would be bad and doesn’t scale well. Can you explain a more proper choice with this build and why? We don’t have a lot of gold to throw around buying different set of armor and weapons and need to make the proper choices. She mostly PVEs with some WVW once in a while.
As for the video. You don’t talk or seem to explain why you use the well, or how this effects pve at all, or some of the other choices you might take. I realize this is most a sPVP build or seems to be aimed at that. However if you are going to make recommendation for say PvE then please say what and why you would make those choices. Just makes things a little more clear for those less familiar with the class in general. Quick example, you say in PVE warhorn might be a solid choice but don’t talk about the sigil or why it’s good in PVE.
I also realize there might be time constraints on the video itself. Still found it enjoyable to watch and was easy to follow. Thanks.
Hey, thanks for the comment and you’re right. I didn’t take time to explain the well choice all that much, but the well of power is a stunbreaker and also has the condi to boons effect. In PvE, you could go a different way, but like you said that choice was mostly for PvP. The Warhorn is good in PvE/WvW because of the swiftness application, which in WvW is a good thing
I would never choose clerics over soldiers or knights, healing power as a stat just does not provide a point for point benefit compared to precision, power, toughness, or even vitality IMO. The scaling on HP is just too low.
Vampiric traits received a nice buff to healing power scaling, as well as power scaling which have great synergy in this build, not to mention the 100% healing scaling buff to life transfer. So you’re saying I should choose precision over healing power, but how come? My minions don’t benefit at all from my precision, nor am I depending on my own damage to kill people, yet healing power/power increase the damage of my minions. If it was before the Oct 15th patch, I’d agree that healing power wasn’t effective enough to take, but my point with the build is that it’s very much viable now after the vampiric trait changes. I’d be curious to see why precision or even vitality would benefit this build over healing power. Thanks
Hey guys! So after reading the patch notes from Oct 15, and seeing that some players still don’t believe the lifestealing minion build can work, I decided to give it a try again. All I have to say is I’ve been having great success with this build in every aspect of the game, it offers very high sustainability through life siphoning, along with heavy single target damage. I would say though that it’s a shame we don’t get some sort of come back button, because when the minions focus on one player, they bunch up and are much easier to AoE down. I also think that agony being applied to minions/pets could be looked at again.
Hello everyone. After an exhausting couple of days, we’ve found all of the hidden locations for all of the zones in World 2. Here is the guide to the locations for Zone 3.
Right at the beginning, I had an area that I thought was counted as two secret locations but it’s only one. I put in an annotation of a short clip showing where the hidden location I forgot to put into the video is. Sorry about that.
You missed a secret in your video. One of the three secrets around the raccoon doesn’t count, instead you have to get in secret #6 and throw a bomb to open a hole to a chest (also necessary for bauble master).
Thanks for pointing it out, brain is a bit fried from too much SAB.
TBH, I’m still grinding through Zone 3 finding the secret locations. I almost have all of them, so once I’m done with that then I might go back and do the baubles.
(…)
And the other 35% of people are those who enjoy the game and are toiling away here while at work (me).
(…)
Please stop with these bold generalizations using fantasy numbers pulled out of thin air! Where is the proof? Where are the sources! I may be at work, although I would NEVER admit that out in the open and publicly – but I am definitely not toiling! That sounds just negative. I am positively patrolling the neighborhood, spreading my knowledge and wisdom, accrued by years of practice, patiently reading the same things over and over again while phrasing the same things eloquently repeatedly myself (but so that no one notices).
So it’s probably like a lot more likely to be like 34%.
Disclaimer: This … satire … if you so will, was not directed at anyone particularly.
People seem to see through smoke color glasses, glass half empty with poison inside. I’m itching to get home to play it at the end of my work’s trip and all I see in the forums during my trip are people who spits at the game and wants others to see it that way too. Appalling to say the least.
*Edit: Note to OP
@OP: Nice work on the video by the way.
