Guild Wars 2

Imo, for zergs, condi damage is useless. There is a lot of condi cleansing and you lost a lot of % of the final condi damage you can do.

Then, our best conditions are those ones that aren’t affected by condition damage. We can apply cripple, weakness, vulnerability and blind with no problems.

Also, mesmers have a horrible condition spam, so it’s very hard for us to reach good numbers with conditions in a moment. We cannot put more than 3 stacks of bleeding, and its a random way, we only have 2 skills that apply burn, and one it’s random on a waaay slow projectile, and the amount of confusion stacks is very low even witjh traited glamour.

Said that, the best way to success with conditions in zerg is with glamour confusion, even with the nerf it’s still the best way. This is the build I would take and the only one that can do decent job against zergs of +25 people:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8flwzqqHVTsGa9IxJFMv5oecdr/dSKgNqB-j0BBoOCy0CQk0BOTqIasVTFRjVJjIqWpETKAImGB-w

With 25 stacks of might and sigil you’re doing 300 per stack. And with both Null Field and Feedback you can do pretty 1200 with confusion. But that’s the ideal situation. The damage drops a lot when not running 25 stacks of everything, full ascended trinkets and very expensive food. Both glamour skills are stationary, so if the zergs moves or enemies are spread, they are useless. And you’re only dealing heavy damage every 32s.

That’s why prefer pure power builds. The spike damage you can do is much greater without investing a lot on the build and you can do it more often. I have managed to do normally 4-5k to a whole ball zerg and spikes of 6k with the iZerker, also 3,5k with Blurred Frenzy.
Here’s a mantra build, which is better when you’re in a pug zerg:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8dl4zSpHVTsGa9IyJFMnzR6hqxarWJF42FC-w

And here, the pure phantasm build I’m running with my guild:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8dlwzipHVTsGa9IypHM3y9ckUoasWJF42FC-jkCBYLCykDwEEQEGAZPFRjtMqIasabY6XRVFTI2iuIa1yAwMGA-w

I’ll test these days 10/30/0/30/0 and take Far-Reaching Manipulations for a further blink to see if the lost of DPS is worth or not for a better hell situation saver.

Any power or hybrid build will benefit from the +30 power and precision, and +6% critical damage. Pure condition builds need to have the maximum amount of condition damage to be as blast as phantasm/shatter are, so Traveler runes are not the best option for them.

Hahahaha nice build, it’s like:

I love the word master. Let’s make my mesmer a master and use all the traits with the word master.
I love seeing green numbers on my utility skills CD’s in the build generation. We have 1 signet trait, 1 glamour trait, 2 mantras traits, 1 manipulation trait and 2 random traits, so lets take 1 signet, 1 mantra, 1 manipulation and feedback.
I also enjoy crits hits, lets put 80% of precision.
I have 1016 of toughness and vitality, it wouldn’t be fancy to have less of 1000 of condi damage.

Yeah, with this build I’m a ba_da_ss (Stupid word kitten in this forum)…. XD

Yes, it still spawn.

And you sorta become the owner. The base damage of the projectile is from the enemy, but the possibility to do a critical hit and the amount of damage increased is from you. That’s why a reflection build has as much precision and critical damage as it can.

Nice fights tonight at BB Bay when we have taken both Bay and Hills while they were T3.

As always with RS, Hills full of arrowcarts waiting for us xd

Wow, I must be a weird guy, cause for me the thiefs are one of the easiest class, and eles are quite hard for me, if they run a roaming build.

My list may be (easy to hard):
- Bow rangers.
- Guardians.
- Warriors.
- Thiefs.
- Mesmers.
- Eles.
- Condi Engis.
- Good rangers.
- Necros.

Bow rangers just kill themselves…

As jenzie said, guards are a joke, the only thing that makes them hard to kill is the amount of time you need to take them down. But with the insane combat mobility mesmer have, it shouldn’t be a problem. It just takes more time.

With warriors, you only need to avoid the stuns. Pick up blocks and stun breakers and they are not that beasts they seem.

Thiefs, most of them aren’t true masters of this class. I’ve had more situation when or I kill the thief or they run, than being owned.

As we’re all mesmers, playing against them shouldn’t be a hard time. If you know the class you will know who they’ll play.

Eles. Even they’re not that OP as they were, they have insane survivability and mobility. The problem with them is that they have a lot of ways to heal and recover from bad situations. D/D is a hard build to kill. Staff is very easy…

Condi engis. They have a lot of pressure and are very tough to kill if you don’t have good condi cleansing.

Good rangers are very dangerous. They’re able to keep you distracted with the pet, while putting a lot of pressure with a lot of hybrid damage.

Necros are absolutely the hardest ones. Their brutal amount of condition damage is a true kill for any mesmer. Even minions necros are hard to kill. You have to manage with 5 or 6 pets while necro is throwing conditions on you.

Best mesmer accomplishments are boon/condition control (Null Field, shatter trait and #3 GS), reflects (Feedback and traited focus), and DPS (iZerker, #5 Staff, reflects, GS and sword autoattacks…).
I also recommend to build pure power when facing servers with blobs and big zergs, while being a more condition mesmer when roaming and in small groups.

