Guild Wars 2

Pinkcomet.2975:

Carpboy.7145:

Pinkcomet.2975:

still cant figure it out about Ele and Mes though

Mes is easy, there #2 makes a clone, however any clone generating ability needs a target to cast. So if you stealth stomp a mes they literally can’t do anything. Ele always take 2 tries.

@OP, i really like the edited skill

I never play Mes before but as I remember. Down Mes always tele away even I stealth stomp.

Do i miss something here?

You can’t have an ally around you, or a rock dog or something, because then they have a target to cast the clone on

We’re you taking damage? If not then thats completely normal. As long as you have a target you can shoot the beam halfway across the map. It just won’t do anything other than giveaway either yours or the enemies position

Tbh there are lots of weird and funky things you can do on clocktower a since its coded very strangely to allow the treb and stuff. For example on thief you can stand directly underneath the point in that tunnel and if you aim your camera up you can shoot cluster bombs onto the point without fear of harm to yourself. I imagine you can do the same with engi grenades, etc.

On d/p for thief, if youre standing on the sides of clocktower you can move the camera and aim your #3skill right at the point so that it teleports you directly into the point.

….no idea what youre tryin to do then. Thats what medi guard does, survive through blinds/blocks/evades, since you have a 10k base health pool

Edit: after looking at your build it just looks like youre trying to do a DPS guard, but without the things that make them decent, meditations.

What you’re looking for is any meditation build. There are tons posted on the forums. This is a really good one tho

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Empowering-Wrath-Ascended-Stella-Alamarr

Pinkcomet.2975:

still cant figure it out about Ele and Mes though

Mes is easy, there #2 makes a clone, however any clone generating ability needs a target to cast. So if you stealth stomp a mes they literally can’t do anything. Ele always take 2 tries.

@OP, i really like the edited skill

And i thought i was the only one who farmed moas….

Protip: find moas in ascalon zones. Then you can also farm chili peppers at the same time

I think sd is the way to go for both of these classes, as a 1/2 sec evade is a lot better defense against multi hit attacks rather than a blind or 2 and doesn’t fall apart vs things like zerker stance

Hambow: be very, very patient, but keep pressure or theyll keep regening to full. Either way, this will be a long fight. Try not to use steal while they have zerker stance up, as youll lose out on your poison application which really lengthens the time needed to kill them. Dance in and out with infiltrator return, dodge all the CCs from hammer. They each have a fairly obvious animation so its not to hard. When they swap to bow IMMEDIATELY steal. Most warrs will always start with combustive shot upon swapping, and stealing right away will interrupt it. Use whirling axe to avoid projectiles and deal dmg. Even better if you can combo it with basi venom. Be cautios of using SR at low HP, as earthshaker, combustive shot, and arcing arrow will be sure to kill you while stealthed.

Medi Guards: these pretty much hard counter thief, so just know youre not gonna win a lot of these fights. But generally ill start in shortbow and try to wear them down a bit and blow some CDs with cluster bomb and autos. Right before i engage in melee ill drop a poison field so theyre medis won’t heal for as much. Save steal for the WW combo and then try manmoding them down. Try and use the stolen skill right before they heal, as you can then easily burst them down. This can be really hard to time however. You can use infil strike to guarentee a hit with it. If you mess up the timing however and they get the heal off, or its blocked/blinded the retreat with infil return and swap back to shortbow to wear them down again. DO NOT refuge at low health or at least do it away from the guardian, as they have have a ton of PBAoE and you will guarenteed go down.

For both fights, patience and poison are required. Both are some of the harder matchups for thief, so just know that if you won, you really outplayed them and if you lost its not a huge deal. Obviously try and get better, but these are very difficult matchups for a thief

There isn’t really any room for a GM trait, but none of them really fit well anyway. The main reason i was traiting my focus was because there isn’t really anything else, and i wanted the 15% more phantasm dmg. Plus nearly perma swiftness is awesome. Maybe a different offhand would be better, especially with iwarden. But then id have to switch to traveler runes. Another problem is i dont really have any points to play with. I need both 15% phantasm dmg boost as i was getting 5-6k izerkers. I could take 2 from domination and use blade training and use dual swords tho….id probably hit 5-6k on the swordsman. Is the signet heal any good for builds like these?

