Guild Wars 2

Haha, well you stay alive which is the most important thing! ;D

I love the look of your little asura – tempted to use that hairstyle myself now. Better than the bald asura I have at the moment!

Anyway, I’m not one to criticise the play – suffice to say the videos are fun to watch.

Yeah, as said – most times you will not catch a warrior or thief who is determined to escape, no matter what build or equipment you use.

Of course, using some form of +movement speed helps to run/chase, but otherwise, depending on your weapons, skills and traits, just got to be creative with the wide variety of mobility (not movement speed) and crowd control skills available.

Imagine you’re like a little sparrow or robin – you are very agile and fast point to point, but can’t keep up with a horse running at high speed over a large distance (ie, warrior).

Only way to catch is clever use of terrain, movement and skills – blinks (staff and sword too), pulls, cripples, ranged attacks, boon strip, daze, stuns, immobilise, etc…

You shall not pass?

:D

lmperdigao.2567:

This topic made me realize how unite and helpful is the mesmer community in this forum. Other professions could learn a thing or two from us.
Congratulations and good work guys, I’m proud of being part of this community.

Didn’t you know? We’re all illusions of the mesmer hive mind.

Join here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/OMFG-Official-Mesmer-Forum-Guild

Plenty of people who can lend a hand.

Edit: I see from your post history you already have.

Yeah, you are kind of forced to fight on point, although the terrain in pvp maps often allows for easier escape than in open fields in wvw. Especially with staff, blinks, stealths – and the small, winding structures in pvp maps.

As you know anyway, spvp will certainly hone combat skills with no loss, so you feel more confident in engaging in combat in wvw. I’d recommend sticking with it for the next few days, adjust build, and then buy gear after the patch.

You could hop into spvp to mess around – sure the gear is not identical, but you can test build concepts and strategies without worrying about paying for gear.

In any case I would wait until after the patch before buying any gear for wvw now – you’d likely have to pay more to change things otherwise. For this sort of build, I’d mix and match between zerker, cavalier, knight, soldier (maybe), valkyrie (maybe), and if you really need the precision possibly one or two assassin.

Look at the overall numbers and also which pieces are easiest/cheapest to swap if you want to change traits. For example switching between 10/30 and 20/20 is 100 precision to 100 power – always useful to be able to swap out the fewest pieces of equipment to redistribute stats.

Test them all and see what you like best, there’s no right or wrong choice here.

20 domination gets you boon strip, or torch/gs traits, depending on which weapons you like to use, as well as the vuln on daze – always useful.

30 duelling allows you to take sword trait, DE and 1200 blink all together.

I prefer 30 duelling as the 9s BF allows it to come off cool down fast enough and often synchronised with MW to allow a second burst before switching weapon sets. But obviously lacking boon strip against boon heavy classes.

Weapon choice is entirely subjective – use whatever gives you the most satisfaction.
I like staff, and also Sw/T – of course has different strengths and weaknesses compared to other weapons, but just have to adapt around that – for example no easy chase unlike with GS izerker and spatial surge, so have to sometimes let things go or be creative with use of terrain and position.

As for stats – well you want to avoid damage as much as possible in the first place – especially conditions. Definitely prioritise power/pre/crit and then toughness. Vitality only enough that you feel comfortable with – I would say over 18k is excessive – prefer between 16-18k base (don’t forget buffs on top of that). Look up some builds in the popular guides and the stat thresholds they go for – try to build equipment around this.

PandaBear.7510:

As far as WvW goes, my first favorite would have to be Osicat. I was an ele main until I stumbled upon one of Osi’s original Shatter Cat vids. What I love about our class is that there are many ways to play it and many builds that you can run to be effective. And this is why Osi is my favorite. You can watch his vids and see a variety of ways to play mesmer effectively. This is includes various builds, how to make use of less commonly used (but very useful) ultilities, and various situations (solo, small group, etc). I think this not only goes a long way in showing how skilled of a mesmer he is but also in helping out the mesmer community to diversify our skills.

Another more recent WvW favorite of mine is Wing. Like Osi, you can watch his vids and see how to be effective running Shatter, Condi, Phantasm, etc.

