Guild Wars 2

I have ignition!

Looks good, although personally I couldn’t drop blade training or DE – but then I prefer to take mental torment instead of empowered illusions.

That’s a lot of might! Tempted to swap melandru runes for hoelbrak, but it’s hard to let go of fear (condition) being completely neutered by melandru+food!

Qaelyn.7612:

Right, the CD reduction is the other one. Need more sleep.

I’ve tried Blink and see its value but usually slot something else. I may be in the minority there.

:o
I couldn’t live without blink! Nearly always trait for cooldown – I only trait for max range if not using staff, and have no other speed buff from runes/abilities.

Mesmer, because style – the weapons available to use (if thief didn’t have such poor weapon choice, I would have stuck with that – I just don’t like daggers), the colour scheme and butterflies, the tricking theme, reflects and the movement skills available – it’s just a beautiful and sophisticated class.

I never played GW1 so I don’t know what is missing that used to be there before – ignorance is bliss for the moment.

I don’t care about the meta – my personality usually draws me to similar themed classes/builds in any rpg or game with character customisation.

Ah thank you, that seems so obvious now you mention it! xD
Better than nothing for sure.

Please can this feature be removed or have an option to switch it off.

I like to carry several different weapons in the bag, swapping them around occasionally, but it’s annoying that for conditions I’m not completely sure of (not using for n number of matches, or logging back in the following day without equipping?), the sigils get removed and they are stored back in the pvp locker, meaning having to go and take them out and reapply the sigils to each weapon.

If there is a way to disable this and I just haven’t seen it (in a menu or something), please someone let me know!

I’m sure I’ve seen someone post this before, but does anyone play
0/10(IV)/30(III,X,XII)/0/30(III,VIII,XI) or
10(I)/10(IV)/20(III,X)/0/30(III,VIII,XI), Sw/T + Staff?

Blink, decoy, MI and whatever else fits the situation (taking mantra of resolve in spvp because lacking condition removal)

Tested the former (0/10/30/0/30) in a few hotjoins briefly and seems to at least be playable.
Utility of IP kind of makes me not miss DE, particularly for (F)3 and 4 shatters. Sharper images is of course hard to let go of, but I was thinking how much does it actually contribute for a PU power build – particularly shatter, when clones don’t live long enough to deal much bleeding anyway? Also the only decent phantasm I’ve got is the iwarlock.
Domination adept and master minors are essentially just damage buffs, as is mental torment, and cleansing conflagration isn’t really necessary other than that additional condition removal.
Lovely to have minimum cooldowns on MH sword and staff.

At the moment I’m flailing around a bit in combat trying to find a rhythm with it, but wondered what other players opinions on this are – I’m sure some of you must have played/are playing with this trait and weapon setup?
:)

Edit: I take it back – weaknesses are starting to show – primarily lack of DE for shatter and mediocre synergy with PU.

Yeah, I was surprised this got fixed.

I find zenith torch and scepter skins look reasonably similar at a distance – going Sc/Sw + Sw/T with the same sword skin in each makes it a bit confusing to see which set you’re using at any time. I find it confusing anyway.

Quite a few choices, some of which have already been listed.

Here’s what I use in pvp at the moment – http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfWlwzipHSzoGb9IipHEHyBckU0avWJF82FC-T0Ag0CnIMSZkzIjRSjsGNsYZxRk5HPRA
A mix of direct damage and support.

Can easily throw a GS in there, or Sc/x instead of staff (just change chaos X to something else). I just like the mobility and team support of staff. Phase retreat + blink makes up for speed of a snail.
Depending on phantasms available (ie, iswordsman, duelist or izerker), could also change dom I to dom III, but because with staff/torch only having iwarlock for anything useful bar condition removal I’ve opted for dom I and relying on MW to enhance the burst, rather than any phantasm.

Edit: Oh, this is what I’m currently geared out for in the other side – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfWlwzipnVzoGb9IipHEHyBckU0avWJF82FC-j0yAYLioRySgoPgkokl9IiWTgglxioxqXwUlA6zFV7NKiWtMALbB-w , but a lot needs changing because that was for a different trait setup.

