Guild Wars 2

Some recent duels I wanted to upload. Right now most of the videos are still unlisted on my channel. I’ll be updating with notations and more info on CI and my interrupt process soon, but some people had asked to see some gameplay.

vs Stickerhappy (Utility Wizard)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4liFA4VP2g

vs Medi Guardian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01c69_19jc0

vs Condi War (Sticker?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-_JnYRw2Gc

vs Caspian (Shatter)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drfe2NsyMHo

Being a jerk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImmAegH4y_E

What you’ll see in these vids:

• 4k+ Halting Strike procs: A combination of Bountiful Interruption, 8x Vuln on interrupt, a glassy opponent. (vs Caspian)

• How to deal with tanky opponents Interrupting autoattacks is actually very important here, especially against warriors.

• Moves to interrupt versus a Meditation Guard – This guy’s guardian was pretty good, but it takes a lot for a guardian to defeat a good lockdown Mesmer.

As it stands currently, Phantasm builds are best for PvE. Confusion is probably the worse choice you can go with since NPCs really don’t attack often enough to make it worthwhile. Condition builds in general are good for soloing dungeons, but really fall off in any kind of group content due to competing conditions from different players overwriting eachother.

Shatter is also considered a DPS loss compared to phantasm, while I’ve seen people make it work, especially in the open world, the general consensus is that a sword/focus – GS build is better for open roaming while sword/sword-sword/focus is the best [DPS] for dungeons.

I’m not much of a PvE guy myself, but I hope that helps!

I’ll be adding this to the big Mesmer guide, but I’m thinking of reformatting it a bit to make it easier to read.

A big problem I see is people taking traits or sigils to benefit only one skill, while that works in some cases in many situations it’s really not too good of an idea. I’m to figure out other common mistakes people make when making a build.

Maybe inserting a sample bad build and sample guild build and explaining the difference…

Hey.

Maybe I’m missing something here.. so I’d like to ask some questions before giving my opinion.

- Why Confounding Suggestions when your only daze comes from Diversion[F3]?

- With Soldiers Amulet and Trav runes, how do you do damage beyond like.. 3 greatsword skills?

- You have no way to apply cripple, why sigil of hobbling?

- Doesn’t taking iElasticity (Illusions VII) for only one skill seem a bit wasteful?

- What is the intended goal of this build?

Me Games Ma.8426:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Glyph of Mind:Your next 4 skills are instant cast. Skills with no cast time do not count toward this limit. Gain 5 seconds of fury. Gain 5 seconds of protection. 1 second cast time. 90 sec cd. “I shape!”

I see what you did there…

Also:

• Yooo instant Blurred Frenzy trololol
• Yooo instant Moa
• Yooo instant Mantras
• Yooo instant AA
• Yooo instant Block Skills???
• Yooo instant Confusing Images

Blurred Frenzy doesnt have a cast time, neither do auto attacks or block skills or confusing images. They all have a small channel, but the actual cast is instant.

Instant Mantras, Instant Moa, and Instant Mass Invis however.. =P

Fay.2357:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

So lets see who comes closest to actually predicting what we get. (More details to come soon in OMFG guild message. Could turn this into a wager, but can’t do that on the forums)

Oh, this is a good idea! I wonder what chaos thought of for traits…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• Reduce Shield CDs by 20%

smh

I couldn’t even think of a cool secondary effect like focus/torch/pistol xD

Lets see what you come up with chief!

Omg dat Phantasmal avenger tho! Sick!

@Cyyrix: I’d imagine the move itself would have like a kitten CD.

@Daniel: Oh man nice!

Xenrocs.9468:

Did i miss something that you know we’ll get:

" A new Elite
4 new Utilities
A new Traitline
A new Weapon
A new/altered class feature (F1-F4 skills)"
?

This was confirmed by the devs when specializations were revealed.

I watched to about 5 minutes in. Or rather, to that FRUCKING GLORIOUS outnumbered fight you dove into like Spartacus.

I’ll repeat: FRUCKING glorious.

That was fantastic, and perfectly demonstrated the power of GS/Staff. The one thing I’d advise, if you don’t mind, is to time your Diversion shatters to your summon. Shatter right as you’re summoning the Warlock and you’re more likely to nail the interrupt. Other than that, great stuff man!

Excellent!