Hey everyone! Myself and Seras put together a video talking about how far Guild Wars 2 has come over this past year. We wanted to put this video together to shed light on how much GW2 has actually improved this year, and the solid foundation ArenaNet has given it. We also talk about the problems that were in the game’s early life cycle, and how ArenaNet addressed them. Thanks for your time!
I also want to close with a congratulations to ArenaNet for all of the fun they provided us over this past year. Many recent MMO’s have struggled keeping a playerbase for even that long.
I see people run past the passiflora’s all the time -_-
i think only very few (like 2?) shown on the map are real.
the rest are fakes. traps that go boom.
proximity mines, they are!
I won the first 3 out of 4 games I played, because of Seras’ help. By the time I would get down to the SE Camp or towards the Crab Toss Arena, I would have around 7 rations from the Passiflora. Two out of the three times I won, it was only because the other guy ran out of food
And it’s a shame you caved in… Just take another footage without names, the idea is good, so keep up with it and don’t be discouraged.
There will always be lots of whiny comments, but with no names I think there isn’t much to complain about.
Also, I don’t think you should ask permission either. Just hide names.
Thank you Gaidax, I really appreciate everything you wrote. You really get what we were trying to do and it’s unfortunate thakitten didn’t come across that way for some. I think the best thing to do was to just take it down. We will definitely be doing more, and I love your suggestions, so thank you for that.
This is trash. How effective or ineffective a build is will be evident by the player’s scores and performance over time. The player will know how they are doing, as will their opponents. If the player wants to do further research for their build, there are plenty of resources already available (on this forum and the official /wiki). If you want to help players, talk to them in-game or make a guide (video or written) to address the issues you want to discuss (which are likely recurring in your criticism of gearing/etc.). Making critical videos of unsuspecting players seems like harassment to me, and shouldn’t be encouraged here. Maybe you just want to make yourself “famous” by making these videos?
We made a mistake of not hiding the players identity. Next time we will make sure to hide the identity of whoever we are spectating. This isn’t meant specifically for the person we’re spectating, but finding lessons within their build, just like someone commentating on LoL and pointing out mistakes along with the positives, which we also do. But we understand now to make sure the identity of the players are well hidden.
More BS. Yeah, I’m a real bad guy for calling them noobs. You’re making videos of them, laughing at their characters appearances, and generally being a dipkitten. Good work.
You’re full of it. We weren’t laughing at his appearance, but we were laughing at how we kept calling him a girl not even realizing it was a male character.
Love the dodging and excuses, ‘oh it’s constructive criticism!’
You’re singling out noobs and saying how noob they are. You’re not even blanking the names. Way to grow the community kittens.
We’re not singling out noobs at all. We never said we had a problem with their builds in general, but we pick builds where there are a few changes that could be made and lessons that could be taught. Aren’t you being openly offensive by calling them noobs in the first place? We never treated them as such.
I like it. Don’t listen to first responder. Keep focusing on builds that make zero sense and are totally useless. You can make fun of their actions more too. Then after you’ve destroyed them you can build them back up again. Making fun of PvE players in PvP is awesome. Its like making fun of a kids horrendous drawings. It’s bad and not nice but its funny. My co-worker has a 6 year old and has her old drawing and failed coloring attempts all over her cube. I make fun of them all the time and the rest of the people in cubicle city get a huge kick out of it. Like why did she draw you with three legs? And how can you misspell love with luv. Not only does your kid have zero motor skills but her grammar is the absolute worst. And seriously why color the already white paper with a white crayon? She’s not accomplishing anything other than butchering the black lines that she’s supposed to be coloring inside of. Its a riot actually. I fully recommend.
On a serious note, I’d love to be on the show some time!