These are examples of what we call blob, a huge zerg with all people in the same place (+40 people, but normally 60 to 80):

@GOSU That clearly shows how much wvw videos you have seen. My opinion is based on what I’ve seen after facing servers from VS to AG (13 servers) for a year, and a bunch of videos from servers like Blackgate to Dragonband (pugs, guilds roaming…).
First, there are tons of ZvZ EU videos. My guild uploads 1 every week, and I’m in a server based on guilds.
Second, one thing is playing with blobs, an another totally different is basing your playstyle in blobs as a server. There are some eu servers which, in certain periods of the day, they only run a 80 man blob jumping the maps, mine included.
NA servers seems to have less packed pug zergs. In EU, we play with ball zergs, 50 people in the same point following the orders of a commander.
In EU, the commander is a leader. It is common he decides when to attack, which, how much, when and where siege to put, when to put water and fire fields… I’ve seen NA videos where the commanders are eles or necro full dps. That’s nearly impossible to see in first half part of EU servers. Commander are so important to simply go full dps and be the first to die.
I’ve seen in a lot of videos there are like 4, 5 or more orange swords on minimap. That is very difficult to see on Eu servers.

All this is about pug commanders, like KT ones, on eu servers with quite coverage. Of course in dedicated guilds this doesn’t happen, and in lower eu servers the playstyle is different.
At first, I founded a lot of builds from NA players useless, while seeing people amazed with them. It wasn’t after seeing a lot of videos that I understood wvw is not played in the same way in both server groups.

@SrebX DE is a personal preference and I only use it to roll twice and use Distortion. Phantasmal Fury is a great alternative, and you can also use 30/20/0/20 and take focus trait or Restorative Mantras.
I first started 30/20/0/20, but with new changes, Protected mantras will grant +600 toughness and I find it more useful.
Also, illusions die instantly only when the zerg is not compacted. For what I’ve seen, this tent to happen a lot in NA servers. The photos are an example of the power of iZerker.

It seems that this build is meant to be played by NA mesmers. After seeing some videos and builds, I see NA servers play WvW in a very different way than EU do.

While this build may work on small teams (5-15 people), it will be absolutely a mess when commanding and facing big zergs (+30 people), the most common thing in EU.

In such numbers, your health drops in a second and you need to be tankier. Also, the commander should be always the last to die, that’s why almost all commanders in blobs are guards and warriors.

So the biggest problems are:

- Absolutely no defense against conditions. Very low health, no Lemongrass and no Melandru runes.
- Your objective is to command, not to deal damage. Focus on defensive stats.

Looking at 10th dicember patch, I’ve been working on a mantra/glamour build as a pug/raid mesmer. But I think mantras suits better for a commander than a pug, so I designed this build, a commander version of the one I’m testing.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8dl4zSpHWTqGa9IypCMHpHqWqtaleEb32FC-jkCBocCykDBigAOnrIaslRFRjVbDT9SISDL1WdAW0Ma1SBwkyI-w

- High survivability. 2800 armor, 26500 base health with defense against guards buff, -65% condition duration, extra 600 toughness while casting mantras, healing through kills, access to 6s of stability, nearly perma vigor and F4 invulnerability.
- Normal DPS: 2488 base power with sigil stacks and +15% phantasm damage.
- Active support by stability to your party, Veil, Null Field and Time Warp.

Piken seems to be stronger than sfr. If, as someone said, sfr is putting all the efforts this week, I think that have no options to beat piken, based on the piken we faced last week and what they have done this one against Jade and elona.

Also, both Jade and Baruch have easier matches than piken an sfr, so there is the possibility to see Jade Sea finishing #2 and Baruch #4 with sfr.

For me, the winners in EU of this first league will be VS for destroying everyone who has faced them, Jade and Baruch for starting the league at #6 and #7 and finishing it on the top, and Kodash, for starting as the weakest and being the surprise at the low part of the league.

There’s nothing wrong with us and thiefs. Just some random people, some months ago saw how much potential thiefs had in WvW as roamers, and after recruiting a some thiefs, they created the famous ODS. A guild admired in some servers, and hated in others.

The 10th december patch seems to bean important nerf to our thief mates. But I know they will solve the problem, so prepare to see the same bunch of baruchians thiefs as always.

Yeah, it’s not a good measure of who has killed more people, but is the only data we have that includes kills.

Anyway, I didn’t want to make the point: RS could not be the #1, but BB yes. I was only trying to show his arguments are totally subjective, trying to give an excuse like a child of why RS will lose this match.
“You may win this matchup, but for me we are better cause I’ve seen that RS has killed much more people…”.

It is the same about blob size. People QQ about facing huge blobs, when a bunch of red names make us the illusion there are tons of enemies, while green names are not seen very much and also you don’t see all the people from your zerg.

I haven’t played yet, due to exams, but seems Baruch has done very well on weekend thanks to that non-tick points increase. RS will suffer a lot during the week with the SFR and BB coverage increase.