Hey trooper! I just have one thing to say …

Shatter more! =P Several of those fights you could’ve ended much earlier if you had used your MindWrack more accurately. I definitely saw some nice stuff here, but the one thing my mind kept screaming out was “oh man shatter here.. dude, shatter. Ugh!”

Some things I noticed:

• 0:12 iWave woulda saved you some pain and procced halting strike.

• 2:01 Right after you caught the ranger with the Blurred Mind Wrack you should’ve used Diversion [F3] as you dodged away for a glorious interrupt.

2:41 MIND. WRACK! OME$RERQ!

3:50 Lol necros

I woulda sent this as a PM but I figured the info provided could be beneficial to others, or maybe others would be able to chime in.

Nonetheless, a few math questions:

• How many conditions does it take for iWarlock to compete with iZerker?

• How much of a DPS loss is a full clone shatter without iPersona?

• If including bleed potential, does iDuelist outdamage iSwordsman?

• How far behind does staff autoattack lag behind the others? Which is the second worse autoattack for damage?

For those who do not yet know, stronghold is the new PvP map set to hit when the expansion Heart of Thorns drops. BLU and a few others were invited to preview the game, but unfortunately did not get to learn much of anything on the new specializations. Nonetheless he did record himself playing Stronghold on a Mesmer.

The goal of Stronghold is to kill the enemy lord, first by breaking down the gates to their castle. This can be achieved by summoning NPCs known as “door breakers” (little jerks carrying bombs) by using a resource known as ‘supply.’ You can only carry one supply on your own, but you can kill other players and take their supply to add an additional second supply.
Other NPCs, such as archers can be summoned to defend your door and there is even access to Trebuchets (which can’t reach the doors) for further defense. Eventually you are able to summon an NPC “hero” to help you, which if you can get into the enemy gate, can cast an ability that does MASSIVE AoE damage to mobs and buffs allies.

Here’s some things to consider, both for general play and Mesmer-specific.

• In the video BLU is in a party of 5, yet still receives a request for a 6th party member. Wat!?

• The mobs do NOT have much HP, so it is important to protect them.

• Players can NOT damage the castle gates.

• Mesmer abilities that will be important: Mass Invisibility, Veil, Feedback, Null Field, Portal, (Glamour Mesmer rejoice!) Mantra Heals (MoPain with Restorative Mantras; Inspiration X), Time Warp, Illusionary Defender, Illusion of Life

• When you get into the castle gate, you can rally off the NPCs in the battle, this makes Illusion of Life a potential viable option.

• Stealthing the champion can help them channel their massive AoE ability which would otherwise get interrupted.

Please Note: Most of the people who previewed the game were not PvPers, so don’t expect to see some amazing high-level play, but this is a great opportunity to familiarize yourself with the map.

I believe that we as a community should start figuring out ways Mesmers can stand out. Portal plays with supply are obvious, but beyond that we need a role that cannot be overshadowed by the other classes. Time to theorycraft folks!

@Me Games Ma: I don’t even know what (45s) is supposed to be censoring lol

@Clownmug: I doubt it. They’ve stated before that mediocre out of combat speed is an intentional Mesmer weakness

Saturn.6591:

Holl.3109:

EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT PLANNING TO WATCH THE VIDEO, AT LEAST LOOK AT 13:10 TO SEE THE MOST AMAZING THING IN YOUR LIFE! (You won’t regret it, promise!)

You mean stomping in Lich form and the screaming in TS about breaking the game (no idea why you’d think that btw)?

You can stomp in lich form?

Hm.. I wonder if you can stomp as a Moa.

So with the upcoming HoT release we’re definitely guaranteed to get:

• A new Elite
• 4 new Utilities
• A new Traitline
• A new Weapon
• A new/altered class feature (F1-F4 skills)

So lets see who comes closest to actually predicting what we get. (More details to come soon in OMFG guild message. Could turn this into a wager, but can’t do that on the forums)

Click here for pictures and analysis of the 2 revealed Mesmer abilities in the trailer.

Some of my ideas so far..

Altered Class Mechanic
Time-related fields can be ‘shattered’ for a variety of effects.

Elite:

• Temporal Singularity – Creates a Vortex that pulses 6 times and pulls nearby enemies. 150s CD

Shield Ability

• Inertial Conversion – Block all attacks for 3 seconds, each attack blocked lowers all other cooldowns by 1 second.

