Guild Wars 2

I’m trying this out in pvp:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWnsnBlphtfCOqBcrhFij6cDugOzMASgFq+S70QF-TJxHABXXGIgnAw67PAwpAAA

It’s hard to find a substitute rune for Defender but I’m starting to become addicted to the resistance on heal from the revenant runes.

Works better than I was expecting, so thanks again.

I really love the look of this – such a shame Defender runes aren’t available in pvp.

Thank you for the detailed write up and videos, definitely inspired me to try it out.

Krysard.1364:

Curunen.8729:

Krysard.1364:

Mak.2657:

To all:
uncheck “Allow Skill Retargeting” in general options (”Combat/Movement" section) and try to test.

This. Maybe it doesnt explain all stomp bugs, but as soon as I realised that retargeting when stomping will make my stomp to miss I usually dont have any problem for stomping

This is a pain because one of my favourite things to do while stomping is to switch target to an enemy resser and interrupt them (Diversion) while finishing a downed opponent.

So you’re saying the reason it might be failing sometimes is because of switching targets?

Yes, because skill retargeting, when switching targets you will “stomp” the current target, which makes you to fail the other stomp. Maybe Anet could fix this so if you retarget when stomping to someone who cant be stomped, it just stomps the first target, but I dunno if this is really hard to write when programming

It used to always work for me whenever I did that in the past (swap target, F3, finish stomp), so it must be something that changed with HoT.

dank.3680:

Jaxom.7310:

i find hotjoin much moar fun than un/ranked.

-more soloq’rs
-no queue (read u can play right now, not 5+min from now)
-if match is too much a landslide, just leave and find a better server, nothing holding u there to waste your time. in otherwords, i get to play matches on my terms, not some terrible mmr where u have no idea if ur party is going to be dumb

in un/ranked if u get a terrible match up, or 3+ in a row, u are sol an just have to waste your time w/ a losing matchup.

in hotjoin, its up to you, an u can find a good fight eventually. it ain’t perfect, but my time is better spent playing the game on my terms rather than clicking around hoping ‘this matchup will be good, rite?’

i jus want to play. i want to pvp. i want to do it now. and i don’t want to be in a terrible matchup for ~10+ mins. thats not fun. thats not rewarding. thats not how i want to spend my time.

thats why gw1 RA was so nice. no mmr, so fast matchups, tmd = very short matches. if your team was that terrible it was over in <2 mins. since no mmr, no streaks trying to keep u at 50% winrate.

u just got to pvp and have fun. what happened to that part?

so w/ ur idea:

This WILL remove me, and likely many others, from spvp altogether because i jus don’t have the time to deal w/ long queue + terrible matchups. u think it will move every1 to un/ranked? people will just stop playing and do something fun. theres already a hard cap on teh hotjoin rewards, so… u sort of already have what u want there.

lose, lose, lose, the way i see it

So you play hotjoin to stack teams and farm rewards like pve and if you can’t do that you wont pvp? bye

You know, you don’t have to stack teams in hotjoin.

In fact I find it very good challenge to join a match that is being snowballed/farmed one way, join the losing team and try to turn it around. Ok sure I might not succeed, but I’ll be forced to play hard and stay sharp.

And unless I want to get a quick brainless daily, I always join the losing/weaker team to test myself.

As he said, it’s good to play when you don’t have much time to wait around in queues and want to have some quick casual pvp with zero consequences. But that doesn’t mean it has to be brainless farming – you have the choice as a player to make life harder for yourself by joining a losing team with weaker players.

Sometimes I end up swapping back and forth between teams to keep scores as level as possible – there’s all sorts of little things you can challenge yourself to do.

I say in Unranked/Ranked, you play to win; in Hotjoin, you play to challenge yourself, not necessarily to win.

Yeah what Pyro said – stomping is ******* at the moment – flip a coin to decide whether you kill the enemy or not…

Krysard.1364:

Mak.2657:

To all:
uncheck “Allow Skill Retargeting” in general options (”Combat/Movement" section) and try to test.

This. Maybe it doesnt explain all stomp bugs, but as soon as I realised that retargeting when stomping will make my stomp to miss I usually dont have any problem for stomping

This is a pain because one of my favourite things to do while stomping is to switch target to an enemy resser and interrupt them (Diversion) while finishing a downed opponent.

So you’re saying the reason it might be failing sometimes is because of switching targets?

Yes this is still a problem.

Has happened in a variety of situations and nothing to do with quickness or slow.

Can make a huge difference between winning or losing a teamfight and the match. As such I can’t take this game seriously until stomping is guaranteed to work every time.

Silverkey.2078:

Curunen.8729:

:o

Thanks for all the replies – a lot of food for thought and a lot of stuff to experiment with.

Yeah MtD vs Shattered Strength is a pain – the 3 stacks from Bountiful Disillusionment on F1 is not enough on its own so I suppose I should use Battle sigils and strength or hoelbrak runes.

I might not give up on it yet after all.

You Might not give up

lol, totally unintended. xD

:o

Thanks for all the replies – a lot of food for thought and a lot of stuff to experiment with.

Yeah MtD vs Shattered Strength is a pain – the 3 stacks from Bountiful Disillusionment on F1 is not enough on its own so I suppose I should use Battle sigils and strength or hoelbrak runes.

