League of Legends, a game with like 10x the player base of GW2, if not 10x the playerbase of every other online game put together, didn’t even have a ‘reliable’ meta until years after it was released. It has metas of all shapes and sizes, sure, but each and every one of them got proven horribly horribly wrong by the next meta (which also crushed all the metas before that). They all thought they had a sort of ideal method of playing the game before then too. And yes, this being a MOBA I’m using for the example, everyone was utterly caustic, spiteful, and elitist towards everyone who dared try to innovate.
This meta that we’ve all cobbled together shortly after release of Burst and Bunker builds, it’s very likely to not be the ideal method of playing the game that makes full use of everything in the game that happens to be strong, all at once, and takes as much advantage of everything possible. It’s simply somthing we cobbled together this early to give the chaos of a new game some sort of order.
Please, please, please stop acting like it’s the be-all end-all of GW2 competitive play. It’s not. Having two bunker x class and 3 burst y class does NOT mean you’re going to win, especially if some other group stumbles upon something that flat out counters one of those two builds every time. The game hasn’t even been ou that long, and if a game with 10x the playerbase, and no skill choice can take years to get a proper meta going, how would be have stumbled upon the ideal a month or two after launch?
I mained an engi for awhile but the nerfs became too much.. What I am getting at even If I don’t use TW in PvP is that begging for it to be nerfed will just keep the slippery slope going… The whining and qqing needs to stop yes there are counters to it SEVERAL… I really hope the Devs don’t listen to the forums begging for nerfs because there are just as many people that ARENT mesmers asking for it to not be nerfed…. Plus we are arguing that in that 10 seconds if it really tips the battle THAT much then chances are your team was kinda screwed to begin with coupled with its kitten long cooldown that make it viable once every 210 seconds… I am not trying to attack any one person as you may have just done I am stating that the constant ruining of a class to satisfy a small portion of the game play (I know may 10 people out of 100s that play PvP regularly) is RIDICULOUS…
For what little it matters, even people who don’t main engis agree those nerfs are a bit much, and are willing to post and post and post until thy’re fixed. Or at least I am.
And thus far, I’m agreeing with everything you’ve said.
Allllso, Battle standard doesn’t force people into being bunker warriors. You don’t NEED signet of Rage to make a good fighter warrior, just a good 1v1 warrior. in tPvP, 1v1’s don’t win teamfights.
Pretty much the title. It might have a bit of a range edge on other skills, but the engineer already has to lead it a bit at extreme ranges (Skill requirement). Needs fast fingers to pull it off well (APM requirement), and it’s Engi’s main AoE option.
You rarely, if ever see Engineers in PvP these days, and that’s largely because the nerfs have been a bit too much all over the class, for some reason, and they could use some buffs here and there to offset it.
Welcome to forums. Mesmer is still a great class but people are annoyed about the constant (And at times totally baseless) QQ against us, and the perception that ANet will nerf us constantly.
Some polish is needed, but this is an online forum for a game. In other words, it’s pretty much a constant state of the crusades (Seriously, look up some history on the crusades, it’s pretty similar. Groups of soldiers (Bandwagons) attacking here and there with no aim or endgoal because they hate X, or at least like to act like they hate X)
How to solve Time Warp, keep it useful and make it “fair”:
1) Keep it’s duration as is
2) Make all team players within its AOE subject to +50% incoming damage
3) Disable healing within time warp AOE for all team playersProblem solved.
Hi, I’m a backstab thief. I click backstab, and with 50% increased damage and 100% crit chance, I am literally able to jib half the classes in the game in a single skill for no initiative. I don’t even need to combo anymore. I just click backstab and they die whenever timewarp is up.
And then I can cloak&Dagger and kill another. And another after that.
Or I’m a warrior with endure pain. Guess what, I have MORE than enough time to kill two or more people before endure pain wears off.
Or I’m an allied guardian with the healing tome. I’m now pointless.
You’re basically asking for timewarp to instantly kill everyone the mesmer uses it on. How about we try countering it first (Hint, it’s completely possible, and many a counter that doesn’t require a mesmer has been suggested. Engineers can literaly barrage them from out of range of anyone in timewarp at their leisure. Endure pain + stance duration is half the duration of a warrior wading in and just chopping them up when they have nowhere to run.
It. Is. Not. Broken.
It is strong, yes. So are a few other elites. Mesmer is just the QQ magnet. And nerfing it directly buffs bunker builds. And further gimps a class that takes a long time to come into its own in PvE.
Time warp is fine. Nobody builds to counter it. Hell, even just popping swiftness and grabbing another point wastes timewarp outright, you HAVE to stand and fight for it to be worth it for them.
