Guild Wars 2

This thread is messed up.

1. Axe1 >= Hundred Blades for DPS.
2. Whilwind Attack > * for DPS.
3. GS > * for mobility.
4. Axe offhand sucks dick except to sustain AOE while dodging (few abilities will allow you to deal damage while dodging) and building instant adrenaline. Axe offhand is not really a damage weapon. It’s a tactical weapon centered on dodging, adrenaline buildup, and a Whirl finisher.

5. Generally speaking, Axe + WH is an equal-or-better overall option for combat than GS. Of course, you can use both and have absurd mobility for the lulz.

Purely for “straight Sword MH”, it depends on how much you use F1.

Sword autoattack alone benefits more from power than condition damage, ironically (unless the target lasts a longass time and you pack a veggie pizza). F1 will skew the balance to condition damage.

The other question is “wth is your second weapon set?”. If it’s a power based weapon set, then Soldier stats seem like your go-to. If it’s something else (longbow), condition damage may be a possibility.

Note that there is no CDMG/tough/vit stat spread (sigh). At best, you’re looking at Rabid with the crit→bleed trait. The bright side is that “no-Vit” is only vulnerable to condition damage, and an “Iron General” build has good condition removal options (cough Shout trolling, cough).

Signet Mastery not useful for only 1 Signet without other synergies. Boon strip is much better and is key for wearing down opponents (stripping regen, vigor, and particularly Stability).

Stripping stability is probably a core piece of this build.

Bunker ele so obnoxious.

On the other hand, it’s funny seeing one take over a minute to kill my crappy level 20 thief. Culling OP gg.

Daze is the better 80% of a stun, and the RNG is 50%. Stuns are better than Dazes, but not by a whole hell of a lot. It’s a matter of preference though. Try it both ways.

The bottom line is “what are you losing to get the last 10 points in Dom and slotting the trait”. Wastrel’s Worry is vaguely ok. However 10 points can be invested into a couple good options — chief among them being Deceptive Evasion.

On stats:

Soldier is power primary (pretty sure it’s the same on sPvP gear). Power is better than Precision by a decent margin unless you have a lot of crit chance synergy. Unless you have some sort of precision synergy, Soldier should do around as much DPS as Knight (especially the sPvP Knight which has Toughness as primary and both DPS stats as secondary — PvE Knight is PREC/tough/pow).

I’m really liking your Signet idea, so I’ve revised the build to something like this.
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.8.3.7.14.14.0.0.0.0.180.184.186.188.205.3.10.34.529.531.0.544.548.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.591.589.597.20.20.0.0.30

It’s a fun idea, but in all reality it’s probably not worth it — two traits spent in juicy spots on Blurred Inscriptions and Masterful Reflection are pretty depressing.

Sidenote: on the concept of Knight’s; Sharper Images and the Vigor trait in Dueling may be enough to make it worth it. Something to manually test out in sPvP.

In sPvP I don’t have any down time, you have to manage your phantasm and shatter and let them use auto-shot before shattering etc.

^

That too. Back when I played with IP shatter, I could output continuous streams of 4x Mind Wracks on cooldown for almost a minute before my abilities were staggered in a way that messed it up. I could do it for about 45 seconds without Deceptive Evasion.

Back then, Troll farming gave a lot of opportunity to practice sustained rotations.

Swap weapons. Use other abilities. Use autoattacks. Pop elite for bonus. IP Diversion because more Vuln is good. Do a barreldodge roll

Suggestion: practice more. The combo is far from the only thing the build can do.

Sidenote: autoattacks aren’t inherently bad.

20/0/0/20/30 is a very strong power-based hybrid (offense/defense).

The points in Insp get you Warden’s Feedback, which is the bomb, as well as another utility (I often use Vigor-on-Shatter, otherwise known as “perma Vigor” when used in tandem with IP, or rapid Shatters in general). The additional CC from Wall/Void is great.

Edit: It’s basically a “more utility” version of the standard 20/20/0/0/30 shatter build.

Per your OP, you’re looking for less Shatters …

There’s the standard 30/30/0/0/10 Mantra build, but that’s more DPS, less Shatters, less utility.

There’s the old bunker / phantasm army series of builds that are still usable I’d guess.

Any support build can be played with Berserker gear, although it would be awkward in some cases (running up to Medic’s Feedback rez someone while having 0 Toughness lolol).

Im running full zerker gear. And i just cant do WvW without the swiftness. I feel like a turtle.

I don’t get why you need boon duration. With Mantra of heal and Centaur runes, you should be getting 100% uptime. The runes will proc on both the discharge and the charge of the Mantra. Just remember there’s a 10s internal cooldown on the proc.

As for shattering. Does the +9% damage from each active clone affect the shatter damage? i assumed it did.

Yes.

Sidenote: the damage output with Scholar runes is pretty obscene. By obscene I mean fun, and you, too, can scratch your head at people who think Mantra of Pain is underpowered.

Yeah, Mesmers have a ton of very easy-to-acquire avoidance abilities in the class. As a result they are possibly the easiest class to play using glass cannon gear.