I might not give up on it yet after all.

Yeah, thanks guys I’m going to have to drop the cele amulet.

I just had an endless (and I do mean endless in that we both had to step back after 10 minutes of not finishing each other off) 1v1 against a decent mesmer also trying a weird build on an empty hotjoin map – while I managed to stay alive without properly knowing what I was doing in terms of the build and dish out a reasonable amount of damage, it was just… meh… well it didn’t do anything exceptionally well.

I really want to keep the revenant runes because that resistance on mirror is pretty sweet, but I’ll probably go either hybrid or full condition with one of the amulets and deal with being glass. Not interested in bunkering though.

Edit: Conceded and reverted to full condi but still trying out revenant runes with traited mirror.http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWlsnhy0YRawRNwtGLEHlZAkZLU9l2phKao9QlGA-TJxHABB8EAOqMw67PAwpAAA
——————————————————-

Edit: oops, wrong amulet in the link.

So I decided to try a cele build because I was getting bored and landed on this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWlsnhy0YRawRNwtGLEHlZAkALU9luphKaK8QlGA-TJxHABB8EAWf/BAOFAFVGAA

I tried Inspiration instead of Illusions, but the damage pressure is just not good enough without confusion and torment on shatter and I didn’t find I needed the survivability boost from Inspiration.

I tried Domination, but I found Chaos gave a more rounded approach and personally I wanted to use traited mirror heal with Revenant runes for the 2s resistance on heal and it works surprisingly well vs conditions. Bountiful Disillusionment gives that almighty 5s resistance on F5 amongst all the stability and other boons.

I’m still trying to figure out what I want to achieve with this build – it’s a bit of a brawler with good cc but lacks enough burst damage to focus and down enemies fast, and doesn’t have quite enough in terms of defence to be a dedicated bunker.

I know I should take Time Warp as the elite, but enjoy mass invis more – to save allies from stomps and so on.

Slow sources are of course aoe F3, shield 5, chaos storm, iAvengers and F5 revert (master of fragmentation) which boosts the crit chance to increase damage on things like scepter 3.

The only reason I took MoResolve is for clutch condi removal – but I could swap it for null field.

Anyway as said, I don’t quite know what I’m trying to achieve with this – just throwing together things I find fun like traited mirror with revenant runes and things like that and seeing what I can make of it. Maybe cele isn’t the best way to go – maybe I should go all in with Sinister, but I don’t fancy playing full glass with this.

Any ideas/advice would be welcome – even just say drop cele and use something else! xD

PierPiero.9142:

I main an engi. I had problems against mesmers. I rolled a mesmers and i played with it a lot in spvp . it helped me a lot. I gained 2 things : first, now i like mesmer really much, second it is now for me much simpler to see where is “the real one”. As an engi i suggest you to take nades for bombing clones down. it is not simple to fight a mesmer but when it gets to you automatic to understand which is the real …. it is not impossible to take it down. Without playing mesmer i could kill only really bad mesmers

I would do this – play a mesmer for a little while, just stick to hotjoin if you like. Try all the main builds out there with different roles, and the different weapons and you’ll soon spot the holes in defence and weaknesses in offence, and learn when the best times are to hit mesmers with your damage.

Silverkey.2078:

For defense, don’t forget double well of eternity. You don’t get 2 full heals, but you get like 1.7 heals.

Double precog is also quite good (although I don’t use precog right now).

I like saving F5 for clutch survival actually – for example one occasion in stronghold I was going to die among enemies in their lane but hit F5 and blinked towards them causing them to follow for a short distance, then reversed F5 and blinked away in the opposite direction, allowing escape and survival (got out of combat and regen’d).

But sometimes, as I play condition most of the time now, I go the default route of blink + shatter spam while in F5 to put the enemy on the back foot while retaining the ability to burst apply condis a second time.

Mogar.9216:

Curunen.8729:

The main thing for me if not taking Domination is losing boon strip which is a lot of utility in pvp.

Sure in wvw it’s not a necessity so more room to use the other trait lines

PB or MA is a toss up depending on choice of weapons/skills and utilities (ie double ranged or using Shield, or gravity well etc perhaps PB is more useful, using torch and fewer cc skills then MA is more useful). Then you’ve got all the vuln which helps with the damage.

I agree losing boon strip is a big deal. From what I experienced in matches the new meta has really made almost every class hit as hard as pre hot mesmer. There is no time to setup a giant burst anymore because you are just getting hammered so hard by everyone. To me at least the counter play is shatter as much and as often as possible. This has 2 advantages, 1 you are keeping everyone blinded all the time. 2 you are stacking alacrity like crazy. which make you shatter even more and the bonus of your stealth skill recharge super fast. So I guess what I’m saying is lots of shatters seem to play better in the new meta than setup 1 giant shatter.

Hmm, that is interesting – I’ll take your word for it and can certainly see why it may work in that way now.

I confess I ceased playing power shatter with the June 23rd patch – which seems funny because the day they supposedly “buffed” mesmer is the day I got totally turned off power shatter for several reasons since then (ease of use, PU, stun spam, stat boosts, bandwagoning, iElasticity loss from mirror blade, etc).

But I will try what you’re saying and see if a sustained power dps is possible with the current meta, compared to all in on one big burst in the past. So Duelling/Chrono and then which one out of Insp, Chaos or Illusions?