Michael.6830:

Another matchup in which the best night pvd train wins. The good thing this week is loot doesn’t run as much as last week. If there would be a points per kill count RS would be #1. So have fun @ night capture without RS

Not sure about that:
- BB: 42,6% score not from ticks.
- SFR: 36,6%.
- RS: 35%.

http://gw2score.com/index.php?action=currentscore&sort=hidden_points_percent&ad=desc

Also, no reason to QQ about nightcapping times if your server is famous to be much stronger during mornings and weekends than most other servers…

A blast finisher on autoattack? That would be totally OP…

Bumbler.7581:

Just a note, the max reflect mantra build will likely remain unchanged at 10/30/0/20/10.

I think the best upgrade may be 0/30/0/25/15. Reflects aren’t affected by your power, so you would only notice a small lost of your DPS through phantasms and autoattack.
But in exchange, you can have a iWarden every 15s and a iSwordman every 12s.

This build seems to be very useful in small groups (5 to 10 people), but there are huge problems when we’re talking about roaming (alone).

Talking about general use, full mantras is not the best option. When you use all mantras stacks, then you’re useless for entirely 11s. And with no Harmonious Mantras, this situation will come very fast.
Also, Moa skill is extremely good for 1vs1 to 4vs4. But when the groups are larger, the effect of this skill on the battle gets redundant, I thinkboth Mass Invisibility and Time Warp can be more useful.
Your build depends only in iSwordman. In your supposes, iSwordman is always alive, but you don’t have alternatives. A secondary weapon set would solve this.

Talking about roaming alone:
- There’s no ooc speed or traveler rune and no blink. Without any of this things, roaming becomes harder and less enjoyable.
- No stealth skills. This is a huge disadvantage when roaming. Mass invisibility has taken me out of trouble uncountable times.
- No burst damage. You run a tanky build without any phantasm-dps boost. That makes Moa useless. Even in spvp I have managed many times to survive after I was Moa’ed. Also in WvW I can’t remember any time I was killed by Moa.
Also, Moa is a very dependent skill. When a mesmer gets used to kill enemies through Moa, they tend to lose ability when it doesn’t work. So they have much problems when facing skilled enemies, who are able to survive againt Moa.
- Mantras when dueling is not optimal, lesser when not having any stealth skill. Cause you need to spend a lot of seconds casting them.

Here’s my version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAscRl4zipHQTkGa9IiJFBnvdSB05clegb82FC-jUCBojCiEEAkIRM7pIasVRFRjVbDTFjIq2aWQ2cWZVKgIWGB-w
- Soldier armor. Sentinel is not optimal for mesmers, as we already have medium base health and using them means a quite loss of power.
- Greatsword/Staff. GS is for more pressure on the enemies. Staff is for more support to your allies. I prefer GS in small groups, as it is a much faster weapon.
- Mantra of resolve. It is more helpful for your small team to clean conditions than giving stupidly 4s of stability every 27s.
- Signet of Inpiration. As you already have Lyssa runes, this is a huge combo. All your party has all boons for 6s. And in a small group, this is awesome.
- Phantasmal Fury. As you have low precision and high critical damage, this trait means a huge boost to phantasms dps.
- Sword trait. Both mantras you use, have low CD. It is much better to bump all your primary weapon set CD.
- Deceptive Evasion and debilitating Dissipation to have more pressure via clone deaths. Also, Empowering Mantras gets useless if you’re running only 2 mantras in a such tanky build.
- Blink for self survive and to cover the break stuns from Mantra of Concentration.
- Time Warp. Is it the best way to support your small team and the best way to use the power of Lyssa runes.
- Sigil of Bloodlust and 2 sigils of Battle to have more damage. Note that phantasms don’t activate the sigils. This make the sigils you put quite useless. Also, with such low precision, critical hit sigils won’t activate very much.
- Lemongrass Soup (More defense against conditions) or Sweet and Spicy Butternut Soup (more damage) are better options for food.
- Cavalier backpack. I think 5% of critical damage and is much better than simply 56 of precision

Amazing fight taken to the last hour. Congratulations to Jade to take more profit of the situation of today and win the second place.

It’s not a problem of the izerker or phantasms. It’s a problem of all pets. They don’t last enough even to attack.
I’ve pop up thousands of times my iWarden and most of the times I’ve never seen any number from it.

I prefer much more Chaos Storm. It’s more easy for me to tag people than with the GS

PVE- Dungeon: I like most a mixed build of phantasms and support. iDuelist, iSwordman or iWarden give the amount of DPS I need. But I also like to give support through reflects and boon/condition control. I love the combination of Chaos Storm-Bountiful Interruption-Signet of Inspiration when there are trash mobs to kill.

PVE-Open World: I run the same build, but I change my play style, shattering more cause I can have more AoE damage. Also phantasms tend to die very fast in big events.

WvW Zerg: Here I go full support. Sword/Focus Staff with Veil and Null Field. Since I’m in EU Gold League, there is no place for phantasm/condition builds while in zerg.

WvW Roaming: I run an hybrid shatter/phantasm build. Scepter/Pistol-Sword/Sword with Blink, Arcane Thievery and Decoy. Very good condition removal and lots of active defense.

PvP: I rarely play PvP, and when I do is to theorycraft in HotJoin. I normally use the base 10/30/0/0/30 shatter build with modifications.

