I’m a bit annoyed that some of my favorite traits are now mutually exclusive.
Deceptive Evasion and Harmonious Mantras
Halting Strike (merged with Power Block) and Greatsword Training
So, wait, did I read that right: DE is now competing for space with Harmonious Mantras?
Breaking my heart.
(Where’d they put that Mirror trait?)
They’ve previously said that after maxing skill points (or whatever they’re called after patch) you get Mystic Forge materials for stuff instead.
Presumably those are the mats used for stuff like superior siege.
My assumption is that the new specialization alters your shatters.
Though I think it’s also possible that shatter slots may become selectable the way pets are (i.e. there’s like six shatter skills and you can pick four).
But I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be the former.
I just hope I’ll still be able to sneak Mender’s Purity into otherwise-very-aggressive builds.
I am so sick of shatter that I’ve been having fun with interrupt builds recently, my fav so far is a double ranged, I run:
I play a similar 6/6/0/2/0 mantra interrupt build without CS: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsfRl0npMt1oxRNcrNipxcqqIdANcQpDZ8FA-TpRBABBu/wCPAANOBAkVG4hDBAAHBAA
(Sigils are mostly a copy of my WvW gear. Something like Battle/Energy + Air/Fire, would probably work just as well.)
Torch helps a ton with survival, especially in any build that’s using Mantras.
Weapon attacks offer reliable sustained damage.
Reflects and phantasms, in contrast, are very situational. (Note how they’re not used for sustained DPS in WvW/PvP.)
Shattering is purely burst damage. (Note how it’s basically not used at all in PvE.) On top of that, a “proper” shatter burst — one that’s not rather easily dodged — involves either precise timing or precise positioning.
A mesmer’s direct damage outside these situations is… kinda sad.
Probably also worth noting that you could significantly boost the power of our auto-attacks without actually powering up burst or reflect much.
Wow, so Generosity really takes the fattest stack? That’s pretty amazing.
A lot of the power of MtD is the combination of Confusion and Torment. Generosity popping off either one right back at you is pretty brutal.
“I’m going to ride a bicycle in a demolition derby. Is it okay to use a fixie?”
Okay, I’ll play along.
Build: 6/6/0/2/0 “Mantra Interrupt” (honestly it’s just my WvW build; in this match I mostly just played it like shatter)
Link to Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsfRl0npMt1oxRNcrNipxcqqIdANcQpDZ8FA-TpRBABBu/wCPAANOBAkVG4hDBAAHBAA
Notes:
Defense lane: me and a medi guard absolutely blocking the 2-3 players they sent at us constantly (usually 2 mesmers and a ranger); he’d run off to do whatever it is that you’re supposed to do with supplies sometimes.
Offense lane: our necro and two eles relentlessly pushing against a (cele? full condi?) engie and a tanky guard.
Ended at like 370-90 and downed their lord one second after the clock ran out. We got, like, all the mist stuff (they did manage to pop a hero once about two minutes before game end). Our outer gate was at like 50% until we abandoned it for the lord push.
To be honest, this was my first and only time playing the map and I’d largely ignored the previews, so I had no clue how half the map mechanics worked, I just decided to wing it by aggressively sniping enemy players.
Results:
Aggressive builds go in defense lanes, support/control builds are better used in offense lanes. The (mostly) zerk-on-zerk war in our defense lane was perfect for us because fights were over quickly and we had plenty of time to pew-pew their skritt bombers without spending any supply on defense stuff.
Main thing I liked about the map was that it felt like a good balance between ranged-fire opportunities and places to find cover. I had a better grasp of these than my opponents and it was a decisive advantage.
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No, no, I’m thinking like big stacks of might here. Ridiculous stacks.
Here’s a thought. If you’re really interested in going in this direction…
Add some options to bestow serious group buffs via shatters or clone death.
If you’re worried about PvP power, make some of those buffs fairly short-range, which naturally favors stacking.
No one and I mean NO ONE fears a Mesmer..
My WvW guild typically fields about 1/3 mesmers, 1/2 rangers. We’re plenty scary.
The mesmer class is one where there really isn’t an “Oh kitten” button to get out of a situation.
Err. How ’bout Blink, Distortion, and Mass Invis?
Naw, the problem is that we’re a really trait-dependent profession, which makes it boring when you’re leveling and gives you a lot of opportunities to create a build that just does nothing.
You could also consider getting a Makeover Kit for your human character.
I use light Twilight Arbor armor skins on her and with the dye combos I have, she looks all spiked-out and sharp, like a porcupine you wouldn’t want to mess with!
Yup. The best-looking asura mesmers are basically all dressed like porcupine fish.
I have two mesmers, asura and sylvari.
I made the sylvari because I got sick of the asura animations.
Now I only play the sylvari.
YMMV, of course.
Only way this trait will see daylight is if it reduced Diversion CD to at least 25s.