The main thing for me if not taking Domination is losing boon strip which is a lot of utility in pvp.

Sure in wvw it’s not a necessity so more room to use the other trait lines

PB or MA is a toss up depending on choice of weapons/skills and utilities (ie double ranged or using Shield, or gravity well etc perhaps PB is more useful, using torch and fewer cc skills then MA is more useful). Then you’ve got all the vuln which helps with the damage.

I’m so glad I bought the legend off the tp.

As they said, in power build it’s about the setup and big burst.

If boon strip is traited, it’s useful to use F2 for boon removal and blinds.

You can also use F2 to fake the big burst and cause an enemy to waste crucial defences – then quickly pop some new illusions and deliver the real nuke while they’re exposed.

Also you can when going in for an F1 burst, hit F2 as well to increase the damage – especially with chrono illusion traits giving you instant illusions back. It could be that little difference between killing a player or leaving them with say 10% health.

F3 should be used more smartly than in condition play. Sure you can setup huge vuln stacks and then unload the killer nuke, but I personally prefer to save it for alternative situations – it’s such a useful interrupt/daze it’s a shame to waste it all for damage unless you’re in a 1v1 or the situation is favourable while F3 is on cooldown. Anything from interrupting a thief’s combo to preventing a stomp on an ally and securing a res, it’s just too useful to waste purely for damage unless entirely necessary and the kill is certain.

I mean, sure you could just smash F1, F2, F3 but then you need to guarantee the kill or have a kitten good reason and survival plan. Using F5 you can smash them all without consequence…

Newest look is Leystone chest (I love this), primitive legs, and I can’t remember which shoes – one of the basic cheap ones I thnk.

I went back through old screenshots to see how my fashion preferences have changed over time.

In some ways I prefer the oldest I have a picture of here, and I don’t like the middle one.

Hoping for Anet to add some new hairstyles soon.

I also prefer the old skill points blue icon – it was much easier to identify.

Woah that sounds a nasty bug. :o

MrSilver.5269:

Curunen.8729:

MrSilver.5269:

Hate to open up my mouth and reveal my utter mesmer newbness, but what is illusionary Avenger? I know what phantasmal defender is, as well as phantasmal swordsman, phantasmal duelist, and phantasmal warden, but can’t figure out what iavenger is.

Thanks for helping!

shield phantasm.

The shield phantasm summoned at the end of the channel from deja vu?

And thanks!

Yeah, one at the end of echo of memory, then if you block and have the option of deja vu, a second phantasm at the end of that – so you can get two of them out.

Quadox.7834:

LOOLLLLL Seize the moment hhahah this is gonna be great my god.

you do give up chronophantasma though, so could be a significant tradeoff.

MrSilver.5269:

Hate to open up my mouth and reveal my utter mesmer newbness, but what is illusionary Avenger? I know what phantasmal defender is, as well as phantasmal swordsman, phantasmal duelist, and phantasmal warden, but can’t figure out what iavenger is.

Thanks for helping!

shield phantasm.

Regarding the Focus – does that mean you still can’t pull people off ledges?

StM change looks absolutely incredible – I’m going to try that out as soon as I can.

I would be very happy if we got a mainhand Axe next (Astralaria…).

I never liked offhand Pistol so I personally have no love for the mainhand pistol concepts.

In any case, the next weapon surely must be a mainhand.

As a side note I’m quite fed up because it takes ages to find anyone to fight in the new borderlands (I think they’re very pretty but seems a lot of players just aren’t there) and EB always has a ridiculously long queue…

Happened a few more times in the last couple of hours.

Makes me think – have they secretly nerfed stealth/invuln stomps, because every time this problem has occurred I was going for either a stealth stomp or popping Distortion, or both.

But then sometimes it seems to work with stealth or F4, so I don’t get it…

Edit – and again, wtf I don’t understand this at all – stomps failing for no reason whatsoever, no interrupt, no quickness, no slow…

The most recent occurence was fighting against an engi and a thief – downed the engi, went for stomp, stomp completed but engi lived – promptly got myself killed. I had no quickness or slow on me at any point, and was not interrupted in the stomp.

Confirmed this is extremely annoying and can be crucial in a fight.

Stomp sometimes just fails to kill the downed player for some unknown reason, nothing to do with quickness or slow because I’ve had it happen even without those things and no lag.

I’ve personally never noticed this much if ever before HoT, but since HoT it seems to be quite frequent.

As a side note, I’d happily have Portal as an elite.

As for moa – they could do the engi treatment and make it an AoE with reduced duration (ie 5 seconds) – that’s enough time to use skill #5 for evade and one or two dodges if necessary while still being long enough to be punishing if getting hit.

Condi application can be avoided (block, blind, evade, invuln, etc) exactly the same way as power damage.

Part of this perceived fallacy that condi builds are “cancer/cheese/skilless” and power builds are “honourable/skilled” is down to the animations of skills that apply any given type of damage.

Look at Eviscerate – big animation, big damage
Now look at Scepter block – small animation, big damage (over time)

If you get hit by the eviscerate, you eat all the damage in one go. If you get hit by the scepter block you’ve still got time to cleanse the damage.

