Guild Wars 2

The main point with confusion hitting hard is making it last long. 33% confusion duration and rare veggie pizza are absolute musts imho.

If you take the above build, with the stats there you will get around 250-300 more condition damage than a pure shatter build. This equals to ~45 more damage per stack of confusion on the enemy. Which in and of itself isnt bad, with usually 4 stacks thats around 180 more damage per skill activation. However, if you make it last long enough for say, two or even three skill activations instead of one, thats potentially double or triple damage.

Above build has around the same toughness as a heavy shatter build (well, a bit less) 80% of the power and 50% less crit damage. Normalized with crit chance and whatnot, that equals to around 30% less oomph on normal hits, while his confusion deals 20% more damage and his bleeds deal 25% more damage. (not to bash the build, but to use it as an example). If your shatters usually hit for around 6-7k to make up for the loss of damage with going that route, the aditional condition damage has to hit for some 2,1k damage to make up for the loss. That might be possible with veggie pizza if you get another aditional confusion off and certainly is possible if you pick the 33% longer confusion trait as well (plus the condition damage from that traitline). This doesnt figure in eventual bleeds from crits of phantasms and clones, but the damage is pretty marginal in real combat situations in wvwv imho.

As for a clear cut answer, i dont think there is any. At least for wvwvw. Condition damage in PvE is utter trash. Also, keep in mind that condition duration does not apply to bleeds from clones.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Cataca.3867:

dani.1956:

Love the sunday players posting troll mesages on forums ! When an elite skill is nerfed 50% its a big nerf mate , so l2p ! And if you didnt play mesmer in PVE for the TW then YOU played the mesmer wrong !

Not to bash you bro but if you are playing mesmer for just that one skill, you really should delete yours.

a. We are the only class that can stack 24 stacks of vulnerability, instantly and on multiple targets if you trait for it. thats a 24% damage bonus right of the bat for the entire group. This actually will outtrump TW over time, cause its up every 35 seconds.
b. We are the only class that has a group teleportation spell. Situational? Yes, but useful nevertheless.
c. We are the only class that supplies glamour fields for confusion and chaos armor. Chaos armor is an incredibly powerful defensive boon.
d. Signet of inspiration doubles buff durations on the group for everyone but the mesmer, and doubles might stacks.

And TW is still the single longest quickness buff and has zero downsides. While we deal less damage than warriors, we still have craploads of utility. And our damage isnt that bad.

I dont play mesmers only for the shatters; if you do, I think u should delete your mesmer too. So if 5s cd were added to shatters for PVP balance, you guys would have no problems with it?

Obviously these pro mesmers never actually used their TWs to rez ppl. The horror of playing with multiple players who get downed.

I am a bad mesmer yet I dont think I needed TW to faceroll COF P1.

What do shatters have to do with anything? They are our class mechanic and serve multiple purposes. There are many builds that are centric on them, and almost all builds utilize them in some way. Even if you are running a phantasm build, if aoe is about to kill them, shattering will provide some extra damage.

If you explain to me, how you’d build a time warp centric build, an effect that is up for 10 seconds every 3 minutes your argument would have merit.

For the record, if 5 seconds were added to the shatters cd (before the shatter recharge %, i assume) it’d probably have a very marginal overall effect. On most builds that would come down to like 1,66 seconds increase, thats not even 10 % . People would probably react much more to a % increase, or a damage reduction. Alas, you are still comparing apples and skyscrapers.

dani.1956:

Love the sunday players posting troll mesages on forums ! When an elite skill is nerfed 50% its a big nerf mate , so l2p ! And if you didnt play mesmer in PVE for the TW then YOU played the mesmer wrong !