Solstice.1097:

<snip>

and IMO untraited shatter skills pretty much suck compared to an untraited primary class mechanic of other classes.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a base damage buff for MW, and some sort of rework for CoF.

Olivia.5420:

<snip>

My question is,Do you like mesmers?
Are you obsessed with them?

Heh, what a question to ask in the mesmer forum – I’d be surprised if anyone disagrees, other than maybe GW1 veterans who don’t like what’s become of the class.

Interesting sigil choices.

Sw/T is a lot of fun to set up a burst, but I’ve always had trouble choosing the swap set.

At the moment I’m on Sc/Sw, although it lacks that extra ranged potential of the OH pistol. Never been a huge fan of the pistol from a style perspective, but I can see its use here.

Would like to see more emphasis on skills that have nothing to do with the illusion and shattering mechanic – manipulations for example, and more active play using tricks that do not rely on illusions in any form, be it through shattering, clone death, conditions or phantasms.

I know illusions are a core feature of the class, but I feel they are too much forced upon us. Similar to how some rangers would like the option of playing without pets.

Want to see more skills like mirror heal, mimic, blurred frenzy, iWave/mind stab, blocks, stuns/dazes… of course all with a huge active component, but without the reliance on illusions or shattering.
Ok not too many reflects as we have plenty of those as it is – but maybe being able to evolve skills/traits to sacrifice illusion generation (or even the ability to have 3 active illusions) in exchange for “personal” tricks – essentially a more sophisticated thief.

Played both – mesmer more fun => deleted thief.

I’d look at it from a stylistic point of view – colour scheme of abilities, class theme (cloak&daggers, smoke, lone wolf, black/grey tones, poison… vs pretty pink butterflies, dancing around, like seeing more of yourself…).

Also any weapon preferences? I find thief’s weapon selection and skill use to be pretty dull overall – may reroll one if they get a quarterstaff or something.

Sc/P is a nice combo if you want ranged in pve without GS. Got the block on there and Sc#3 does decent direct damage. Wouldn’t feel bad about playing it.

I’d take Sw/x as the other set then (offhand sword, or focus, or if you really want it just for fun in pve then the torch, although not the ideal pick).

Hehe, take a breath!

Valuable RL lessons, which also happen to apply to this (and other) games too, good post.

One thing is for sure, I have initial respect all players regardless of experience/class/build – always giving full attention to each fight (of course depending on RL situations wherever you game from). Learn from those you lose to and be humble when victorious.

The only thing I find hard to deal with is when players are rude/insulting/displaying unpleasant behaviour in chat – but that’s just internet anonymity at its worst – best to just stop playing and do some other activity to maintain peace.

Ouch, that mesmer vs guardian fight was painful to watch! :o Why no disenchanters/nullfields/AT?

Personally love this video from a tutorial point of view (yes it’s one of Seven’s): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai5WCN2Lbag
Many similar videos out there, but the presentation here is perfect and highlights a lot of basic tactics that help with this class.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

People really, really overestimate the damage that phantasms are capable of. Kill them, outrun them, or dodge their attacks. Phantasms are not all that threatening. Mesmer is one of the professions I never have a problem tackling in SPvP or WvW. Thieves remain my biggest gripe and they will continue to be as long as stealth has no counters… which goes full circle back to the reason why I started using PU. Guess who the majority of PU complaints are coming from?

Thieves are everywhere in WvW. The only way to beat them is with counter-stealth mind games. It works very well when they aren’t actively trying to (and successfully) predict what you’re going to do next. A very good thief will always (always) beat anything you can throw at it in a 1v1 contest, however… and they still have more mobility than we do.

Oddly in spvp I have a much easier time against thieves in a 1v1, compared to phantasm (specifically GS/pistol users) mesmers, of similar/average skill – find it easier to time thief’s rhythm and counter with icounter/riposte/stealths/BF… as well as reacquiring target after appearing from stealth being a push of a button compared to cycling through a bunch of illusions. Some of my favourite 1v1 fights (in mostly empty hotjoins) have been against thieves – love the stealth and counter stealth. Granted, I’m only average, and very skilled players of any profession can demolish me.