Players don’t equate small, seemingly insignificant animations with the ability to land big damage over time – and tend to ignore the smaller animations unless they are experienced enough to know the consequences.

But equally there are direct damage skills that have insignificant or less noticeable animations. Mesmer shatters for example are equally instant on power and condi builds – and I’d argue it is harder to play a condi mesmer successfully at the moment compared to a power mesmer.

For the record I was a die hard power shatter mesmer for well over a year in 2014 and utterly hated condi builds. In addition to this I don’t use Scepter or Chaos in my condi build anyway, but I accept that handicap in efficiency for the sake of fun.

I am also against passive procs – ie perplexity runes that proc confusion if you get hit, rewarding bad play.

However condi application through shatters is entirely active and easily avoided/countered, as is condi application through weapon/utility skills.

The only argument I could accept is passive application through pets – but I argue that scepter and staff clones apply negligable conditions anyway and phantasms such as iDuelist have equally obvious visual/audio cues as things like Eviscerate – so the bulk of damage in condi mesmer builds is active or easy to notice, especially since clone death traits were deleted (Scepter 2, 3, staff aa, shatters, phantasms).

Mirror blade is also an unblockable attack so you need to evade it or otherwise avoid it.

Mesmer GS 1 and 2 are weird outliers compared to most ranged attacks in the game. But then Mesmer GS is a weird, unorthodox weapon.

Mesmer GS aa is “special”. It is not a projectile.

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Curunen.8729:

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Curunen.8729:

Mesmers have one evade on one weapon – blurred frenzy, on a base 12s cooldown, which is usually left untraited because Blinding Dissipation is superior to take.

They have one evade on a utility, providing they trait Chrono – well of precognition (which if they take often means they don’t take decoy – a significant loss of stealth).

Distortion is on a long cooldown, and only reduced if a player takes the Illusions line – which few if no power builds take over any three from Dom/Duel/Chaos/Insp/Chrono, and condi builds have other problems.

There are a maximum of 4 stealth skills, most of the time the maximum used will be 3 – prestige, decoy and Mass invis. If a player uses torch, they are very likely not using shield which means no channeled block defence, or aoe stun/interrupt.

Personal alacrity generation through flow of time and if specifically taking improved alacrity requires frequent shattering to maintain decent up time – but spamming shatters is usually not a smart idea against any decent opponent, especially if playing a power build. For condi builds, even with shatter “spam”, the damage/application is still mediocre and easy to either avoid or counter.

The only way to generate significant alacrity is through traited wells and shield phantasms – but that means a player will sacrifice their utitlity skills (decoy, blink, portal, Condi cleanse, mantra of distraction, time warp, mass invis, superior heals, etc) in order to take sufficient wells – and the playstyle requires standing in a well when it ends to reap the benefit – easier to predict and counter.
As for shield phantasms – again most players running a build with shield don’t use Torch, so that’s at least one less source of stealth (max two others, decoy and mass invis).

Scepter block is single target, single block and pretty useless against multiple hits. Few people use offhand sword, and again if they do that means either no shield, no torch or no two handed weapon (most use at least one lf the two handed weapons in any build). Aegis on PU is random – and if a player is using PU it means one out of either no Chrono, no Deceptive Evasion/Blinding Dissipation, or no torment shatter/ineptitude – a significant tradeoff.
Aegis from chaos storm is also random and has a long cooldown.

There are significant holes in every Mesmer build once you realise the weapon set, utilities and traits they’re running and there are straightforward ways to figure this out quickly from watching what they do in a fight.

The only argument I can accept is CSplit back to back shatter spam – but this is a one trick pony which also requires destroying one or two illusions first to get any decent use from it. Bait it out and once it’s been used up it has a very long cooldown.

A 12s CD on sword #2 is hardly a factor. 4s of Alacrity will fully recharge it, and you cannot seriously imply Alacrity is something that is hard to come by. You also cannot boonstrip it, meaning even cele signet necros aren’t going to help you in this scenario.

And i’m not complaining about stealth. I didn’t even mention that, or Aegis. Stealth can be countered with a plethora of abilities and Aegis can be boonstripped. Straight up blocks require you running anti-block INTERRUPTING abilities, some classes have very easy access to this kind of stuff, like Necro. Other classes aren’t so lucky. Signet of Power, for example, is hardly ever used. Throw mine is hardly ever used. You can maybe make an argument for Spike Trap, but I can’t even remember the last time I saw it.

Once again, I never brought up Aegis or Stealth or whatnot. I’m talking about abilities that basically just read “Block for a long time or become invulnerable.” These abilities need to become less frequent, the more you give to a class the longer they can cycle them. Engineer is the best example of this with them cycling two 4s invulns with a 3s block so they can get off a free, riskless heal and essentially make you have to kill them twice. That isn’t fun. That isn’t esports.

I don’t want to play a game where every other character plays like Puck, and half their play-style revolves around becoming invulnerable long enough to wait for cooldowns or allies to show up. Like I said, defensive abilities need to be less reward, or more risk. There is no risk to just hitting “Blurred Frenzy” and living for two seconds, either you were dead anyways or you potentially turn the fight.

Blurred frenzy is a risk in itself. You root yourself meaning it’s easy for an enemy to wait out the evade and cc/burst as soon as it ends. The damage of blurred frenzy is pitiful and it is also susceptible to retal.