• Phantasmal Warlord – Creates a Phantasm that taunts foes.

Utility Ability

• Chrono Flux – Creates an ethereal field that cripples & slows enemies. – 45.1s CD

• Tempo Reattunement – Creates an ethereal field that causes ally cooldowns to recharge twice as fast, and enemies half as fast. -60s CD

Traits

• Each time you interrupt an enemy reduce all cooldowns by 2s (5s ICD)

• Reduce Shield CDs by 20%

• Inflict 3s of weakness when you apply slow.

• Gain 2s Distortion when haste is applied to you.

• Phantasms apply 2s Taunt on hit (5s ICD)

• 25% chance to gain 3s quickness on crit

• 20% chance last ability used will not go on cool down. (15s ICD)

It’s official.

Ross Biddle is the Mesmer community’s style simon cowell.

Sup guys,

So I realize that unfortunately its really extremely difficult to coordinate a guild on both the US & EU sides. Having an event coordinator is good, but even then there isn’t as much activity on the EU branch of OMFG as there is on NA, and I’d really like to change that, so I’m extending a request out to anyone willing to step up and be “guild leader” of the EU half of OMFG.

I never really considered myself leader on the US side but … apparently I’m the only person who hasn’t. x.x Which goes to show that being a “leader” in this guild is just another job and not meant to be prestigious or anything, all I’m asking is for someone to:

• Maintain the EU custom arena
• Organize EU events (dungeon runs, wvw runs, pvp stuff, ect.)

This person would be handling this almost as if the EU side of things was a separate guild, you won’t be waiting on collaborations with NA, just pop in and send some mass whispers out to guildies whenever something is about to go down. Casual events don’t need much planning, but on sundays we’ll have bigger events that ideally we could do at the same time on US/EU.

So we’re looking for someone who:

- Doesn’t mind sending mass whispers and being social.
- Is willing to help organize sunday events. (Dungeon Runs, WvW stuff, ect.)

Please, someone, perhaps someones (no need for only one person to shoulder the burden) step up!

/sharpens swords

And if you’d like someone to spar with to help ya analyze your strengths and weaknesses, feel free to hit me up!

Alright, so.. I’ve got the hang of most of the longbow skills, but I’m curious about using the 5th skill in single encounters.

Do you use it defensively, centered on yourself to discourage melee?

Do you combine it with a pet?

Do you cast it as a feint to bait out an enemy?

What are your tactics with this skill?

Unfortunately, the Necros were not able to put a team together. =[ Many also weren’t too confident about 1v1s.

Their guild is still new though, so maybe in the future!

I’ll set sights on Wind (ranger guild) and see if they’re up to it this weekend

Alright folks! Here is part one of the video, which allows you to see all of the contestants and the beginning. I wanna extend a huge thank you to everyone involved in making this a success. We definitely learned a lot from the event in order to make it better for the next time. I’ll be updating this specific post to write things of note.

• At 7:00 you can see me browsing through the contestants.

I wanna extend a special thank you to Calliope (Solanyse) and SuFlea (Soldrana) for making this entire thing possible. I’m not the best at organizing and I pulled their help at the last possible minute and they STILL made everything go fantastically. In the future I promise I’ll be more organized about this, so they’ll be less time for people to wait, and easier for the judges to judge.

Again, I take all responsibility for any dysfunction that occurred due to my lack of proper preparation but this was an excellent turnout and hopefully the first of many events in the future.

Wow no wonder you said Aeoldyn isn’t purple. o_O He definitely looks black/dark gray on yours. There’s much more traces of purple on my end.

Quick heads up guys. Contest will be starting in 40 mins.

And unfortunately due to a change of plans, the EU contest will be hosted next week! This gives us time to do a trial run of the contest, see how everything works, and have an ever better one the next time

xDudisx.5914:

Leodon.1564:

xDudisx.5914:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

xDudisx.5914:

I didn’t say they open with that I just listed the simple combo. Decoy+mass invis is a lot of stealth for a class that has a insta cast teleport on a 8s cd and insta cast immune.