Troma, several things.

- First, those photos doesn’t mean anything. First one is from the period of the day when in Baruch there is nobody while both VS and JS have a lot of population. Second could be the same, but wothout the time I cant say anything. In these moments it is normal that the server without pop has nearly no structures.
- There are dozens of reports from baruchians that have seen both blobs of VS and JS ignoring them, while the first blob of baruchians they see, they jump without any doubt. Also VS entering to a Baruch structure and JS finally capped it, with no solid arguments. VS going first to BB in a JS keep, like if they were helping defending…
- I’ve experienced myself a lot of times, in BB bl, both VS ans JS going for garrison and upper towers, while ignoring each other structures and only seen orange swords in their camps or in the middle of nowhere.
- The gw2 statistics shows that VS has taken slightly more BB structures than JS. But differences have been reducing, cause after the weekend it was 58-42. This shows that VS went more to BB structures on weekend and equal during the week.
- We have a photo of EB where the map is half red, half blue, and only our keep green, like if it was planned. JS took the left part of our EB and VS the right. Kinda funny xd

Those things and much more doesn’t mean that JS and VS have done an alliance. I don’t care if you do or if you help between you. Anet neither cares, so it doesn’t matter.

But what is real is that VS has the power to control this kind of matches, cause it has much more coverage than the other 2. Maybe if we are so close is cause VS has made sure it is in this way and let decide the match in the last days. Maybe this explains why when any of BB or JS has taken a little advantage, in the next few hours, they are close again.

I would like to see a Baruch-Jade-another server instead of VS, to see what happens without the influence of the VS power. But this wont be possible in this league, cause this is the only match that BB and JS face each other.

I’ve been testing with GS in my premade, and I see I am more useful for my guild with staff than GS.

There’re some issues with izerker that makes staff a better choice for me.
The damage is very irregular. Sometimes, it tags very few targets. Sometimes he needs a lot of time to do the attack, cause the tagged enemy is moving. And even sometimes, it dies before it starts the attack.

I think that GS is much better for pug zergs, since people usually don’t go very organized, and you take more credit from the autoattack. But in my guild, a lot of the enemy zergs tent to die fast, or in the first charge there’re a lot of downed people, and I find the staff much useful.

What do you think?

1- WvW performance (Skill lag and server shutdown).
2- Server population imbalances.
3- Skill class balance.

I didn’t started the WvW mesmer-guard comparison. But in WvW, guards are the only class that can mantain a puch of mesmers alive against a panic aoe skill situation. So if in WvW they can do that, they can do the same in PvE, and the sentence “Mesmers basically obsolate guardians” has no sense.

Also, there are some sentences that show his argument is inconsistent.
“There are certain guardian builds that can be used to take advantage of certain guardian strengths” and he uses a generic base build for guardians and a modified generic build for mesmers. He is comparing the 2 classes in a very mesmer-friendly scenario, where is full of projectiles, single boss with no aoe damage, nobody needs heals…

“People usually take guardians for in the first place: condition removal, blocks, and stability.” Well, mesmers are take for utilities and reflections, so why to roll a mesmer to do the guardian job, and build the guardian to do others work? If I want reflection I will take my mesmer. And I prefer a guardian to support me.

More stupid facts: In one post he puts Mesmer Condition removal> Guard. But when you see why, you realize that with the mesmer, he takes all the condition removal possibilities that mesmers have, while with the guardian he takes only 3 of the big amount of sources of guardian condition removal.

And finally, the most glorious sentence one can say: “Guardian is sort of jack of all trades but master of none while mesmer is master of all trades but jack of none.” When the reality shows that is goes more in the other side. There are specific areas in than no class can even do a similar thing than a guardian, while mesmer is the most adaptable class to all kind of situations.

It’s really amazing how you makes things valid/invalid just based on your opinion, on how their are implemented in the most used build, or your optimal party, I mean, whatever specific situation is optimal for mesmers, and not for others.

I put that build just to show you that there is no way a support mesmer obsoletes a support guardian, if that one makes a truly support build. Again, I don’t care if people won’t use them, but that proves guards are still than mesmers in support.

I don’t think comparing 2 offensive builds, and take the one who brings more support, means that a the class that “lost” now is obsolete in pve.

Oh, the last sentence made my day. That really explains why all professional guilds in wvw have, at least, one guardian per party. And why many people think that a DPS guardian build is only out-DPS by a warrior or an ele. And why guards are a must in sPvP…

And please, for the last time, don’t put reflections in the comparison to make the mesmer win your dilemma, if you’re not counting the healings from guards.

Now, my vision of the new stuff for the mantras.

It is good that they have in mind that mantras haven’t been that good, but they’re not fixing their principal problem. The fact that they need nearly 3s just to have them ready, makes them inviable in many parts of the game.
In WvW and PvP, interruptions are there even if you don’t want, and they completely mess the mantras.
In PvE, instead, they are good, cause there are very few interruptions, and most of them are very predictable, but I’m still not very keen on them:
- Since we have a lot of awesome utilities, I still prefer not taking them and stay with the traditionals blink, nullfield, feedback, sigil of inspiration, idisenchanter…
- Cause I would need to change my traits quite a lot, and I also play a lot of WvW.
- And cause even this new buffs are not quite good as they seem. The extremely small radius make them only viable in melee bosses, and their effects, Condi cleaning and stability, are still very meh.