Im well aware of the state of mesmers in tpvp, and i know the typical shatter build. In my experience however, as long as there isn’t an enemy thief a mesmer is a great addition to any team. I also know how strong/OP PU is, but i dont wanna be just another PU mesmer. There so many potential builds i see with this class i dont wanna follow a mold. Here’s another ive theorycrafted. How do you think this would do?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQNAscRl0npRtlpxINcrNiqhc6mDTSqAluTpBA-T1BEABTq+DTK/sb/h20HAwhA4hnAwWKBJDg+EA-w

First, a bit of my story. I made my first mesmer almost 11months ago (a sylvari), got to level 20 or so, then realized how sucky leveling was. So i deleted it and moved on. 7months ago i made my 2nd mesmer (a charr), got to level 30ish, and finally figured out “how to mes”. But i realized how bad the clipping was on all charr light armor and deleted it. Now very recently ive made my 3rd mesmer (human) and leveled it to 80 with a combination of map completion and tomes from spvp. This one i really want to stick with, as i main a thief, and mesmers are also very stealthy and tricky, much like my main.

So here’s my problem. I want to play a level 80 character on a class that i have under 30 hours on. Primarily want to play in tpvp and solo roaming in WvW. I am fully aware of how painful and frustrating this will probably be. But i really want to get good at it. Any general mesmer tips would be appreciated.

I’ve put together a build, and it seems to have all the bases covered, but im not really sure how well it would work in practice. I did roam with it for a few hours, but all i could find were groups of 4+ and completely clueless people who just attacked my clones (which was super funny to watch). Here’s the build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQNAsdRlknpRtlpxINcrRSqhYuUn9ZRSOIQp+A-TFCEABTq+DTK/aTfQO7PAwhA4hnAABnAgtUCSGA9JA-w

Would this same build translate well into tpvp if i bring portal? Are there any traits you think i should move around? I know the meta there is the GS/staff shatter, but i am almost sure i lack the skill to really do anything with it. Also, how on earth do you solo camps? The guards will instantly kill my phantasms, and im stuck with almost no dmg until theyre off CD again. You also can’t really just Los and cleave like ive found with other classes because you just melt. How do you do it?

TL;DR: very new mesmer, less than 30 hours on my fresh 80 and i need help in tpvp/WvW.

If you want to actually learn basic game mechanics this time around instead of auto attacking and face planting, then yes, now would be a good time to return

People are kittens. You have two options:

1. Be a kitten yourself. This doesn’t really work well and makes you feel meh too

2. Block/ignore anyone who makes mean comments.

Lol needle trap

I think what mayama was trying to say was thief is the most survivable, out of all the other classes zerker builds. Which is very true. No other profession has access to the active defense a thief does, and that doesn’t change regardless of how glassy you go. One of the main reasons to bring a thief is to shut down squishies, aka shatter mesmers, lich/power necros, staff or fresh air eles, really anything that dishes out a ton of dmg at the cost of defense. These types of builds will absolutely wreck teamfights with good positioning, unless of course you have a thief that can port through walls, stealth, blind/evades all the opponents big hits. Thief is the apex predator against these classes. Is that a bad thing? Well, no, because you can always bring your own thief to counter the enemies thief. But if the enemies thief is better than yours…then GG.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Carpboy.7145:

BrunoBRS.5178:

that said, i’m starting to lose faith in the balance team’s handling of the thief profession. even the buffs they gave us felt incredibly misguided.

Lets be honest tho, what would they possibly buff on sd or dp without making them OP? They were incredibly good sets before the patch, sd acro was almost unbeatable 1v1. After the patch theyll still be very strong.

did you finish reading my post? i don’t even touch on S/D or D/P. in fact i’m pretty fine with the nerfs those sets got. what annoys me are the misguided buffs, the buffs that not only don’t solve the problem they’re trying to fix, but show that the dev team has a gross misunderstanding of what the problem is in the first place.

so again: my problem aren’t the nerfs, my problem are the buffs that don’t really buff anything because the problem will remain.

Actually, i replied that before you edited all the other stuff in. Which i completely agree with. The “buffs” they did are meaningless. Sure people may mess around with them for a bit after the patch, but they still won’t see any serious play.

Zero Day.2594:

Carpboy.7145:

BrunoBRS.5178:

that said, i’m starting to lose faith in the balance team’s handling of the thief profession. even the buffs they gave us felt incredibly misguided.

Lets be honest tho, what would they possibly buff on sd or dp without making them OP? They were incredibly good sets before the patch, sd acro was almost unbeatable 1v1. After the patch theyll still be very strong.