Or they make the (traited) AoE big. Like 600 or whatever.
But I don’t think they’re gonna do that.
I’d rather lose the week because of coverage issues than spend more time sitting in a queue to “balance” coverage.
EotM has a queue you were in?
What the heck are you talking about?
Something I’m curious about.
A lot of times in your videos, I see the Mind Stab circle pulsing rapidly. Is this some kind of animation-canceling trick to do something slightly faster (like, IIRC, you can do with Illusionary Leap) or just a habit that has no actual impact on play?
What burst? Maybe in PvE mind wrack’s numbers are considered burst but it certainly is no backstab level of burst or even 100b.
That’s partly because all of your PvE builds are traiting into phantasms (and reflects) instead of shatters.
But the reason that’s happening is that every “real” PvE encounter is against a champion+ enemy (or, at least, a pile of veterans) with a boatload of hp, where sustained DPS is everything. And people, justifiably, don’t spec for easy fights.
This isn’t a problem you’re gonna be able to solve, really, besides creating more encounters that constantly blast phantasms to pieces. But as long as enemy hp is so bloaty they’re still gonna be super awkward for even a shatter mesmer anyway. :/
Shatter’s fine for bursting into a group in PvE. The thing is that anything that is actually hard to fight in PvE takes a lot of damage to kill. So even a pretty big burst isn’t doing that much for you.
And the stuff you can burst down easy also dies pretty fast to cleaves and reflects.
Here’s an example that might help clarify.
You have Air on (mainhand) Sword and Fire on Torch. You swing at an enemy with your sword attacks. Both Air and Fire trigger even though you’re not using any skills on the Torch.
You switch to your other weapon, a Staff with Energy and Hydromancy. Your Air and Fire sigils from your Sword/Torch set won’t trigger while you’re using the Staff.
The stuff being proposed here would kill WvW.
I’d rather lose the week because of coverage issues than spend more time sitting in a queue to “balance” coverage.
I’d rather face the same “stale” matchup every week with the same guild group and the same allies on my side than be thrown into an EotM-like random pugging environment.
MtD shatters are a bit harder to pull off because you don’t get to self-shatter off IP. But MtD lets you get a fair bit of offensive value out of all four shatter skills (2 Torment + 1 Confusion each, on top of their basic effect). I think it balances out, mostly. (There’s other aspects of conditions vs. direct damage, pressure vs. burst, and team roles that differentiate the builds.)
There’s a thread already bopping around in this forum where someone’s working on a fairly tanky mantra-heal Triumphant Distortion build. You could try their latest as a starting point. (Though if you look at the videos you’ll notice they’re not rushing into the thick of things.)
As far as I’m concerned, the best way to command as a mesmer is to focus on ranged combat and get yourself some players who can follow targeting instructions without needing the tag. Buuuut…
1. Bad players can’t do that well. Sometimes it’s a big ask to even get them partied up and listening in Teamspeak/Mumble.
2. Most good WvW players have lots and lots of experience doing hammertrain and focusing on the tag. While they could adapt to something else, this does put them in a bit of a Michael-Jordan-playing-baseball kind of situation. Hardly ideal.
That said, if you’re in a WvW tier where 12 people is a zerg, you could probably get away with commanding on anything. Basically just read advice for havoc groups.
If I were to go to EoTm, id prob do something fun like ask for all the uplevels on me and have the full 80 group go with another tag, have our uplevel group go into the enemy zerg and let the 80 group flank the enemy backline while we’re downed or dead…perfect bait. Idk if this idea would be brilliant or evil as I never go to EoTm these days.
You don’t need to do this, really.
Just get a few of your level 80 folks with real gear and some basic PvP skill to push in. Couple of hammer stuns, a well or two, anything really. EotM blobs just melt when faced with any kind of concentrated pressure. And they tend to be so sparse and uncoordinated that you can “crowdsurf” even in full-zerk cloth armor.
Ack, that’s right. I keep forgetting because it lasts for, like, 5-7s (depending on your build).
We do use The Prestige for stomping but mainly because of the stealth and not due to the blind.
The blind popping when you exit stealth is pretty perfect. It tends to soak the last-chance Hammer Toss, Grappling Line, Thunderclap, or Fear.
You meant to dodge auto attacks now.
Play a zerk mesmer or thief. Pretty sure you’ll feel quite a lot of pressure to dodge auto attacks even from people who aren’t using Air/Fire sigils. Seems only fair that they can use these sigils (at the cost of not being able to equip other great stuff like Energy, Doom, Battle, or Hydromancy in their stead) to force the same on others.
It’s pretty simple, really. Edge of the Mists isn’t really WvW. The EotM zerg is a champ train and people are using it to farm for loot and levels (and WvW ranks that most of them likely won’t actually use) from NPCs. Most of the folks you run into in EotM are gonna be tunnel-visioned by getting to the next tower to get more champ bags.