In regards to Shatter specifically though, Vash is certainly at the top of the list

I was a big fan of Seven Mirror when he played. To this day I still watch his videos. It’s just so entertaining to watch him make 1vX look so easy. I was a sad panda when he quit the game

In terms of PvP, there are just too many skilled mesmers in that arena for me to designate just one as the most skilled. Supcutie, Lord Helseth, Sensotix, etc are all exceptionally skilled mesmers.

Then there are the mesmers who we all know are very skilled but don’t put out many/any videos. Pyro and Chaos A. immediately come to mind. I’d loved to see you guys in action!

Pretty much agree with this 100%.

I’m expecting to expect the unexpected.

:p

More weapon skills
Sub classes – trait branching, power evolving?
More pvp game modes
Open world duelling?

Nice one. Registered.

I’d be interested – if only to have a little more organisation with topics/subforums, rather than on here everything in one place.

30s of cripple!?

And 3 condition thieves?!

Where can I find the suicide button?

Yeah – rune and sigil changes are the ones I’ve got my eye on, as well as any other equipment changes.

All this fuss about ferocity… nothing a little tweaking and adaptation can’t solve.

Oh My God.8423:

I have been trying to refine my skills in shattering lately. I use sword-sword/greatsword with Decoy and Mirror Images in the utility slots. I do not normally carry a condition cleansing skills too and I do not have a fixed skill on my third utility slot. I do not use traited torch either (also because I prefer distracting my targets with clones rather than relying on stealth. Not saying stealth is not useful though: it is in the right situation but can do without under normal circumstances).

It is indeed a riskier build without condition removal: I do not mind having a bit of bleed or buring or poison, but chill really gets me since shatter build really rely on recharge speed on skills.

I used Mantra of Resolve once. But having to activate it every time I zoned into a story area annoyed me a little. It is nonetheless a good condition removal power. Recently I having been experimenting on Phantasmal Disenchanter instead. It removes conditions and can double up as a shatter fodder. On a 16 second cooldown (with Illusionists Celerity), it is not half bad. Just have to remember to let it does it job first before popping it.

Yeah chill can be nasty. Poison on long durations is the other one I personally hate, which is why I like to have one button to get rid of it if I can’t afford the time/health to let it wear off.

I tend to run with -condi duration food in wvw, and hoelbrak in pvp, along with MoR for when I need stuff gone, now (Cillit Bang ;D).

I was wondering about the idisenchanter – used to use it with a previous build, but stopped because of that issue of getting only one cleanse before popping.

I noticed generosity sigils have skyrocketed in price… shame as I was thinking of sticking one of these on the two handed weapon to give an additional string to the condition removal bow!

Ah, thank you – it is interesting to know that it is possible, albeit very hard in some situations, to go without condition removal.

I think I will stick with mantra of resolve for the time being, because I just don’t feel comfortable running without it at the moment, but I will see what happens after the patch next week.

I feel a song coming on…

:D

Abe Kleine.3568:

I find it pathetic that instead of criticizing or giving a counter argument to the OP with legit reasons for the Moa, everyone turns to “Oh boy, let’s all make fun of the guy qqing about moa”. Could you act like 5-10 years older please? every other professions forum is more mature than this one as it stands

And just how many moa threads have there been in the past? There’s a reason for the type of replies given – because this has come up again and again and people here can’t be bothered with it.

To the OP, as a serious response – I do agree moa is cheesy in certain situations (for example 1v1), and could do with being changed to make it less “overpowered” in those situations, and instead giving it more group utility – like mass invis or time warp.

easyface.8064:

Thanks for watching and you reply!
Thanks man I really appreciate it and it makes me very happy to hear! =)

I do have a question regarding your shatter play which I’ve been scratching my head about for some time – how do you feel running with almost zero conditon removal?

I play a similar stealth shatter approach (well not recently – I have not played since february), although with different equipment, traits and staff instead of GS, and I would love to be able to swap mantra of recovery for veil – but there are times when it’s impossible to avoid taking a hit and get landed with a long duration poison or something… what do you do when/if this happens?

Thinking post patch of maybe sticking generosity sigls and maybe taking torch trait, but not having on demand access to clear poison or similar I find to be a disadvantage.

Do you ever get melted by conditions?

Badly…

:p

Serious response:
- mantra of resolve
- hoelbrak runes
- avoid getting them in the first place!

I’m hoping with the patch it might be viable to go generosity+purity sigils, depending on what they do with the ICD and so on.