I’m sure theres a few things that could be reverted, without making things OP…. Like the range on cluster bomb.

1200 SB again would be so awesome, but i doubt it.

Stealth, invuln, blinds, blocks, stability, cripple, chill, immobilize, boon strip+CC, running away, teleports, DPSing down.

BrunoBRS.5178:

that said, i’m starting to lose faith in the balance team’s handling of the thief profession. even the buffs they gave us felt incredibly misguided.

Lets be honest tho, what would they possibly buff on sd or dp without making them OP? They were incredibly good sets before the patch, sd acro was almost unbeatable 1v1. After the patch theyll still be very strong.

Nemiros.3590:

But what would i know, i dont stream.

So much yes!

@OP, what class do you play? Lich can be blinded, blocked, reflected, stripped of stab and CCed, and even just strafed to death. In addition, lich doesn’t give any defensive boost at all, so if you have your team focus it then they blow up incredibly fast.

K.

Build: Sd crit/trick or dp crit/trick

Ogre with dp, as they give the best dmg, and the rock dog is very useful at body blocking certain projectiles.

Pack with sd, because you get lots of precision out of them

W – walk forwards
S – walk backwards
A and D – Strafe
Weapon skills 1-3 stay the same
Weapon skill #4 – Q
Weapon skill #5 – R
Steal- E
Heal – C
Utility #1 – X
Utility #2 – T
Utility #3 – Caps Lock
Elite – Cntrl+E
Jump – space bar
Dodge – V (so i can jumpdodge easier)

No update will occur until September 18th. All of those things are sneak peeks for what will be in the feature patch.

Recently rolled a condi necro, having lots of fun in spvp with it and only couple wins from champion phantom. (dem clutch fear stomps/resses). but there is one thing i have a real problem with, and thats hambow warrs. im not used to hambows being much a problem as i main thief and most will just keep trying to hit you even as they stand in you rblind field. but on my necro they just eat me alive! i cant kite them with zerker stance, and most of them will pop stability at the same time so i cant corrupt it. sure, you can say jst kite them around, but thats really hard to do when none of your chills, fears, cripples, et work against them. in addition, you only have 2 dodges, and earthshaker is back up way before you get another, let alone a dodge for pindown, arcing arrow, staggering blow, etc. in the time it takes for zerker stance to wear off i usually find myself on the ground, looking at them wondering what i couold have done to maybe even tickle them. so is it just l2p, or are there some tricks of the trade regarding hambows you could teach me?

This is a phantasm build ive primarily designed to be used for solo roaming in WvW. It combines very strong and hard hitting phantasms with mantras and a hint of mighstacking. Without further ado, the build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8cl0npRtlpxGNcrNyqhYuSnd5xSvZUAA-TVCEABMpETKlHScRAsb/h20NAwDA4hjAQiq/slSQyAovFA-w

First i want to answer the question i know most of you are probably asking and that is “why the focus on mantras?”. One of the many complaints mesmers have is the poor condition cleansing, but with my build you have the capability to cleanse 8 conditions every 10 seconds. On top of that you can heal for just over 11k health every 12 1/4 seconds. On top of that you have the permanent regen from phantasms, which is about 167 HPS. All together you have about 1k health per second.

One weakness of the build you may notice is the rather low armor, but thanks to illusionary membrane and the adept trait youre actually much tankier than you seem at first glance. Illusionary membrane also synergizes amazingly with the regen from phantasms. Combined with all your active defense, healing, and condition removal you are very hard to kill.

Typically builds that are very tanky dont put out very much damage at all, but this is an exception. With double battle sigils and GS #2 youll be able to maintain a permanent 6-12 stacks of might while in combat. This makes your phantasms hit that much harder. IZerker will typically hit anywhere from 3-5k, and iSwordsman will hit for around 4-6k. One weakness of this build is there are no CD reductions other than for sword, so it takes a bit to crank out the damage if you miss one of them. But you have plenty of ways to kite around until theyre back up.

Decoy and blink are obvious, and typically the 3rd slot in a mesmers skill bar is reserved for some kind of condition cleanse. But since we have more than enough condi removal from mantra of recovery and menders purity i opted for mantra of distraction instead. It synergizes very well with all the mantra traits, and is the perfect skill to end a fight by interrupting a heal or an escape attempt. Typically save this for near the end of a fight, but since you have harmonious mantras you can afford to use it a couple times early and still have it ready for a heal or escape. It can also act as a pseudo stunbreaker, since the daze is instant you can cast it while stunned, thus nullifying any dmg you would have taken while CCed.