Naturally, that doesn’t mean you have to, and in many situations (and for many players) it may be better for a more hybrid stat spread.

I drafted a similar build awhile back, but didn’t bother finishing it because I don’t run team-focused builds.

Couple immediate comments:

1: Confounding suggestions is bad. Don’t do it prz.

2: Your illusion generation is rather low. You do not have IP or DE to make up for it (or GS+Staff which is relatively the fastest illusion generation). A key piece of your build is wide AOE Daze and you even have the Signet to do it twice. You need some method of accelerated illusion generation or else you’re wasting the potential shatter output.

It’s also important to note (for people that play with IP too much) that in order to even use the shatters effectively, you will need some rapid clone generation on demand, so Scepter+Sword [while being attacked] will probably not even be fast enough.

3: Phantasmal Haste has no place in this build.

4: You need some coherent method of damage output. Knight’s is an “eh” hybrid and you have no precision synergy in the build (e.g. no Sharper Images and no crit damage%). I would suggest an immediate change to Soldier, or revising the build in general to a condition damage build (Elasticity + Rabid/Carrion/Shaman WTB CDMG/vit/tough hurhurhur OP lols).

Note that regardless of what you do, the stacked Daze/CC in the build basically means you will have substantially less personal damage output than a normal build, making it group-reliant no matter what you do.

5: With this many Dazes in the build, use Runes of the Mesmer plx.

6: Related to #1 and #2, you can switch 10 points from Dom to Dueling to pick up DE so you have illusions to use for Diversion as well as maintaining AOE vuln with other shatters.

7: Other utility abilities to consider for evalution: Signet of Domination, Mirror Images, Blink as always.

Sidenote: With the mechanics of this build, I think a side-suggestion of considering Distortion-on-Signet and Signet cooldown reduction and 2x Signets (Illu and Dom) would be interesting.

E.g. Blurred Frenzy -> SigDom -> Diversion -> Distortion -> SigIllu -> Blurred Frenzy -> Diversion -> Distortion -> Blurred Frenzy -> Illusionary Invigoration -> Diversion -> Distortion -> Blurred Frenzy -> SigDom -> Blurred Frenzy -> SigIllu ->

Because you don’t have enough Dazes, Stuns, and Distortions already. With random dodge rolls mixed in. Note: if possible, figure out some way to insert Vigor into the build so you can have the most un-killable chain CC + invuln/dodge Mesmer imaginable. Additional trolling with Mass Invis is a bonus.

Edit: In retrospect, trait slots invested for 1s invulns on a ~30s (15s) cooldown are probably not totally worth it since they generally synchronize in time with you using other CC/defensive measures (e.g. the stun on SigDom, so who gives a kitten about the 1s distortion).

Edit:

Last trait in Illusion can be swapped to IP for non-teamfights obv.

Edit:

Definitely a fun build concept to try out. Rotating CC and defenses could be pretty kitten fun. I would definitely recommend “learning” the build with IP instead of AOE diversion. The AOE diversion part would be a second step of learning (e.g. removing IP as a crutch), and group situations occur less often anyways.

I’m currently running Signit of Midnight: I swear the passive does not work for me for some reason, but if you trait confusion on blind then you get an instant aoe blind confusion bomb

Signet of Midnight’s active is an AOE?

Edit: Checked wiki.

Nifty. May add it to my glamour build as a 3rd slot when I’m not using Portal. Or a generic condition damage build with Scepter and confuse on blind.

Hehe yep, Mimic wins the award for most misleading tooltip in the game.

Is there anything tips or trick wise I should be looking out for? I have my combos down on the warrior, linking well, swapping etc, which weapon sets should I be looking into, currently on GS & Sw/P.

The main thing you want to learn while leveling is weapon swapping.

Mesmer class mechanics are centered around Illusions (clones and phantasms) no matter what build you use. If you swap weapons constantly, you practically double your access to clone and phantasm generation.

The only class that focuses on weapon swapping as much is the Ele with their Attunements and combo fields.

Edit: The easiest weapons to level with are GS (AOE) and Staff (AOE and defensive / tank abilities). Other weapons are good to practice with and “get good” at, however.

Is there a specific build or ideal way to trait to level with, does this then become redundant (ie. 5 signet warrior dropping effectiveness at 40ish.)

5 points in Illusion. This reduces the cooldown of both your clone and phantasm generating skills on both weapon sets.

10 points into Dom for either 20% Mind Wrack damage or the 15% illusion damage (mostly affecting phantasms).

After that, whatever. Note: 5 points in Illusion is a staple for 99% of legit builds. There are a very few rare builds where that trait is not taken, but that is because the build absolutely cannot afford to take it (in theory). I don’t recommend a spec without 5 points in Illusion unless you know exactly what you’re doing and why.

At level 45-55 or so you have the option of respecing into Deceptive Evasion (Dueling line) if you want to practice that.

At level 65+ you have the option of spec’ing into heavier Mantra builds if you want to practice that.

At level 60+ you also have the option to spec 30 Illusion for Illusory Persona, which also significantly impacts gameplay.

