Guild Wars 2

rchu.8945:

Jasher.6580:

If you are playing a shatter Mesmer against any player who is decent, you are going to have a rough time.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.

+1

and someone mentioned a medi-hammer guardian is harder than shatter Mesmer from a post above, lol…

Glass mantra mesmer is harder than shatter mesmer IMO – micromanaging 4 mantras in a zerker build has to be the hardest thing in the game.

Agreed with the above comments – in wvw videos people want to see lots of good fights with other players, so it’s worth chopping out segments and stitching them together.

We don’t want to see fights with npcs, unfair fights where say a handful of you are chasing and killing a lone upleveled player, or aimless running around with nothing happening.

Please don’t feel discouraged – rather come back with more videos doing the above and I will enjoy watching.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdRl0npKtFpxGNcrNipxc6qiaJSFQpHZ8FA-TpBFwACOEA12fIxJAYxDAoaZAAHBAA

Good luck, have fun…

…you’re certainly going to need it.

(anyone who can play a full bar of mantras as a glassy zerker mantra mesmer in pvp successfully has my utmost respect)

What about the loss of sharpened images?

I can’t watch the video at the moment, but I’ve been considering running either a 0/0/6/4/4 CI or 0/0/4/4/6 MtD setup (both with traited focus so I have free rune choice), but don’t like the idea of giving up sharpened images, DE, 1200 blink and vigour on crit, to pick up ielasticity and more condition damage.

Anyway, I’ll watch it when I can later.

echo.2053:

meh play what class you enjoy playing. gw2 is far too casual to be caring about composition for random queues.

This – play what you like and see what happens.

Sometimes an unexpected composition can be the most surprising and fun.

I love your videos.

And I would like to say also that it is great to see how you’ve progressed over time – the gameplay is so much tighter and cleaner with some impressive manoeuvres. It’s a great showcase on how a player can become so finely attuned to their build/class with time and practice.

Sars.8792:

I love this map when more often than not.
people who run in solo and rally kills or don’t pull back and re rally if starting to wipe… ruin it.

saying its comp/mindless/spam etc can be used to describe conquest just as well.

This.

It’s can be frustrating if you have one or two teammates who have difficulty surviving, and they decide to push all the way to the enemy spawn instead of knowing when to play safe…

The saying that your team is only as strong as your weakest link is even more applicable on courtyard.

I love courtyard – I always vote for it if it comes up in rotation.

Some of my favourite, closest and most fun matches have been on courtyard.

I haven’t seen a flawless victory on there by one side or the other for quite some time – the last half a dozen matches I’ve played on there have all been fairly tight. The most recent one was a lot of fun – the lead kept flip flopping, at one point down by 3 kills but we finally grabbed a few decisive stomps towards the end to secure a win.

Yes please. /15char

I pretty much never use Pistol. Tried many times in the past, in different builds – I just don’t find it as fun as the alternative choices.

And for a long time now I don’t use offhand sword either.

Apart from those two I use everything else.

Focus is my favourite weapon, especially traited.

Carighan.6758:

Really? I mean I don’t mind holding the sword instead of floating it like Norn / Potted Plants / Bookahs do, but the angle up the upper wrist makes me cringe in sympathetic pain.

Heh, ok I see your point there – it does look a little strained.

But overall it is much better than the prissy floating nonsense the bookahs use. Nevermind our superior “BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL” iZerker animation, our Mind Stab which looks like it would create in impact crater and our iWave which looks like it should knock enemies into another zone, and our Mirror Blade which just looks better.

Carighan.6758:

Another issue: Asuran Mesmers use the “wrong” Greatsword AA animation. Or rather theirs not only doesn’t look as flashy, it also seriously hurts my wrist every time I see it. Ouch.

WHAT?!?

Asura Mesmer GS animations are THE BEST animations in the game.

Asura Ranger GS animations come in second place.

jportell.2197:

Well anet has shown time and time again that mesmers can’t have nice things.
* glamour build- gone Nonexistent now.