Overall, this is a very fun phantasm build that ive used and decided to share with all you mehmers. Hopefully you can try it and have as much fun as i have with it. Cheers!

Id say either thief, mesmer, or warrior

Crossaber.8934:

To convince me playing a charr, please let me toggle 2 leg run… that’s the only request.

Just draw your weapon if you wanna walk on 2 legs

3 asura, 1 sylvari, 2 humans. I’ve honestly been contemplating making a charr just because i love the super saiyan hair so much, but i dont think id seriously be able to stick with it and hes just end up a bank character

Hi, im looking for a look for my newly completed female human mesmer. Im looking for a sort of “battlemage” feel, so no robes of any kind. (Big fan of the embroidered pants). I also dont want a whole lot of skin showing, but a little bit of sexiness is fine. Not a big fan of helmets unless theyre masks like the phantom necro starting mask. Dyes i want an abyss/celestial with a hint of light blue, as my character will be dual wielding Jormag’s breath and cobalt. Im excited to see what you can come up with! Cheers!

Seazen.7415:

Ahh, so what are the main use of grenades?

Every skill except the auto attack

Yes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Empowering-Wrath-7-DPS-Build-Stella-Alamarr

I have no idea what youre saying

Elixir gun is the preferred weapon to autoattack, but youll hardly ever have the chance to autoattack due to all the skills you have available to you, rarely is it a good idea to auto attack. Bomb, toolkit, nades, EG, and FT can all be used in a triple kit condi. Its up to the players preference. I prefer nades/toolkit/eg

DeceiverX.8361:

Nope, because you engage on steal which grabs you a bundle, causing you to gain 10% more damage rather than 5% (you don’t use the bundle until after the fight or when desperate). Getting a refresh on signets also re-grants you your utility or more might stacks, and a refresh on venom leads to a proper re-engage if you need to for the backstab. Only on traps does nothing change, but 10% is better than 5%.

Hate to tell you, but improv doesnt interact at all with stolen items

Yep. Its absolutely ridiculous. Same thing with shadowstep and infiltrators arrow too. Theyll just rubberband back to the starting location. Lost too many fight because of this.

Sarrs.4831:

Prysin.8542:

P/P Venom Thief (it just demolishes anything really)

I’ve gotta see this.

In team fights they are absolutely ridiculous

Hakan.9240:

Wait.. really?

Isn´t Valkyrie better than Cavalier because of the Lifepool? Against Condition e.g.
And is signet of shadow really necessary when you got PB and shadow shot? o.o

But rune of strenght is still standart, right?

Cavalier is better because guard stacks. Signet of shadows is necessary for running around the map. You can always change it out to something else before you fight someone

Quakeman.9378:

I feel like removing the ability to stealth will completely ruin the weapon set, and I don’t really want that. What if the following is done:
1: Black Powder’s blinding shot is removed, and only puts the smoke field down
2:Shadow Shot: blind replaced with a cripple (vulnerability/weakness maybe too; anything really)
I believe that something like this might make D/P thieves much easier to deal with, while having the set viable.

This i would be ok with. If it was weakness and cripple

Quakeman.9378:

Carpboy.7145:

Dp isn’t a crutch, unless you use it with SA. I can roam perfectly fine with dp trickery. Are there some matchups i know i won’t win? (Most things condi) You bet. So i dance around them a bit to try and gauge their skill level. If i know ill be able to kill them i stick around. If not i shadow step away and find one of the many other people in WvW fight. And that’s ok with me

The problem is that the vast majority of D/P players do use shadows arts. I do not feel that SA should be nerfed, because D/D heavily relies on it.

Thats a bit hypocritical. You don’t wanna nerf SA because that screws dd users. Ok thats fine i understand. But anything you do to dp won’t only nerf dp SA, itll also affect dp trickery. The trickery build HEAVILY relies on the blinds for survival since thats all they got.

