Guild Wars 2

I’m going to try out 10/20/10/0/30, see if I have better luck with shatter.

1. I want to try a good instance build. Right now I’m 0/20/15/15/20 with GS and sword/pistol. The damage seems to be very inconsistent, and I’m not really bringing anything to the fight. (I use time warp every cooldown, I use null field to remove debuffs and I’m prolly the best class at reviving my teamates) but beyond that, I feel like warriors and guardians buff better, my null field is on a really long cooldown and I do very little damage when I don’t have phantasms out. I’m good with my phantasms (put them in the corners and do what I can to give them health), but they get killed by most bosses and the trash typically dies before I can get 3 out.

So I’m thinking I’d like to try a staff build, I’m just so unfamiliar with that concept that I’d like some guidance—I also already invested in an exotic GS and Sword (I have enough tokens to pick up a staff, scepter and focus though) I just haven’t had the motivation.

2. I need a source on how my attributes are transferred to my phantasms (how much of my vitality, power, prec, toughness and cnd dmg is transferred) and what abilities have misleading tooltips. Eg. the on runes that increase bleed duration, don’t increase your phantasms bleed duration right?

3. What sigils and runes do we benefit the most from in your opinion? I’m looking through all the vendors and there’s not a lot for us.

Can you do me a solid and post your spec?

Also, what sigils and runes are you rocking right now?

What they wanted was to give mesmers the options to use other skills except for just getting 3 phants out.

With 3 phants out you try to avoid your clone creation skills because they eat a phantasm.

This patch makes it so we have options. If all of our phantasms are dead, use a clone creating skill or two and build up a fast shatter. Most of the +clone skills and shatter skills AoE debuff and buff the party too. If you become less attached to your phantasms and become more of an active player, it’s almost a buff.

Also, stop comparing us to warriors. It’s a stupid argument. We do all of our damage from range, they do all theirs from up close. It’s apples to oranges because each class has different strengths and weaknesses.

If you’re like me, you’ve settled on the so-called “Legion” build for your Mesmer toon.

To run this build most effectively, you PvP with GS + Sword/Pistol.

Why this build does fluctuate to some extent, it centers around going at least 15 deep in the Dueling tree making for builds like:

10/20/15/15/10

or (my current build and the focus of this post)

0/20/15/15/20

With another, perhaps better damage, less survivability spec being

10/20/5/15/20

However you look at it, you’re specing yourself to get the following MUST HAVE phantasmal traits from the tree:

1. Phantasmal Fury (10 into Dueling)
2. Sharper Images (15 into Dueling)
3. Illusionist Celerity (5 into Illusions)

The trick to this build is that your phantasmal duelist hits the target 8 times, each individual attack has a chance to crit, and each crit applies a bleed. With three duelists out, you can quickly, and from range, stack bleeds up to 20-25 on a target.

I’d like to do some of the math for those of you who AREN’T using phantasmal haste, as many specs seem to pick up the Empowered Illusions for 10 points in the Domination tree as opposed to the somewhat cumbersome 20 into Illusions.

On average, let’s say my duelist does 1k dmg a cycle (it doesn’t matter how much, it’s arbitrary and would be the same with any scaling of damage and any phantasm). The cycle, untalented takes 7 seconds, giving me an effective dps of 142.9dps.

When I spec into Empowered Illusions, I gain 15% additional damage. This means I’m now doing 1150 damage a cycle. The cycle still being 7seconds equals 164.3dps.

Now compare that with Phantasmal Haste, 20% faster recharge speed on phantasms abilities. This means my duelist is not shooting someone every 7 seconds, but every 5.5seconds. At 1k dmg every 5.5 seconds he does 181.8dps.

Beyond having a straight up better damage output, there are other intangibles associated with doing damage FASTER, with this build.

First, dead enemies aren’t killing your teammates.
Second, you stack bleeds faster, and they have less chance of coming off because your next cycle is starting 1.5 seconds faster.
Third, phantasms are squishy, any phantasm that died 5.5seconds to 6.9 seconds after their last rotation would have underperformed the spec that picks up Phantasmal haste.

For those of you who are curious, the two abilities together, 1150dmg every 5.5seconds equals 209.1dps.

So let’s talk about picking up both PH and EI. The only way I see it working is to get rid of a bit of survivability by only going 5 deep in the chaos tree and emerging with a spec like:

10/20/5/15/20

Here what you’ve done is you’ve removed 9% max dmg reduction and your protection when you gain regeneration (your synergy between Illusionary Membrane and Phantasmal Regeneration is gone) for an effective 13% increase in phantasm dmg:

(209-181)/209=.13

I don’t see it being worth while for a WvW or PvP build.

The other gripe I have with the community at large is people taking Deceptive Evasion over Duelist’s Disipline (The 20 point Dueling Talent).

While DE is an incredible ability, no doubt, our damage potential in this Legion build is SO slow to get started. You have to do everything you can to get the duelists out faster.

Additionally, our mantra in the Legion build is “I WILL NOT SPAM BUTTONS, I WILL NOT SPAM BUTTONS, I WILL NOT SPAM BUTTONS.” Spamming buttons, more specifically, over-summing clones, will get you killed. It reduces your dmg and slows down your gameplay, it also removes your O S*** buttons. Now some of the better Mesmers out there, understand this and USE CLONES WELL, to build up shatters, during their phantasm cooldowns. Effective use of shatters early, phantasms mid battle, and ultimately shatters at the end, is what you should be aiming for.

Your armor for this build should be about cnd dmg, precision with power and toughness as third stats.

Complexes
Darkhaven

Thanks for the feedback.

An favorite skills from any of the trees?

Hey,

I just rerolled mesmer—and I’m loving it. They’re a lot of fun to play. So I’ve been trolling the forms a bit trying to figure out optimal specs/abilities and gear for various scenarios.

And what I’ve found so far… is that you guys can’t agree on anything…

Right now I’m using GS/Staff. My spec is irrelevant because I’m so low level, but I’m thinking of going 20 deep into domination to pick up the GS specialization—that’s as far as I’ve thought it through right now. As for my abilities, I use decoy, blink and feedback. I change the last two fairly frequently depending on my situation, but really haven’t tried any others out I’m really happy with.

I like playing as a more support/hazing role, but I want to maintain my ability to do some damage in small group pvp and pve encounters.

I’d love some guidance, I’d even like to just hear what weapon and ability combos you’re using and how you’re playing it. I would also really appreciate it if someone could tell me what gems you’ve found in our skill tree—most of them seem unappealing to me.

Thanks.