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I’m of the opinion that some of them are underpowered, and some of them are pretty blatantly overpowered.
Blast gets Fire/Water/Smoke
Projectile gets Fire/Light/Dark/Ice (They’re less impactful individually, but many classes can literally spam 20% chance finishers at a rate greater than once per second.)
Whirl gets Ice/Fire/Dark/Water/Light (Seriously, don’t underestimate whirl, it tends to spread strong conditions enmasse)
Leap… um… yeah… leap needs buffs.
Alot of people underestimate the effects. Whirl finisher in dark field can heal you quite a bit and ramp your damage up quite a bit as well. Blast has some great support options, especially fire, and the area stealth is literally murder if used right, especially with a thief.
They’re too costly to put resources specifically into proccing, but they ARE useful, and that’s where the issue lies.
Popping a long cooldown AoE, then using either a blast or whirl skill is simply too costly most of the time to be any sort of reliable. Even if some are downright overpowered when used right, getting the situation to use them is simply too difficult to make them a constant.
To everyone underestimating Whirl finishers. AoE +damage and healing from dark. AoE burning from fire. AoE chill, and the usual “Water field is overpowered”. The issue with whirls is they are rare and oftentimes too costly to use just to proc a finisher. In the situation where you’d use the whirl naturally, and proc the combo field as well, it’s a large buff.
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Problem with the defender is that it really takes up 2 slots (signet of illusions )to be of any use at all.
Plus the 20% trait is in the vitality tree ( clones don’t inherit any vitality from us )
Depends really. If I know I’m going into a battle with a nearby structure, I’ll just set it on the structure, and abuse it to high hell.
The trick to it is simply placing the phantasm in such a way that it will not take aggro. When you can do that, it’s great.
Fun fact: Engineer grenadier actually counters timewarp.
1500 range. 300 range edge on timewarp, can easily harass from outside of it. Mixed conditions and the actual radius goes a bit beyond the 300 range edge, letting you completely safely fight enemies in timewarp. If they leave, they lose the buff.
8/10 pretty name, sounds mysterious (you a mesmer?)
Warrior. (Do not count this post)
Just tested. It’s four seconds. it starts reading 3 on the tooltip for several moments, indicating it would start at 4, and goes to zero seconds for several moments as well, again, indicating it’s 4. Thus it’s 5 with sure footed.
My point still stands. 5 is half of timewarp. Dodge rolls can eat most of the rest, and honestly, if you die in one second to timewarp damage, please kindly put on some armor, nudity doesn’t make you an asset to your team.
Quoted the wrong guy in that reply, but anyway.
Endure pain isn’t damage immunity like elixer S or distortion, you still get hit with conditions and take condition damage, you just don’t take direct damage until the effect wears off. It isn’t nearly as great as people want it to be.
I found the snide comment about armor hilarious though. But any Mesmer worth his salt is going to wait until someone is downed or in a position where they can’t escape anyhow so this is pretty moot.
Yeah, I’m aware you still take condition damage. But warrior has the largest base healthpool (Well, tied with necro), so condition damage isn’t as much of a threat, and conditions have a hard cap, meaning most members of a group aren’t going to be running cond builds. Most cond builds can approach hard cap without timewarp, so the actual damage rise is much smaller.
If the mesmer is timewarping to secure a kill over timewarping to win a teamfight, something’s pretty wrong there. Likewise, Battlestandard says hello if they are (Still on warriors).
And yeah, that was more sarcasm at the idea that a warrior can be downed in one second. Personally, I don’t see it happening.
And sorry about the misquote, my bad.
1/10. Come on, really? Not even a space? Also easily taken as racist towards chars, so I have to give it two paws down (Sorry, had to)
Neraine Casel. Again, as I got skipped last time.
Good time warp counter for condition necros is to trait blind to also chill and pop plague in the timewarp. Chill+blind every second helps negate the damage to team mates
Just tested. It’s four seconds. it starts reading 3 on the tooltip for several moments, indicating it would start at 4, and goes to zero seconds for several moments as well, again, indicating it’s 4. Thus it’s 5 with sure footed.
My point still stands. 5 is half of timewarp. Dodge rolls can eat most of the rest, and honestly, if you die in one second to timewarp damage, please kindly put on some armor, nudity doesn’t make you an asset to your team.
Me: Anyone.
Most: Bunker builds.
Least: Anything that doesn’t take five minutes to kill.
Some good suggestions. I chuckled a little bit when you suggested an engi’s turrets, though.
I think the beef people have with this skill is that no team will join a paid tourney without it. It’s not really a big deal outside paids. Sure, there are ways to survive it, but nobody likes mandatory.
