Guild Wars 2

I can also check when I get home but the easiest test I did a few months ago was with my guardian. Long lasting fire field. Hammer auto attack for light then hammer 2. Always gives might if the fire field goes down first. Can repeat this several times with multiple light fields on top of the long lasting fire.

Since I’ve been playing my ele a lot recently, I’m fairly certain that the first one down is the one that is blasted still applies since I do pay attention to fields before blasting. One thing that might confuse people are overlapping fields that are not completely inside each other. A fire field/wall of reflect can both go down while I’m in the fire field but not in the wall of reflect. In this case, it doesn’t matter which one is down first as long as I center the blast on fire. This is not as easy/possible with feedback/TW as they are much larger and usually centered on the boss.

Yes warden + focus 4 is condi cleanse but fire for 25 might instead of light for 15 seconds of retal is still much better in most dungeon settings or just in general. I also use focus 4 to either pull or reflect so I rarely have the warden spinning on top of it. I’m not saying never do it, but just be mindful of where you put the fields and don’t randomly spam feedback when nothing needs to be reflected.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Balance-Developer-Livestream-on-Friday-at-2pm-PST/first

Just wait until at least tomorrow to decide. Crit dmg is most likely going to get nerfed soon.

Pyrotek.8730:

OMG, i did not know that! Didnt realise that my fields actually have negative effect and counteract others.

I’m quite new to the game and catching up but looks like I’m reading old advice.

Thank you!

Xyonon.3987:

I used to use the nullfield too back in my days. But the long cd made it too … well … how can I call it? It’s just a “NOW should everything neutralize”-moment. It’s not flexibel enough. However it still is great in some situations, sometimes I even use both of em.

Btw try not to create etheral combo fields. They just disturb your group if you have somone who benefits from fields like an engineer, a thief or an ele or any “20% projectile” class. The chaosarmor is pathetic compared to might and heal. For example as engineer I put down a fire bomb and rush the combo finishers for 9-15 stacks might for everyone for 25 sec. If there is a etheral field it sux terrible … :P Chaos armor … It requires a buff in PvE.

So feedback/focus (light field persists even when double tapped) 4, when needed are better for the group than extra might stacks. A good ele (and engi/guard) will know when those are going to happen/delay their fire fields and blasts. As long as the fire field is down first, it’s fine to toss another field on top of it since finishers go for the earliest field down.

My biggest gripe with this is when an mesmer throws down time warp before any might stacks happen. Lot’s of classes also have dmg increases when enemies are below 50/33 health so it’s best to wait a little bit. Basically, let your team get might/ vulnerability, then let their traits proc for 10-20% more then TW. 50% attack speed when your party is doing 60-150% more dmg is much better than using kitten the very start. If a boss dies fast, just wait for fire field and drop TW down right after. Also as a courtesy, ping TW (shift click) 1-3 seconds before you drop it.

The key binding also lets you easily dodge diagonally which seems much harder to pull off with double tap.

Perhaps I just missed the patch notes but I was charging Mantras on land then running underwater and they stayed charged! I remember people complaining about this a while ago but I don’t think it was working until recently.

If the mantra isn’t on both bars, you lose the charges but the underwater replacement doesn’t go on CD. However, if you return to land quickly, the replaced mantra is on CD.

mahariel.4981:

“mindless dps”? Does rolling PVT and camping bow make someone the next einstein or something?

Since you clearly don’t roll in organised groups, I can’t imagine you’d understand how rolling meta builds is actually far more challenging and complex than your average pug group, I mean what pug is going to maintain optimal dps rotations, cast skills at appropriate times, have appropriate skills on their tab in the first place and know to mitigate damage through dodging and use of the correct weapon in a fight?

You mention using optimal skills/weapons for various situations like it won’t happen in the new system. If enemies were less on the HP sponge side, then more cc weapons/utilities might be chosen. It would still require thought.

Exp. Rather than going axe/mace+GS, maybe warriors will swap to axe/mace+hammer for a few fights. Rotations would still be there but instead of gs2/3, it would be hammer 2,F1 for more cc. It would be dps loss but if enemies had less heath, then less dps wouldn’t be so bad. Alternatively, axe/warhorn+GS for aoe weakness. 5% less dmg on axe auto but an average of 25% less dmg taken for your group. It can still be a zerker warhorn.

There is no reason to take this to an extreme and invoke pvt/bearbow or gs mesmer logic. Good players will adapt as you say they currently do. Hopefully, the new system will reward other play styles while still keeping full zerker melee the best but only for the truly skilled.

I look forward to these changes.

haviz.1340:

fadeaway.2807:

What would you say to frequent low damage attacks which are enough to kill you via attrition if you don’t bring enough toughness/healing, mixed with a dodgeable high damage attack?

That would mean I cannot play how I want anymore which is the selling point of this game.

But with a few more changes, the toughness/healing wouldn’t even be required. Going full zerker but having a group with blinds, interrupts, weakness, & protection would still allow for full zerkers to “tank” weaker hits at a riskier level. Burning through the enemies would be less hits in the long run. Faster weaker attacks would also make retaliation tank builds less useless. Confusion also wouldn’t be as bad in PvE. So I see this as a win win for everyone.

Enemies just need to behave like & have player abilities. They should be in diverse enemy groups rather than a single target boss. More than 3 enemies = melee cleaves will randomly hit enemies unless targeted. Tanky enemies would soak up those random hits. Enemies should have glass cannons so focus fire rather than blindly cleaving would be more useful. If enemies had stronger heals/healers, poisons/interrupts would be nice while also offering an alternative target to focus fire. So even though we don’t have a hard trinity, doesn’t mean the enemies can’t have some of it.