• actual confusion builds that relied on constant blind applications- totallg gone
• clone death builds gutted
• illusionist celerity nerf hammered then slightly less
• portal cd massively increased long ago
• mainhand sword- shadow of its formal self
• nearly all new gm traits Freaking useless. MtD is the closest one to good. The rest are god awful (Maybe triumphant distortion in wvw but otherwise no)
• mantras- mesmer may as well be chanting " kill me now"

This is just off the top of my head as to why i am skeptical about anything for this class in HoT

Regarding MH sword, I admit I do prefer the new iLeap to the old one given it allows you to blink up/down terrain to follow your enemy. Of course the Swap, BF and AA nerfs outweigh that though.

Fay.2735:

I’m disappointed that shiny isn’t an option

Need playable skritt, now.

rchu.8945:

Curunen.8729:

Yes, nevermind invuln, but should lose stealth if an attack is evaded, blocked or missed as well. Same goes for Mesmer phantasm casting while in stealth (saying that so it doesn’t seem unfair).

sure, if Anet fix or optimize Mesmer’s GM trait power block that’s completely invulnerable to theives (and future Revenants), then I can agree to fix this “unfair” issue…

Hey, I’m a mesmer main – I was just trying to preempt any whining.

Makai.3429:

Shortbow would’ve been an interesting choice for a Mesmer weapon. They could have used it in melee like a crescent blade (with illusory edges covering the weapon’s front) and the no. 5 skill (phantasm) would act like a reverse phase retreat: teleport to an enemy and leave a phantasm in your place that uses a borrowed shortbow skill. A quick, painless way (not iLeap/Swap, which is still buggy) to switch from ranged to melee within one skill bar would fit the Mesmer nicely.

From a design standpoint, shields are just too boring and cumbersome for a profession that relies on finesse and style.

Yeah, melee shortbow would be fun.

But let’s not ignore the real reason – we all know most mesmers would then run around with the Dreamer.

jportell.2197:

BlackTruth.6813:

Here in this thread, we support prejudice equality and hate easy builds which is a big middle finger to the people who worked kitten hard to play specs.

Like shatter mes. Which surprisingly I got told by a D/D Cele ele that d/d ele is harder to play than shatter mes. >.<

lol.

Yes, nevermind invuln, but should lose stealth if an attack is evaded, blocked or missed as well. Same goes for Mesmer phantasm casting while in stealth (saying that so it doesn’t seem unfair).

Noss.4105:

Both I guess. Depends on the momentum.
If I feel weakness from my opponent I will try to exploit the shift in momentum. If I’m losing control I will try to retreat and play more passive a bit to get my kitten together.

Depends a lot on the class too. Against good warriors I feel like I’m always on the defensive and just try to “bleed” them while they’re trying to eat my face. Like a matador.
I’m talking about WvW.

Haha, nice analogy for warriors!

Makes even more sense if using temporal curtain – ie the “red rag”.

Zarathustra.1458:

mmm I have always found that if you turn your back as a mesmer you tend to die pretty kitten ed fast…

You mean if you turn your camera away.

It’s quite useful to have your back turned, especially for the opening move in an engagement because even though it is obvious you would have your camera facing the enemy in the opposite direction, it can provide that moment’s hesitation in the enemy which is fun to exploit.

Depends on the enemy and also my mood.

Sometimes it’s more fun to toy with your opponents, other times it’s more fun to unload your entire skill bar in their face. I would be surprised if any player is strictly one or the other, all the time.

For Chronomancer (or whatever they will call it), I’d like to see much more emphasis on Control – through use of slow/quickness, manipulation/control of enemy skill use and movement, more physical control effects like into the void and iwave, denial of damage, and of course a mechanic that isn’t shattering.

Yeah, sadly you either have to just deal with it or hide your chat.

But take heart – you will run into players, whether allies or enemies who will make the game enjoyable for you.

Caelus.7139:

I think OP is troll guise

I’m inclined to agree, this is getting silly now.