It’s not really all that manditory though, more a matter of people not countering it right. It’s not going to chase you, so it’s a simple mkatter of hanging back ten seconds, then going it. Sure, it can be a clutch skill, but that’s kinda what long cooldown elites are meant to be.
Until you see teams start deploying either warriors specced to be able to ignore damage, or teams falling back for a few seconds once they see timewarp, then pressing the attack after, it’s going to be overpowered due to not being countered.
And yeah, Engi turret is a gimmick build. It’s still a counter, bu grenades are there as the real counter.
Helpfully arranged by class.
Warrior: Endure pain + Increased stance duration + Axe/Mace, Axe/Shield, or Greatsword. Fear me as a bonus.
6.25 seconds of damage immunity. 2s stun, potentially AoE. Tons of burst damage. Timewarp has a 10 second duration. You’re playing a tanky class. Bonus points if you took the trait that makes it auto activate at 25% health. You can, and should walk right in there, and start bursting people while they can’t do a thing about it. Afterall, if they leave the small area that timewarp is affecting, they lose the bonus. Add your two dodge rolls to this, and you can be immune to damage for the ENTIRE duration. With a cooldown more than twice as short.
Guardian: Save Yourselves + Shield offhand + anti projectile defenses.
They hit you, they take damage. You take less damage, you already regen. You use projectile shield to force them out of the timewarp if they want to attack you. Not really ideal, but retaliation is good in general.
Ranger: Um… yeah, running away probably. Ranger isn’t that strong of a class, or one I know that well.
Engineer: Knockback turrets + ranged deployment turrets + More knockbacks. Also grenades with range bonus.
They can’t attack you if they’re CC’d. They can’t attack as fast if they’re out of timewarp. Also, 1500 range lets you sit 300 units beyond the range of everyone in timewarp.
Thief: Stealth. Dagger/Dagger dual skill.
Spam invuns, stay out of sight. You can pretty much pop shadow refuge just outside of timewarp, and be safe unless there’s something like an engineer that can literally spam ground targeted skills. Or you can just creep around them with stealth and wait for it to wear off.
Elementalist: Bunker build.
You’re already obscenely tanky. Sure, they might get -you-, but if they, even in timewarp, have to throw all their cooldowns at you then auto you, odds are your four allies are going to kill them anyway.
Necromancer: Fear. Lots and lots of fear.
They walk out of timewarp, they lose quickness time. Also, group CC, they can’t move if you spam it.
Mesmer. Blurred frenzy/ distortion if possible.
Everyone. Back off, wait the ten seconds out.
It’s ground targted, it isn’t chasing you, it has a long cooldown, and the area isn’t too big. Two dodge rolls will probably get you a decent amount of the way. Battlestandard + Endure pain is 100% chance of rezzing entire groups. Guardians and elementalists can take entire groups and live for obscene lengths of time. Thieves can disengage from combat at a whim. You can’t counter any of these by simply moving out of range. It’s strong, sure, but it’s certainly not gamebreaking.
Oh, and fun little fact, cooldowns don’t cool off any faster in it. Chilled still works wonders.
Not really sure what auto attacking has to do with it, Getting 2-3 phantasms out and doing your burst in half the time is pretty good though.
We can already do that in a few moments. 10 seconds of timewarp where we spend two doing things, and 8 auto attacking with those things done, on mesmers, is much less effective than putting it on another class.
Warrior + Quickness = meatgrinder. Especially in melee.
Mace Guardian + quickness. Twice the healing rate atop twice the damage.
We don’t get the same mileage as we burn all our cooldowns at the start, same with them and all of their DPS cooldowns, but our auto attacks are lower damage, so for the rest of timewarp, we aren’t getting as much as them. We make up for it by having timewarp, but it’s much stronger used selflessly, as we really can’t milk it for all it’s worth.
What’s funny about this is timewarp barely benefits the mesmer relative to other classes. Our auto attacks are objectively slower at killing as is than any other classes provided same weapon.
We get our damage from cooldowns, timewarp doesn’t accelerate these.
Honestly, at this point, take timewarp away, and mesmer is a portal user who spams the least reliable and most telegraphed burst in the game (Ignoring pure 100b warriors, they don’t count as they’re not viable).
Mesmer vs Mesmer, all I have to do is roll into their clones, and I’ve wasted their entire burst. Dodge roll is universal. They have to specifically set it up with a LONG cast time clone, who then has to get into melee with you, and then get teleported out of melee, provided you attempt to avoid the shatter. Killing said specific clone INSTANTLY breaks this burst tactic. Really, they have nothing else that can immob you, and they have to reset a third clone, which is, admittedly, easy.