I love your videos, and this one is simply outstanding.

Love the style with which you play.

Power (primary) / precision (secondary) / toughness (secondary).
- opposite to knights, having power as the primary instead of toughness.

Power (primary) / ferocity (secondary) / toughness (secondary).
- opposite to cavaliers, again having power as the primary instead of toughness.

calavel.6249:

If we ignore Healing Power, which is bad for everyone most of the time, I would have to go with Vitality. IMO the only classes that need vit at all are guardians, eles and thieves. And this is mostly because their base health pools are so small.

I would agree with this, if we had to choose one overall stat that in most cases isn’t as important as others.

As for “best” stat, well most likely overall an offensive stat. I’d go with precision because it’s useful in power and condition builds, but it depends entirely on build.

Good thing is that you can swap both of those traits anytime and see what works best for you in a particular situation.

I don’t think there’s a “best” choice here – all down to personal preference.

If you feel comfortable enough to rely on mind stab, sword auto and utilities for boon strip, then torch trait is the way to go, especially as it gives added condition removal.

As for iE vs iI – I prefer iE, but that’s because I use staff and prefer the auto attack damage buff, and can get away without relying on shatter refresh through additional stealths and evades. But with GS, you might prefer the extra layer of defence that having a second shatter #4 or whatever, provides.

Swings and roundabouts.

I can only speak for how I think some changes will affect me:

iElasticity on staff clones is going to be a nice little benefit, even though I don’t play a condition build – more bounce means more boons and every little bit of bleeding/vuln/burn always helps.

Crit damage will be sad – might have to swap out some toughness gear for more zerker – assuming required armour thresholds to take the odd inevitable backstab will be lower, so can get away with less defence.

Sigils and runes – I have absolutely no idea. Might drop fire if damage is nerfed too much, maybe go energy + generosity… really can’t guess, just have to wait and see.

Anything else will also likely have to wait and see. Most likely my trait allocation will be remaining the same – 10(1)/30(1,4,10)/0/0/30(3,7,11). None of the new GM traits (while they are interesting) are likely to make me change.

I like the storing all damage to be redirected in one spike to your target.

Would like to keep the current visual effect whatever happens – that’s the best thing about it – one of the best looking casting animations IMO.

Haha, good one.

Dastion.3106:

EverythingEnds.4261:

Dastion.3106:

I actually meant to trim it down this morning before posting it. However, apparently if you install windows 8.1 on April Fool’s day your keyboard rebels and decides not to be recognized. :-/

That’s called Kharma. Not because it punishes you on April’s fools Day, more because it punishes you for using windows 8.
…And it’s a much better joke than yours :P

Dastion.3106:

And of course there is a source, I moved it to the top for you. :P

Great, so everybody klicking on it will immediatly see it’s a joke, before he even started reading it. At least this saves a lot of time

Not very nice, are you? Oh well, I’m sorry my attempt was worthy of such efforts to make me feel like crap for making it. I thought I’d post some obviously too straight-forward and basic QoL changes as the gag. The point being to provide a joke, and also provide a means for discussion – the set-up was a joke but the changes were meant to sound realistic. Instead all I get ridicule? Sigh, now I remember why I don’t post here as much…

(I did get one nice response from someone who took this for just a suggestion instead of the joke it was intended to be, you deleted your post when you realized it was a joke, but I did want to say I appreciated it)

:(

Cheer up.

If it helps, they’re actually good suggestions.

Tl;dr, and no I didn’t fall for this one.

Requires more effort than most to reach same level of effectiveness.

Especially compared to warrior.

Lol, I look forward to seeing this later today.

Don’t think the necro one works as well as the others unfortunately – new weapons a bit too obvious.

Pyroathiest.4168:

I’ve got one in the engie and ranger forums too xD

Might trick me once, won’t let you trick me twice.

xD

@#£%&!&…

I fell for this.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

crippled my damage output sources? The Phantasms would still be doing solid damage, the Shatters when combined with the healing, the Might and the Confusion would be quite strong as well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAR8al0npRtdqxENcrNSc6Ryd+zR9Y7g/7kK0aA-zECBoeAYLRmgAI7pIaslhFRjVJLyKkYaXCpAA-w

How about this? Moved the 10 points from Chaos into Domination for the increased Mind Wrack damage. swapped the Illusions traits to Confusing Cry (for now) and Illusionary Invigoration.