I like the way you’re comparing support of both classes, when you miss the most powerful point of the guardian, healing.

Also, you put 2 builds, but the guardian is not optimized.
Just take the normal phantasm 25/25 and this one, a full shout build:
http://tinyurl.com/ngsovfr

Reflections:
Yes, here mesmer wins, cause obviously mesmers are the kings of reflections. In most cases, I prefer not to use wall of reflection, cause in a very projectile stuff dungeon, I would take my mesmer for that.

Condition removal:

Mesmer:
- Mantra of resolve, 4 conditions every 25s.
- Feedback every 32s.
- And disenchanters.
The problem of mesmers is that if we have feedback, we cannot have our full condi removal set.

Guardians:
- Ray of judgement (4 of focus), 4 conditions every 25s.
- Can clean a lot of conditions with Cleansing flame of torch every 15s.
- All condition from the party every 48s.
- Purging flames.
- 2 conditions with every shout (Soldier runes).
(Virtue of resolve is not worth, since it has a cd of 50s and only cleans 3 conditions).

Healing:
Do I really need to make a list of the tons of ways that a guardian can heal?

Boons:

Mesmers:
Boon share from Inspiration Signet.
4s of stability every nearly 30s, and the fact that you’re nearly need 3s doing nothing.
I count quickness from Time Warp here.

Guardians:
5s of aoe might every critical hit (With that build you can have 100% crit chance, so it’s aoe might every hit).
5s of stability and retaliation every 24s.
Protection and regeneration every 28s.
Fury, might and quickness from tome of wrath.

Damage:

Mesmer:
You can only have 3 illusions, so if you have disenchanters, you’re the one in the party who puts the lowest DPS.
No perma bleeding staks if not using 3 iWardens.

Guardians:
+25% base damage.
A lot of burning damage with autoattack.

So in the end, it let us that mesmers cannot do all the support/damage at the same time. Or you’re focused in reflections, or you give up them to have more condition cleaning, or you’re more focused in boons. There’s also a fourth option, you do a little of everything, which in no way you can be better than a guardian. Also, the 3 last options put mesmers in the worst DPS position of all classes.

Guardians, instead, can grant tons of healing, tons of condition removal, can give a good amount of boons, lots of might stacks, while keeping a very high DPS thanks to a powerful autoattack, a perma upgraded base damage and lots and lots of burnings.

As I said before:
Mesmers are good for their utilities (Null Flield, feedback, Inspiration signet, portal, arcane thievery and Time Warp), and for the reflections.
So build around these options in pve and let to the masters (guardians and eles) do what they are the best doing, support through healing and condition removal.

PD: And please, the next time you compare two profession, don’t put a list of all the options they have. Instead, put a list of the maximum options you can have in a single build. Cause we’re limited to 2 weapon sets, 3 utilities, 1 elite skill and 70 trait points, and some professions, like mesmers, suffer a lot when you want to put more than one main objective in the same build.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

It’s a PvE thing I think. The mantras are godlike for dungeons and whatnot, they basically obsolete guardians.

No way they obsolete guards. They only need to waste 10 points to give all party 5s of stability every 24s, also 5s of retaliation. And that with only one click to cast it.

Mesmers instead, need 50 points to give to the party 6s of stability every 28,75s, needing 4 clicks to mouse to do it.

A completely different thing is the fact that mantras can upgrade your dps thanks to a trait. But guardians can also have damage boosters, they can easily have +50% of damage with a scepter, which is a super fast autoattack weapon and perma burning.

So, in the end it stays that mesmers are good for their utilities and reflects.

The problem is that devs only make changes with the spvp perspective. They don’t even care about how those changes affect in zergs and if they mean a buff or not.

Even those changes, mantras mesmers are only good in small scale fights. In +15 people zergs guardians and eles can put stability and clean conditions much better and easier than us.

I did some tests in summer, testing with 3 iduelists and with 3 iwardens.

I tested both builds DPS in the strongest golem in hotm and 0/20/0/25/25 was just slightly faster than 10/30/0/30/0.
But the differences were too small, cause it only needed 3s less for 3 iduelists and 7s less with iwardens to kill the golem.

But I think that in pve is the opposite, since we can have much more base damage, and that +15% from 10/30/0/30/0 is determinant.

Thats only in terms of DPS. But I find that 0/20/0/25/25 is much more viable, since phantasms tent to die quite a lot in pve, and the DPS of both are nearly the same.

You need to realize that he plays in FoW, the server with fewer population of all servers ( NA/EU), with the permission of Vabbi. I think he hasn’t ever been in a bigger scale fight than maybe 30vs30.

In such low populated servers, commanders acts more as directors of small groups, than commanders of huge autoattack spamming blobs.

I cannot say anything about improving this build, as I’m not a commander, and I’m in one of the highest populated wvw servers.