That’s why EotM zergs can get wiped by a single Spectral Wall. Or one-pushed by basically anyone with a headset. Or why twenty people will go down in seconds charging at an RI’d Basilisk.
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The thing is, this is all moot in PvP/WvW, because we’re talking game modes where range actually matters. Some enemies are much safer to engage at long range. Others are too evasive to get close to consistently. Others get all up in your face where Greatsword autos do very little damage.
Lots and lots of folks play Greatsword + Sword/X specifically because they’re both good weapon sets for aggressive power-based builds; both weapons offer similar features but also compensate for each other’s shortcomings reasonably well. Or they’ll run Greatsword + Staff or maybe Staff + Sword/X, because the Staff gives you amazing defensive mobility (at the cost of doing very little non-condition damage).
Nobody PvPs with Sword/X + Sword/Y (which is a popular “high-end” PvE build) because you’re just going to be useless a lot of the time.
Sword autos do more damage, yes.
Which is fair because one is a melee attack. And the other one is a 1200-range (slightly longer on the #1 attack, actually — practice activating it manually) unreflectable instant-tracking laser beam.
Also, it’s not a lot more unless you’re hitting with the third attack in the auto chain.
So, here’s why folks are saying commanding on a mesmer is gonna be unpleasant:
Remember that as a commander your job is not to secure kills, but to be able to stay alive long enough to direct your melee train and provide a target for the focus fire of your ranged support.
What Feaduin said right here is pretty much the consensus on what a commander is supposed to do. Which is to say, to lead from the front and provide a focal point for everyone else’s actions.
In theory, it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not like you need a tag to focus your attacks here or there, after all. But, in practice, this is the way to command. The vast majority of players — across all classes, skill levels, &c. — have pretty deeply ingrained expectations about fighting this way. And it’s one of the better techniques for making sure both veterans and newbies are doing roughly the same thing in a fight (otherwise the newbies are sorta dead weight, throwing little bits of random damage around here and there but not really pressure the enemy team much overall).
So, okay, partly that’s just good strategy, partly it’s inertia (folks wanting to play how they’re used to playing). Can you overcome that inertia? Perhaps, but only if you already rock at commanding in general.
(edited by ASP.8093)
Sorry to say this, but the immobilize is actually cleaving
Hawt.
How about both PU Mesmers? Six clones + stealth.
Could you chase effectively?
Err, different thread? You’re asking about offhands here.
The thing with offhand Sword in big or medium-sized battles is that you’ve got:
4. A skill that blocks one attack from one player. Or you can throw it for a line daze, but the projectile’s pretty awkward.
5. A single-target phantasm. Probably will hit once, for some pretty good damage, then be killed off by random cleaves/AoE. Compare to letting an iZerker sail through the crowd (once, before it dies to random cleaves/AoE just like iSwordsman).
Mainhand Sword, in contrast, can be pretty worthwhile, because you get:
1. Decent autos for a melee weapon. Nothing to write home about, but whatever. Perfectly okay for cleaving some downs.
2. A skill that lets you facetank an awful lot of stuff, on a pretty short cooldown. Just watch out for Retal!
3. Immobilize. I don’t care that it’s single-target Immobilize. Immobilize is sooooo good for clinching kills.
I’m saying “commanding” isn’t one unified thing.
An uplevel thief can command in EotM just fine, because you don’t actually do anything ’cept look at the map and lay siege.
You can play almost any personal build you want while leading havoc. (You also don’t need to tag up unless you’re just helping to coordinate with the main map commander or trying to attract a couple of pugs.)
Getting what you want out of 30-60 zerglings, nearly all of whom expect you to lead a certain way (which is basically “bomb on me”), though? You really want to be a warrior or guardian, because the job you’re doing (standing in front facetanking obscene pressure) is the job those classes were designed to do best.
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That greatsword also is not cleaving anywhere as well, and it requires a target so when your targets stealth you can’t track them with your auto chain.
Greatsword beam can pierce through several targets. It’s more work than melee cleave but it’s not hard to set up, most times. Not being able to attack folks who enter stealth is a weakness, yes, though you can use Mirror Blade, Mind Stab, and Illusionary Wave to offset that partially.
Basically greatsword is only really used in pvp, and mostly because of the spike in 1v1 and the fact mesmer is not a particularly good frontline profession.
Greatsword is a perfectly fine for most PvE stuff, too. It’s not an ideal weapon for coordinated stacking dungeon teams, but it’s quite handy for open-world stuff, world bosses, storyline missions, &c. There are lots of circumstances where you can’t stand right on top of a boss and just go at them with a Sword forever.
(edited by ASP.8093)
For a commander? Err. It really depends on how you intend to command.