As far as elites go, post moa nerf (And you can avoid Moa in alot of ways, but it’s not telegraphed enough for it’s power, but that’s another story), we have only Timewarp. Mass invis is quirky, easily ruined in the heat of the moment, and lasts for only a few moments. Veil is objectively better in 9/10 situations.
Timewarp has a MASSIVE cooldown. Most sPvP matches, I’ve only gotten off two if I was using them as much as possible. for tPvP, you miiiight get three if it’s close.
Timewarp does precious little to the mesmer proper. Timewarp has NO effect on cooldown rate. Most of mesmer’s damage in any build comes from cooldowns. Other classes have faster kill speeds in melee, and at range, with their auto attacks. In a 1v1, it’s strong, but we REALLY aren’t getting half as much out of it as we would if I used it to buff allies and not myself.
Portal is still strong, but it’s a skill that will never not be strong. If timewarp gets nerfed, mesmer will have no elites worth anything, and become a simple portal class with a high burst (Many other builds give high burst that can’t be countered as easily, so largely irrelevant). AND IT WILL STILL BE PICKED BECAUSE PORTAL IS GREAT FOR GROUPS.
Why not add a new equipment slot to both standard and town clothes that creates a small visual effect in the air around the character. It doesn’t add any stats, or radiate to any real degree, and doesn’t clash with legendaries, which add a visual effect set on the character.
These could be purchased via the cash shop for 25 gems, and four could be forged together in the mystic forge to create a more pronounced version of it, up to several ranks.
Visual effects are also not visible to enemy players in WvW, or usable in sPvP, to prevent any form of imbalance.
As a basic idea, one version could create a small multi-colored sparkle in the air around the character. Another could create a minor snowfall. And a third could make a mild heat blur around the character.
You’ll see alot of people saying that evryone is DPS, and such. This is NOT true. You are not all DPS. You are all support. If everyone speccs to buff and empower their teammates while still doing fine themself, dungeon runs go by effortlessly.
If you have a banner warrior, a shout warrior, a mesmer with null field and timewarp, a guardian, and an elementalist, all of them geared to do damage and survive, and specced to buff their teammates and themselves, you’ll clear fast and easily. If everyone specs to do as much damage as possible, everyone will do less damage than if everyone was buffed up and spend more time downed due to being damaged more.
3/10. Lots of places to dock points. Goox being the main one XD.
Liliana Monteclaire again (And to the person who docked points for it being common in french, I was aware of that when I used the name XD)
Very Charr-esque. 10/10
My ranger is named Rhenium Longstride. I was sifting through the metal elements in the periodic table when I was making this guy and liked Rhenium. Longstride is for his long strides. lol
9.5/10.
To put it simply, it adheres to pretty much every single naming convention a Charr can adhere to, but it sounds sliiightly elvish on the last name, which docks half a point.
Neraine Casel. Again XD
Just gave it a real stress test in WvW.
me vs a Thief, Ranger, and Engineer all at once, plus a vet hylek. I came out on top. Second thief joined while the last guy was downed, got him too.
Cut close towards the end, but I’m willing to bet a better player would have done better.
Also, GS Spatial surge’s damage when using lifesteal food isn’t even comparable to the damage without. at shorter ranges it doubles it or more.
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Something tells me you’ve not played mesmer too much. We don’t really do any of that outside of the shatters, which we often have to set up, as any skilled playr can force the entire shatter burst to fail.
Delo, I don’t have much to say beyond thanks for giving it a try, and I’m glad you like the concept. It’s nice to see others trying it besides me, and trying it in different builds.
Edit: Note to self, don’t type when half awake.
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Be careful with mashing illusionary swap. Many many many times the clone derps around for a few seconds before deciding to actually leap. This happens really often on uneven surfaces, or when it is trying to go around corners. Always try and watch the clone itself, and leap as soon as you see it get close to the target.
Clone placement is very important after your first shatter burst is done. Generally, I save the combo you described until I know it will instakill them, preferring to initiate with the daze shatter for the MASSIVE vulnerability stacking, and then following up with cry of frustration, and a few autoattacks. Once they’ve lost a bit of health is when I do that combo, because having no or fewer evasions gives a much higher chance of that illusionary leap landing properly, and allows you to just completely finish a fight unexpectedly, with no chance of a heal to counteract the damage.
Null field without a doubt has the best group utility, which is why I almost always run with it in s/tPvP. In my glassier builds, I actually don’t run with condition removal at all. Risky, but I don’t want to give up the three stunbreakers I take (blink, mirror images, decoy). For group utility, or all around best utility pick in wvw, feedback has to take the prize, with portal getting the honorable mention in niche situations.