I don’t understand your criticism of blurred frenzy.

I brought up aegis because you talked about blocks in your OP – therefore aegis is relevant as a block. And as stealth is an often complained about mechanic when it comes to Mesmer defence I felt it relevant to discuss when also talking about blocks/invuln/evade.

The only relevant block in that case is Shield 4, which could do with a reduced channel duration.

Blurred frenzy has been nerfed enough over the years – there are plenty of other defensive weapon skills available to spam on a other classes and honestly blurred frenzy is the least worrying of the lot.

Now if we look at revenants UA on the other hand…

Uh? No? Aegis and Block are different things entirely.

Aegis can be countered. I hit them with some kitten-poor attack that hits a million times, IE Warrior Axe, Flamethrower #1, Revenant Staff, and I just burned the Aegis. Despite that it is STILL countered by anti-block abilities. It is also countered by boon stripping/boon corruption.

Block abilities that read “Block for x seconds” are not the same. I can hit a Guardian with Shelter up or an Engineer or Mesmer with his shield up 1000000 times in the span of the skills duration, it will NEVER expire unless I explicitly not only find an ability that bypasses block itself, but also INTERRUPTS him.

It is much easier to counter aegis than it is to counter gear shield or deja vu.

As for Blurred Frenzy, like I said, its no risk with a huge potential reward. “Lmao rooted in place” is just as stupid a counter argument as people who say “Elixir S removes the ability to do anything”

Yeah, but guess what? You’re still invulnerable. Chances are if Elixir S or Blurred Frenzy won’t save you, nothing will, and you were dead anyways.

So that means nothing to lose —-—> everything to gain

In my opinion aegis is as relevant as anything that causes you to potentially not receive damage from an attack – whether a single block or a channeled block.

Well then it seems you don’t like channelled “blocks” in general? Is it the duration of the “block”, the number of “blocks” or the concept of negating damage for a small period of time? You could include every skill that has a built in evade, every dodge and so on.

So I’m assuming it’s the frequency of these damage avoidance skills that is the problem?

Mesmer only has 4 of those – blurred frenzy, shield 4, well of precognition and Distortion.

Personally I don’t see how that can be considered too much given the cooldowns they are on and the durations, even with alacrity, even with F5. The only thing I believe could do with a change is slightly reducing the duration of the shield block (numbers such as 1.75s have been thrown around). And the second thing is suggestions of slightly increasing well of precognition to 50s.

I think there is far more “block” spam from various other classes (including evade spam and invuln), and other than those two things of shield 4 and well of precognition mesmer is a non-issue.

Otherwise I don’t see the problem with skills that prevent damage because I don’t see the up time of them as being impenetrable beyond a few very niche builds.

Yes, glad to see a non-mesmer main noticing this without bias.

Even alacrity and illusion generation traits from Chrono don’t make up for it – because you have to drop either Duelling (loss of Blinding Dissipation and dps through DE) or Chaos (loss of Chaotic Persistence, Chaotic Transference among other defensive options).
If you take Chrono you basically end up having to spam shatters in order to apply a mediocre amount of torment and a too short duration of confusion.

The only benefit now is the ability to use tormenting runes and have +25% movement speed, but with MtD as it is it isn’t really a game changer.

I am in favour of adding a single stack of torment baseline to Cry of Frustration – so it becomes a dedicated condition “burst” button and justify the cool down of F2 compared with F1. But there are plenty of other suggestions in this forum from others to remedy the problem, ranging from things like giving us taunt somewhere (forced movement and skill use), to buffing burning on staff auto attack and torch skills, to giving a trait that buffs torment damage to moving targets, to restoring a confusion on crit trait in duelling and so on.

Anyway I of agree with your views on the… I don’t quite know how to describe it… “defensive/offensive skill spam” that has occurred with the power creep across all classes.

But this is a foundation problem in the design – or at least where the game has ended up with the gradual changes over the years.

I don’t believe it is an easy fix of nerfing defensive skills because there’s so many factors in play that they all need to be gradually changed together.

I would like to see skill usage and timing carry more weight than it currently does, but part of me thinks that boat has sailed, or at least we are a long way off from achieving it.

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Curunen.8729:

Mesmers have one evade on one weapon – blurred frenzy, on a base 12s cooldown, which is usually left untraited because Blinding Dissipation is superior to take.

They have one evade on a utility, providing they trait Chrono – well of precognition (which if they take often means they don’t take decoy – a significant loss of stealth).

Distortion is on a long cooldown, and only reduced if a player takes the Illusions line – which few if no power builds take over any three from Dom/Duel/Chaos/Insp/Chrono, and condi builds have other problems.

There are a maximum of 4 stealth skills, most of the time the maximum used will be 3 – prestige, decoy and Mass invis. If a player uses torch, they are very likely not using shield which means no channeled block defence, or aoe stun/interrupt.

Personal alacrity generation through flow of time and if specifically taking improved alacrity requires frequent shattering to maintain decent up time – but spamming shatters is usually not a smart idea against any decent opponent, especially if playing a power build. For condi builds, even with shatter “spam”, the damage/application is still mediocre and easy to either avoid or counter.