Crit damage in WvW is a pervasive issue for multiple builds because it uses the silly PvE ruleset. Kill Shot just highlights it similar to Thief backstab builds.

Also, nice thread necro.

The concept of p/d in WvW allows for consistent sustained conditions. Common condition removal abilities won’t help too much. Persistent ones will, though.

The veggie pizza really helps a lot of builds like this though.

I’m glad to see P/D making a minor comeback. It was fun as hell to run it in sPvP back in beta. Lacked some of the punch of power builds, but hilariously difficult to kill.

Spifnar.4712:

The change from a month ago needs to be reverted. First, have warhorn #4 remove cripple/immob/chill, then have any remaining condition converted to a boon if traited.

I agree with the sentiment, but the solution is not the best.

The issue with that method is that when you only have cripple on you, for example, then the trait goes to waste — the cripple would be removed, and no conditions converted into boons (because you have none left). Edit: This is probably why it was changed, although I think we agree that the side-effect here is worse than the original.

I think it would be helpful to brainstorm a simple logic / solution that works for both “I only have cripple on me” and “I have 10 conditions on me” situations.

Edit2:

Speaking of which, the simple solution would be to use the logic path:

1. Trait will convert non-cripp/chill/immob conditions into boons.
2. Any charges left on the trait will convert cripp/chill/immob into boons.
3. Ability clears cripp/chill/immob.

Sidenote: I don’t believe that it is valid to de-prioritize Bleeds.

Just a general observation to help people understand the mechanics and the impact of the mechanics:

Mantra of Pain is like Mug for Mesmers, except slightly less damage per hit and you can use it multiple times back-to-back at the cost of a utility slot.

1. From a general item investment perspective, it’s rarely a good idea to pick up both power and condition damage. The only item set that does this with any efficiency is Carrion, although Rampager comes close but is crit-centric and has no defensive stats.

2. Conditions are generally good for sustained fights whereas Power is good for direct attacks and burst. Given the general context of WvW where you can have over 9000 players attacking the same target, the damage over time of conditions becomes less impactful for killing players.

3. Conditions are still good for suppression, however this is more oriented towards AOE suppression. Conditions that scale to many players (Mesmer Glamours and Necro Epidemic) can be very potent here.

4. Due to the meta, many players stack a lot of Toughness, which is generally smart. However, Conditions bypass this. Hence, Condition damage can still be a coherent strategy, although not as a go-to for most of the population.

For sieging, it is critical to have low cooldown conditions, since AOE cleanses (and light combo fields) happen with a fair frequency.

Hate spam to commanders is completely kittening kitten unless the commander is 120% pure terribad and auto-losing the map.

I want to punch people that don’t respect the burden comms shoulder when they actually put forth an effort.

Coverage is the primary factor. However, coverage still only amounts to 70-80% of performance. Within the same tier, coverage is vaguely on par for the most part.

Hence, while coverage is #1 for TOTAL RANK, it does not make as much impact within a single tier. Skill, coordination, and community is still a significant factor.

Becoming good means you can perform the basic mechanics by reflex against average opponents.

You only have to apply your mind when fighting a good opponent or thinking about larger fight strategy.

Arcane Thievery — this one might be pretty cool, I’ll have to try it in wvw/pvp.

Old version was better as an instant counter to “gain all boons” opponents, or opponents that really just stack 50 boons. Still vaguely ok, but Null Field is way better.

Illusion of Life — looks cool but have never slotted it.

Same. Slotted once for a specific reason. Almost never, though.

Mimic — reward doesn’t seem worth the effort on this skill.

Mimic is rather good, but it is out-done by Feedback. Edit: If you are not running a combofield abusing build (Pistol trait + Confusion duration / cond damage), Mimic is [as good as and can possibly be] superior to Feedback versus single targets in a dueling-like situation.

Signet of Domination — condition dmg not significant, and I already have a daze kitten

Vaguely ok for PvE. Slotted it a few times for experimental sPvP builds. Still usable for specific sPvP builds.

Signet of Illusions — health boost just not worth it, and on a delay. I dont’ run legion.

Good for various PvE applications, particularly while leveling up in solo PvE.

Signet of Inspiration — don’t like RNG on my skills.

Used to be horrid but they reverted it to proc outside of combat from what I hear. So, it’s ok and has applications in group PvE boon-sharing builds. I haven’t personally slotted it anytime recently because IDGAF about group support builds.

Signet of Midnight — don’t see much value in this (passive nor active).

I used this at one point, but will probably never slot it again.

However, it could be effective in a defensive Signet build (Signet -> Distortion trait). I’ve never seen such a build be drafted or completed, but it is a possibility, and this Signet would be an option …

Of course Distortion and Blind kind of negate the value of each other, so. Yeah, Signet of Midnight is probably just bad. Even though the cooldown is pretty decent.

Veil — never use because if I want it I take mass invis instead.

Veil is ok as a range Glamour for Glamour-blind-confusion builds. Also good in tandem with other Mesmers to portal bomb or rush through a gate/door in WvW. Initiating a fight with stealth for 58 people is an effective strategy. I’ve slotted it from time to time in WvW. