Guild Wars 2

Continuing with the 20/20/0/0/30 and Fotm, Dredge Fractals:
I find this fractal to be the hardest, especially at higher levels. I hate dredge but but they are also my “favorite” in design for mobs. They have support (the gongs) they have ranged dps, and melee bruisers. It’s a really nice combo of mobs that reminds me of enemy groups in gw1 (they look just like your party with tank/dps/support).
I will focus on the gongs and 20 domination:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shattered_Concentration
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dredge_Disaggregator
“Gong is a channeled skill that grants Swiftness, Protection and Might”
Protection is a serious hindrance to your teams damage and the swiftness/might can make them extra painful. With focus 4/4 and sword4/4 you have nice aoe interrupts to stop that noise. Furthermore, shattered concentrations lets you shred through those boons faster than any other build out there, making sure your whole team isn’t doing 33% less damage all the time.
Reflections and also using focus4/4 to better LOS enemies is also good.

Alissah.9281:

fractals of the mists – harpy fractal
Having 10 or 20 inspiration aswell as a focus will be very usefull in this fractal, as most enemies you encounter use projectiles.
Cheers,
Alissah

Those are some awesome pointers, however, I would like to add some points for non inspiration. Specifically what a 20/20/0/0/30 or just 30 in illusions mesmer can pull off.

Namely, I want to talk about:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Masterful_Reflection
and these two for supporting it
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Invigoration
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Illusions

One argument I often read is that phantasms bring more support than shatter mesmers since inspiration gives more reflect up time. For Harpy fractals, I found that stacking in melee works the best for teams in general. Masterful reflection creates a bubble of reflection around you that can protect your team. I can be a bit tricky but if everyone is in melee on 1 platform, you can protect them all. The other trait/signet just let you spam it more often. Of course, p.warden and feedback are still good here.

Also looks amazing =)

keenlam.4753:

So Winds, I agree with you that in a perfect team setup, zerker build outshines.
But I’ve been in situations where we had to 3-man a dungeon (me and 1 necro and 1 guardian) and I helped the team got through it with my condition build.

…and when I get bored while waiting for my team for a fotm 18 or 28, I grab my zerker warrior or mesmer and solo the underwater fractal. Although, at least 1 or 2 teammates from my guild show up by the time I reach the boss. I could probably also pull that off with my zerker engineer and a few more of my alts. The idea that you 3 manned a dungeon is not a sign that your build was what carried your team. In fact I do this for most dungeons. AC exp, my ele clears the entire spider queen room regardless of who shows up in time from my guild. We only grab a pug if no one else wants to come for kholer/burrows. TA exp, I solo/duo the first boss. I rarely wait for a full team before I start clearing mobs.

There are cof braziers/dredge panels etc. that require warm bodies.
There are a few dps checks like burrows in ac and simon (at least the old version of simon) and the vet grawl sacrificers.
There is the rest… and the rest for the most part, can be soloed/ done without a full team.
So besides those first two points, any build is “viable” according to your definition of viable because any build can fill the extra 4 “meat bag” slots on a team. It’s sort of inherent to how the game is designed. I guess to the rest of us, viable is not spending 2-4 times as long in a dungeon than necessary. This doesn’t even require a full guard/mes/3warrior trinity. It doesn’t require full glass cannon. But again, all of my alts that are specced for power, easily stack 5-15 bleeds. That’s just 1 person. Then you got 3 more teammates who will be adding more. It is common occurrence for me to see max bleed stacks in a group with no condition specs. That means you will be competing with your team for dps. Power doesn’t compete with/negate your team.

Torment is a nice addition that helps a lot in these situations but I don’t think it’s enough. Those clone death traits? run them with a power build/knights armor and you will probably be doing the same amount of dmg or maybe more. For clone death, you should summon two phantasms then keep spamming a clone with the scepter? That way the second you summon a new clone, the old clone dies. (Minor thing: phantasms in gw1 where mesmer condition dmg and I sorta still consider them sustain DOTs )

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The MOST important thing to remember – play a build you find fun, if thats zerker thats fine, if its Condition thats fine as well.

I 100% agree with this.

The question was “Are condition mesmers viable for PvE?” – The Answer is YES. Pretty much that simple, Are they are strong as some other builds? of course not they arent build for POWER, they are built differently and played differently.

I have played enough of the dungeons and high level content as both a Necro and Mesmer condition build and in none of it have i thought kitten i should go change to a Zerker spec.

I have a problem with this. The question was if it’s viable in dungeons. It is not viable 100% of the time. Sometimes it work well… sometimes it’s kitten.

I have 1 of each proffession. I have condition specs and zeker specs and tank specs. My mesmer has ran all of these and zerker or power isn’t rendered useless depending on your group.

Kanto.1659:

Zerker grenadier, 8 bleeds? Wut? No, 20 bleeds. What we need to think of are bosses. Which, tentively, we could say is what matters most, and with bosses the -50% duration means we rarely (ever?) reach the bleed cap in a 5 man. That grenadier suddenly only manages 10 bleeds and a zerker mesmer only about 5 or less.

Are you talking about
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unshakable

Gains defiant when targeted by crowd control skills. Blind is 10% effective. Weakness and vulnerability last 50% less time.

My zerker grenadier is specced to sometimes have 100% condition duration (I’m slightly hybrid dmg and go rampagers in wvw) Can usually keep 20 stacks of vulerability on a boss and can spike it to 25 with grenade barrage. I’m pretty sure bleed stacks aren’t affected by unshakable. 3 bleeds that last 24 seconds every 5 seconds does lead to more than 8 bleeds. This of course doesn’t count for 30% chance of 6 second bleeds on crits and I don’t even bring shrapnel for 15% chance of 24 sec bleeds on all attacks. So yeah, the 8 stacks… I felt like low balling it since most zerker grenades don’t run 100% condition duration or shrapnel. Then of course there is the constant aoe poison and aoe burning.

This is the other reason I don’t think it’s worth it to go conditions on mesmer. Other classes just do it better.

If bleeds/all conditions lasted 50% on bosses…. how is thinking about bosses a good thing. That just makes condition builds even worst because power builds don’t do half dmg to bosses for no reason.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

…and what if your group doesnt have anyone that really applies conditions? as for Mesmer Condition builds, the only way of getting Bleeds i have are RNG or if you trait for it so not really an issue, we have Torment (only 2 other classes have iirc) Confusion stacks …

and what if your enemies don’t attack that fast.

Plus not all condition build ONLY have condition as the damage, Sure the damage wont be the highest but i know quite a few that go into Power tree as well. Plus most Condition Mesmers use Staff as a weapon and I-Mage just loves conditions, doesnt matter who applied them.

Those two “what ifs” are why I don’t think you should spec for conditions. As I have stated in my previous post, confusion can be potentially really nice in some situations but what if… those situations are rather rare. And saying what if ppl don’t run lots of bleeds is not a good argument for you. I listed some very common traits/builds/skills and only a guardian is a safe bet with not bringing bleeds.
Power based builds NEVER have those what ifs because power builds don’t cancel each other out. If fact, stacking vulnerability makes power builds synergize. That p’warlock… would be hitting even harder in a power build. How is this an argument in your favor?

Just as an example of how even if Condition build it doesnt make the class un-viable or anything, they still have plenty of options and abilities in a dungeon that can help. Only a Mesmer can bring Feedback for example so unless you are running with other Mesmers that use that skill, i dont quite see your point…
Plus, if you go full Zerker means nothing if you are dead. My build might be condition but it can still take some damage as well so sure might not do the same damage but in some situations more defensive traits/tree line options are better then full out attack.

It’s not that only a mesmer can bring feed back (and multiple classes have projectile reflects) it’s a matter of which mesmer would you prefer. A power mesmer with feed back or a condition mesmer with feed back?

As for zerker, just because you cant survive as full zerker doesn’t mean other people cant. If necessary, a mesmer with some cavalier/knights/pvt/zerker mix will take just as many hits as you while also not worrying about those what ifs.

Pyroatheist.9031:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Zerker mesmer with 2 phantasms (p.duelist, p.zerker, p.warden) can easily stack 8-10 bleeds. More with a clone/3rd phant.

This is actually the specific reason I almost never go 15 points into dueling in my PvE builds. By doing that, I am decreasing the potential damage of any condition build party members that I have, so I stay away from sharper images.

You are too kind =)

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

So because they dont work in ONE group means they wont work in any group? Sure if you are all running conditions then of course it wont be much use but how many dungeons have you seen that run any condition builds let alone a full group of them?
… Mesmer Condition build CAN work in Dungeons, but like unlike most builds it depends on what the rest of the group is.

Zerker mesmer with 2 phantasms (p.duelist, p.zerker, p.warden) can easily stack 8-10 bleeds. More with a clone/3rd phant.
Zerker grenadier tossing #2 (bleed grenade but also high power dmg) can easily stack 8 bleeds
D/D ele get 4-12 stacks.
At least guardians don’t bleed at all.
Warrior/Ranger/Necros auto attacking with common bleed on crit traits can easily get 2-5 (depends on the weapon speed)
I can go on…

I listed zerker but it could be any non condition build. Most common (not condition) builds have enough bonus bleeds that your damage will be getting overwritten. If you got a full condition build in your group, it gets much worst. It’s not that condition builds don’t work in one group. They are weakened in most groups and occasionally they fall flat on their face when it comes to dmg.

Mesmer have plenty of tools that can help in a dungeon no matter the way the damage is delt, Null field, Feedback and such can all be very useful. You can also be offering up combo fields for Chaos Armor as well as other boons.

Listing mesmer utility that functions independent of stats is not a argument for a condition build. A direct damage build can bring those just as easily while also doing consistent damage.

The point is that the OP asked for viable in dungeons.

Viable : Capable of working successfully; feasible: “the proposed investment was economically viable”.

Viable can be objectively determined. Fun is subjectively determined. When some states a valid counter argument for conditions (condition builds are ok solo but don’t play well in team settings) and you respond with a subjective argument, (but I find it fun) you aren’t adding anything to the discussion.

Disclaimer: I have not tried this myself.
Imbuded Diversion did get buffed recently. What if you swapped IP to ID? Since your GS 2 and 4 spawn illusions in melee, you can aoe daze enemies with F3. That could be useful in small groups.
Otherwise, I would just look at kylia’s builds.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Winds.3087:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Plus pure Power/zerker builds isnt the best of the best in WvW (which i do alot)

Initial question was about pve. WvW is completely different story with their own builds that work best.

I use the same build both in PvP and PvE, i play for FUN and i enjoy my build. I know i wont be the top damage if there was one, but i add to the group in conditions and support with boons so i dont feel that i am too weak or anything

Why do people always bring up the FUN argument?
Other people also play for FUN too. Part of what I find FUN is teaching newbies in my guild how to run dungeons/fotm and carrying a party is much easier with an optmized build.
The OP asked for an effective build in dungeons. Some people perceive optimal as effective. How FUN is doing crap dmg to burrows and other objects? Furthermore, condition builds can be anywhere from viable to crap depending on if allies are using condition builds. How FUN is it when you negate another party member’s damage? I personally don’t like rolling a dice to see if I will be doing negative DPS in a pug party.

With that in mind, I to am a zerker phanatic but I think most zerker proponents try to ignore conditions too much. Example, a zerker shatter mesmer will have 300 condition dmg. With 25 might stacks, (depends on the group/sigils/shatter combos/banner of strength) a zerker shatter mesmer can hit 1250 condition dmg or 312 confusion per tick. A F2 on CoE p2/3 Alpha for example can hit for 312*8*5=12,700 on 1 of his attacks (it’s technically 5 attacks at once) and then up to two more time since he can attack pretty fast. This of course doesn’t count for the 3,200 burst dmg F2 can still hit. Then your Mindwracks still stack 4 confusion as well. So even when running a zerker build, be mindful of how much your condition dmg does in relation to your burst dmg and try to time your shatters to also max your condition output.