Not to bash you bro but if you are playing mesmer for just that one skill, you really should delete yours.

a. We are the only class that can stack 24 stacks of vulnerability, instantly and on multiple targets if you trait for it. thats a 24% damage bonus right of the bat for the entire group. This actually will outtrump TW over time, cause its up every 35 seconds.
b. We are the only class that has a group teleportation spell. Situational? Yes, but useful nevertheless.
c. We are the only class that supplies glamour fields for confusion and chaos armor. Chaos armor is an incredibly powerful defensive boon.
d. Signet of inspiration doubles buff durations on the group for everyone but the mesmer, and doubles might stacks.

And TW is still the single longest quickness buff and has zero downsides. While we deal less damage than warriors, we still have craploads of utility. And our damage isnt that bad.

Doesnt getting that “perfect” group together take more time than actually running CoF 1?
I mean, seriously? For fractals i could understand (somewhat) because they can take longer, but for anything else (especially CoF) where a seasoned player can practically carry 4 new guys, i lack understanding.
I also have the greatest fun and some of the most relaxing runs (because of not taking it kittening serious) with beginners.

Ethics.4519:

Do you suggest mirror over ether fest just for the 5 seconds reduced cooldown? I’ve just gone with default ether fest because nothing really stood out to me.

If you go with the mantra, would you proc swiftness on the initial meditation, and the 2 charge use afterwards?

Yes, it does. This makes Air runes better than Centaur imho, just use temporal curtain, run through and charge the spell. Wait 10 seconds (cooldown on the rune) and use the second charge, temporal curtain etc.

This also works with menders purity, giving you 2 cleanses (they only seem to work on the actual heal, not the charge)

EasymodeX.4062:

6. Staff is a tank weapon. This is common knowledge. If you need more tank, go Staff. Switching from Staff to GS in a power-based shatter build basically increases your total damage output by 50%.

What? Your other points may have merit, but thats complete bullkitten. For shatters GS vs Staff theres zero difference. The buffs from staff and GS pan out, and chaos storm has a very good chance of giving you frenzy, which increases your dps by more than the weakness from GS 2.

As for clone generation, you can use staff 2 while summoning the phantasm and dodge after that to get your 3 clones for the first shatter, you will be buffed and immediately ready for your second one. Thats kinda hard to beat. Now, if you keep using the staff after you shatter, sure, your dps is gonna drop, but thats not very smart in any case, when 90% of your staff skills are on cooldown. Besides, getting the most out of a shatter build requires you to be close, thats not the best place for the GS.

If you said phantasm build, sure, the staff loses out simply because direct damage isnt its main thing.

Personally, i allways found GS extremely lacking. The auto attack has pitiful damage and all the skills have cast times, limiting utility. The i.zerker is amazing damage and a very strong aoe tool, but everything the gs does for range control, the focus does better (oh, and it has an aoe phantasm that condition cleanses when combined with temp. curtain)

For shatters i allways found staff to be much better. The phantasm is strong single target damage, the clone is a stun breaker, a second blink, can be cast during other spells that have a cast time and its utilities give you much needed survivablitiy.

I really think that GS, Scepter & Torch need a second look, the GS has its uses, but mostly because we severly lack direct long ranged damage otherwise.

Imho, relying on bleed stacks for damage for anything but solo pve and spvp is a recipe for subpar performance. And in those cases above, gearing for direct damage and using those bleeds for aditional pressure works much better than soley relying on it.

In both dungeons, events, and some extent wvw bleed will be capped on targets, and mostly by classes that can stack it with +condition duration (which we cant). In wvw an additional issue is that your phantasms and clones will rarely live for their full attack duration. Once there are 25 bleed stacks on a foe, your damage will plummet.

I tried condition based builds with staff and combos, but that build is less of a condition build and more of a hybrid support with some condition damage and doesnt get close to the “real” condition damage builds of other classes. Dont get me wrong, im not bashing the performance of the build, the constant buffing of everything around you while still applying mediocre damage is useful, but calling it a condition damage build is a bit far fetched.

First of all, it would really really help if the clone applied cripple at all. Im using the skill all the time and it never ever triggers.