@OP – the targeting system is not “great” given they went half way towards an action TPS game, but decided to keep the archaic tab targeting and hold right click to turn camera.

Having said that, fighting a Mesmer using this tab targeting system is nowhere near as difficult as you say it is. The only possible difficult targeting situation is if up against a PU build running traited torch, veil, decoy, MI, and yeah may as well throw desperate decoy in there as well.

For pretty much every other Mesmer build, fighting one is no more difficult than any other class – and in fact much easier than most “obnoxious” meta builds – such as celestial engi, ele, warrior, any thief, any guardian, terrormancers, minionmancers, power rangers, Condi rangers, spirit rangers… the list goes on.

If you are unable to distinguish between different Mesmer builds you are fighting against, then you almost certainly are unable to identify key skills/cooldowns and tactics, and then it is purely a L2P issue, as has already been stated by pretty much everyone in here.

Edit: Get some good keybinds for targeting and learn to use them fluently and efficiently (nearest enemy, next/previous enemy and so on).

Nice play and interesting setup. I enjoyed watching.

Incarcer.8036:

My version of a mesmer

BEAST.

kitten , I forgot P/D dire perplexity thief.

Yeah, this has to be the most annoying build in the game.

Edit: For wvw of course – at least in pvp it is a useless build.

Baldrick.8967:

I’m glad the OP died to a mesmer- it might even have been me that killed him, as I seem to be meeting a lot of terrible rangers recently whilst playing mesmer.

Ranger: pew pew! pew pew! Oh look a shiny bubble and purple thingie on me, RAPID FIRE!!! $^$^*(% the ^&^(&&(^ why am i dead? Mesmers are OP, nerf them!

If I see ranger in the daily class I jump on either mes or necro.. although is there anything quite as fun as a scepter 2 on that thief?

Traited focus vs pew pew ranger is more fun than scepter 2 vs thief.

Ehecatl.9172:

I don’t think I’ve ever used a ranger build that felt especially weak against mesmers, and I’ve used a fair few.

One of the biggest advantages you have is your pet. If you tell it to attack the mesmer it will always chase the mesmer, which makes finding out which is the real mesmer a thousand times easier. The pet also keeps up constant pressure and occasionally kills their clones on top of extra crowd control.

With the glassbow ranger you should hard counter mesmers with Rapid Fire, which will track them into stealth both doing massive damage and showing you what direction they are running. Volley more or less instantly kills all the mesmer’s clones and phantasms which immediately cuts down their damage output and postpones their burst. Then you have a snazzy stealth skill of your own for a breather. Enemy turns invisible? Just shoot one of their clones with it and turn invisible yourself, or save it for when you’re being pressured and you need a quick relocate.

I’m surprised you don’t see the benefit of the axe against a mesmer. You use the axe with either a pet build or a condition build. Either way a mesmer produces clones constantly as they fight, which guarantees you’ll get the maximum number of bounces every time. Playing a beastmaster ranger means your pet will be sitting with 25 might stacks for the entire fight, and the axe itself will be destroying the mesmer’s clones as your pet pursues and destroys the mesmer. A high damage pet can easily crit for around 7-9K with 2-3K auto attacks if you set it up right, which will rip through the mesmer’s meager defense.

My trapper ranger wins the majority of his fights. Sometimes it can be difficult if the mesmer’s clones set off my traps, but even then it’s stopping them from using a shatter on me which removes their primary damage output. Inevitably the bleeds from my shortbow will kill the mesmer. That’s assuming the mesmer plays it smart and never sets foot on point of course. Activating my traps tends to be their doom.

Yeah, axe/SB condi rangers or melee rangers scare me far more than pew pew rangers.

Cele engi/war.
Fear chain necro.

Edit: Forgot – P/D condition thieves.

I totally respect that.

Photoloss.4817:

MAIN mesmer? Most of the whiners probably didn’t even look up the tooltip for Feedback, while continuing to stand in it and spam projectile attacks…

Feedback is OP, please nerf!