Decoy has a 40s cd while mass inv has 90s, a thief can stealth several times in this time frame.
The “insta cast teleport” is a really low range teleport that has absolutely nothing on a thief’s shortbow 5, which is also spammable.
I don’t even know how you can complain about a mesmer having a lot of stealth when thief has more stealth and more ways of kiting around or disengaging from a point.

40s? Every mesmer has the minor trait that reduces illusion cd so it is 32s. Shortobow #5 costs 6 initiative, if they use too much they can’t use other skills. Also why use thief as example if this class in the only natural counter to mes? Comparing mes mobility with everything else it has crazy mobility.

@ xDudisx: Another exaggeration. You have to go 3 pts into Illusions (generally for shatter specs) to get the illusion CD trait. There are PLENTY of specs/mesmers that don’t have this trait.

On the subject of stealth, let’s not forget that Rangers using LB have stealth on 12 second cooldown.

What mesmer is not running full illusion traitline nowadays? It’s like find an ele without 6 points in arcane or an engi without supply crate.

Ranger stealth only procs if the arrow hits the enemy it can be blocked, reflected, LoS, evaded, etc.

Your bias is blinding you, dude. Plenty of Mesmer don’t run 30 illusions. Y’know.. That whole lockdown thing.

@OP: Mind sharing your build? If your running glass you could be getting blown up by some good shatters and fire+air procs. Otherwise you’ll wanna make a new tab for combat log.

That, of course, was an illusion! (Ty for the catch)

Though.. First person may make landing certain blink spots easier (looking at you kyhlo)

Amir.1570:

^
Sadistic? More like Cancer in design. It’s not hard to understand how to land Mesmer attacks and it also is NOT hard to spam evades while doing so. I base my “opinions” on in-game mechanics. Therefore I’m actually pretty close to facts.

Mesmer, other than portal plays, is just flat out low-skill cap and a medium skill floor. Once you get to that medium skill floor such as dodge counting and shattering people with no more endurance, its just easy from there on. Mirror image shatter isn’t hard to land, and Phantasms, when people dodge that you are simply open to shatter.

TL;DR Instant cast, easy dodge baits, high uptime without relying on cool downs and evade/block/blind spam isn’t hard to play. Also bad in design because they can’t simply get buffs or they will be cancer.

P.S Just because “Thief” counters Mesmer, that doesn’t make Mesmer weak as a class. That is such a bad argument. Celestial as an argument is also bad considering other builds can be affected by celestial as well.

You couldn’t have possibly been fighting anyone of any decent skill to have come to that opinion. And even then your vague generalizations only refer to 1v1s.

Sylent.3165:

Truthfully I never had an issue with my sword. I think this is because I use dagger.

Every fight hit 5. Get close to enemy hit 3. Pet takes aggro I’m positioned behind enemy which is great with the trait that increases damage attacking in back. Then I have 4 as a great evade, and 2 to quickly get out of aoe and back in fight. I’ve never turned the auto attack off actually. Give dagger a try it’s really fun.

Wow, I never thought to start with dagger 5… Thanks!

It’ll be whatever we can gather. I don’t wanna set a specific time (though I’ll let people know in advance) and I don’t intend for this to be one singular event, I want this to be something open for anyone available whenever, all weekend.

A 10v10 sounds awesome though, that we should schedule.

One of the necros called you out in their thread, Ry!

From what ive read from one of Justin’s posts Its a server information issue. It’ll happen when you try to use blurred frenzy and get knocked back/down ECT. The move will still come out after.

The ability to zoom in as much as we want could work really well for tutorial videos, especially in showing what to interrupt.

its madly impractical to use in combat though unless you become extremely used to switching in and out of both POVs.. Third person will still be crucial.

What I do find interesting is that it is a legit first person view which zooms in to the head of the character. If you’re an Asura your PoV will be entirely different from a Norn

I was thinking EST. What is that for game time?

Not a bad idea, but I think mantras need to benefit from quickness more. I’m hoping chronomancer has a quickness field or quickness traits to help mantras out.

I think invuln on cast is a bit strong, and too much of an icd would make it not very desirable. 2s during with no ICD could be really nice though.

I believe we still have our EU custom arena open as well. If so I see no reason why we can’t have the event in both regions. =P

Awesome. Alright so we have a place, what time is good for EU? I’m thinking around 8pm works for US.

REMINDER! THIS SUNDAY IS THE SHOW!! We’re gonna need an audience for flashy Mesmer effects and hopefully can get some broadcasters. =P I’m down to get on my mic long as I have a cohost.