I’m normally firing leap right after the counter, then cancelling it into dodge roll, and swapping as I shatter there as well. So I’m in melee the entire time.
Agreed on the rest though ^^
Sword counter to clone leap to dodge roll the moment it lights up (Clone is out WAY before the animation completes), deploys all 3 within a quarter second of it starting, so you don’t need to worry about controlling placement.
It gets bombed with AoE’s at times, sure, but you can quickly use it to cure allied conditions as well as your own. Or use it to mass purge after a For Great Justice, on multiple targets.
Mindstab isn’t that bad if you force cancel it’s recovery animation, but that’s clunky still. I can land it constantly. I have a bit of experience with stuff like rapid cancelling in Blazblue, so it’s pretty easy for me to reflex a forced cancel, but that’s just me. The buff removal is nice though.
Mirror blade can likewise be a little iffy occasionally, but I find that if I stop pressing buttons (It has low priority), it goes off easily.
You’re right that I don’t run a heavy shatter build in WvW. As I said, I have terrible luck keeping the things alive unless I’m in melee, and sword sword can instantly 3x shatter someone as is. Something like Staff which has a bit of a run distance for them just screams dead clones to me. But we can do the sword 3x shatter on both builds easily.
I like Null more as it creates a buff killing field around me as well, which gets people to back off, and it’s lingering, and a team support tool. Arcane thievery is better if I’m legitimately in a 1v1 though.
Also. Pyro. I’d like to thank you for being willing to debate this with me for so long. It really helps iterate on the strengths and weaknesses of the build, and helps others see how it works, and what to look for, and what can be tweaked.
I love the idea, though I have built it much differently it definitely has the ability to work. In PvP it doesn’t work quite as well since you don’t have food and such to power out the extra lifesteal but it was still good when I tried it a long time ago, though admittedly there were better alternatives for PvP purposes. I wasn’t lvl 80 at the time when playing with the idea and have since been sidetracked by many other builds and never got back to it for WvW.
If I get the money to afford a set for this I’ll definitely have to give it a try in WvW, but I’ll also test it again in sPvP.
Don’t even bother with it for sPvP. You only have Blood Sigil, and Knights gives Vit, not Toughness there, which SEVERELY nerfs the blood sigil. Not to mention Blood as a whole is basically just a second proc chance for it, and not as good on it’s own at all.
It also relies on a stacking sigil to really push the crit chance, so you can’t rely on that either in sPvP.
As a few counterpoints to that.
Lifesteal is unaffected by range. GS up close in the rare case where you’re forced to will still do acceptable damage via proccing up to 1k or so in armor ignoring damage and healing.
Mirror blade actively feeds off of being close. And it has a TINY cooldown.
Chaos Storm’s rapid heal rate comes from throwing it into a group of people, knowing some will trip it enough to heal you. 1v1, it’s going to get dodge rolled, as it’s obnoxious.
Staff’s constant +20% crit rate buff does not accomplish nearly as much to feed into lifesteal as spatial surge does naturally. It simply does not make up the gap.
Mirror blade has a absolutly tiny cooldown at about 4.7 seconds. for 9 vuln, 6 might, and up to 4 lifesteal procs if you’re up close, you can, and will benefit immensly from it.
100% vigor uptime is a fact regardless, so you can easily dodge roll to defend yourself. It cuts into your damage a bit, sure, but the clones CAN go towards shatters.
Given the build is designed to be capable at all ranges, and staff thrives off of closer engagements, and the build can safely slot multiple tools to keep distance (Blink, Null field, Feedback), Staff isn’t required.
In your average WvW battle, you’re not going to be close enough to the enemy most of the time to actively use the fury buffs from staff. Getting the might buffs from mirror blade is risky, but you don’t lose out as much if you don’t, as you add an extra 2 lifesteal proc chances. Staff demands you stay closer to get the crit, instead of popping in for just an instant.
This isn’t simply a defensive focused build. The lifesteal procs blatantly ignore any sort of defenses, such as protection, armor, or any character skills. It’s more designed around being able to safely transition between melee and range, and have an extremely fast recovery time when wounded. It’s defensive in places, but hardly a bunker or turtle, you’re still relying on hitting the enemy with alot of damage over speccing to defend yourself. Vit is ignored because it would cut into damage. Toughness both increases your durability, and effectively increases the value of each point of life stolen.
Staff has a higher clone dependancy. In WvW… good luck with that. Really, I can’t keep them up in a decent battle for any length of time.