Removed the Cleric armor and replaced with soldiers and replaced the Apothecary accessories with Dire+Rabid

Compared to the other build it would be a Increase to Power, Attack Power, Precision, Vitality, Health, Condition Damage, Condition Duration, at the cost of a loss in Toughness, Healing Power, Boon Duration. I would still have Both sets of food and 3 sigils to decide on as well.

While it looks a little better than the previous link, I still think it is trying to juggle too many things at once while being below average at each.

Your phantasms will do reasonable damage, but for one attack maybe before shatter?

You’re trying to mix:
- direct damage shatter (burst – high damage in short time interval)
- condition damage through shatter/phantasm (mostly sustained damage)
- phantasm damage (mix of both, but counter productive with shatter),
while maintaining some group support through aoe heals.

There’s a reason entire builds are dedicated to specialising in one or two aspects, because otherwise each aspect suffers.
In order to balance such a hybrid, you need to be absolutely clear on your gameplan, skill usage and timing.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Taking the 10 in Choas for the little added Boon Duration, Toughness and Debilitating Dissipation. The added conditions can be pretty decent and help a little bit as well. Though Mental Torment seems like a decent alternative though.

Because you have ipersona and two other on-shatter traits, and the trait allocation is heavily focused towards frequent shattering, putting points specificallt towards using a trait that only works on clone death is a waste.

I wouldn’t really call 44% Crit damage incredibly low, the Crit Chance is rather low i can agree with that. I could swap it out for the Shatter Recharge trait though. I could also grab Confusing Cry maybe to replace Precise Wrack?

You’ve got to think what each shatter skill does: #1 direct damage, #2 condition (mediocre), #3 interrupts/daze, #4 panic button/secure stomp/etc…
For #1 to be effective, and especially if it is the focus of the build, you need high precision first (at least 40%), and to capitalise on burst you would be well off with at least 60% crit damage, though I’d push higher for at least 70 or 80%.

Anything you take away from that and it loses it’s edge, especially if traited around – sure this can work with multiple sources of damage, but usually turns out to be less effective. Yes you’ve got the confusion on shatter trait, but it’s not significant.

For #2 you can do with any way of buffing conditions – but overall it is a lackluster shatter and mainly to supplement #1. You can build around retaliation, where the trait that gives retal on #2 comes in handy, but this is no longer as effective. After the patch, condition shatter looks like it might be an interesting spec so potentially you might get more mileage from this again.

Yeah conditions are a serious worry. Not quite sure how i could really get around that. Any tips would be much welcome. Yeah i do agree their, it seems that 101 Healing Power is like 20 added to the healing of Restorative Illusions. Removing the healing Power from Armor and accessories still means i would heal for 1,300 from Restorative Illusions so i could replace that gear with Solider Armor and Bers+Valk accessories that would increase my Precision to 22% and my Critical damage to 60% or maybe replace the rings with Dire+Rapid seeing as i would be shattering a lot and the Confusion from them would be decent damage.

I would drop vitality down – use what you get from that to boost power and other damage output, as well as toughness if you like. 23k is pretty high, but not really worth going that high in vitality at the moment.
Grab some condition removal utility – such as mantra of resolve, arcane thievery or null field. I would avoid disenchanter if you’re frequently shattering, unless you can time it perfectly to get one or two attacks off before shatter.
Failing that, take mender’s purity.

Yeah the Condition damage is a bit low but would be primarily used for the Confusion from Shatters. Though i wouldn’t really call nearly 2,000Power (with sigil) Plus i would have 3 other sigils and both types of food to decide on. 3,000Attack Power and 44% crit Damage doesnt seem that bad.

You need to think how you will execute attacks – taking advantage of openings and how you can maximise damage when the opportunity arises. Just having a mix of condition and direct damage stats (when both are at mediocre levels) is not necessarily going to work out, unless you have a specific game plan.

MoR is my favourite because it’s instant and don’t need a target.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAR8al0npRtdqxENcrNSYqQwP9I5O/5oeodv/dA-zUCBoeAYLRmgAI7ZIrZRRsMsIas6ZRWhET7SIFA-w

This is the build i am currently looking at. Though kind of a worry not having PU or DE in the build. Now if that bug is correct i would get like 2,600 every shatter. That would be rather nice.