AI from Gw1 hardmode had enemies disperse if they took too much AOE. Full zerker stacking groups could utilize CC skills but someone might need to swap to hammer instead of GS etc. If CC was screwed up then the zerkers would have a much tougher time recovering. So, more play styles/weapons become viable while requiring more thought to zerker stacking.

Get rid of defiant. Give enemies stability instead. Or have them be defiant when they are not using an attack. This would prevent CC spam to trivialize an enemy but would allow for well timed CC builds to be more rewarding. Again, doesn’t prevent full zerker, just opens up more usefulness of other classes/builds/weapons.

If enemies refreshed retaliation on themselves, it would be harder to stack and burst. Alternatively, it would require to maybe swap to slower heavier hitting weapons or single target weapons. Just more boons in general for enemies would be good. Zerker warriors could go with their boon hate while necro/mesmer might be brought for stripping instead. Furthermore, protection wouldn’t hit condi builds as much so in an indirect way, they are buffed.

TLDR: Making enemies “weaker” but “smarter” would raise the bar on a full zerker group but it could still be done. It would also make other builds not as bad. So the selling point of the game would be more valid than it currently is. Most of these suggestions don’t require a major change in enemy AI, just changing their skill bar so that problem could be avoided.

I did not forget, look at my first post. Boon duration affects boons that you give others, not the ones you receive so not as good as you implied. Only sigil of battle, signet of inspiration, torch 4 blasts for wvw settings will be affected by the mesmer’s boon duration (and self given boons). The reason I mentioned going 3 ruby/traveler for a mixed set is that 15% boon duration can make up for the 3% less dmg via sigil of battle in PvE. Then it only takes 3 cheap pieces, like gloves, hands, head or boots to swap to a full set of travelers.

I also mentioned condition dmg and how 10 domination + these runes is 1 second longer on sharper images. However, the last 3 traveler bonus comes at a 5% loss. Since I don’t even have 10 in domination for my PvE build, it’s a straight loss for me. Even with 10 domination, it is iffy but also comes down to if you care about 5% or 8% without sigil of battle.

When I did the math, I held everything else constant. So math is based off of full zerker everything ascended + 0/30/0/25/15. Only the runes changed. So the numbers might be 0.2% off from your build but there will be parity overall.

Comparing 2033 to 2123 power, that alone is ~5% more damage. Then +2% crit chance and +6% crit dmg bring it to about 8% overall.

6 rubies does ~8% more base than 6 traveler
3 ruby/3 trav does 5.5% more than 6 traveler.

2 things to think about is boon duration + sigil of battle if you swap enough makes up for ~3% less dmg for going half/half.

condi duratin + 10 domination means 1 sec more sharper images.

It’s up to you whether you think the 15% longer might/1 sec bleed is worth the 5-8% more dmg. I ran into a similar problem because of ascended armor + fotm. Decided to go for 3/3 full ascended and 6 trav half exotic to swap between since I really like my cultural sylvari tier 1/2 mix and full t2 set. Full zerker because again, hard to get and jewelry gives me enough defense for roaming when I want to swap defensively.

You are grouping fear and daze with immobilize which is not how it works. Fear/daze/stun/blow outs STOP you from being able to use most skills. This is why stun breaks/stability are meant to counter them.

Cripple, fear, chill, immob, blind, vulnerability and weakness all do no inherent dmg but that doesn’t stop them from all being conditions, affected by condi duration and condition removal.

It is not that condis have to do dmg, it’s that STRONG control effects take away your ability to use skills but are rarer and also require rarer counters. Necromancers have the terror trait which also makes fear a damaging condition based of off condition dmg. It’s unique in that it is both control/condi dmg and therefore is the only condition that can be countered with stability/stun breaks.
From balance on July 23rd

Rune of Melandru: Fear duration is now only reduced once by this rune set. The negative stun duration bonus no longer reduces incoming fear duration. This is also true for food consumables that offer a negative stun duration bonus.
&
Sigil of Paralyzation: This sigil no longer impacts fear duration.

Fear is officially a condition and used to be the only condition that was affected by control duration stuff. That is no longer the case. It’s the only condition that stability/stunbreak counters. Immobilize is NOT countered by stun breaks/stability.

Stuns can only be increased by Sigil of Para
Daze can only be increased by the trait, runes of the mesmer.

I don’t know for certain, but I think the stun duraiton will probably round like conditions, so to the nearest quarter of a second and it is probably additive. So having both buffs would get to 1.5 seconds while 1 buff would do 1.25 seconds of daze.
I think sigil of para will turn a 1 second stun to 1.25 as well. I am not entirely certain of this paragraph though.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Sigil_of_Paralyzation

Condition builds are in general just bad in pve. Carrion gear is especially bad for mesmers in all aspects of the game. Our main source of bleeds is sharper images + illusions. You can easily hit the 25 bleed cap but then other ppl usually happen and bring those down to ~5-10. This also requires precision. With carrion gear, your average bleed stacks will be like 3. Confusion is also pretty bad in PvE since most of it is short lived and most enemies attack really slow. So at least get rabid/rampagers instead of carrion if you insist on condi builds in pve but it’s going to very suboptimal.

Revlin, since you’re a new player, I won’t compare gs vs sword so much as talk about boons and staying near your team. Might, fury and other class buffs are extremely strong and can easily double your damage. However, they require being close to your team (600 range). So even if GS and sword were equal on their own, double damage by stacking in melee is just too good for an “elitist” to ever consider bringing the GS which does poor damage in melee. Furthermore, the sword+offhands>gs when it comes to utility and damage so a lot of us don’t consider GS “viable” in dungeon builds.

As mentioned above, variants of 0/30/0/20/15 offer the most when it comes to both reflects and damage. Feel free to experiment with builds though. If you want to run 20/20/30/0/0, I’d recommend full zerker gear with full interrupt traits. Then share the might/boons with your team via signet of inspiration. You won’t have any reflects traited and your staff damage will be poor but at least you will occasionally give the group 25 might. As you do dungeons though, if you pay attention, you will realize that it is usually 1 or 2 players that are making a dungeon a breeze for everyone else while the rest of party are doing “fun” builds. If you ever decide you want to try and be that player, go at least 0/20/0/20/0 and full zerker for mesmers. Since other classes do the might/boon stacking much better, leave it to them.

Wacky illusionary weapon builds…., scythe+mantra (in their prime for pve=300×3 per swing) or flourishing frustration sword interrupt builds all worked. I guess I was always a melee mesmer+interrupts at heart and went sword/focus/sword from day 1 of gw2.

Backfire/empathy reminiscence does not compute for me:
Backfire = Reflects
Empathy = Confusion/retaliation
Shatter Delusion/Enchantment = Shatters
Wastral’s worry every 3 seconds = p.swordsman every 3 seconds
So forcing ppl to do something and nothing at the same time is still there.

Part of using your skills freely in gw2 is having the right target and not being afraid of cleaving clones that explode (and reflects). We have interrupts as well and plenty of them. Boons and healing spells aren’t as strong as before and we have much more raw power. This isn’t a memser thing though, it’s a gw2 thing. The class has been brought into the new system fairly well and I consider it the same class envisioned in a new game.

GW1 mesmer had 600 health. Gw2 mesmers does thousands of damage =)
But seriously, I think the gw2 mesmers are stronger. If nothing else, just invis and phantasms would destroy a gw1 mesmer. GW2 mesmers also don’t have any energy to deny which is the one thing I miss but cant happen in gw2. 8 mesmers walk into fow. Chaos storm+instability then aneurysm was so fun.

Cat stands for osicat’s builds not shatter builds in general.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-WvWvW-Pve-Shatter-Cat-2013-12-28/first

Sigil of energy and fire don’t stack as they share 1 internal CD. I watched your videos a bit and it rarely seemed like you were reflecting when distorting or distorting as much as the build would lend itself to. So… just a weak shatter build.

When it comes to those kill time videos, we also don’t have that many impractical spike abilities/utilities that other classes use. Basically, if you understand the other class mechanics, most of them are using sub-optimal dungeon builds/tactics/rotations to reduce time. They are also often blowing through multiple utilities with long CDs that aren’t sustainable.

Something to cheer you up. Silliness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzjNvlbZg04
And also a bit more legit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEC1DO-j5fw

Guardians/warriors are around 5:20 lupi solo kills but I’m pretty sure that mesmers are in a good spot with a 5:40. Ele is at 4:07 with their massive FGS spikes but as you can see, the 4 second kill vs the giant doesn’t translate to 4x faster kills against a real threat. The 4 other classes seem to be around 8-15 minutes.

Elaborating on % modifiers: 10/30/0/25/0: Warden and phantasms traited. Full zerker Vs Karka, only looking at crit dmg numbers. (Test build, don’t use it)

Warden+double trait buffs: 4265,3839, 3931, 4141, 4187, 3997: Avg =4085
Feedback unbuffed: 3195, 3209, 2957, 2915: Avg= 3069
Feedback w/ 3 mantras+sigil of force: 3774, 3494, 3523, 3784, 3819, 3709: Avg = 3656
0/30/0/20/15 w/ 3 mantras warden: 2975, 3170, 3126, 2979, 3148: Avg= 3079

Buffed feedback should do 18% more and it did 19% here. Buffed warden reflect did 33% more when it should do 32%. Numbers look good in saying that warden traits do reflect warden reflect damage. Mantra traits do not affect warden reflects. I didn’t go all out on testing but the feedback can also benefit from 10% slaying potions/sigils, 10% rune of scholar, 3%^3 per illusion etc…

So 10 domination does help with reflects but mantras and 30 dueling are really nice and it’s hard to find those 10 points in a 0/30/0/25/15 build. Especially since if you want to emphasize warden reflects, then dropping 5 from inspiration/illusions doesn’t help and 10 from dueling drops overall crit damage/reflects and up to 17% personal dmg.

p.Haste is also bugged so don’t go 20 illusions.

Retaliation can stack up to a max of 5 times. So 5×3.5 = 17.5 seconds as soon as mimic ends.

At the cost of boon removal on shatters, moving 20 domination to chaos lets you stack might on interrupts. The might gain is worth the loss of 200 power/20% MW dmg. 200 toughness, regen/protection and another trait of your choice adds up to some awesome defense.

Saturn.6591:

colesy.8490:

Phantasmal warden?

If traited, yes. Not every Mesmer has a traited Warden, though. And yes, that person is one of “the bads” then in your opinion, but that doesn’t make this possibility non-existent. Also, iWarden doesn’t always spawn where you want it to. Sometimes it spawns in front of the mob, sometimes next to it, sometimes even behind it. Also, iirc Lupicus’ AoE ranged projectiles go in all directions, thus iWarden can’t reflect all of them. Feedback can, and thus does much more damage. Am I missing something?

Last but not least… how are your feelings about timewarp? Will you ragequit if a Mesmer casts it all over your party? After all, it’s an ethereal field too. An ETHEREAL FIELD! No Might, but chaos armor for you. Evil Mesmer.

It doesn’t require a premade group to stack might. Some classes can stack might on their own just fine. If you are good enough to notice this, then place your TW after the group is buffed up. So yeah, I do get annoyed when a Mesmer places TW down at the very start of a fight when a d/d or s/d ele is in the party. That ele could have increased the parties damage by ~50% for 20-40 seconds which is better than TW. Even better is full might stacks + TW.

Also, trying to argue that anyone that thinks ethereal fields are bad also think feedback/TW are bad is such a weak argument. If you have a blast finisher, save them for something better.

Feedback does much more damage against lupi but it also has a CD. The traited focus is for some more dps/reflects when feedback isn’t available. Even if it only reflects some of them, it will still protect your party/do several thousands of damage.

Why do none of those skills work? Most of the dangerous skills are ranged and can be reflected which I would prefer to blind/protection. The melee knockdowns can be interrupted/stability from a mesmer. This doesn’t leave that many attacks to trigger the RNG chaos armor. However, that does mean a light or ethereal field getting in the way but I wouldn’t consider chaos armor/retaliation doing most of the work there if blast finishers do go off. The TA aether path is also not a common type of fight. I wish there were more like it but that is a pretty weak argument at the moment.

As someone that plays all the classes, I can tell you it’s really frustrating when I try to start a might stack combo on my ele, engineer or guardian and I waste a few blast finishers on weak combos that don’t stack. Warriors and rangers can try might stacks to a lesser extent although it isn’t nearly as viable. This is why I try to time my reflects well and tell pugs to stop using reflects when there is nothing to reflect. So many times I see feedbacks/walls when there is ZERO need for them. Those might stacks are helping your group a lot more than the chaos armor 99% of the time. Be mindful of your fields.

I would actually go sword/sword and scepter/focus. The focus brings excellent group utility and anti-range. So if you feel the need for ranged, you are still benefitting your group and also protecting yourself from projectiles. Sword/sword will give you two defensive skills if you want to hop into melee for a bit. Since the focus is so good, you could alternatively go sword/scepter main hand and only focus offhand until you get better with the CDs.

Even though the scepter has 900 range, the auto attack is faster the closer you are to an enemy so it still promotes melee range.

Start with something like knights gear and slowly swap to zerker as you get better. I believe zerker jewelry/weapons and knights armor is the “ideal” mix to start with when it comes to balancing crit damage and toughness.

You stated that a full mele mesmers is only doable with 3 warrior/guard and the mesmer isn’t doing jack to help. I disagree. I explicitly stated that I never go full pug. If I went full pug I could understand wanting to stay ranged. If I don’t see anyone else in melee for fotm, I would be scared to solo melee. Also boon stacking wouldn’t be happening so the melee vs ranged dps wouldn’t be as bad.

If everyone knows their class and tries going melee while also doing that classes style of defense, that collective localized defense adds up to a group surviving. And of course, boon stacking ftw. Furthermore, it doesn’t require everyone to be in melee from the start. Just having 1 other person near you makes things so much easier. Having 2, even easier. When my friends end up adding a few randoms from the group most of those pugs will “test waters” with us. If they see us in melee, I notice they tend to drop their ranged weapons and also swap to melee. That doesn’t mean they always melee. Some ppl are still scared to melee some bosses but mosts pugs I’ve seen have the ability to melee if others are doing it as well. Every class has the ability to help defensively. It doesn’t require optimal group compositions, just a few people willing to take that first step.

Also, the sword auto attack doesn’t have a CD. Sword 3, gs2 are both clone spawns which are usually bad for phantasm builds so there is no 3 shared CD problem. In fact, I would prefer having blurred frenzy always available as soon as it’s off CD.

TLDR:
Ranged begets more ranged.
Melee stacking begets more stacking.
I appreciate all classes when they melee with me because going with a melee group has always lead to a smoother run for me.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Pack
If I recall correctly, it was bugged because the runes used to say when you attack an enemy but it was when you were struck. Made me very sad when I realized I couldn’t have easy fury on my mesmer.

They changed the text to state “when struck.” Which is not great for most mesmer builds. 5 seconds of boons on 10 sec ICD on 5% chance is not great. The runes now correctly give power instead of healing power too.

I don’t think those stats alone are worth it. Runes of scholar, ranger (it’s bugged to always give 5%) and ruby orbs are pretty standard for DPS. Travelers (rich ppl), speed (poor ppl) and centaur for mobility.

LordByron.8369:

Ryn.6459:

I am not pro, I always pug and I can stay at melee with my mesmer much easily than with any other class.

i am more inclined to believe in unicorns than anyone can go FULL melee frequently with pugs…..in high level fractals….

if you Always party with 3 wars and a guardians well the reason you can melee is not the mesmer….

Do you mention the 3 wars/guard because you actually think that is the best dps set up? Cause it is definitely not the best DPS set up. Or do you think the other classes can inherently mele without any support? Cause most of them won’t go solo melee either. It’s always a team effort, or at least 2 ppl synergizing.

The reason the rest of my party can melee is because I can use the focus pull to group them up and use reflects to negate a lot of the enemy attacks. Furthermore, just using correct LOS helps as well. Blinds from a thief/ele/guard/necro help with the anti melee as well along with blurred frenzy/sword 4.2. Knockdowns or boons/weakness can also help tank some of the smaller hits.

I never go full pug since someone in my guild is always up for fotm but even when we grab 1-3 pugs at high levels, most of them know their class and what to do to help the team. (Seemingly except for rangers, which is sad.) Melee seems the norm in pugs. Perhaps it’s just seeing a mesmer and another already in melee that lets pugs feel comfortable also going into melee.

Torch 4 actually has a use in stealth… group stealth. Smoke Screen from thief, everyone times their blast finishers and the group is good to portal bomb dredge. Can a thief do this on their own? Yes, but the better timed blast finishers give the group a few more seconds.

Blasting for retal got me thinking. Most ppl blast for might but we’re mesmers so sure, we can mix things up. We can charge/spam our heals without wasting them like other classes so why not make our heals the source of AOE might/fury: Runes of Altruism.

5 Mesmers with Runes of altruism would be giving AOE 15 stacks of might for 11.5 seconds and 29 seconds of fury on a 15 second CD. Rather than using veil before charging in, 1 mesmer drops temporal curtain while the rest Prestige in it. Charge in invisible while appearing with an AOE bomb, 20 seconds AOE burning and 18 seconds of AOE retaliation.

Water field combos would be lacking but I think mantra healing could come close. 5 mesmers spamming mantra of stability would be overkill. Same with resolve, given that each build has a crap ton of condi removal. So an extra mantra of pain here or there could be more “dps/heal focused.”

Furthermore, signet of inspiration on 2 mesmers would cap Might for the group. However, I have another question about retal that I can try testing later. If retal only stacks 5 times, does signet of inspiration combine those numbers and count as 1 stack? The same would go for stability. 3 stack max for 6 seconds. Would a double signet of inspiration turn that into 18 seconds or 6 seconds?

Protection would be the only boon that would be hard to come by for the group and runes of altruism would be taking away the regen I initially thought of… So leaping through ethereal fields with sword 3 for chaos armor. 1 or 2 mesmers bring null field/feedback instead of the redundant mantras. Random regen and protection while also having random blind/cripple (and confusion). 1 chaos armor alone would be weak on the blinding but since most attacks are AOE, wouldn’t a group of mesmers be able to “spam” counter blinds.

A 100% mesmer zerg frontline? with all the boons o_O.

That’s a bad build. Rending shatters is useless since the only shatter should be at the very end. Mental torment might be worth it. Phantasmal haste is broken for the warden and swordsman, and the duelist will also be doing more damage than the warden especially since the warden is buggy.

I think the combo that is going to get the fastest mesmer kill is going to require the torch. If other classes are swapping weapons as prebuffs before combat, why cant we?

Cast torch 4. Quickly swap to sword. Sword 5, pistol 4, start timer as the duelist starts to shoot. Sigil of battle on pistol and swap back to Sw/Sw which has force/undead. Torch 4 procs. Even if you attack early to reveal, the explosion will still happen. Use sword 4 asap to get 3% more dmg and the spike. TW and auto attack. F1 probably after the duelist does it’s second volley.

I don’t have recording software or a pc capable of it or I would be giving this a go.

Weakness used to only affect normal hits and not critical hits? However, that is no longer the case. Might have been confused with that?

This started off as a silly thought experiment for me but now I’m seriously thinking about this. As I said before, I have never frontlined, especially on my mesmer, so thank you so much for all the advice.

What about this build? 30/20/0/20/0. Meets the specs you listed off earlier. I also think sword auto attack will also be doing decent damage with it so it’s not like we don’t have any sustainable power. By decent I mean comparable to the sword auto I saw the warriors using. No more self might stacks/random fury but that’s what FGJ is for ^^.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQRAsd8fl4z6pHSTlGa9IyJFQnzR6Rp9arWJF32FC-jECBofDimgAk+IQUBwpmFRjtupIasKbYaYER1SBUxyI-w

If the two areas we fall behind in are blast finishers and healing, I decided to try and add a bit of that. No way we can catch up on blast finishers but the traited torch for the delayed bomb, blast finisher and aoe blind can help. It’s also our only non illusion dependant offhand.

So healing wise, every 8(cd)3(charge)3(discharge) = every 14 seconds, self heal would be 2766×3= 8298. Aoe healing would be 2673+176 x 6 sec regen. Total self heal from spamming would be about 900 per second. Furthermore, the other 2 mantras would also do the aoe heal. Something I noticed in those videos you posted is that they would dive, fall back, count a few seconds to recover then dive again. That recovery stage seems perfect for mantra play. Spam mantras while diving, then recharge them to heal allies.

Thoughts? and TY again.

The retaliation damage nerf for wvw was not on the wiki =/
Thanks for mentioning that.

With the mantra build, the crit chance/dmg will be lower than a zerker build but the power will be so much higher that the damage should sort of even out. 4000 power isn’t going to hit like a wet noodle even if it doesn’t crit that often. I would consider the retaliation a bonus. If power is reliable in 3v3, then why isn’t it viable in a larger zerg? I would consider condi to be even worst as the numbers/condi clears increase.

I guess for anyone that has actually frontlined with a guardian/warrior, what makes them so much tankier/better compared to these builds? The warrior doesn’t have protection and only has endure pain (x2 if traited), shield stance (usually not) and the new heal. We have blurred frenzy and mimic for our damage mitigations and distortion (not happening in zergs). However, BF and mimic have much shorter CDs than the warrior skills. Likewise guardians have their heal and ult as the several second blocks but those are 30 and 90 second CDs. They can give aoe stability and condi clearing but so do mantras.

Most guardians I see are just spamming staff auto attack so that isn’t exactly spectacular dps. Warriors do bring cc with the hammer but that is why I tried incorporating interrupts into these builds.

I am not claiming that this build is an immortal mesmer (RIP) but would they be really so bad on the frontline? Would they die so much faster than a warrior/guardian that I would be rally fodder? I genuinely don’t know the answer to this since I have never tried to frontline before. I’m just not convinced by your arguments since I’m not seeing them backed up with any hard evidence/theory.

I decided to theorycraft so https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/WvW-Frontline-Maximum-Retaliation/first#post3365230
Just as supporting evidence though. A picture of my warrior with only 8 stacks of might and zero bloodlust: 3300 power, 4400 attack. Not full pvt gear or max consumables either.

Basically I theory crafted these after prior thread and the idea of max power on Mesmer. I’m going to start working on this gear but I was wondering if anyone had input on these 3.
General concept: Full PVT, max power/tankiness for WvW front line build. Stack might with interrupts. Stack retaliation with mimic + retaliatory shield. All of the following builds will be around ~3800 power/4800 attack ? 480 retaliation dmg. You read that right. With full Power high gear, you can reach about 2593 power. With sharpening stones, 2784 power. With might, +875 power. With bloodlust, +250 power.

Power Overwhelming:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAR8dlwz6pHVTlGa9IhpHE33Cn0DTn6TXqguB-jUCBofCyEEwUBBK1sIas1WMasVYAKbYqXER1WzFRrWKgLWGB-w
30/10/30/0/0. +5 power infusions on everything, 25 stacks of bloodlust, and 25 might from bountiful interruption will hit 4000 POWER! For 500 retaliation damage. 5k attack, 3k defense and 22k health. Sigil of Force ftw. Runes of Holbrook/Melandru + Lemongrass could be used at the cost of 200 power.

Mantra of Masochism:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAsdWl4z6pHSTlGa9IhpHE33InUBTX6huvdsB-jECBofCiEEgUBBK1sIasFYFRjVZDT9iIq2auIa1SBYiyI-w
10/30/30/0/0 although 0/30/20/20/0 for some extra mantra healing could work. It’s a mantra spam build that is meant to be super tank. Can bring decent group condi removal/stability. Has ~3600 armor while casting mantras due to the recent buffs. Runes of the Forge for 17 seconds of protection on a 60 second ICD. Illusionary membrane at 5 every 15 seconds. Random protection from bountiful interruption and chaos armor just might be able to get perma protection as well. Remember to use Mantra of stability with Mimic and Blurred Frenzy. This build will “ONLY” have 3400 power.

Empower Allies:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQRAsd8clwz6pHQTlGa9IhpHE33Cn0DT76TXqguB-jkCBofBkgAkKAI1sIaslhBp6KslXRTZDT9iIq2auIa1SBYiyI-w
30/10/30/0/0: 95% boon duration. By rotating your 2 AOE interrupts, you should always have 25 might. Mimic will stack 29 seconds of retaliation. Then share it with your allies. Even if your allies have zero extra power, they will hit a minimum 332 retaliation when you share those boons.

Dawdler.8521:

5K Chaos Storm ticks would be awesome, lol.

Would only require 6000-8000 power or alternativly 500-600% crit damage.

I have 3300 power

That’s pretty amazing, considering the max power you can get from gear/trait stats is 1300, plus the 1000 base. Which equal 3300 attack and 2300 power. Well, you can add some might, rune stacks and food buffs there as well, but I dont quite see how that can reach a constant +1000 power over base stats. Where do you get the rest from?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAscRE90jEmeQcfLcSPUdqBQpC6G-j0BBofBkgAI1sIas1WFRjVZDT9iIq2erIa1SBcxyI-w
Base power: 2789
Sigil of Bloodlust+250
Might+875
Final: 3914 Power.
Stack might with interrupts.
Stack relation with mimic then do 492 retaliation dmg.
And with that much power, you can still hit for a decent amount.
Useful? probably not but 3300 power is definitely doable.

The OP’s numbers are definitely off though.

Actually I would say the current meta of wvw is mele train + ranged NON-projectile support in the back. Several auto attacks should never down a player.

IMO, anyone using a projectile weapon in a zerg is probably a random and not a representation of “meta.” The exception being staff on eles/necros but they tend to spam the aoes not the projectiles auto attacks.

Probably should have used a duelist. Warden bugged out and since you are using a mantra build with 10 or 30 in domination, and this is supposed to be a DPS test, why not use mantra of pain/distraction at least once for a dps boost while keeping the mantras at 1 charge. I’m sure you could have gotten 13 and 16 seconds with the two builds tesed, maybe lower.

What is there not to believe? It works and they saw it. Are they thinking the traited warden can do it as well?

I mentioned this 2 months ago when the mesmer hand book was being written. I thought this would have been common knowledge by now since the fight is a pain without it especially after the guardian shield nerf. Actually, just don’t use the warden when your guildies are around. Your clones will also briefly body block so don’t summon mele ones. Let them feel the pain. Then they will love you every time afterwards.

The Necro heal is going to be amazing for some builds. For tanky condi or cleric/retal builds, the passive alone is going to be great. ~300 dmg reduction and 300 dmg retal + actual 2-300 dmg retal is ridiculous. Combined with protection from spectral armor/trait and weakness is going to be one hell of a tank for pvp/wvw.

If there is no internal CD, for Dagger/warhorn dungeon builds, this will be bonus 10k dmg every 16 seconds just for the necro. Then multiply that by up to 5 depending on how fast your team attacks.

Please keep your whining and especially necro whining out of the mesmer section.

The phantasmal swordsman doesn’t strip boons on it’s attack. That’s the sword clones/sword auto.

Vulnerability, burning and bleeding are really common in dungeons and also on the staff auto. If you have any other class besides the guardian, mesmer, warrior trinity, then there will usually be 4+ conditions. The staff also doesn’t require traiting chaos and illusions anymore than the usual phantasm build (Especially with the new signet heal).

There is also a difference between unreliable and situational. The warlock is unreliable because the attack can actually miss when the ground isn’t perfectly flat. The second you have a team for a dungeon, it should become pretty obvious if 5-10 conditions are going to reliably show up for that group or not. That’s situational.

I agree with your general message of staff is usually not a good idea in dungeons because of the terrible staff auto attack, but vs a single target, I would prefer a mesmer that uses the staff as a back up ranged weapon than a GS mesmer. (Assuming the rest of the group is trying to mele stack.)

Although the phantasms are different entities, chill does increase recharge time in real time. I don’t think it would be that hard to reverse the % or # on chill effect, crank it up a notch and make it last 0.1 seconds on all phantasms we have summoned. This would refresh the phantasm’s attack CD “instantly” but only once.

I don’t think that will actually happen though. It would make our phantasms more active and we could time our attacks well but it would also make 1 dodge able to negate all of our phantasms and then they would be synced up so that 1 dodge would negate them for an entire fight. Would be OP against noobs and useless high up. Lose lose for us.

Against enemies that require projectile negation rather than projectile absorption, having a 2nd warden ready to go would be great. The mid point cat golem comes to mind. Also, runes of scholars + passive heals ftw. Or just getting 3 phantasms out fast. So I will definitely be using this in PvE.

For small scale wvw/pvp, I think this will be OP. Not just for the healing but also how hard this will spike. I usually summon a swordsman then swap weapons for another phantasm before the swordsman gets me into combat. This lets me summon 2 phantasms WITHOUT my weapon CD procing. 3 phantasms is usually GG and this will let me have a 4th replacement ready 2 seconds into a fight.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Bumbler.7581:

Ryn.6459:

Signet of the Ether: Signet Passive: Heal yourself based on the number of active illusions you control. Signet Active: Heal yourself and refresh all phantasm skill recharges

Just a note in this discussion. If the ‘unverified’ notes for the heal skill are accurate, phantasm uptime in pve is going up significantly.

Maybe is my crappy English. But I don’t get it. “Refresh all phantasm skill recharges”? What does that mean?

Since they specifically use the word “recharge” which is present in the phantasmal haste trait, my guess is that if you have, for example, 2 iSwordsmen and 1 iDuelist, then they will attack on heal and behave as if you had just summoned them.

I think you’re wrong. I don’t think they have the code to do that.

Phantasms are completely seperate from the Mesmer. They simply have their own skills on a certain cooldown, and what you do can’t affect them.

Or worst, they tried to program the new code in and gave all phantasms the warden treatment. No enemy can win a staring contest against 3 phantasms.

The main fotm sword and offhand bolt doesn’t look nearly as good. I think it’s cause the fotm sword is a great offhand flashy weapon while bolt doesn’t do much when in the offhand.

Bolts with blurred frenzy.

8 Dancing bolts? Sure.
I also gave up on ever getting a fotm sword when I started crafting the 2nd one. After 8 months one finally dropped about 2 weeks before the fotm update. I am torn between the two.

I’d have to agree with a 10/30/0/10/20 being a relatively useless mesmer in the meta. Traited focus is the main reason to bring a mesmer in dungeons. Then again, the warden is still bugged and I have noticed my party getting downed a lot more because of it. So annoying that they won’t just revert the terrible change.

I would think 10/30/0/20/10 or 0/30/0/25/15 would be the same/new builds, especially if p.haste also doesn’t work for the warden anymore o_O. It never worked with the swordsman to begin with. Basically a choice of 20% CD on illusions or 100 more power. If p.haste does work for the warden/they fix it on the 10th then maybe 0/20/0/20/20 base with 10 to spare in Domination, Dueling or Inspiration.

Going with the 10/30/0/20/10 build, phantasm stats would be:
Scholar: 2254 power, 79% crit chance, 108% crit dmg
Ruby Orbs: 2209 power, 83% crit chance, 112% crit dmg
Maths… the phantasms do 2.1% less damage.
I think the 10% @ >90% is worth it although I usually recommend ruby orbs as a cheap good enough set because a new player will rarely be benefiting from scholars.

I would be happy to sit in a pvp arena and shoot ppl with steady weapons later today to test the various multipliers on various reflects.

Also, although the meta is zerker gear, I have been leaning towards assassins in pugs for stuff like lupi. When reflect damage with feedback >>> phantasm or mesmer damage, and your party isn’t buffing your crit chance that much, assassins armor/weapons with zerker trinkets is an increase in mesmer damage across the board although minor. If you get fury from allies and 25 perception stacks, it becomes overkill.

“Broken Mirrors You cannot reflect missiles”

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1rim71/data_mining_upcoming_features_from_fractured/

This is going to be interesting.

Edit:
Sick Day Random conditions are applied to you when you deal critical damage.
Tepid Toxins Your condition damage is reduced.
Barbaric Only two-handed weapons are effective.
Social Security Effectiveness is greatly reduced when allies are away.
…
And I just realized this is a lot more than 19. Now I’m not sure what is going on

So after watching the gw2twich video, a lot of the ideal builds might change because of the mistlock instabilities being introduced. At lvl 39 for example, the enemies explode after they die. That will make melee stacking harder to pull off.

I wouldn’t be surprised if another instability is increasing the armor/damage reduction of power dmg by a lot which would be an indirect buff to condition damage… or maybe even retaliation bunkers o_O.

There are supposed to be an instability that is unique to each lvl from 31-50. Only 1 more day of waiting!

Sigil of battle and inspiration are normally part of my kit. However, if my party has an elementalist, guardian, warrior and/or engineer that knows how to stack might, the signet/sigil aren’t worth it. It isn’t sustainable group support that other classes will bring. For a fractal run, I often hit 25 sigil stacks and manage to carry those to maw. For shorter dungeons, stacking sigils aren’t worth it.

The potions make you do 10% more base/reflect damage and take 10% less damage. That makes you tankier not squishier ^^. Let’s look at this a different way. Add 1.03^3 × 1.1^2 × 1.05(Trait+runes/potion+sigil of force: that seems rather reasonable to me) = 40% more base damage + 20% crit chance. How much damage did the phantasm lose in this scenario? Ruby orbs vs scholars is: -55 power, + 4% crit chance + 4% crit dmg. That’s rather negligible.

Where is that 63.5% increase for phantasms coming from? You factored fury into the base and phantasmal haste doesn’t affect the swordsman. It should only be 32%. Briefly looking at your math but with an easy 40% boost + fury in mind, it looks like the sword auto attack would be comparable to 3 swordsman vs ONE target. 3 phantasms are not always feasible either. Also reflects!

I love the mad king gloves. They have a perfect biker glove feel with them. If you want to see them in game, just whisper me. I’m on a US server.

So a lot of what I was talking about where super optimized conditions with some quick math before class started. I’ll try to spell more stuff out.

So 25 might stacks is 875 power/condi dmg. Compared to ~2000 power that most mesmers run with and some bonus bleed damage from sharper images, that can be about 40-50% increase just from might stacks. Mesmers also have a hard time with fury: 20% more chance to do about 160% bonus damage (crit dmg has a base of 50% bonus). Then add banners for more power/crit chance/crit dmg. All of this adds up to about 100% more damage. Also could factor in frost spirit/spotter/empower although those aren’t nearly as common.

With that in mind, these don’t require melee stacking, just stacking with your team. However, in practice I have rarely seen groups stack all those buffs at range. The buffs have 600 range, usually require blast finishers centered on the enemies and most people that play at range will spread out because stacking is “dangerous.”

Mantra: 1.04^3 (It could be 4 but usually you bring at least feedback) 1.03^3 for 3 illusions. Sigil of night, runes of scholar and sigil/potion of slaying are all 1.1 coefficients. All of these multipliers are multiplicative so…
1.04^3 × 1.03^3 × 1.1^4 = 1.8 multiplier. If you are doing 100% more damage and then having that further multiplied by 1.8, 1.8 × 2 = 3.6 or 260% bonus damage.

Reflects will be boosted by the 1.8 multiplier and also the fury so I estimated about 100% more. Phantasms will only be affected by raw stats like might but not the potions/sigils/fury (they already have it).

Personally, I have about half of those buffs in my bags. Potions for the common enemies for dungeons I usually run. I’ve also gotten a bit lazy after getting my second Bolt since I don’t feel like equipping any of my other swords. I also don’t bring the mantra trait since I tried it and hated using mantras. In practice, I’m probably at about 180% bonus damage in the groups I usually run with. I also run 0/20/0/25/25 since I often carry a few noob guildies and reflects help that a lot more than the ~20% more personal damage.

While these numbers may seem ridiculous, just look at a speed kill video of lupi for example. Under 20 seconds. Now compare that to your random pug. Is 300%-500% more damage really that far fetched? Keep in mind that ranged AA usually does 50-70% BASE damage of melee.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Where-and-When-to-Reflect/first#post2954490

This has a pretty good list of when to reflect anything. One thing that isn’t in those notes and that Anet will probably change soon is Mimic. Catching Mossman’s agony axes, or the crazy cat lightning balls will allow you to store an agony attack. Mossman’s axes are better as they bounce. Bosses that inflict agony attacks are immune to agony damage but the rest are subject to instant KO. You need to actually survive it and not get downed.

I usually tell my party to tag the enemy first as you can prevent them from getting champ bags. Favorites are the ice elemental mid point boss and the harpy mid point boss room. Dredge midpoint if you are good at staying alive. You can store the mimiced attack even when you don’t have echo/mimic on your bar. You will see a ball of energy on your left hand. If no good opportunity comes up then just look pretty as you stroll through to the jade maw knowing you never got downed once.

As cosley mentioned, your reflects are based off of your modifiers. 1.04^3 × 1.03^3 × 1.1 = 35% increase in your stabbing and reflect damage. The extra crit dmg and precision helps too. That math is only with a potion of slaying (10%). If you toss a sigil of night/slaying/runes… it gets up to 80% more stabbing/reflects. The 100% more damage from stacking in melee for group buffs also does not translate to 100% more phantasm damage. It would be closer to 70% more phantasm damage.

Ideal situations, your sword auto math will end up being buffed 260%. The phantasm damage by ~70%. Reflect damage will be uped by ~100%. In not ideal situations, your math would be much closer to reality but I would still favor steady sword auto attack to GS phantasm aoe as the sword auto is much more reliable and stacks in mele better.

Supposedly the warden reflects are based off of phantasm damage increases as well although I have never tested this myself. They should not be affected by the 80% I mentioned above for reflecting though. So feedback buffed like crazy is still better for fights like lupi.