Hammer would be amazing. Great skill ideas above, they could really pull some crazy things off with it.

Apart from main hand pistol?

Playing cards sounds interesting, although maybe it would be better to have a MH focus with playing card skins.

skcamow.3527:

Yeah don’t ever feel guilty for playing a spec the game allows (a lot of folks disagree with this, whatever).

PU certainly has some nice staying power in PvP but you’ll rarely if ever see it in team play (especially as a bunker) due to the stealth heavy play style. Can’t hold those points if you’re in stealth. That said, you see it hot join/solo que because it’s such a strong trait and fun to play. Goes without saying, it’s more fun when you’re not dying as much.

One of the main things I still struggle with on occasion is the targeting system in this game – coming from a TPS/FPS background, without having to hold right click for mouse look.

Stealth for me sometimes gives the time to pick the right target before initiating a new attack.

Also as with any character in a game that “dumps aggro” on teammates through means of some sort of cloaking device/invisibility, I feel the need to make up for it by doing something useful – in this case focusing damage on one target so as not to be a burden. Perhaps I’m just trying to play too much like a thief! But thief doesn’t have pink butterflies and more of itself to talk to.

Chaos.3579:

<snip>
But not looking at the trait itself and instead at its placement in the trait trees I can see another problem. Mainly that the trait is far too easy to get on builds that utilize the chaos tree. Which of course are condition builds.
After all the majority of staff condition builds have 20 in chaos right? So that nullifies the requirement to get the trait to 10 points.

If they moved prismatic understanding to the inspiration tree. I think that this trait would not be nearly as powerful looking at how many builds could viably use it. And in the end result of things the trait should mainly be used as a boon/support role. Thus inspiration is the perfect tree to have it in.

I might not be looking at this the right way, but wouldn’t that be an insane buff to stealthy phantasm builds? Could go 10(III)/15/x/30/x or something?

I think it’s safer in the chaos tree, and instead should have the boon refresh reduced back to at least 2 seconds, perhaps give protection even less of a chance to trigger.

Edit: I should say – my biggest fear as a direct damage PU build are greatsword/pistol wielding phantasm mesmers.

Personally I’m not going to feel guilty for a PU playstyle – shifted to that and had been playing since before the ridiculous additional boon refresh every second buff in the summer (needs to be reverted IMO), heavily inspired/influenced by Seven’s videos/playstyle, despite that being wvw and this being pvp.
I play it because I love the playstyle of dropping into stealth and opening with mini-bursts – it just feels right for me and my personality.

I’m looking forward to a minor nerf to PU, to spread out build variety and shift the focus away from this. Would be interesting if summoning caused you to decloak there and then, and certainly the rate and duration of protection at the moment is too much.

Current hotjoin pvp build is this: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQRAsf7clwzipHUzoGb9IipHEXwBckUoavWJF82FC-T4Ag0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1M+Y9x2ijITLeiA
But I’ve only started playing again recently, so still trying to get my head into combat and definitely needs some tweaks – once I feel my fingers are doing the right things.

Divine and compound! – I’m assuming it should be something and confound?

OH WAIT! I forgot – mimic’s reduced duration underwater.

I like it too, in hotjoin. In other modes I can see where the criticism comes from.

But then in hotjoing I try to enjoy the moment instead of always how much glory can be achieved, or even which team wins. Even if I have only one or two good fun fights in the match then I’m happy.

And falling to your death can sometimes be quite funny depending on the situation.

Less skill to stay alive, definitely. But on the other hand for direct damage PU, requires a lot more effort to bring anyone down – bursts are weaker, control is minimal.

I can’t speak for condition PU though, because I haven’t played it.

1. Confusing images sound effect. Funnily enough I love the sound effect for spatial surge.

2. Fixed #1 to #5 skill choice per weapon – but this is a game wide issue. Hopefully some day we’ll get the option to swap out weapon skills (with limitations of course), as with utilities.