The Power Block thread is worse tbh – so many posts in there are hitting me with 25 stacks of confusion, I feel like glamour builds have made a comeback.

I honestly cannot believe some of what I have read in that thread.

The only way I can rationalise it is that those posters do not/have not mained mesmer or acquired sufficient experience playing one and as such don’t have a clue about what does/doesn’t work.

Wow, reading this thread has given me a headache.

How many mesmers actually use Power Block anymore since it was “fixed”?

No, just like Disruptor’s Sustainment, I’m willing to bet no sane Mesmer uses this anymore, especially over Confounding Suggestions.

Therefore all this discussion of “working as intended” is stupid – because if no one is using the trait then Anet may as well delete it and give us something useful.

How is there even a counter argument to this? Oh the horror of thieves having to actually think and plan their skills when fighting a lockdown/interrupt Mesmer…

There are some really arrogant/miserable/obnoxious players, which is the ONLY thing in the game that truly annoys me.

Anyway, I just block/ignore and move on. Not going to waste my energy getting stressed over rude, unpleasant chat because people fail to have tolerance/acceptance/patience – or simply a lack of humility and respect for other players.

I don’t want to read that BS when playing. I never insult another player based on their class/build or actions in game, so I don’t expect it in return – if it’s an unranked I simply tolerate it and move on, REGARDLESS of whether we lose. You know because it’s a game and the moat important thing is to cultivate friendship with other players, not animosity. Funnily enough it would then be the other team spamming arrogant chat if we have one or two weak/new players such that it’s a guaranteed loss.

Ranked I would only ever play with a full team/guild group now (unlike previous team queue), so the only issue there comes from enemy players.

I just hate this BS – if the internet exists in 50 years (if we haven’t wiped ourselves out by then), I hope that as a species we have acquired some discipline and risen above the the ability to be unpleasant because of being anonymous.

LOL

…

/15char

Heh, you answered it yourself – play mesmer for fun, play another class for efficiency.

I love the new Shadow Violet.

Also, Rose Ice is decent for armour highlights.

Yeah, what type of guardian?

If it’s the “unbreakable mountain” bunkers, then yeah – it’s not fast. Make sure to use boonstrip at the right moments, keep the pressure up on them between bursts (ranged pew pew with the GS) and judge the opportune moments to nuke away their health. The good thing with these guardians is that they can’t do much to you – the only problems are in conquest because of the points – but then just rotate and cap another point (-1 the other team and win the other two points), or coordinate with a teammate to spike them down (maybe a thief).

If it’s the zerker guardians then apart from boons/defensive skills their HP is made of glass and can easily be decimated if you time your burst right (but equally they can destroy you if you aren’t very careful).

Jurica.1742:

iLeap also works up there.

Nice, thanks – I’m looking forward to getting more time to play and enjoy this over the next couple of weeks.

ASP.8093:

Srsly, all y’all better go watch The Prestige.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I saw this movie: Hugh Jackman went mad in the end I think.

Haha, exactly the first thing I thought of.

Or maybe Jet Li’s “The One” – every time you shatter a version of yourself you gain all its power.

SlimChance.6593:

I think the reasoning of having the 50% RNG on CS right now is because of the “possibility” of a staggered 3 clone(3 second stun) Diversion. And the “possibility” of being totally stunned/shutdown inside a Chaos Storm. It would be easy to Diversion into a Chaos Storm and completely shutdown the player.

Hence, if we were to get a 100% CS, then there would need to be an ICD or something similar to prevent those “possibilities”.

Unfortunately, as with everything Mesmer, we are nerfed based on the “possibility” of “all the stars aligning” and all that RNG triggering in our favor.

lol, sad but true – especially chaos storm. I was just messing around with the condition CI build earlier this evening and scored 4 consecutive interrupts in chaos storm on an ele (followed up with MoD and F3… poor guy pretty much died on the spot).

MailMail.6534:

You can definitely use phase retreat to get on top of the ledges at mid on Forest now. I literally SCREAMED when it happened, because everyone knows you can only get there by blinking from a tiny point on the ramp.

Being able to blink up there so easily is so kitten good.

I haven’t yet tested ileap, but I’m assuming that also works up to the ledge? Will be nice to be able to surprise burst people who try to snipe from the ledges now.

Kievari.5031:

My old main character, Vana St Melancholia in her fractal illusionist look.

Second image is great.

Asura > Charr, and it’s nothing to do with size.

Personally I love the asura lore and characterisation and I can really connect with my character. I can’t connect with charr as well (and I really don’t like the running animations).

Also asura have THE BEST mesmer greatsword animations in the game. Period.

In fact, all the asura combat animations >>>> every other race.

Sebrent.3625:

Sabwa, I can only assume you are partial to cats and/or horns and it has led you down a bad path.

Everyone knows that the best Mesmer ever is:

• Norn
• dressed in a gentleman’s outfit, “like a sir” (Light Heritage)
• wielding a Princess Wand (Scepter) and a Flower (Focus)
  … though I may be biased.

Though, seriously … everyone else is running around killing each other with swords, axes, bows, poison, fire, etc. while wearing all this armor.

Norn Mesmer walks in looking like he’s ready for a formal party, wielding a princess wand and flower, and kills people with butterflies.

Obviously the best :-p

I saw a huge pink norn mesmer in HotM a couple of days ago named something like “Pink Portal Fairy” (IIRC). Was that you? :p

Was an awesome look.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Curunen.8729:

No torment on it please – as said, it would have too much of a knock on with things like MtD.

Just buff the confusion duration, perhaps add slow when HoT gets released – ie it’s meant to be “frustration” so it should make the enemy frustrated. :p

Adding slow would negate the increased duration as the enemy would execute less skills. I think the cc you are looking for is taunt as it would force the enemy to execute skills.

lol, that’s a kitten good point!

Obviously I wasn’t thinking clearly about that. xD

I do prefer to use MoD (reluctantly) on this now instead of MoR, being more offensive, hence carrying an extra set of armour with antitoxin runes.

That sweet bean bun + antitoxin is pretty ridiculous, but I can’t justify 1g/hour of play. I mean, the only defensive weakness of this build are conditions, so having -64% with ridiculous toughness while dealing out sufficient condition damage (plus the 5 might stacks for 13s from the runes are nice) is crazy – but at least balanced by the cost in coin.

Even then, if the food was cheaper, I may still opt to run nightmare + sweet bean bun to give -40% defensive and + 40% (+25% +15%) offensive condition durations, not to mention that useful fear.

As the main set I do prefer nightmare over torment, simply because I don’t have to micromanage torment application and scepter clones – and I find the durations on all the conditions are sufficient. The builds I’m currently running are in my sig.

I think the single biggest problem with this build is the shatter mechanic – aside from Diversion (And Distortion which is always useful) it doesn’t gel, which is why I’m interested to see what the specialisation mechanic will be. I hate ignoring F1 and to a large extent F2 (unless needing to get rid of surplus iWarlocks…).

On that note, the iWarlock – the only other thing which doesn’t gel. I’m hoping under the new spec that phantasms may either be replaced on weapons for new skills, or have alternate effects. Otherwise I may plan to end up running Sc/F, X/Sh, depending on the skills.

No torment on it please – as said, it would have too much of a knock on with things like MtD.

Just buff the confusion duration, perhaps add slow when HoT gets released – ie it’s meant to be “frustration” so it should make the enemy frustrated. :p

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Fay.2735:

However, once it’s released it’ll be the theorycrafters time to shine as I will be compiling all the new builds that come out and all the old builds will be put to rest unless the build creators update their builds/topics appropriately in a timely fashion, in which case they will be re-added.

Hype intensifies

So many “what ifs”.

Trying to make sure I acquire all possible gear that may have interesting changes, especially taking into account things like Resistance boon, etc.

Yeah, tbh I’m loving it mostly so far.