Right, except we aren’t making fun of anyone. I’ve always encouraged people to create unique builds. Unfortunately, even if you use a unique build, it still needs to make sense. Where do you see us making fun of someone? There is a moment at the very beginning where I candidly laughed at a certain decision. We are constructively criticizing a build and talking about downfalls of the player’s build, while pointing out things that many newer players might overlook or not be aware of.
Maybe next time try NOT opening up your video with immature giggling and finger-pointing when you’re not “making fun of anyone” as you put it.
People run experimental builds in sPvP all the time, it’s those players and their decisions to ignore the giggling, finger-pointing antics your video represent that discover those builds that you simply google to find and use afterwards. Nobody of any credibility would ever make a video like this to show anything productive.
The reason I put the necromancer part in was the fact that we thought it was a girl character while the whole time it was actually a male character, just for a laugh. We didn’t go over the necromancers build, because it was so far off and he was lacking an off hand weapon anyway.
I like it. Don’t listen to first responder. Keep focusing on builds that make zero sense and are totally useless. You can make fun of their actions more too. Then after you’ve destroyed them you can build them back up again. Making fun of PvE players in PvP is awesome. Its like making fun of a kids horrendous drawings. It’s bad and not nice but its funny. My co-worker has a 6 year old and has her old drawing and failed coloring attempts all over her cube. I make fun of them all the time and the rest of the people in cubicle city get a huge kick out of it. Like why did she draw you with three legs? And how can you misspell love with luv. Not only does your kid have zero motor skills but her grammar is the absolute worst. And seriously why color the already white paper with a white crayon? She’s not accomplishing anything other than butchering the black lines that she’s supposed to be coloring inside of. Its a riot actually. I fully recommend.
On a serious note, I’d love to be on the show some time!
Right, except we aren’t making fun of anyone. I’ve always encouraged people to create unique builds. Unfortunately, even if you use a unique build, it still needs to make sense. Where do you see us making fun of someone? There is a moment at the very beginning where I candidly laughed at a certain decision. We are constructively criticizing a build and talking about downfalls of the player’s build, while pointing out things that many newer players might overlook or not be aware of.
It is fairly self explanatory what he meant.
You used correct/incorrect, that might be YOUR definition but not THE definition. It come across as elitist and arrogant.
Who are you to judge what’s “correct” or not?
There are clear points that are stated as to why certain choices are not good and other choices are better. We’re talking about informing people of things they might not be aware of like how Sigil of Superior Fire and Superior Air won’t work on the same weapon set, because they share the same cooldown. I’m not sure how someone gets upset over the correct/incorrect idea of it. It’s about letting people know why certain choices are not viable.
It’s about letting people get a feel for how everything in a build needs to synergize with each other.
We took down the video because of the reactions we received on the forums and want to apologize for not respecting the privacy of the players we were spectating. Next time, we will request consent from the player to record them, and keep them anonymous. We overlooked the importance of player privacy, and will make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future. Our apologies.
Hello! We are doing a new series called SPVP Creepers, where we randomly spectate players in spvp and talk about their traits/runes/sigils/amulet choices, while throwing some valuable information your way. If you want to learn more about PvP builds in GW2, then check out our channel!
Hey guys, here’s a playlist I’m working on that has all of the achievement guides in it for the new Living Story content, including the 11 sample locations, stepping stones jumping puzzle, and locations of npcs.
Hey guys, here’s a video of me beating the bunny boss on Rytlock Mode with three hearts and no healing potions. I hope this helps you if you’re having difficulty with the boss.
These videos are spoilers just in case you wanted to find the locations on your own, but if anyone needed help with the hidden locations, I’ve uploaded a video for Easy and Rytlock Mode.
Thank you Oranisagu. It wasn’t my intention to just bump for no reason, but since I added part two and three I figured it would be fine. I wasn’t expecting to get a response like Esplen’s. I’m just trying to share all the fun I’ve been having in the SAB.
If anyone wants to know where the hidden locations are, here’s some videos showing you where they are. I’ll be adding in the other zones later on today.