Sword/Torch personally. Having iLeap and stealth on one weapon set is great – BF is the icing on the cake, and I like that sword clones will chase and harass targets in melee range.

But that’s for direct damage – I imagine sceptre would work better if a condition build, but I can’t speak from experience, having never tried such a build (and from what I’ve read, I never want to!)

Sceptre/sword on the other hand is great, though means dropping staff which loses a bit of mobility and team support.

Hard to pick out any as useless – different situations suit different skills better, nevermind what can be achieved through traits and creative gameplay.

Illusion of Life is a kittene to justify though – if I had to pick out one skill I see no value in over everything else, it would be this. Cooldown is ridiculous, and better support options are available.

But in other cases, for example untraited feedback vs a melee warrior has almost no value other than a combo field, but in a large crowd with many projectiles flying around it suddenly gains hugely in value – just need to swap out skills regularly depending on situation.

Having said all that, the two wonderful crutches that are blink and decoy almost never leave my skill bar – blink only leaves when underwater.

As a side note – for the pvp version, do you need to use a vigil character to get that as well, or will any character work, as long as you have the relevant items and rank?

Already got what I needed in pve side, and want to delete that character because it’s a waste of space, but only if pvp armour doesn’t have that restriction.

Ground targeting is harder, so bear that in mind if you’re playing a build with a lot of ground targeted abilities.

For accuracy, need to quickly toggle off, cast ground targeted power, then toggle back on again. I use two keys for this, one to toggle off only, another to toggle on and off – I find I need two keys to manage it fast during combat, otherwise I struggle.

The good thing is you know your cursor will always be in the centre of the screen to start with, so moving it to the targeting location is a bit easier.

Also, 180* about face doesn’t work with it active, so need to about face manually using the mouse – another challenge.

Edit: Oh yeah, charge up powers don’t charge fully if bound to left/right click. Doesn’t affect what I play fortunately.

Qaelyn.7612:

What exact build are you using takatsu?

As an aside, I’ve been trying to work IC into my PU-ish build without success. I just can’t find anything else I can give up without seriously damaging the build.

Yeah, difficulty for me is with holding on to DE and PU, that only gives 20 points spare, 15 of which are needed for IC, and then the last 5 points are almost meaningless – domination 5 is useless, insp 5 also not great anymore, illusions 20 – well I don’t like any of the majors there – elasticity possibly for staff, but then lacking any traited condition removal, and duelling 25 isn’t great in a direct damage build either.

Hmm, tough choice.

Yeah, my preferred playstyle is also direct damage + PU.

I’m just getting back into the game mind you, so I’m very very rusty, but my last builds were:
- 20/20/30/0/0 in pvp, with Sw/T + Sc/Sw (or staff) with berserker’s gear and so on.
- 0/30/30/10/0 in pve/wvw with berserkers/soldier/knights/cavalier and -cond duration runes/food, because needing blink range and inspiration 10 gives access to mender’s purity, medics feedback and compounding celerity, all of which are great to swap between.

Conditions simply a bonus, but I preferred not to focus on them. Burst was obviously less than a full dps shatter/phantasm build, but not negligable providing it was set up effectively.

However now that IC has been moved to an accessible position, and several other changes, I’m reconsidering everything and adapt where possible.

Great thread, should be fun.

IGN: Sailears
Server: Desolation EU
Role: Scholar – just looking to learn new tips/tricks and have fun with fellow mesmers.
Playstyle: Haven’t played in ages – was doing mostly PvP hotjoin, but occasionally a bit of PvE and looking to get more involved with wvw.
Playtime: GMT, whenever I feel like it – mostly evenings/weekends, but sometimes erratic.

Just tried to catch up on major changes from the patch release notes, but wanted to check if there’s anything I’ve missed and ought to know about.

IC now master minor trait? Fantastic, might have to shuffle some talent points now.

New heal signet is a strange one – mixed feelings about that. Bit of a long cooldown – will try it out but probably stick with ether feast.