Note that commanding hammertrain-style (leading from the front, with melee guys and ranged support all focusing on your tag) is gonna be pretty disastrous for a mesmer. Folks have tried to come up with builds for it but they’re been really reliant on gimmicks (like old weird Mimic functionality) and much, much more fragile than just rolling a guardian and learning how to call waters and use your cooldowns.
If you’re doing anything else… well, what else do you intend to do? How many people do you intend to command, doing what, against what sorts of enemies? Do you have people you trust to follow your directions rather than just the tag itself in fights? Nearly any spec, even a very glassy one, can be an effective havoc commander if you’ve got the skills and the team.
…
But, okay, Pistol’s strength is primarily in small engagements. It and offhand Sword are both dueling weapons, more or less: both have a skill that can counter opposing bursts, and phantasms that threaten significant damage on a single target if opponents just leave them up to attack repeatedly.
In contrast, Greatsword’s our most consistent way to throw damage at long range, and Staff is probably the best defensive weapon overall. As I said above, I like both Focus and Torch because they bring unique abilities to the table.
Hmm, okay, what about the Sword? How is that?
Sword offers decent damage, but I’m not impressed by the utility. The main advantage of the phantasm is in PvE (where you really notice its attack rate more since it doesn’t die as often).
WvW folks who don’t use either Staff or Greatsword (meaning they have two 1+1-handed weapon sets) seem to run Pistol a lot. The attraction there is that the phantasm combines decently with Sharper Images and tends to stick around a bit because you’re creating it at range. Also, Magic Bullet is a very solid skill (though, personally, I prefer Illusionary Wave or Temporal Curtain).
WvW? Torch. Focus.
Torch phantasm is garbage, but who cares? The Prestige is excellent against real live human players. Stealth+blind (+small burst damage, +blast finisher) is very powerful, both offensively and defensively.
Focus gives you something no other mesmer set has: pulls. Being able to mess with people up on walls, cliffs, &c. is invaluable. Two mesmers working together can even hit folks who are carefully avoiding the edge. It’s pretty good for trying to mess up the enemy backline in open-field combat as well. Note that the phantasm is pretty bad in WvW, though.
The general problem with siege fights is that there’s only so much siege and so many more players. 10% of the group will be firing on siege while the other 90% are staring into the abyss, essentially not actively playing the game.
The other 90% are jumping up and down in one spot right in front of your own siege weapons like rabid monkeys. (To counter ballistas.)
Personally, I think I’d want to be besties with a medi guardian who has the various teleport skills and also that bubble ring thing that people tend to get stuck in it. Because the guard hits hard, can draw quite a bit of attention away from me, and will love me forever because I have Mass Invis.
It’s kinda interesting how many people are sounding off about their distaste for “open field siege” without really reading the OP’s situation. Which is… trebs on a gate.
Lots of people want to fight in relatively matched numbers in open terrain. They feel like this is the “fairest” WvW gets. Some folks look forward to these fights as a tst of skill. Or just a fun time, you know. Building ACs to fire into the fight violates that sense of fairness.
Anyone who’s complaining about building trebs out in the field to bypass enemy siege has likely heard the “open field siege” line too many times and picked it up from osmosis without understanding what it actually means.
So, I think you could have more fun if your play was a bit more goal-directed.
Like, okay, you spend a lot of time fighting NPCs without really getting anything out of it. You just sorta go at them for a while and then run off. Try doing what you’re doing at supply camps instead of in front of towers and keeps, so you can actually claim them for your team once you wipe the guards.
Alternatively, try to actually group up with other players — even just one buddy is a big help, if you don’t want to follow the commander tag — and you can do stuff like actually cap a tower.
As it is, if I were on the other team I could safely ignore you: you’re not hitting camps or yaks or even sentries at all, you’re not sieging stuff, and the tower guards you kill will just respawn in a sec anyway.
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For PvP, in PvE it’s absolute trash and the only reason torch is used in spvp where it wasn’t used before in favor of focus or pistol is that the mesmer is so weak defensively and vulnerable at the moment to thieves that the only way to peel said thief is The Prestige.
Again, it’s basically a bandaid to a design problem that needs to be addressed at some point.
Look, it’s a condition based offhand weapon that for some reason finds its way to even power builds, and it’s The Prestige to not be so easily picked off by thief, so if you have to tack reveal on the phantasm as well you’re addressing the symptoms instead of teh root cause (poor defenses, especially against thieves).
It’s not just a band-aid against thieves. Stealth in general is really effective, and plays well with a mesmer’s focus on slipperiness over facetanking. On top of that, The Prestige is fast, it blinds, it’s a free little burst of damage that hits harder than a Sword auto-attacks, and once in a blue moon it’s useful as a blast finisher — it’s just an all-around awesome skill.
“Is it useful in PvE?” is usually the wrong question to ask. Many mechanics in this game are absolutely superfluous in PvE.