If you’re attacking only with sword autoattack, then I think the % from phantasms goes down to 60% more or less.
Doing something else, like summoning a phantasm, healing… will make your phantasms to have the % Pyro said.

If you don’t have traveler runes, then this 4% will be significant, but if you have them, that 4% of condition duration only affects burning from Prestige and adds 0.25 to Cry of frustration and iMage. For the Prestige, is a lost of 998 DPS every 24s (Build with full extotic rabid weapons and armor, full ascended rabid trinkets and 25 stacks of corruption and might).
Then there’s the lost of 10 of condition damage, negligible.
So, in the end, there’s no reason to spend like 5 or 6 times more on food if you’re a casual roamer.

BTW, while PU build is better for roaming, this one is much more versatile and still good on roaming, as it allows you to make good builds fot other aspects of the game. I also finally ended with this trait distribution, as it allows you to make a nearly top GvG glamour build, and also it helps to improve your DPS in PvE thanks to reflections of focus and Phantasmal Strength.
Just with changing your set and choosing different traits, you’re able to change between game modes in a second.

Deathcon, just one quiestion,

How Veil exactly works with Dazzling Glamours? Cause in the wiki it says that only applies blind one time and only to enemies which are inside the glamour skill. This is easily understandable for aoe glamours, but not that much for veil.

And Chaos, as Deathcon said, best mesmer build for GvG is still a glamour one. Thanks to that incredible melee/AoE/combo train meta of GvG, mesmers are relegated only to support via glamours or boon/condition removal from shatters.

Here’s is a thread of this forum where people talk about mesmers viability in GvG. You can take ideas from it, and also ask them more doubts.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Why-would-u-take-Mesmers-in-your-GvG-mathes

And these are some builds I have in mind. The first is the one I would run, focusing almost on glamours.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArdWlwzqqHVTsGa9IhJFBH5new8l3cSKKNqB

The second works more with shatters. You are able to remove boons/condis and apply a lot of aoe vulnerability.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArcRlwzaqHVTsGa9ICqHgX2xdkUAbsWJF82FC

The maximum amount of clones I’ve ever have. And yes, when illusions are sent to be shattered, they don’t count as illusions summoned, so you can summon more.

Em, that’s a list of most of our CC, but not the amount of interruptions you have on an optimal build that suits with Perplexity runes.

You can only have 2 of the 4 weapon cc. Also, signet of domination and Mantra of distraction are in a very long CD, Mantra needs nearly 43s to have two 1-second dazes.

So, in a good build that uses perplexity runes, you can have, at most, 5 interrupting skills, but the problem is that 4 of them have +35s of CD. In fact, our best way to interrupt is through Diversion, and even with 30 points in illusions, the CD is about 35s.

These are some examples of builds that take a lot of credit of perplexity runes #6.

Engineer with pistol/shield, tool kit, flamethrower and ram:

- 1 CC with 15s of CD (Launch from FT)
- 2 CC with 25s of CD (Pull and launch from tool kit and ram)
- The 2 shield skills.
- And the stun from Supply crate.
4 of these skills are aoe interruptions…

Or thiefs, that have a daze skill (#4 from pistol) that only cost 4 points of initiative, and due to the initiavtive regeneration, thats a CD every 5,3s.

Or warriors, who with mace/mace, hammer and trait Distracting Strikes, have 6 weapon skills with less than 30s CD, that apply 9 stacks of confusion every CC. 3 of them are aoe…

Most of the HotW stuff is projectiles based, story included. Final bosses rom explorables are excluded, since 2 of them are underwater and the one from path 1 has more aoe attacks than projectiles.

Also in Caudecus story there’s a lot of projectiles. I remember that the final boss in story mode is a ranger, which didn’t touch me anytime thanks to iWardens and temporal Curtain.

So here is one that recommends the traveler.

We only take a huge advantage of the +% confusion duration and #4 from Perplexity. We have very few interruptions that makes the #6 meh for us.

But with Traveler runes, you get much more, even if you don’t see it.
- +20 to all stats. Thats a bit bump to our survivability, as it means +200 health, +20 toughness and healing power. Also is a small bup to our dps.
- +10% condition duration. With a common PU build an Vegie pizza you have +70% condition duration which leaves Cry of Frustration and iMage 5s of confusion. Also helps our Torment to reach 13s.
- + 15% boon duration. This adds 0.5s to boons from chaos skills and iMage, so you have them for more than 4s. With perplexity they last 3.75s.
- 25% speed. This is, and I’m sure, the biggest buff you can get from any rune for Mesmers. And I will repeat, the best. No other rune gives you that much as Traveler, as it buff one of the main lacks of mesmers, the OOC speed.

I changed my perplexity for travelers and now I am much more efficient when roaming. Yes, I can’t apply +20 stacks of confusion in my enemies, but I’m still able to put a lot of pressure with shatters.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The 6 bonus could probably use a 10s ICD or a lower stack size. The runes themselves aren’t too overpowered, it’s the spammability of interrupts on thieves and engineers that makes them silly, and it’s the interrupts that need to be nerfed.

I have to desagree here.
Reducing the cc in those professions means you have to nerf whole 3 classes just to balance a rune that combined with specific builds, makes these professions OP on roaming.
Instead, adding a CD in the rune, you’re just balancing specific builds that don’t affect all the other builds from these professions.