I can see the value of staff as a weapon, but it simply doesn’t excel in using lifesteal, and the armor ignoring bonus damage that comes with it.
Remember, EVERY proc of lifesteal does bonus damage to the target as well. 375 from Omnom pies. This only scales with attack speed, and doesn’t proc from clones at all. Shatters can, sure, but in WvW, clones die fast.
While not entirely on topic, grats for thinking outside the box and finally someone is using sigils and traits to do something other than Shatter Cat.
On the note of using Sigils to change a fight and fill in holes.
Mesmers should Check into Sup Sigil Of Generosity for condition removals if your build is lacking there or you want to bring a few different utilities.
Null field is pretty much the ultimate condition remover. Poison doesn’t affect lifesteal, and other conditions tend to be either rare, or bleeds, which are normally massed by people with no cond damage.
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Osicat, part of the reason I posted it is precisely because I know I’m not going to be able to build a ideal build or setup for this. It’s still experimental, and quite frankly, I want to see others try and refine the idea as well. I’m a pretty good mesmer, but I don’t play nearly enough to see this through to perfection. Also lack the gold to go testing things like full divinity runes and such with it.
I’d love to see lifesteal attrition mesmer turn into a viable WvW/PvE build, but I simply don’t do enough to accomplish that myself.
What I did test though had a very constant influx of health to match the extremely high vigor uptime.
…Can someone test if food procs off of feedback damage?
That would be an interesting thing to do, but really situational, feedback food. For pvp though, this build really needs 30 in illusions. I can’t see doing any sort of shattery attrition based build without illusionary persona. Ideally, you max out crit so that you don’t need the fury from the interrupts, but if absolutely necessary, you could go 10/30/0/0/30 I suppose. Another advantage to the staff is that it is a far more defensive weapon that the greatsword, which synergizes far better with this build.
Also, even if you don’t want to take illusionary persona, the aoe diversion from 30 in illusions would be unbelievable with the fury on interrupt, since you can potentially do interrupts on upwards of 15 targets in a decent size aoe with a 3 clone diversion shatter.
Again, Greatsword Training directly feeds into your might pool, has a massive damage effect at closer than 900 range, and gives you more fury from your knockback being up more.
Shatters aren’t the focus on this build. They’re nice, but they are NOT a core component. They’re something you do as needed. The AoE daze IS strong, but too situational compared to everything else. It does nothing in boss fights. In WvW pitched battles, they won’t get close half the time due to AoE spam. They’re a bonus with this build designed to be useful regardless of the situation. + Mind Wrack damage would be swapped over to + Illusion damage if I was using Sword/Pistol/Staff, but as is, Zerk is still buggy at times, and Swordsman is still a melee minion (though it hits HARD as an ambush tool). Duelist, Likewise, could deserve the + illusion damage, but I personally prefer OH sword as I’m more dungeon focused. OH Pistol is definately better in WvW where you can instantly generate 8s fury. The idea is tht they’re nice to have up when you do, but just as nice to shatter when you get an opening. You’re not spamming them to shatter them, but more likely holding them for distortion shatter, or the enemy to get too close.
Staff has an IMMENSLY lower lifesteal proc rate. Spatial surge gets 3 procs within the time staff gets 1.5 (Factoring for projectile speed). Mirror blade up closer gets 2 procs and instantly gives you 9 might, on a tiiiiny cooldown. Mind stab can AoE at a distance for a few free procs but isn’t important. Illusionary wave can give multiple procs, alot of fury, and gets everyone off of you.
Staff has two moves on it’s kit that generate Lifesteal procs. Auto attack and Chaos storm. chaos storm has a LONG cooldown. You’d be severely underusing the core mechanic of this setup. Greatsword has 4, and a faster generation via auto attack. The sheer AoE lifesteal power of Chaos storm isn’t worth it’s obscene cooldown.
And if you’re in that close, sword/offhand is the best bet you have. Cone leech is powerful, blurred frenzy is a mass of self healing goodness and damage immunity.
(edited by AnemoneMeer.7182)
Osicat, part of the reason I posted it is precisely because I know I’m not going to be able to build a ideal build or setup for this. It’s still experimental, and quite frankly, I want to see others try and refine the idea as well. I’m a pretty good mesmer, but I don’t play nearly enough to see this through to perfection. Also lack the gold to go testing things like full divinity runes and such with it.
I’d love to see lifesteal attrition mesmer turn into a viable WvW/PvE build, but I simply don’t do enough to accomplish that myself.
What I did test though had a very constant influx of health to match the extremely high vigor uptime.
…Can someone test if food procs off of feedback damage?