The only way to generate significant alacrity is through traited wells and shield phantasms – but that means a player will sacrifice their utitlity skills (decoy, blink, portal, Condi cleanse, mantra of distraction, time warp, mass invis, superior heals, etc) in order to take sufficient wells – and the playstyle requires standing in a well when it ends to reap the benefit – easier to predict and counter.
As for shield phantasms – again most players running a build with shield don’t use Torch, so that’s at least one less source of stealth (max two others, decoy and mass invis).

Scepter block is single target, single block and pretty useless against multiple hits. Few people use offhand sword, and again if they do that means either no shield, no torch or no two handed weapon (most use at least one lf the two handed weapons in any build). Aegis on PU is random – and if a player is using PU it means one out of either no Chrono, no Deceptive Evasion/Blinding Dissipation, or no torment shatter/ineptitude – a significant tradeoff.
Aegis from chaos storm is also random and has a long cooldown.

There are significant holes in every Mesmer build once you realise the weapon set, utilities and traits they’re running and there are straightforward ways to figure this out quickly from watching what they do in a fight.

The only argument I can accept is CSplit back to back shatter spam – but this is a one trick pony which also requires destroying one or two illusions first to get any decent use from it. Bait it out and once it’s been used up it has a very long cooldown.

A 12s CD on sword #2 is hardly a factor. 4s of Alacrity will fully recharge it, and you cannot seriously imply Alacrity is something that is hard to come by. You also cannot boonstrip it, meaning even cele signet necros aren’t going to help you in this scenario.

And i’m not complaining about stealth. I didn’t even mention that, or Aegis. Stealth can be countered with a plethora of abilities and Aegis can be boonstripped. Straight up blocks require you running anti-block INTERRUPTING abilities, some classes have very easy access to this kind of stuff, like Necro. Other classes aren’t so lucky. Signet of Power, for example, is hardly ever used. Throw mine is hardly ever used. You can maybe make an argument for Spike Trap, but I can’t even remember the last time I saw it.

Once again, I never brought up Aegis or Stealth or whatnot. I’m talking about abilities that basically just read “Block for a long time or become invulnerable.” These abilities need to become less frequent, the more you give to a class the longer they can cycle them. Engineer is the best example of this with them cycling two 4s invulns with a 3s block so they can get off a free, riskless heal and essentially make you have to kill them twice. That isn’t fun. That isn’t esports.

I don’t want to play a game where every other character plays like Puck, and half their play-style revolves around becoming invulnerable long enough to wait for cooldowns or allies to show up. Like I said, defensive abilities need to be less reward, or more risk. There is no risk to just hitting “Blurred Frenzy” and living for two seconds, either you were dead anyways or you potentially turn the fight.

Blurred frenzy is a risk in itself. You root yourself meaning it’s easy for an enemy to wait out the evade and cc/burst as soon as it ends. The damage of blurred frenzy is pitiful and it is also susceptible to retal.

I don’t understand your criticism of blurred frenzy.

I brought up aegis because you talked about blocks in your OP – therefore aegis is relevant as a block. And as stealth is an often complained about mechanic when it comes to Mesmer defence I felt it relevant to discuss when also talking about blocks/invuln/evade.

The only relevant block in that case is Shield 4, which could do with a reduced channel duration.

Blurred frenzy has been nerfed enough over the years – there are plenty of other defensive weapon skills available to spam on a other classes and honestly blurred frenzy is the least worrying of the lot.

Now if we look at revenants UA on the other hand…

Mesmers have one evade on one weapon – blurred frenzy, on a base 12s cooldown, which is usually left untraited because Blinding Dissipation is superior to take.

They have one evade on a utility, providing they trait Chrono – well of precognition (which if they take often means they don’t take decoy – a significant loss of stealth).

Distortion is on a long cooldown, and only reduced if a player takes the Illusions line – which few if no power builds take over any three from Dom/Duel/Chaos/Insp/Chrono, and condi builds have other problems.

There are a maximum of 4 stealth skills, most of the time the maximum used will be 3 – prestige, decoy and Mass invis. If a player uses torch, they are very likely not using shield which means no channeled block defence, or aoe stun/interrupt.

Personal alacrity generation through flow of time and if specifically taking improved alacrity requires frequent shattering to maintain decent up time – but spamming shatters is usually not a smart idea against any decent opponent, especially if playing a power build. For condi builds, even with shatter “spam”, the damage/application is still mediocre and easy to either avoid or counter.

The only way to generate significant alacrity is through traited wells and shield phantasms – but that means a player will sacrifice their utitlity skills (decoy, blink, portal, Condi cleanse, mantra of distraction, time warp, mass invis, superior heals, etc) in order to take sufficient wells – and the playstyle requires standing in a well when it ends to reap the benefit – easier to predict and counter.
As for shield phantasms – again most players running a build with shield don’t use Torch, so that’s at least one less source of stealth (max two others, decoy and mass invis).

Scepter block is single target, single block and pretty useless against multiple hits. Few people use offhand sword, and again if they do that means either no shield, no torch or no two handed weapon (most use at least one lf the two handed weapons in any build). Aegis on PU is random – and if a player is using PU it means one out of either no Chrono, no Deceptive Evasion/Blinding Dissipation, or no torment shatter/ineptitude – a significant tradeoff.
Aegis from chaos storm is also random and has a long cooldown.

There are significant holes in every Mesmer build once you realise the weapon set, utilities and traits they’re running and there are straightforward ways to figure this out quickly from watching what they do in a fight.

The only argument I can accept is CSplit back to back shatter spam – but this is a one trick pony which also requires destroying one or two illusions first to get any decent use from it. Bait it out and once it’s been used up it has a very long cooldown.

Haha, I’ve got to see this place for myself.

Would be interesting, but it shouldn’t be available immediately on down.

It could be a fifth skill which becomes available say after 8 seconds or so?

I love the Leystone top on asura – looks pretty cool.

Need to find a better location for screenshots though.

Fay.2357:

Curunen.8729:

I agree with Windwalker regarding adding a +50% torment damage to moving targets with MtD, which would be a compromise between when it was 2 stacks (which is obviously too much) and now when it is one stack (which isn’t good enough).

It would also be nice to see Confusing Combatants added back in the Duelling gm minor for confusion on crit. Give it an ICD if you like but it would go a long way to solidifying condi builds, also allowing weapons like mainhand sword, greatsword and focus to be useable in condition builds for more variety. And it would rely on high precision for crits so Dire “cancer” builds in wvw would not benefit from it.

I’d rather see confusing combatants added onto mistrust. That would actually make it competitive instead of just flat out bad.

Tbh the whole Duelling line could do with a reshuffle.

I wouldn’t mind seeing:

Adept Minor – Critical Infusion
Adept Majors:
- Phantasmal Fury
- Evasive Mirror
- Duelist’s Discipline

Master Minor – Sharper Images
Master Majors:
- Fencer’s Finesse
- Blinding Dissipation
- Targeted Parry (gain 2 seconds of Blur when you interrupt a foe. 10s ICD)

GM Minor – Flummox (only you, the player, deal 1 stack of confusion for 4 seconds on crit. Gain 15% increased crit chance against foes inflicted with confusion)
GM Majors:
- Harmonious Mantras (see below for detailed rework)
- Deceptive Evasion
- Mistrust (interrupted targets incur 4 stacks of confusion for 6 seconds on interrupt and nearby uninterrupted enemies incur 2 stacks of confusion for 6 seconds in a 240 radius. All phantasms now also deal 1 stack of confusion for 4 seconds when they crit.)

Harmonious Mantras of course needs a buff so I’d suggest:
1) Mantras can have 3 charges.
2) Increase a unique stat by 50 points for you and nearby allies (600 radius) for each charge readied for each mantra to a maximum of 150 points if fully charged.
- Mantra of Recovery – 50 healing power per charge readied
- Mantra of Pain – 50 power per charge readied
- Mantra of Resolve – 50 vitality per charge readied
- Mantra of Distraction – 50 toughness per charge readied
- Mantra of Concentration – 5% boon duration per charge readied
3) Activating a mantra causes a stacking damage bonus effect – 4% per charge activated and shares this in a 240 radius with nearby allies.
4) Activating a mantra also pulses a unique effect to nearby allies in addition to their normal effects (pbaoe, 240 radius, up to 5 allies):
- Mantra of Recovery – shares 6 seconds of Regen
- Mantra of Pain – shares 5 seconds of Might (3 stacks)
- Mantra of Resolve – shares 2 seconds of Resistance
- Mantra of Distraction – shares 3 seconds of Protection
- Mantra of Concentration – shares 3 seconds of Aegis

I know that’s pretty complex but I don’t think it’s any more involved than say Master of Fragmentation on Bountiful Disillusionment. Also I feel the aoe share would help the pve folks and also make it more interesting in teamfights.

Mistrust should then work well with Pistol, Focus (iWarden and Duelist will have good confusion and bleed stacking potential) and condirupt builds in general. It should be more punishing to enemies who let themselves be interrupted, but less punishing to enemies who are not at fault for the sake of their teammates bad play. I think it’s unfair if you get hit with a full 4 stacks of confusion because your ally standing next to you got themselves interrupted but you didn’t. DE is still there for shatter heavy builds, and HM for the pve or mantra players.

Flummox allows for better personal confusion application and allows players to experiment with greatsword and sword in condition builds among other things. It also provides increased crit chance if a foe has confusion so it is still a useful minor trait for non-condition builds.

Clones still only cause bleeding on crit through SI, because I feel confusion on crit for them would be too powerful so it should be limited to player and phantasms (if traited) only.

I feel this would provide an interesting line up for interrupt builds – targeted parry would help interrupt builds more in 1v2+ situations and teamfights because of course in 1v1 you probably don’t need the blur when you interrupt someone. Offhand sword would be more manageable in team fights. Pistol and Focus would have interesting defence based on using into the void and magic bullet successfully.

Obviously this is very rough and there’s many things I’ve not thought through, so I’ll come back and edit this on further thinking.

For the record i’s so kittening difficult to reshuffle Duelling because there are 3 skill cooldown traits that cannot be in the same tier and none of them can be minors – mantras, sword/spear and pistol. Unlike every other traitline which only has a maximum of 2 skill cooldown enhancement traits… It’s extremely annoying and creates huge limitations.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Curunen.8729:

Telekinesis.8312:

scepter in a power build is alright cause confusing images deals a lot of damage but sword in a condition build is not worth it

In pve yes it’s not worth it.

In pvp no – sword is excellent in any build, condition or power, as a defensive/kiting tool.

^
Realistically, you’d use sword/shield to replace staff as your defensive weapon, and have scepter/pistol, scepter/torch or scepter/focus as your damage driver. Losing condi pressure from the staff is compensated by the superior defenses and cc of the sword/shield combo, but you do end up more reliant on the scepter than otherwise (which is fine, you just have to be aware of that).

Before HoT, I think Curunen was even using sword/focus instead of staff, is that right?
I could see sword/torch being decent as well, using the stealth in place of the block, with torch providing a superior cover phantasm to avenger.

I used Scepter/Focus + Staff in skcamow’s Chaotic Perdition condirupt build but that was a long time before the June 23rd patch. I ceased playing that in favour of condi shatter because it had severe hardcounters (eles…) and Scepter/Focus is nowhere near as good as Sword/Torch is for defence in outnumbered situations.

I tried using Scepter/Shield + Sword/Focus (and Scepter/Focus + Sword/Shield) Domination/Inspiration/Illusions power interrupt but again Staff is just way better than x/Focus currently. In any case I enjoyed condi shatter more so also dropped that build.

It’s just a sad state that Focus is in the state it is in now. Ok the curtain height is bigger but what do we have – pull has an ICD, untraited is bugged and does not destroy projectiles, trait competes with the far superior Restorative illusions (pvp), Shield offers much better defence, tons of stability flying around in the game, pull now cannot cluster or throw people of ledges…

At least iWarden still works I guess… but no one in their right minds should use focus in pvp right now over the superior options, unless purposely wanting to handicap themselves for fun.

Sword/Torch is just a fantastic defensive/evasive/mindkittening set I’ve grown attached too after having used it for at least the last couple of years through power shatter (at the time many players were on the double ranged bandwagon which I didn’t enjoy playing) and now condi shatter. I seriously struggle to let go of it for other weapons because I love it so much. As a side note I’ve kind of gone full circle because I remember two years back trying to use Sword/Torch + Staff in power shatter and getting some severe lessons in punishment due to using two “defensive” weapon sets and having to reluctantly drop staff in favour of greatsword for a long time. But now I simply do not enjoy using greatsword or power builds following the mirror blade nerf and crazy power creep of all the classes and instead prefer the more “Zen” playstyle of staff and sword/torch. The in combat mobility and kiting you can do with those weapons is too much fun.

Anyway apologies for derailing the topic. To get back on track I suggest that Seize the Moment apply on self shatter, but the quickness duration to 0.75s per illusion (same as flow of time).
That will allow self shatter for quickness, still provide enough quickness duration on shatters but not be too much. And it might be able to compete with Chronophantasma.

Either that or make it 1 second per illusion and self shatter and slap an ICD on the trait to limit the quickness generation. But I prefer the 0.75s route.

While you’re at it, the buzzing on Chronophantasma butterflies and the “squelching” sound of blinding dissipation are equally unpleasant.

Especially the Chronophantasma buzzing.

I agree with Windwalker regarding adding a +50% torment damage to moving targets with MtD, which would be a compromise between when it was 2 stacks (which is obviously too much) and now when it is one stack (which isn’t good enough).

It would also be nice to see Confusing Combatants added back in the Duelling gm minor for confusion on crit. Give it an ICD if you like but it would go a long way to solidifying condi builds, also allowing weapons like mainhand sword, greatsword and focus to be useable in condition builds for more variety. And it would rely on high precision for crits so Dire “cancer” builds in wvw would not benefit from it.

Telekinesis.8312:

scepter in a power build is alright cause confusing images deals a lot of damage but sword in a condition build is not worth it

In pve yes it’s not worth it.

In pvp no – sword is excellent in any build, condition or power, as a defensive/kiting tool.

Embolism.8106:

Sword can be used in Condition builds the same way Staff can be used in Power builds: as a defensive weapon. In fact it’s probably easier for Condition builds to do this because Condition pressure comes mostly from Shatters, so your weapon choice isn’t as relevant.

This.

In pvp you can easily use sword as a defensive/mobility weapon in a condition build given most of your condition application will be through shatters. Taking either Scepter or Staff in the other set allows for more sustained pressure through the illusions (and Sharper Images if you take that).

Telekinesis.8312:

and where do the clones come from for shatters? :-P

the whole point of condition pressure from shatters is from scepter clones and regarding defensive weapon.. rather stick to a block that inflicts 6 stacks of torment over a 2 second invul that deals less dmg in condition spec not to mention confusing images and autoattack inflicting torment.. sword really has no place for condition mesmer in pve.

And this in pve – I also agree that Scepter + Staff is much better for condition builds in pve given you want higher sustained application.

So it totally depends:
- pve use native condition weapons because you need sustained high condition application and pressure. You don’t have to worry about avoiding that Rapid Fire, Backstab or Mirror Blade + F1 combo where Blurred Frenzy is a godsend.
- pvp/wvw you can use sword defensively because burst condition application through shatters plus sustained application through your second weapon set is enough to be successful vs the relatively small health bars of players.

It comes down to the fact that pve mobs are bullet/damage sponges whereas enemy players can be burst down much faster.

Haha, yeah gliding is so much fun and I fall into the trap of expecting to glide even in places like heart of the mists! xD