Is like you want to fix a broken screw and your option is to repair with glue tying the pieces with a clamp. We just say buy a new screw…

The purpose of illusionary Persona is that you count as a fourth illusion that is shattered. So if you’re shattering and being in range, all shatter skills will activate as of 4 illusions were shattered, so Mind Wrack will do much more damage, Cry of Frustration will apply 8 stacks of confusion, you’ll be able to daze 4 times and stack the 25 cap of vulnerability with domination traits, and if you are in a bad situation, Distortion will bring you 4s of invulnerability.

Distortion don’t require you to be in range of the enemy, as the range don’t count, just the number of illusions you have.

Also, illusionary Persona also gives you the possibility to activate shatter skills even if you don’t have any illusion up.

Hi and welcome to mesmer community xd

Here’s my feedback.

- First of all, you need to know that all the traits that work with clone death don’t activate with shatters. So Confusing Combatants (25 in duels) is not worth if you’re going to shatter a lot.
Instead of that, I would put 30 in illusions, so you can take illusionary Persona (XI in illusions) and you will realize that you DPS is much better.

- In dungeons and general PvE, boon stripping is not that important, since most bosses or have very few boons, or theirs are perma. In that case, I find that Shattered Concentration (VII of Domination) can be switched for a better one. For me, I would put 10 points of domination into Inspiration to take the Glamour CD trait. That will be a great increase of your support, as a lot of PvE stuff are projectiles and Null Field shines with the stationary bosses.

- Desperate Decoy (V in duels) is a good choice, but I find it more suitable for pvp. Stealth is mindless in PvE, also there’s enough clone generation from Deceptive Evasion and weapon skills. Phantasmal Fury (II) works better. Even if you shatter a lot, your phantasms will make at least 1 full shot, and perma fury helps to increase your DPS.

- I think that there are better options for sigils. Try sigil of bloodlust, perception, battle, generosity, blood, force…

- And finally, Assassin gear fits more a phantasm build, to take advantage of Sharper Images. But in a shatter build, berserker will be better.
It has been proved that assassins only outperforms berserker when you have a lot of traits or options that activates with critical hits, but if there only one or two, then berserker will have a better DPS.
But don’t worry of this point, if you already have an assassin set, don’t change it, cause the differences are unnoticeable.

Yes, that’s cause illusions shares all your base stats except vitality, which variates for every phantasm.
The stats shared are: Power, precision, critical damage, toughness, condition damage, condition duration, healing power and boon duration.

Fury does not affect illusions cause it increases your critical chance, not your precision, so it’s not a base stat and that’s why there’s a trait that gives phantasms fury.

The other boons don’t affect them since phantasms are not an extension of you. They are an external AI that acts as a “pet”, like necros minions or pets from rangers.

The problem about their might not being effective is solved with the fact that those stacks of might doesn’t affect you. As your power does not increase, phantasms neither receive the might increase. It has no sense, but it’s not a bug xd

I also run a condi roamer build and I don’t know which rune is better, traveler or perplexity.

The problem is not with the lost of condi damage. I don’t know what is better, if the confusion stacks from perplexity or the speed from traveler…

Chaos, one question.

How this change would affect the boon storm??

All duration stacking boons(Aegis, Fury, protection, Regeneration, Retaliation, Swiftness, and Vigor) and conditions(Blind, Burning, Chilled, Cripple, immobilze"now stacks duration", and Poison) now stack to a maximum of 5 times.

There’re other changes that aren’t exclusive of mesmers, but that they can have some impact in the game:

- Aoe spells with that have a maximum number of targets will now count combatants that block or evade the attack towards that maximum.

- Stun breakers now break blowouts and launch as well.

- Tab targeting now prioritizes players over npcs (including minions)(mesmer clones are an exception).

- All duration stacking boons(Aegis, Fury, protection, Regeneration, Retaliation, Swiftness, and Vigor) and conditions(Blind, Burning, Chilled, Cripple, immobilze"now stacks duration", and Poison) now stack to a maximum of 5 times.

- All player controlled minions. excluding Mesmer phantasm and clones because they were already increased in a previous patch, now have 71.43% more hit points in a PvE map.

- Skills that buff allies in an aoe now prioritize party members.

PD: Note that these are UNOFFICIAL, and I haven’t seen them on reddit.

Winds.3087:

When you deal with phantasm build, your primary concern is whether your phantasms survive long enough to deal damage. Ideally played, you just throw them out and sit back enjoying the views.

Meanwhile with shatters you have magnitude of your short bursts which strictly depends on how many alive fodder you have – and they all have to survive before you decide to shatter them. So you need a right time and place to summon them, pay close attention to them while they are alive, and then pull out shatter when you see window in mob’s attack. Failure to do so drastically decreases shatter’s damage. Exceptionally executed rotation allows shatter builds to be on par with phantasm builds.