Because it gives me an incredibly diverse toolkit at any one time that lets me too all kinds of things. I can melee, and be safe from harm. I can shatter, or hold onto my minions. A teleport is just a button press away at all times. I have a stunbreaker tied to my sword 3.
Mesmer just has so many perks that, moving to any other class, I always find myself missing.
Food as a whole lacks GCD. If they added it for Pies, they’d add it for everything.
Besides, you can’t use them in sPvP, and everyone can get them cheap.
Good analysis Pyro, let me break down some of the logic in play.
GS gets used ALOT in WvW, as it ignores any projectile defenses. Mirror blade is immensly effective at midranges for fury buffs, and with the lifesteal being the brunt of it, it can actually be useful.
Staff is bad on this build because, for WvW application, getting 20s fury is pretty much as easy as breathing, illusionary wave is going to proc it every time.
20 in domination gets you 20% Greatsword cooldown reduction. This is IMMENSLY important, as 20% more mirror blades = 20% more might, and more rapid cast bounding heal tools, as well as more fury uptime in WvW from the knockback. 30 in illusions gets me illusionary persona.
Precision main is the effect of Emerald orbs, though not of emerald orichalcum gear itself. I use emerald orbs in all but 5 slots, where I swapped after the fact for ruby to get a 10% crit damage boost.
Staff has a MUCH lower return on health than Greatsword. Given each heal proc also does armor piercing damage, you get less damage and less healing from staff with this setup.
Each daze clone gives fury last I checked. I haven’t run enough tests.
Ah, but Staff’s attack rate is exponentially lower than Greatsword. 20% crit chance doesn’t compete with potentially 5 hits out of mirror blade on a quick cast, and spatia surge getting about 2 to 2.5x the hitrate since the animation speed buffs. Chaos storm being an on demand extreme self heal generator doesn’t make up for the lack of tools that trigger heals rapidly in the rest of the kit. And GS/Staff doesn’t have the multi hit options of sword or the invun for destroying burst combos.
I tested it today on bosses. It procs “Interrupt” If a CC hits during an attack and either chips CC immunity, or outright CC’s it.
how are you self buffing fury?
30 in dueling gives me 4s fury for every target I interrupt, on no cooldown. Illusionary wave can generate 20s under literally impossible ideal situations, but normally, I can use OH sword’s daze, a quick rolling shatter, or Illusionary wave to pop 4 seconds of fury whenever I see an incoming attack.
Contrary to what you’d think, interrupt triggers regardless of if you stopped the skill, just as long as you fired a CC while they were using it, so CC immunity doesn’t block it. It’s by no means 100% uptime, but it’s easy to get some measure of uptime with a little awareness (and illusionary wave is basically a wide angle heal with this setup too).
Pistol offhand would be better for the fury, but really, sword offhand just feels better to me.
This game is horrible. IT is a clunky piece of crud that doesn’t work well at all. The population for it will likely continue to fall as well.
I don’t see this continuing to be popular except to a small group of MMO gamers and former Guild Wars gamers. It was nothing like what we were led to believe it woudl be.
Complete waste of money and time. Just avoid it.
Sales charts, server population cap situations, and so much else tends to disagree with you. It seems to be less able to retain players, sure, but it’s picking players up quickly, and having fairly decent return counts on events.
The obvious question that doesn’t appear to be asked yet is “Why are you pushing so high anyway?”
Seriously, 30 and on, there’s no real reward for the extra effort. I get doing it because you enjoy it, but it doesn’t seem like you are… so… yeah, why are you pushing for 40+ clears?
I think the most “magic” racial skills are human/norn or sylvari. Asura and charr are all about their guns and gadgets and golems and stuff.
Except literally everything the Asura make and do is fueled by magic. No other race tends to use magic for literally everything.
Golems are magical in nature in every way, not science, at all. Asura gates use magic. Glyphic weapons use magic to cut. Every other race relies on various degrees of standard tech except them and the sylvari, with the asura relying on magitech, and the sylvari relying on… well, Magitwig.
Speaking from experience, we had a massive wave of new players recently, so they’re currently wokring though the content. Likewise, a large amount of the “rush everything” croud are gone. I’d personally say the plyer count is stable at the moment, though divided between low level zones and high level zones, leaving it outright barren in the midlevel zones.
Dungeons are just fine save a few realllllllly dumb encounters (Twilight Arbor Forward/Up final boss is boring as can be, and will down most people a ton)
Class balance is pretty good.
There’s still very little at 80 that really matters. Not that I care, I have 44g and I don’t have a single use for it.