And so I have wandered off into the Necromancer forums and issued a challenge/invitation. This weekend we’ll be having some Mesmer vs Necro competition with some duels and ideally a nice big GvG battle!

I’ll update this thread with further details and will send out more info via in game pms

Necros ! We Mesmer challenge ye!

Any and all necros are invited to come join us in the OMFG custom arena this weekend for some cross-class duels and, if we get enough people, a nice big Mesmer vs Necro gvg match!

Times will vary, so I’ll update this thread with more info as we coordinate and will shoot PMs to the necro leaders. Hope to see y’all soon!

Speaking of GvG, anyone down to battle an army of Necros this weekend? I’m about to go challenge them.

Shaogin.2679:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Shaogin.2679:

Such a shame. Necromancers start a forum guild and tag it with SwAg. My characters shall never run around with such a ridiculous tag.

Actually that’s because initially it was a personal bank guild. I’ve had it for over 6 months and it already has a lot of upgrades. After some discussion with a friend I thought the name “Sweet Agony” was a rather appropriate name for a Necromancer guild. In retrospect the tag could have been better but it was done for comedic effect and I still find it funny personally.

Still, have a sense of humor, huh? (;

Would probably have a greater comedic effect if not for the fact it is completely over-used in the most ridiculous ways possible. Nothing against the guild, and I love the idea, but that tag, just can’t do it. >.<

Ironically.. The name is part of what drew me to join. =P Diff’rent strokes I guess. And I like the idea of when we compete with each other calling it OMFG SwAg.

…Oh hey that gives me an idea!

xDudisx.5914:

Amir.1570:

Neptune.2570:

Thief is the single, undisputed, hardest class to make effective at high tier pvp. Fact.

Fixed.

If by hard you mean baiting dodges with Phantasms and then instant-cast shattering people after they don’t have anymore endurance while spamming evades and invuln as you do so is hard then it just shows how much you know.

Ranger is easier than Mesmer, but Mesmer is still pretty easy. There are harder specs in this game, specs that take real skill. Even Thief is more skill-based than Mesmer really but I guess it’s just hard to understand that just because you play a Mesmer.

The problem is the loud minorty that plays mesmer on the forum and keep repeating “mesmer is hard” in every post. The strategy of repeating lies until everyone believes in it.

The strategy lies in .. Uh.. Actually playing the class?

Portals, teleports, illusions, and I get to make a psychic dual swordsman?

Sold.

Players are .. What? No way.

Players are getting more options?! Terrible, truly.

On the bright side.. Mesmer is much more fun in pvp and I could whip ya up a mean sw/sw build

Sup guys!

A couple weeks ago I had asked you guys of your opinions on Mesmer. Plenty of people from both PvP and WvW chimed in with some awesome feedback, so I flipped the question the other way around for Mesmer. I figured ya’ll may be interested to see what we think of you.

How Mesmer Feel About Thieves.. And Everyone else!

TL:DR – We hate you guys. =P

Sup guys!

A couple weeks ago I had asked you guys of your opinions on Mesmer. Plenty of people from both PvP and WvW chimed in with some awesome feedback, so I flipped the question the other way around for Mesmer. I figured ya’ll may be interested to see what we think of you.

How Mesmer Feel About Ranger.. And Everyone else!

Sup guys!

A couple weeks ago I had asked you guys of your opinions on Mesmer. Plenty of people from both PvP and WvW chimed in with some awesome feedback, so I flipped the question the other way around for Mesmer. I figured ya’ll may be interested to see what we think of you.

How Mesmer Feel About Necro.. And Everyone else!

Sup guys!

A couple weeks ago I had asked you guys of your opinions on Mesmer. Plenty of people from both PvP and WvW chimed in with some awesome feedback, so I flipped the question the other way around for Mesmer. I figured ya’ll may be interested to see what we think of you.

How Mesmer Feel About Guardian.. And Everyone else!

Sup guys!

A couple weeks ago I had asked you guys of your opinions on Mesmer. Plenty of people from both PvP and WvW chimed in with some awesome feedback, so I flipped the question the other way around for Mesmer. I figured ya’ll may be interested to see what we think of you.

How Mesmer Feel About Engineer.. And Everyone else!