Also, zerker and rampagers are the only glass cannon sets that max dmg. Since Mesmers tend to have an easy time of being a glass cannon and mesmer support is usually stat independent, I agree with Godmoney that rampagers is the closest you should go to a condition build

juno.1840:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

juno.1840:

Yeah but you must get hit at least once to get your 33% chance. Then you must get hit a second time to negate the damage. So this is not a good representation of the new state of chaos armor.

So what if you need to get hit at least once. If you are using chaos armor, its because you expect to get hit. Otherwise you should be dodging/distorting/blurring/blinking/invis…. not chaos armoring.

Even so, it’s not 100% reduction. You got hit twice, negated once. All damage being equal you got 50% (but all damage is not equal so you may have negated 99% or 1% total over the two hits).

In addition, the chaos armor boon application is capped. So that in itself is a nerf. Your party is now capped at five boon applications MAX. That in itself is a nerf — and not made up for by the new possibility of a blind.

You can sugar coat it all you want — the change hurts.

Your talking about the party? I used to NEVER give your party protection or blind your enemies.

Old staff 4: You get hit twice with protection so you take an average of 66%.
Old chaos armor (not staff 4) everyone takes 100% dmg every single hit.

With the new one, you have a 33% chance to proc protection and a 33% chance to proc blind.
So 3/9 the time, you take 100% then 0% dmg or an average of 50%.
If protection procs when blind doesn’t (2/9 the time) you take 100% then 66% or an average of 83%.
If neither proc, you take 100% (4/9 the time)

So on average the new chaos armor is (3/9) x 0.5 (2/9) x 0.83+(4/9) x 1 = 0.167 + 0.184 + 0.44= 79.5% reduction for ALL chaos armors.

Again, nerf to staff 4, buff to staff #5 then 2. Buff to leaps/blasts in ethereal fields.

Edit: Lets just compare the two chaos armors you get from staff.
Old staff: Average of 66 &100 = 83%
New staff: 79.5%

Relshdan.6854:

you now have 0 seconds of prot if no one hits you during its duration (so no effect at all)
you now have a 33% chance to get 3 seconds of prot if you get hit 3 times during CA duration (will not happen very often).

useless skill at current cooldown.

If you don’t get hit, you didn’t need chaos armor to begin with. You were just spamming a skill and wasting a cd.

Edit: In case you guys missed it again, the blind didn’t work before. Prot is also still there.
Edit 2: Nerf to staff 4 but buff to staff # 5 then #2

The 33% chance of 100% negation is a 33% chance of blind. However, this 33% chance of blind is for all enemies attacking you on individual 1 second cds. As I said before, this is a nerf to staff 4 but an overall buff for mesmers and party support.

“Mesmer:
Chaos Armor: This skill no longer automatically applies protection when activated. This buff now provides an equal chance to trigger regeneration, swiftness, or protection on hit with a 1-second internal recharge. The random condition applied now has a 1-second internal recharge per target. These changes apply to the Chaos Armor provided through combo finishers as well.”

juno.1840:

Yeah but you must get hit at least once to get your 33% chance. Then you must get hit a second time to negate the damage. So this is not a good representation of the new state of chaos armor.

So what if you need to get hit at least once. If you are using chaos armor, its because you expect to get hit. Otherwise you should be dodging/distorting/blurring/blinking/invis…. not chaos armoring.

Embolism.8106:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

How can the trait work if blind never happened.

If you take Blinding Befuddlement back then you would see that even though the Blind does not appear the Confusion does. Plus you get about double the amount of Confusion than you would without the trait.

Really, doesn’t anyone test things themselves these days?

As evidence with a recent thread of mine, I test things like crazy. However I never ran condition builds and I cant test EVERYTHING, so I rely on others to also test. I could honestly care less about the bonus confusion working or not and it was a minor thing I added. However, I watched his video and the enemy never missed an attack so I feel confident in agreeing with him that the blind itself never procced. Since peopling are moaning so much about the doomsday of mesmers and the staff, my focus is on the blind now supposedly working.

So lets look at what it should be doing now and what it used to do.

Old: 100% chance of 33% reduction of dmg. Edit: Protection
Now: 33% chance of a 100% reduction of dmg. Edit: BLIND (Then more on protection below)

At first appearance, these are mathematically similar until you think about it more. This can also negate important attacks like cloak and dagger and screw up a theif combo. THEN ALL CHAOS ARMORS now also have a 33% chance of 33% less dmg as well.
Edit: Also can be 66% chance of 33% less dmg if you have the chaos 15.

This seems like a bug fix and major buff to our defense while also being a buff to our party support since we can now give our group a chance at protection and blind.

Embolism.8106:

Blinding Befuddlement always worked with Chaos Armour, that’s one of the reasons the trait got nerfed into the ground.

They should remove Swiftness from the random procs so it is just between Protection and Regeneration, like how Chaos Armour used to be before they made Protection an on-cast effect.

How can the trait work if blind never happened.

Because it’s a bug fix. It used to not do what it claimed to do. For pvp, I would prefer to blind my attackers 1/3 the time than 0% chance of blind that it used to have. Then protection also now happens 1/3 the time instead of never for all other chaos armors.
My post from a different thread:

The bug. I agree that this is a nerf to staff 4 BUT it is a buff to every other chaos armor if it actually works. Blind also used to NEVER work. Now it should work for ALL chaos armors. This means that the confuse on blind trait now works. This is also amazing defense for WvW. Being able to blind multiple foes now is BETTER IN EVERY WAY. Its like multiple aegis’s that stack.

The bug. I agree that this is a nerf to staff 4 BUT it is a buff to every other chaos armor if it actually works. Blind also used to NEVER work. Now it should work for ALL chaos armors. This means that the confuse on blind trait now works. This is also amazing defense for WvW. Being able to blind multiple foes now is BETTER IN EVERY WAY. Its like multiple aegis’s that stack.

jimmyimo.2089:

Merryweather.3592:

Can anyone explain the reason for this nerf to me? It appears to be completely random und unnecessary. Well, gotta make the the whiners happy for a couple of minutes.

If you pop a Chaos Storm in a 5v5 and you Cluster Bomb it, you give every one Chaos Armor; that will stack kitten tonnes of conditions, maybe the protection on-top of that was a bit too strong. At the other hand, ANet’s view on buffs and nerfs haven’t made any sense since Gw1 release.

I’m pretty sure that type of chaos armor never gave protection. It does now according to the patch notes.

I remember someone on the forum saying that blind used to NEVER work on chaos armor. Also, I thought protection was only from the staff 4 and NEVER from leaps/blasts in chaos. I didn’t use them enough to know if this was the case, but if blind/prot now works on all chaos armors, this might be a buff. It is true that chaos armor on staff is now a really weak skill though.

After looking at my quote I just realized a problem… I used a comparison of force vs accuracy on my first test. I’m too tired to do more testing now though.

So here is the build I started testing with:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQFg6EN1LqpQPSYmBAAAaGAAAlUAgcD-TgAg1CpIoRpkTJDNyusdB
So I wanted to test if fury, phantasm fury and the sigil of accuracy stacked. 2 staff clones and boon duration for permanent fury on me. Then I would let a p.duelist volley a golem and count the bleed stacks.
This 45% bonus +55% crit chance should equal 100% if they did stack. After a few “quick” (10 volleys or less) tests I quickly realized they did not all stack. Furthermore, despite reading in several places that mesmer fury affects phantasms, I did not see this. However, the test groups were too small to figure out the sigil of accuracy so I refined my methods. From here on out, I used this equation in excel:
=average(A3:A76)/8*100
So the average bleeds of 74 volleys / 8 shots x 100% or 592 shots per each parameter.
So continuing with the base 55% crit chance:

With no sword and a pistol offhand with no sigil and no p.fury : 55.23%
With no sword and a pistol offhand with S.Accuracy and no p.fury : 56.93%
With no sword and a pistol offhand with no sigil WITH p.fury : 78.04%
With no sword and a pistol offhand with S.Accuracy WITH p.fury : 71.79%

So 55.23 and 56.93 are close enough that it looks like my initial testing (30 volleys) were inaccurate.
However, losing a 6.25% crit chance when you use a boosting sigil was a red flag for me. Since I had been experiencing that bug I previously described, I had made sure to only use a offhand pistol and check that my crit chance read as 60% or 55% and no sigil of force. So it was not that bug.
My initial testing had a sigil of accuracy in the sword instead of pistol. Furthermore, I visit other areas like the engineer section and I know that traits can mess things up (turrents are big on this).
So I did some more tests:

With a sword(Empty) and a pistol OH (Empty) and no p.fury : 55.74%
With a sword(Accuracy) and a pistol OH (Empty) and no p.fury : 53.38%
With a sword(Accuracy) and a pistol OH (Empty) and no Dueslist Discipline : 51.18%

I haven’t plugged these into any programs yet but a trend I noticed was that when I used the sigil, crit chance went down and it looked like a significant difference (especially after 600 shots per test) which seemed odd. It also was not what I saw two days ago so out of stubborn hope/completionism I repeated my very first test. No armor/traits at all. Just a 4 or 9% crit chance. Look at crits on the duelist instead of counting bleeds since those don’t happen.

4% base = 5.57%
9% w/ Sigil (sword) = 4.79%
9% w/ Sigil (pistol) = 4.56%

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I recorded 264 attacks (33*8 per pistol volley) for each weapon combo.
The crit chance was about 3.4% and 7.58% for the force vs accuracy. Since you have a 4% inherent crit chance, it looks like a sigil of accuracy does work with phantasms now.

So very different results than the first test. Raw data if anyone else wants to look at it:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AohSpGgKCVZ7dGQ1d0Jrd0RCazFLUDExWVg2bDg4SWc&usp=sharing

The sigil decreasing accuracy and the conflict between my first and second test N of 264 vs 592 has me conflicted about saying this but it does look my original conclusion was wrong. Or given that the sigils seem a bit buggy.. IDK

From what I’ve read about other peoples experince (I have not tried myself) halting strike, like power spike of gw1, only procs if you actually interrupt an attack. Also, apparently auto attacks don’t count? I’m less certain about the last part. I was not capable of critting in the past and I don’t know if this has changed.

For PvE and F3, you can actually “interrupt” a boss even if they have defiant stacks. This would theoretically mean you can proc it 4 times on a boss with F3 even though you didn’t actually stop the attack. If they have 1 or no defiant stacks though, this will only proc once or twice but actually stop some bosses.
In PvP, try to stagger your clones so that they don’t hit within 1 second of each other.

I agree with Kaunt on everything except for #6. I don’t have access to gw2 right now but I do plan on doing a lot of testing when I get back home as I noticed that sigil of accuracy now affects phantasms. I plan on testing the fury on mesmer, fury on phantasms and sigil of accuracy and phantasms can get a bonus 45% crit chance from those 3. I’ll have more concrete numbers in 7 hours or so.

kaunt.8275:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…Since phantasms inherit our crit chance, I was wondering if they now inherit the sigil bonus….

According to the wiki this is not true. They inherit our precision, not our crit chance (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion).
Thus Sigil of Accuracy does nothing for our illusions

Have you tested this yesterday? My results indicate it does now affect phantasms. The wiki is a good reference but is often wrong and/or outdated.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil
Even the sigil page has adjustments on what the correct time for sigil cds are. Like most oddities noted on the wiki, these are player tested.

I could probably spend another 30 minutes when I get home so that I have about 1000 of each phantasm attacks instead of 264 but if the trend hold up, the number don’t lie.

+100% duration bonus is the max. A few traits let you cheat that though.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_duration

I am not super familiar with mesmer condition builds but a few thoughts:

Koi cakes are super cheap right now and amazing for condition builds: 40% condition duration for 50 copper.

Warlock with not be hitting hard in this build. You have neither phantasm traits nor crit dmg/power/crit chance. Staff clones would be better than warlock for this build.

I always thought 15 in dueling was pretty mandatory for mesmer condition builds. I briefly tried debilitating disappation with a scepter in wvw but I found clones don’t die often enough near the target and the bleed doesn’t proc often enough so you really need those illusion crit bleeds to capitalize on the one type of damage your build has.

I’ve always wanted to try the reaper of grenth for a mesmer condition build but I have a sylvari mesmer. Pulsing poison and chill in an aoe around you seems much better than a pulsing poison/weakness in 1 spot. This also synergizes with torch and scepter and clone deaths sort of being pseudo melee weapons. It would also work with sigil of geomancy for bleed spikes.

LOL woops, I have zero experience what that trait, sorry

I actually got a bit curious about the order of boon removal so I grabbed a friendly guard to sit there and take hits for a bit. So each shatter removes the boon first then does dmg. I think the numbers are slightly variable do to might in shatter changing the numbers a bit.

For example, if the guardian only has protection or no boons, my MW did 84/82/84.

If the guardian used save yourselves and had all the boons, MW with a steady weapon only hit for 55/56/56 since too many boons were “protecting” protection.

If the guardian had only 4 boons (hold the line/stand your ground) the MW numbers were 56/82/84. I think this means the first shatter got 1 boon then did reduced dmg. The next shatter got rid of the protection so the last two shatters hit for max dmg. It was also possible to hit 84/82/84 depending on which shout the guardian used first.

For F1, F2, and those with IP, it removes a boon for each shatter that hits an enemy. So 3 clones+IP +F1 or F2 removes 4 boons in an aoe of up to 5 targets. This is great vs dredge with gongs.

F3, I believe it only removes a boon from the target but I have not tested this extensively. F3 can be made aoe but then you don’t have IP. So up to 4 enemies once or 4 times vs 1 enemy or some combo of that depending on how your illusions are spread out. Great for setting up a shatter spike on a boon heavy target if you 20/20/0/0/30. Stack of vulnerability, remove up to 4 boons and daze them with a prep for F1.

F4 is where it gets tricky. With IP and zero clones, your distortion never hits anyone so it doesnt remove a boon. However, your clones still have a target and it will remove a boon from the clones target despite not doing any damage.
Example: 1 clone with or without IP vs a target with 2 boons. F4 will only remove 1 boon.

Hope that helps

The first time I tested this was before May. Never realized it changed until now but all that is the past. What matters is if it does now…
My testing set up: have 4 swords, 2 with accuracy, 2 force but in opposite hands. Swap between the set and mess with equipping them. As long as you have 1 of each sigil on a swap, you should always have 9% crit chance. This does not happen for me. When I have the 4% crit chance, I do 69 dmg on my first swing. When I have 9% crit chance, I do 66 dmg. I’ll look at how the Guru guy tests this but I think there is either something buggy, or they don’t stack.

Edit: It seems that if I only have 1 swap to test with, I will hit for 69 with a 9% crit. This only works when you are dealing with 1 weapon set. The second I equip the swap set is where it gets weird. If I equip accuracy then force in the swap set, it goes back down to 4%.

Edit2: After more testing, this seems to be a bug with equipping items in very specific orders. Like I’m using 4 swords. Both main hand swords are accuracy, both offhands are force. Still only 4% crit.
Once you get bumped down to this 4% mark, a script seems to over ride how it “should” work. In fact, once you unequip the 2nd set and only have a force/accuracy set up, the crit chance is still 4%. Equiping a 1 or 2 handed accuracy weapon and swapping sets doesn’t correct this.
Edit3: 1 sword of accuracy and nothing else. Still 4% crit chance. I swear I’m not making this up. Need to figure out how to post screen shots.

This might not be a problem for most builds, but since I swap/shift weapons around a lot depending on each fight, this is an annoying bug.

Now that Accuracy actually shows up in the panel, it is even easier to prove that they don’t stack. Don’t take my word for it though. Go to the mists. Equip a steady sword of accuracy. Then equip a steady sword of force. Look at the dmg a single auto attack does to a light golem and look at your crit chance. It will be 4%. Now equip those same swords but in opposite order. First force, then accuracy. Your crit chance will now be 9% BUT your damage will be lower. I tested this a long time ago and I’m pretty sure it never stacked. I only tested this again since the accuracy is no longer a stealth buff.

Shinigami Curse.5940:

Sigils
Stacking Precision or Power, Force for 5% Dmg, Accuracy for 5% Crit Chance. Which to choose? Well, when i was running a shatter build, i liked having a sigil of Energy for the added dodge clone production, but for Phantasm, I chose the sigils of Force and Accuracy for my main and offhand and Accuracy for my two handed weapons. Running Zerker I don’t Down too often, but enough that stacking sigils don’t get the chance to add up. That means they’re out, especially when you can get the 5% bonus right up front all the time. This can be up to you, but again, it will change your optimization. For my calculations I ran with the added 5% of each stat.

I was testing this a few hours ago and posted in another thread.
“Sigil of Force does not work with phantasms.”
“Do sigil of accuracy and force now stack? I tested this while ago and they did not stack. After testing today, they still don’t stack.”

I would also not trust that websites math.
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.a4.0.0.0|0.0|0.0.0.0.0|e

Look at the traits and crit chance. That alone should convince you that the math is unreliable.

So recently I noticed that sigil of accuracy now displays in the hero panel. A few patches ago it used to be a hidden 5% crit chance buff. Since phantasms inherit our crit chance, I was wondering if they now inherit the sigil bonus.

2nd question: Do sigil of accuracy and force now stack? I tested this while ago and they did not stack. After testing today, they still don’t stack. They do seem to stack but it can be buggy

Back to the first question. I used 2 sets of weapons. A steady sword of force with a steady pistol and a steady sword of accuracy with a steady pistol. Side note: even with steady weapons, phantasms are not “steady.”

I recorded 264 attacks (33*8 per pistol volley) for each weapon combo.
The crit chance was about 3.4% and 7.58% for the force vs accuracy. Since you have a 4% inherent crit chance, it looks like a sigil of accuracy does work with phantasms now.

So comparing the volleys that had no crits proc, I looked at the average damage. 1216.64 (Force with 25 volleys) and 1233.4 (Accuracy with 16 volleys). Sigil of Force does not work with phantasms. Sigils like air also work for attacks/shatters but not clones/phantasms. So Accuracy seems like a clear choice for a mesmer. Perception and Bloodlust are good choices but once you have a full stack, what do you guys use? Especially for phantasms builds? From most phantasms builds that I’ve seen in action, proc on crit sigils don’t look like a good idea but I see those sigils in the builds.
Edit: Conflciting results seem to indicate that sigil of accuracy does not work for phants =/

Random fact about scepter: You can “charge it up” if it doesn’t have a target. Double tap auto attack then select a target then auto again for an “instant” clone.

Perspective: Mostly PvE/some WvW Zerker 20/20/0/0/30 “Full melee” shatter mesmer. Since sword is a true melee weapon that cleaves, it is the obvious choice when there are two or more enemies. Normally, I run sword/sword/focus but for some bosses/roaming fights I would like to make an argument for why scepter is a decent swap to use. Blurred Frenzy now has a 9.5 sec cd when traited. Leap/swap is about 7 seconds. Since weapon swap is a 9 second cd, you can swap to a new weapon right after blurred frenzy then swap back to the sword in time for the next blurred frenzy. So for those 9.5 seconds that blurred frenzy is on cd, we need to compare sword auto attack & leap to a fresh new weapon.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Esplen.3940:

Scepter hits just as hard (and as fast as) Sword autos

This is only true on paper. In reality, since the next chain will not start until the bolt reaches the target, the scepter is far slower than the sword chain. At melee range, the scepter is the same speed as it shows on paper, and it gets slower and slower the farther away from your target you are.

Since IP shatters have a range of 240, I try to stay in melee as much as possible and usually manage about 90-95% of all PvE/Dungeons. So this on paper vs practice is the same in a lot of fights for me. Furthermore, for ~4 of those 9 seconds, I can use scepter 2/3 at range. The offhand doesn’t count since you can swap just off hand weapons. So, for the other 5 seconds of that 9 second weapon swap cd, I can use the scepter auto as a melee weapon that summons more clones to blow up.

So now that I have explained a scenario where the scepter is a potentially viable “melee” weapon, I’d like to compare it to the other ranged weapons or even the sword auto attack with numbers from steady weapons in the mists:
The two “melee” weapons:
Sword 1: 171/171/309 (No boons on golems or most pve enemies, 2 vulerability)
Sword 3: … hold them down + clone

Scepter 1: 136/136/204 (Plus clone F1=313 F2=89+ confusion, F3=5 or 8 vulerability )
Scepter 2: 218 in 0.5 seconds for 436 DPS + clone + Torment 2,494 (maybe x2)
Scepter 3: 136 × 5/3 = 227 DPS + 5 confusion (505 confusion: just time it well)

The staff IFF you bring elasticity instead of precise or compouding:
Staff 1: 90 × 2 + boons/random condition.
Staff 2-5: 3/5 are about power but 35 second cd in my build are =( Does have great defense and I will bring for some fights but I’m talking about PvE IP shatter.

GS 1: If in IP range, 159 for the 3 hits. 198 at 600 range. I try to never go further than this unless its those first two jade maw tentacles and a few bosses.
GS 2: 208, 214, (220 with elasticily) with some might/vul. So about 422 or 642 DPS. Can be used twice on swap. +2 clones.
GS3: 252 but requires a bit of aiming.

Keep in mind, the condition dmg is based on 30 illusions. Might stacks can get these higher. So for those 9.5 seconds of blurred frenzy cd, the scepter actually has better damage and defense than just sword auto attack and you can still be at around 240-600 range with that “melee” burst weapon. I left phantasms out of the math as they can be very situation dependent, especially for a shatter mes.

So now, lets compare the 3 ranged weapons when used with ideal IP shatters in mind. Elasticity helps the GS and Staff a lot but I don’t usually like taking the trait as it doesn’t benefit my sword and I lose precise or compounding. However, If I swap traits for a specific fight, the staff/scepter auto attacks have similar damage. However, while both can have decent defense, the scepter has higher spike single target damage and faster clone generation with auto and counter. For burst dmg, the gs 2 and scepter 2 are very close. This depends on how much armor a target has.

Even though I’m full zerker, I still think the conditions need to be kept in mind since scepter 2/3 can easily hit 3k condition dmg and maybe 6-10k. for faster attacking/moving targets.

TLDR: Against single targets, when blurred frenzy is on cd, it is better to swap to a scepter if you want to keep meleeing a boss.

If you reflect the scepter auto attack, you can go over the 3 clone limit. I know this works for other classes. Idk if the would count for mesmer illusions or not or if they fixed this.

redux.1502:

Thanks guys! I’m debating between Engi or Warrior. Warrior = most mobility, Engi = most difficult/unique. Anyone have experience with both classes?

Those are my two runner up for favorite classes. The warrior is rather simple and fun to play. Having a 5 second cd on weapon swap is also great and the leaping around does feel rather visceral. The engineer, if quadruple kit has basically a 1 second cooldown on 5 weapon sets although medkit isn’t much of a weapon. I play both of them like my mesmer: glass cannon with a lot of active defense. Those lower cooldowns on weapon swaps I think are why I enjoy them so much. Ele is a close 4th in that sense but feels off.

A glass cannon warrior has 2 dodges, gs3 and maybe an offhand shield. They normally don’t have vigor. So even though it can sometimes feel brain dead for open world pve, my warrior has made me better at dodging in dungeons/pvp. The big numbers are also nice. 12k in a big aoe with the longbow then gs3 can wreck 3 glass cannon thieves in 3 shots.

I’m convinced that my grenade engineer does as much dmg if not more than my glass cannon warrior and that can happen at 1500 range. The perceived randomness of 5 weapon swaps on a rare/misunderstood class can really throw off enemies in wvw and is reminiscent of the confusion caused by a mesmer. Engineers are also IMO the true masters of conditions with sorta easy access to everything in an aoe except fear and now torment. Also, perma swiftness/vigor in combat FTW.

Try them both and I think you will like both depending on the mood you’re in.

The bigger question is what set of ascended gear should you get? These are harder to come by so ideally they fit in with most builds that you use. For most of my characters I get berserker ascended trinkets but I really like the celestial (all stat) items on my engineer since I feel that my engineer is much more versatile and is capable of utilizing each of the stats. I’m also otherwise a glass cannon so the defense helps.

I primarily toss grenades and spec 30/30/0/10/0. The last 10 points in fire arms may change as I test the new patch. You can bring rampagers/rabid/zerker armor/weapons with this build and each of them does well.

Try hitting 100% condition duration if you can since it helps for power or condition or hybrid builds. Koi cakes are super cheap right now; 40copper each and give you 40% condition duration. 30% from explosives, 10% from a giver’s pistol and 20% from runes is 100% duration for all of your conditions. This benefits any grenade build I choose since 25 stacks of vulnerability in an aoe along with poison and freeze is great for any group/build. Since your grenade 2 is both a high zerker & condition ability, your target will start to easily build up 10 stacks of bleeds even if you are full zerker. Then one lucky SOB is on fire from 8 out of 10 seconds. If your group/you stack might with runes/sigils/blast finishers in fire fields, your build will also benefit from the 800 boost to both power & condition dmg that 25 might gives.

With medkit, healing turret, elixir gun, or supply crate that bonus healing power helps out your team a bit. Swiftness on crits and vigor on swiftness helps doubles your dodge rate for more active defense. Toolkit and an offhand shield adds even more to that active defense.

So there is no reason not to mix and match or eventually get a few sets of armor. In that sense mix and matching AC/TA rabid/rampagers or CoF/CoE/Arah Zerker. If you check the temple karma armors, you will also find some great starter armor/trinkets for 42k karma a piece.

Fixed just as I got my gear to really start testing it =/
I was hoping this was a ninja buff to make scepter better but I guess it’s just a bug.

I haven’t tested this myself but I’ve heard other people say that the scepter spawns 2 clones instead of one. So, if you have 2 phantasms out, 1 clone and then you keep auto attacking/mirror images, and clones don’t override phantasms, would this be a double clone suicide each time you summon 2 more clones?

So givers scepter of doom and pistol/torch off-hands. Rabid gear. 10/30/10/0/0 with 20 points to spare. Summon two “condition” phantasms while you start auto attacking to spam conditions. Doesn’t matter if you kill them by replacing them or the enemies kill your “buffed” weaker clones. 2 stacks of confusion, 10 seconds of cripple and random bleed/vul/buffed weakness in an aoe around your target. Pistol phantasm is tossing bonus bleeds/combo field finishers at them. (Did they fix the 100% chance?) Weapon swap to poison.

The bonus 20 traits could go into inspiration for the scepter trait. The new torment on scepter 2 would be a bonus + clone suicide. Probably wont use scepter 3 since it slows down clone suicide.

Bonus 20 into chaos for some conditions on interrupts and the 30 in dueling for quickened scepter auto attacks for a hybrid suicide/interrupt build.

20 illusions for more confusion/condition dmg or 20 more in domination for more condition duration/bonus power & dmg to your duelist.

Thoughts?

The scepter is the opposite of the gs laser; faster attack speed at melee range. I would occasionally go sword/scepter/sword for a few fights like mossman since that gave me 3 offensive defense skills that all can crit for around 5-7k.

If the leaked patch notes are true, scepter 2 just got a huge nerf (75% loss of power damage). However, it will be more of a condition weapon. I would wait and see how this patch goes out before deciding what kind of build to use with the scepter.

shimmerless.4560:

Zumi.6384:

The TC nerf really annoys me. It was literally made as a direct result of high end pvp play. It will still be very useful as a weapon, but it will be exponentially harder to catch people in WvW now with it.

Don’t engies have a pull similar to TC in their Toolbelt? As far as I understand it the reason for the nerf is you couldn’t see the pull coming, and it seems the engie one works the same way.

It works the exact same way, there’s no telegraph and it has a 30% longer range to boot. Only diff is that it’s single target.

Are you talking about magnet?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magnet
You can def see this coming. There are sorta clear “magnet” lines between the engineer and it’s target, it takes 1.25 seconds to cast with a pretty obvious animation and it only can happen after they swap to the tool kit since its not a tool belt skill.

I really think everyone needs to stop complaining and wait. The two recent patch notes have not been official and also contradict each other. Also this new patch note doesn’t mention any changes to weapons when the previous did. What if decoy received a base 20% cooldown?

AndrewSX.3794:

btw, this means that 2 skill out of 5 weapon skills have a 20% higher CD for all the builds with less than 25 in illusion.

Diversity!

(how am i supposed to try out new grandmasters if i have to drop 25 pts in illusion ,instead of 5 + 20 in dueling for enough clones.)

More like 2/4 or 3/4 for sword/sword. I wouldn’t count auto attack for cooldown reduction. Then Mirror Images, Decoy, phantasm utilties… so easily 5/9 abilities on my bar. At least I’m roll as a shatter mesmer but this does seem way too heavy handed.

This was not mentioned in the previous leaked notes and nothing indicates that these are official. ALSO, we didn’t get any changes in Domination and we were promised at least one change in every line. This preview doesn’t mention the new condition either. So, I think we just need to be patient and pray to lyssa.

Carighan.6758:

You’re talking balance, I’m talking design. The trait-setup of Mesmers makes no sense. It’s not cohesive, it’s not counter-balancing, in fact it doesn’t even show a theme to it.
.

I misunderstood this. I thought you ment the Mesmers don’t have any of it. You only want Mesmers to have 1 of these? I disagree. If we only had synergy we would have something like WoW Paladin traits. “Do you want to be tank or dps or heals? Pick the correct 1 trait line out of 3”.

If we only have counter-balancing, then no build could specialize the way we can now and everyone would basically be running around with celestial/divninity traits.

Having a mix of all of these is what makes our builds diverse and interesting. Other classes need more of this. The lack of an entire theme is due to Mesmers being a specialist class. We have like 5 different themes in our traits and then multiple ways to pull them off.

If elementalist fire is red and guardian burning is blue, would dhuumfire be green? It’s only called burning since gw2 no longer has hexes. Think of it as a powerful degen hex from gw1 that just happens to use burning from a technical aspect rather than actual burning with fire magic.

I think mesmers in general have the best designed trait lines. I think this is why people think we are OP. So many choices/builds that after fighting a few different mesmers with the same weapons, you think they are all running 30/30/30/30/30.

Carighan.6758:

Given the way each trait line is set up I can think of three ways you can sort traits for any class in GW2 – more depend on the specific class-mechanic:

• Full synergistic. The line giving +Malice gives the weapon traits for the damaging condition based weapons, for a simple example. Such traits are not found outside of this line.
• Supportive. The line giving +Expertise gives the weapon traits for the damaging condition weapons. This is not as good as it being the +Malice line, but it still fits in well, and while some traits in this line will deal with binary conditions instead of damaging ones, all in all it’ll fit in.
• Counterbalancing. The line giving +Precision and +Prowess gives the weapon traits for the damaging condition weapons. Here, the presence of such a trait serves to make a condition-based player interesting in a line giving stats otherwise of dubious use to him or her.

Neither of these concepts is used for the Mesmer. I know why our current trait setup is the way it is, it’s a result of how things shifted around in beta. But it’s still annoying.

Are we playing the same class? Dueling: Sword & pistrol traits with crit % /dmg is full synergy. Vigor on crits, clones on dodges and decoy at 25% adds deception/defense to a line that is about “duels.” The illusion bleed on crits is synergy with the crit chance but also counter balancing since this is very tempting to take for a condition build that otherwise wouldn’t benefit from crit chance/dmg. The confusion on clone death is less temping to but still more counter balancing.

Domination is about damage/control and how they interplay. Power and increased vulnerability duration for a power build. The traits directly increase base power of our abilities (phantasms/mindwrack) or have some function with interrupts (halting strike 500% more) or both: vulnerability on interrupts for up to 25% more power damage to a target while that vulnerability lasts longer. More mantra of pain and distraction with 3 charges also has synergy with this line of power/interrupts. Finally 5% more dmg to inactive foes is even more synergy with interrupts and power. The supportive is that condition builds also want condition duration and the torch, which is supposed to be a condition weapon, has a trait in this line.

I could continue… When you say neither of these concepts are used for the mesmer, I think you mean all of them. Some of the traits I mentioned may not be worth taking, but when you talk about flavor/synergy in each trait line, mesmers definitely have it.

Arale.4207:

We must be playing a different class, because I only see a few nerfs. ITV, Sirens Call, and Sword 1 being the ones I can see. Everything else is a buff/bug fix, which is really nice.

“Mind Spike: Reduced base damage by 20%. This skill does an additional 50% damage to targets with no boons.”
Is that really a nerf? 0.8 × 1.5 is a 20% buff to PvE. With shattered concentration, null field and mind spike itself removing a condition, this is a change that we can actively deal with but IDk about nerf. I wonder if it calculates “boon hate” based off of mind spike removing the conditon first or after it hits.

TooBz.3065:

Godmoney.2048:

In a recent SOTG they mentioned this nerf.

Bascially good teams would do this.

AOE stealth, Temporal curtain from stealth (since there was no internal cd the curtain can be trigger without chance to dodge.) MOA the guardian on enemy team, focus guardian………mop up the rest of the team.

The nerf is to address that tactic specifically. Giveing the 1 second internal will give the other players 1 second to see the curtain and dodge a pull to knockdown.

Not agreeing or disagreeing but that’s the reason for the nerf.

Well, as long as it’s good for PvP I guess that’s all that matters.

It’s terrible for WvW. You can’t use it to pull back fleeing targets, they will be out of range before you can catch them. It was already difficult, now it’s impossible.

Now that I think about it, wasn’t this also the SoTG when Colin mentioned that PvP/WvW/PvE splits were going to become more common?
When I first looked at the leaked notes, they seemed too detailed and overall balanced to be fake. However, there aren’t any split skills. Since the patch isn’t here yet, they would be subject to change and of course not all changes make it into the notes but it does seem odd that no splits are in.

Mere Image.8376:

Also, the necromancers are talking about how Torment condition will be the Mesmer bane. They are hoping it affects teleports and the damage is received based on the “distance traveled.” Which means using “Phase Retreat” could actually do more harm than good to you in some cases. Apparently this will be a way to lock-down mobility for classes like us and the thief…

I highly doubt this will happen.
“Enemies under Torment will take damage periodically; as they move, they’ll take even more damage.” They don’t mention distance traveled and the description states the damage will be periodically. This sounds like most conditions that tick once every second. Whenever that tick happens, it will probably check to see if you are moving. If you are, you take the higher damage. If anything, mesmers might be better at countering this condition since we can “move” without moving. Will just have to wait and see tough.

Seras.5702:

Remember IW-mesmers in GW? Now we get swords without having to be gimmicky.

Warrior sword interrupts/flourish and frustration was another gimmicky melee mesmer I did for duels. I’m so glad we can use a sword now =)

Auto attacks were also a lot less powerful back then so skills like http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Frustration were nice. It was basically halting strike but actually good. It could maybe be a new phantasm. Every time you interrupt a target the phantasm(s) do bonus spike damage. This would be different than the usual cooldown and auto attack of the current phantasms.

Without energy (mana) management in gw2, a lot of the energy denial spells would not be possible to bring back from gw1. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Aneurysm
Would have a team of 8 mesmers (7 heros/npcs) empty mobs energy then blow up by giving them back too much power =). No need for tanks since 6 chaos storms/E-surges and 2x http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Psychic_Instability then aneurysms ment no enemies ever got back up/had energy to do anything. This was despite the fact that enemy mobs “cheated” with super high energy regen.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Arcane_Larceny and similar skills were fun but underpowered. You would steal a skill but probably not have the right attributes to make it worth it. With the current incarnation of skills and power, this would actually be a lot of fun in gw2. Would maybe have to be only the enemies utilities though.

Last thing I miss is http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Clumsiness and similar skills. It would cause the enemy’s next attack to fail and they would hurt themselves. Different to confusion (would have been called Visions of Regret, backfire or empathy back then). It was only 1 attack. So basically, if we got a trait that caused damage when an enemy removed blind from themselves by attacking.

Overall, I’m happy with the new mesmer. It does feel weaker in the control deparment but I think it was necessary for balance.

Edit: If anyone actually looks at the links, keep in mind that max health back then was around 600 not 30k ish.