Cooldown woes and pathing aside. A core part of the skill is just not working. (just test it on spvp or some mob, it wont trigger, no matter what you do) Tho saying that, i find a one second cripple to be incredibly short at any rate.

Confounding bolts is rather lackluster imho. Afaik its one stack of confusion per bolt.
Cleansing bolts on the other hand (ie. place your temporal curtain on your iwarden) removes some 5 conditions within those few seconds, thus almost replacing a condition removal utility slot.

Afaik, that was a fluke and it still works. (just as all phantasms that count as finishers, its just not in the description)
The other nerfs on GS have been aknowlaged to be bugs and will be fixed according to the devs.

Ohoni.6057:

And while this wasn’t directed at me, I feel I can give some insight. I do deliberate plant phantasms on multiple targets while I weave around and start tearing them down. In the case of mobs with a larger threat, I’ll put illusions on the biggest danger while I whittle down the mob around it until I can get it by itself. I use staff and swords, but I know greatsword is popular for multiple targets as well because of iBezerker/having the best multi-target capability outside of melee.

I’ve not played a shatter build very extensively, but I believe clumping the mob and aiming clones towards the middle is usually how they try to get the biggest bang for their buck.

Interesting ideas, thanks. I’m not really used to dealing with less than all of the mobs in a group at once, which might be my problem with my Mesmer.

Sorry in advance, im a few days late to the party so but i feel that i have to share my experience on this. If for nothing else to help other new mesmers.

I read through your posts and i get where you are coming from, other classes are way more intuitive, and their main prowess comes from weapon skills. You look at the skills, know what they’ll do and use them intuitively. This isnt the case for the mesmer, and it makes them inherently weaker than any other class till you learn the ropes. The main strength of the mesmer comes indeed from traits and skill combos, that are not inherently obvious and the class as a whole takes a lot more insight to make it work “properly”.

Lets take a cookie cutter shatter build for instance.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAsdWlwzip3UzqGa9ICqHaH29dkUoatWJF42FC
Or something like that. I use Sword/Focus & Staff, mostly.

Intuitively you would ramp up 2 clones, add some phantasm and rinse and repeat till the mob is dead. Maybe throw in a shatter or two.

Effectively, you get a bunch of mobs, then do the following.
Chaos Storm → iWarlock →Phase Retreat → Dodge back in the AoE → f1 → mirror immages (dodge if you can) → f2 → chaos armor → if anything still lives weapon swap → iwarden → x→ blurred frenzy….. rinse and repeat.
This made you do two shatters with high damage, landed 8+ stacks of confusion (any mob that uses a skill will take 1k+ damage), some 10 stacks of bleeds all while beeing protected by chaos armor for 100% of the time (phase retreat in etheral field ie. chaos storm) and in general beeing invulnerable for a large portion of the combo (dodge and blurred frenzy). The “x” in here is that if you face condition heavy foes, you would put temporal curtain on the iwarden, cleansing you. If there are foes that use projectiles you’d put up feedback, reflecting both projectiles AND making your iWarden apply confusion with his attacks.

Thats a huge wall of text for whats happening, while it takes part in less than 15 seconds. And the best part is, that you lose zero utility with this. You can easily gear for a strong mantra build like this, or an equally strong phantasm build. Leap (sword 2) will apply chaos armor in any ethereal field yet again (of which you have 2 off-staff), time warp +iwarden +2 sword clones will easily apply 15 stacks of bleeds + confusion and so on. And thats not even touching the rest of the arsenal.

I get that when you first use your weapons they feel incredibly weak, or that you feel that your clones/phantasms should have more uptime but in reality keeping, for instance, the i-warden up for its second barrage would be what you want to do, but its by no means the most effective way to handle the class. Truly, after playing my mesmer for a while, every other class feels so incredibly slow paced and limited, ironically thats the way you seem to be feeling about the mesmer.

I hope that helped, or at least other players that feel they are doing something wrong with the mesmer.