No new weapons yet? Kitten, I would have hoped for some more new skills by now.

Veil is now actually a light field as per description? Hmm, interesting, could work nicely for retaliation.

Ooh, mender’s purity now does 2 conditions? Nice.

What? Illusionary counter has reduced recharge? That’s… unexpected. But I’m not complaining! Good for confusing images though.

Also seems PU is the new flavour of the season/enemy #1, which is a shame because the last build I had was a PU power/crit hybrid – don’t really want to have to change from that yet, but also don’t want to come across as “that PU noob/troll”. I suppose it’s not a condition build, and if I hybridise more for some shatter it should be a bit less annoying for other players. shrug

Any other things not in the patch notes that are worth knowing about?
Cheers.

^Everyone has to let the walking cabbage order them around – no special treatment for us!

1. -10% cooldown on all illusion skills. IC adds a further 10% cooldown, and is a MAJOR Illusion trait choice (adept or master).

2. Fix/replace iMage. More stacks of confusion and burning, and longer retaliation, and lower cooldown would be a start.

^Exactly.

Environmental hazards are mere trivialities. Cold? Heat? Pah, child’s play.

Phase retreat? Mirror blade? Wow, that would be crazily overpowered.

I think it is fine as it is.

Ok decoy cooldown is a pain for non-shatter builds, and I would like to see an underwater version of veil.
But our stealth is not like thief stealth – the illusions add an extra element of confusion, so any further stealth skills need to be 1. on high cooldown and 2. on a limited number of weapons.

Maybe when we get alternative #1 to #5 skills in a future update/expansion, we could have some more to choose from.

Maybe if you had to make a compromise between the maximum number of illusions, and stealth/other mechanics so we could specialise, then I would support more options.

Because you can make them look kind of like rabbits (with the right face and ears of course)!

Call me shallow, but that’s pretty much the only reason I bought this game.

Staff 4 and 5 also offer a lot for reviving teammates.

Apart from the iWarlock, it’s not a weapon for damage. Rather it is a “utility” weapon, with unrivaled defensive potential (except maybe Sc/Sw).

Yes, GS + staff is a great combo.

Staff on its own will keep you alive with much less effort though.

I agree with your friend then – I think staff is superior to GS in pvp. that’s not to say GS is bad – it’s a good weapon. However due to the point nature of pvp, staff is much more useful.

Edit: it doesn’t matter power or condition build, staff works for anything.

To place a portal for all the other kittens that were too lazy to cross it themselves!

redslion.9675:

Curunen.8729:

Even in spvp other races don’t respect us, often going out of their way to insult us.

But asura always respect each other, even if they’re on the opposite team.

I think asuras are rally cute in spvp.

They fit EXACTLY under my hammer.XD

You’re a nasty person.

:p

^now that would be pretty fun, running around slapping people!

Rance Webster.2635:

I sometimes /cry when I lose XD

Better than no emotion!

Goose.5196:

GUYS! Guys! I got it. Turn Moa Morph into a Signet. Signet of the Moa? Passive effect: 25% movement speed / Active effect: turns people into a Moa for however long. My work is done here. I will be browsing some other threads if you need me.

Hmm, could work!

Mass invis is decent on its own to create a breather – with PU it is a very good skill on low cooldown.
Time Warp I’d only ever use in a large group – I don’t like the extremely long cooldown otherwise.
And moa… well I never use it; MI is better for me.

Taym.8326:

Obviously he is not in the club that knows you gain secret achievements for killing people when the scoreboard goes up.

Is that why? (I’m being honest – at least that makes some sense).

Otherwise I stop when a team hits 500 – stow weapons, bow. Pretty annoying when whoever you’re fighting just does not get the hint to take a break and chill out.

Small team hotjoin is pretty fun (<5 people per side), I don’t want to see that removed.

As a solo player, I like to be able to hop into a match in less than a few minutes and leave when I feel I’ve played enough – hotjoin offers me this option.

I do agree though that 8v8 hotjoin can be pretty silly at times.

Hell would freeze over.