Corr Pridehunter gets an 8/10. Last name follows the two word/syllable minimum for Charr, first name is… a little iffy, as it doesn’t seem like Charr ever use “Core/Corps” as a word. At least as far as I’ve seen, so it sounds slightly foreign for them in my eyes.
Neraine Casel. Female Warrior. Last name is pronounced Case-L (Or however you pronounce Case as it’s own word.)
3/10. It’s a more Sylvari sounding name through and through. Points for creativity, but it really does have the mix of things I’d expect from a Sylvari (Though the last name sounding like a greek god, soul calibur and history failure, and humans and their own gods and such make me a little biased)
Liliana Monteclaire – Female Mesmer, Noble.
Isn’t there an internal CD to the life steal?
Not really, but most of the time, you can’t legitimately push the lifesteal for all it’s worth, due to RNG, squishyness, and the like, unless you’re in direct combat.
It’s more for sheer hilarity value than it is viable in WvW, as thieves still oneshot you, and ghost pepper poppers are still a better damage ramp tool if you’re spamming multi hits. It only really shines on a few class/build combos, but it’s absolutly hilarious.
For the record, Ghost pepper popper + stuff like the ranger arrow barrage, can generate 10 or so might almost instantly, and I’ve honestly seen it go as high as all 25 might in a few cases.
(edited by AnemoneMeer.7182)
Title says it all. 100% chance to crit + 66% to do 375 armor ignoring damage and heal that much + Spatial surge or any other multi hit ranged attack = extreme amounts of self healing hilarity.
Tested this on my mesmer today (Knights/divinity gear with some zerk gems to balance it out). I was getting extreme amounts of health back very quickly, and an absolute ton of armor ignoring procs.
Being a little bored with the game, I decided to experiment with a rather unusual mesmer build. Namely Sword/Sword/Greatsword Lifesteal mesmer via food buffs and Blood sigils.
The specs are as follows. All knight gear save my Triforge and Ancient Karka shell, and ascended backpiece. 5 ruby orbs in my gear, one emerald. Blood sigil on greatsword and mainhand sword. Stacking precision sigil on offhand sword. 20/30/0/0/20 build (probably not ideal).
The Omnomberry pie proc does 375 or so armor ignoring damage (only tested in TA, where I was getting 145 with the ghosts), and heals you for the same amount, on a 66% chance on crit. Blood is just shy of 500 damage/healing on a 30% chance. This build can self buff fury, generating a literal 100% crit chance in ideal circumstances, and I was able to get 52 critical power in alongside all of my armor.
The end result was absolutly hilarious. I was healing on practically every swing when facing more than one enemy. Blurred frenzy at times healed me about 2k in Twilight arbor, making it competitive with my heal when factoring in cooldowns. The true damage procs were going off left and right, and Spatial surge actually started doing respectable damage through the extra 430 damage from procs if I got lucky.
This works on Mesmer imo because we have so many ways to avoid damage, albeit on cooldowns, so the lifesteal is patching the holes between it, while increasing our damage at the same time.
It’s still an experimental build, but it’s pretty hilarious in practice. Just figured I’d post it to help refine it.
As for Sword/Sword, I find it’s safer in dungeons, Sword/Pistol is probably more viable for the additional fury procs from it, but I can’t live without riposte to screw up any one-shot attacks.
A pretty easy set of methods to obtain max stat gear easily
1: Buy rares that give the stats you want (I tend to suggest Knights to everyone, as the damage tradeoff is worth it due to basically doubling your durability compared to Zerks). These are cheap. Weapons, then armor, then accessories.
1.5 Grab some gems to put in all of the gear. Runes are nice, but orbs are obscenely cheap, and still give good stats. I’d suggest ruby orbs to make up the crit bonus you lose going Knights.
2: Dungeons. AC Explorable is fine.
Optional: Use the temples in Orr to grab a few pieces if the stats are good.
3: Turn dungeon tokens into armor and coin into weapons.
4: Finish buying armor, trading out your dungeon gear.
An hour and a half a day, for a week, can get you to max stats ignoring ascended gear easily. Less if the Orr Karma temples are open.
Also, sell what you can on the TP. I’ve had 1g on a level 16 by doing this constantly.
A fun one I suggested before would be a greatsword made entirely of tiny crystal fragments floating apart from eachother, where the crystals break away from the blade in a torrent of tiny shards to attack, as well as form into a thin, cracked looking blade while slashing.
Mesmer spatial surge could fire three bursts of shards, Hundred blades would be a storm of shards cutting up the target, guardian pull would be throwing shard spears into the targets, then recalling them to pull closer. All kinds of fun animations that could be done with a storm of shards.