Not sure about the food or other Sigils.
What would you guys change?

Any views on this build? Terrible? Decent?

Some interesting choices, but overall I have no idea what you’re trying to do. I’ll start off by saying 10 in chaos there is a waste – better off putting 10 in duelling or domination (mental torment).

A few other things:
- you’ve take precise wrack, but your crit chance and damage is incredibly low.
- phantasmal haste, when two of your GM traits, and vigorous revelation revolve around shatters.
-pretty much zero condition removal – you need some way to remove dangerous conditions at a key moment in a fight, fast, or you’ll melt.
- Healing power gear – negligable difference to traited heals – eg mantras, and overall the least useful stat for any mesmer build.
- mediocre condition damage, and powers to apply them.
- very low power and direct damage in general.
- there’s more, but I’ll leave it at that…

What it seems to me is that you’re going for some sort of support shatter hybrid? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Unfortunately you’ve crippled all your damage output sources, while not gaining much in the form of survivability.

Maybe when the patch hits, a condition shatter/support could be viable and work for you?

Simonoly.4352:

Use Flee and them Kick to an area where you can abuse LOS, then dodge twice (when enemies come) and that’s usually enough to not even be hit whilst in Moa form. Too many people simply panic and give up when Moa’d, which is exactly what the Mesmer is hoping for. Don’t do it.

Yeah, this.

When I’ve been hit, sometimes I’d just go completely berserk and all out attack while in moa (depending on health) – which they don’t often expect.

Stealth shatter is my preference (10/30/0/0/30, sw/t + staff).

Folks would get confused with defensive staff play and stealth (assuming some sort of PU build), and then suddenly hitting for high burst – in either weapon set.
Con = weaker enemy control and still a little squishy plus direct damage being less effective when against ridiculously tanky players, but high mobility and burst kind of make up for that in a way.

Of course with upcoming changes I’ll have to change something.

Mind you, I haven’t touched the game since a month, so brain is out of gear and don’t know if there’s some new trend.

And again…

I’d like to see a land spear too.

I’m still happy about it.

Better than current system, and that’s all that matters to me.

All I can say is… Finally!

Woah, seriously?

IE + staff is going to be very powerful then – it’s already decent enough on the auto attack alone.

With great difficulty – cc is great, although they are very slippery – I’d say just burst and try to run away.

Very annoying build – at least vs PU condition you can run away more easily.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Curunen.8729:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Let’s just bind all skill effects and related conditions to the 1 skill, that way we can all just spam 1 all day to full effect.

And this adds to the discussion, how?

We can swap the order of utility skills – we should be able to swap the order of weapon skills (apart from the auto attack).

The human brain is a wonderful thing. With a little practice and repetition, it’ll actually bind the pathway from your will to the correct key on your keyboard or mouse for you.

I know it’s archaic, and hardly hip or fly to talk about brains, wills, and consciousness anymore what with all this technical computer jargon flying around, but it really is an incredible thing to put to good use.

So? Everyone has different preferences for controls, uses different hardware, different key layouts. Having this feature would not have a negative effect on anyone, so unless for some reason it takes a lot of dev time to do which would be better spent elsewhere, there is no reason to leave this out – given the usual focus on unnecessary fluff, this should be done.

I expect when we get more weapon skills, then they’ll have to make the option for swapping – though it could be years before that happens.

I haven’t spouted any technical jargon in any case and from what I can see there isn’t any in this thread either – I’m not trained in that sort of thing beyond consumer knowledge.

draconx.3102:

It would be nice to be able to swap the order of weapon skills.

For user interface… allow skills to be rearranged in the “Weapon Skill” pane which already exists the hero dialog. The changes would be set for the weapon type and permanent for that character. For simplicity, disallow changes of offhand skills to 1/2/3 or mainhand skills to 4/5.

Yep, nice and simple. Keep offhand skills offhand, and same with mainhand. Two handed skills can be moved around more freely. Permanent change for class weapons in your hero screen.

Bunda.2691:

Curunen.8729:

I’m tempted to hoard cheap runes to sell after the patch.

Ha. You’re a little late to that game, my friend.

You know the worst part? I had already stocked up on them, but resold them due to lack of bank space… :/