Just changed a few things

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQNAoaVlsMp0pdOx7J8PNBNBtdFGeI4uGlYGaFAA-TFCFABCcKAeU9HkU+Vy+DZoJYD9AA8EAuSJYAAEAuZYzyAovFA-w

Azawrath.7304:

Carpboy.7145:

Dp isn’t a crutch, unless you use it with SA. I can roam perfectly fine with dp trickery. Are there some matchups i know i won’t win? (Most things condi) You bet. So i dance around them a bit to try and gauge their skill level. If i know ill be able to kill them i stick around. If not i shadow step away and find one of the many other people in WvW fight. And that’s ok with me

Your post bring up another point for D/P being very strong.
Having the ability to dance around a player with D/P and have the ability to leave shows that D/P is still strong even without SA. Compared to S/D or D/D it is very hard to dance around an enemy without being engaged.

Only dp can use shadowstep? Sd cant dance? Wat

Dp isn’t a crutch, unless you use it with SA. I can roam perfectly fine with dp trickery. Are there some matchups i know i won’t win? (Most things condi) You bet. So i dance around them a bit to try and gauge their skill level. If i know ill be able to kill them i stick around. If not i shadow step away and find one of the many other people in WvW fight. And that’s ok with me

Here’s my view. Anet knows thieves are fine. Why should you care what some random forumer thinks? Youre not gonna convince them the other way, so why waste youre own personal time?

You only really use infil sig for the active anyway. The passive is just a nice little bonus.

Prysin.8542:

Carpboy.7145:

Prysin.8542:

Oldgrimm.8521:

Ill trade whirling axe for EVIS

i wanna steal ranger pet when i use steal…. imagine stealing traited BM bird…. thats 6-8k hit + blind

I wanna cleanse conditions while also dealing 3-4k dmg every sec while also healing 1.3k every sec. Oh wait.

you wanna play ranger?

Its called healing tree+cluster bombs. I dont want some garbage pet skill on my steal

I logged in just to say this. Why cant the standard sd acro or dp trickery disengage just as easily? Shadow step lets you move 1200 units instantly and also breaks stuns. Thats not exclusive to SA, any thief can use it. Most of the time youll be fine with just 1 or 2 infililtrator arrows, so you don’t even have to blow a CD. At which point your health will start regenerating due to breaking combat. There goes your #1 reason for SA in spvp, being able to disengage.

On top of that, the standard dp trickery does a hell of a lot more dmg than some SA build which in the situation you described helps your team wreck at mid even more. In addition because of the trickery trait line you provide solid support for your team members while also being one of the only classes able to prevent a lich wipe or stab stomp.

SA cant do any of that. All SA does is increase your 1v1 potential in a game mode designed around 5v5. Thats why SA is not viable in spvp.

There’s a reason no top players use it. Do you really think they’ve just never tried it? Remember how everyone used to think trickery was trash? Now its a staple in any good spvp build. People have tried everything at this point in the game. The meta builds that people play now have been through all sorts of variations, but there is a reason for the traits being the way they are, and believe me its not just because some guy thought trickery was pretty neat.

Prysin.8542:

Oldgrimm.8521:

Ill trade whirling axe for EVIS

i wanna steal ranger pet when i use steal…. imagine stealing traited BM bird…. thats 6-8k hit + blind

I wanna cleanse conditions while also dealing 3-4k dmg every sec while also healing 1.3k every sec. Oh wait.

This would be so so so so OP. lets add it >:)

Do low level fractals while at a high level yourself

Dahkeus.8243:

Carpboy.7145:

Charak.9761:

Scepter is a dueling build medi
hammer/staff/shield are not medi

yes you have binding blade but the knockdown is short duration

If you say hammer isn’t a medi build idk what to say. Ever done a precast SoW and mighty blow->JI combo? Staff and shield may not be common but they can work in some builds

Probably not because:
A) SoW is a really inferior utility skill compared to other options
B) Using a 30 second cooldown to immobilize a target that you’re about to teleport to anyways just doesn’t make sense.
C) If you want to immobilize, you could JI->Zealot’s Embrace, then Mighty Blow instead.

Personally, I don’t think hammer really shines that much as a meditation build weapon unless you’re talking about using it in Edge of the Mists or Skyham so that you can JI-> Banish.

SoW i shield of wrath, focus #5. Of you precast that and wait right before it explodes, then precast mighty blow and use JI, it can oneshot squishy toons. Additionally, you can precast RoW->JI and then if your other weapon is GS really lay on the hurt with Ww and symbol. You can do safe stomps with banishing the downed person, then right before the stomp completes you JI to them. Hamme is an awesome weapon for medi and if you haven tried it before i seriously reccomend it. Here’s what i run

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Roaming-2handed-Meditation-build

Also, sorry for hijacking the thread OP