1- An intelligent played won’t concern that much in phantasms survivability, since he/she knows the best place for phantasms and also when they will probably die. This allows the mesmer the possibility to focus more on support or reflections. Also, if you’re smart enough you can interact with phantasms, as we have tons of ethereal fields, those stacks of confusion from iduelists/iwarden are a little bump to our DPS. Also, iwardens are a massive condi removal with Temporal Curtain. These proves that phantasms build are not that boring AI pets builds.

2- Ideally played you don’t sit and watch how your phantasms attack, you interact with them and this requires some CD administration. Those players who only summon 3 phantasms and then they do nothing are not playing a phantasm build efficiently, so they are the same as a shatter player who does not correctly shatter rotation.

3- And finally, that’s the problem with shatter builds in PvE. You need to be perfect during all the time, and this requires a lot of action, lots of correct summoning, continuously controlling a lot of CD skills… just to be on par with phantasm builds, which allows you a more relaxing experience, and for some people, more enjoyable.

There’s a big problem and another one smaller I see in this build.

First, you based your build on traits of killed clones, but you also put some points in illusions to improve shatters, which actually have the opposite idea of the other traits. So I see you want to put the 2 ideas in your build, but they don’t synergy.

The second is not that important, but +33% confusion trait works better with runes of Perplexity, since mesmers sources of confusion inflicts very short confusion stacks, so you won’t notice much if a stack lasts 5 or 6 seconds.

With these “problems” I think those 15 points in illusions can be better spent, for example to get Bountiful Interruption and pistol trait.

Nuka Cola.8520:

no, high level fractals isn’t the only pve but if a build works there it will work anywhere in the game or the new content anet will add one day. I base this on the only pve content that is half decently challenging and skipping ALL DA THINGS (like the other dudes says) isn’t an option for the majority of fractals.

Do you base your build because you skip stuff and expect everyone to do so? Or do you base your build because while exploring the world you find it to work nicely in the facerolling open world? I base mine where you can’t play blindfolded while playing with one hand… and please, phanta builds i haven’t just ran many times but its my primary builds for solo roaming in wvw which i do every day…

It’s an error to think that a build that works in H-L fractals is good for anywhere, just because those fractals have a very specific meta, which you don’t find in the rest of PvE (Lots of mobs that have a lot of health and do a lot of damage).

The talk about skipping things is that the OP asked for a build for general PvE, and he was asking more for dungeons. There’s no fractal reference in any of his posts, so don’t discredit the people who give advise on how to be better on dungeons. High level fractals are a whole different world.

Finally, people don’t base a build to skip things, they do to be the most efficient possible. If in all dungeons you spend most of the time fighting a boss, what is more efficient, making a build that is the best to deal with them, or suggest a build that will outperform, but only in the smallest part of PvE?
And also, why all the builds have to be made for high-skill PvE? Very few people play fractals and even less play high level, so don’t come to a thread of dungeons to say kittens about how losers we are to play only easy stuff and wait for us to say, Oh this guy is god, lets do what he says, stop playing phantasm builds in dungeons and be useful and start to spam shatters trying to emulate a warrior…

PD: Even if you run a phantasm build for roaming, that doesn’t give you experience of how phantasms in PvE work, since they have way more survivability and normally bosses don’t go for them. So in some places, and if you’re smart, you are able to forget about summoning more phantasms than the 3 first.

Nuka Cola, high level fractals is not the only thing in PvE, actually is one of the smallest part of it. So don’t use it to make a point in how shatters are better.

I will remake your question: So you suggest people to run X build because you like to fight big groups of mobs and high level fractals?

Btw, if you’re playing large groups of mobs, they usually have very low health. Also, most of the PvE is based on killing bosses (All dungeons work like this, also a lot of group events, final bosses in fractals, actual farm…). So a build for killing-lots-of-mobs-fast is not worth.

PD: It’s even more funny when shatter players say that phantasms die with a sneeze in PvE. That really shows how much they know about phantasms builds…

Ryn.6459:

Ansau.7326:

I’ve tested 10/30/0/30/0 and 0/20/0/25/25 and I find the second much better. Despite all the damage you lose (100 power, 150 precision with sword trait, 10% critical damage and 15% phantasm damage) you even have the same sustained DPS with 0/20/0/25/25, thanks to Phantasmal Haste and illusionists Celerity.

yeah, no doubts about that.

I’m not sure what happen if you compare 0/20/0/25/25 with 10/30/0/20/10 taking compounding power and empowering mantras. Less damage from phantasms and more damage for you.

The’re 2 problems with mantras for DPS.

1- You lose all the utilities, and mesmer have tons of utilities that are awesome in PvE.
2- Even with +25% damage on you, your sustained damage will be less than the +15% in phantasms, or the Phantasmal Haste + illusionists celerity.

I’ve tested 10/30/0/30/0 and 0/20/0/25/25 and I find the second much better. Despite all the damage you lose (100 power, 150 precision with sword trait, 10% critical damage and 15% phantasm damage) you even have the same sustained DPS with 0/20/0/25/25, thanks to Phantasmal Haste and illusionists Celerity.

Shh**t, I am 1 week out and you start a revolution hahahaha

Ingame Name: Ansau
Server: Baruch Bay (EU)
Playstyle: PvE and WvW
Playtime: Spanish primetime (night in Europe)
Role: Scholar and Tester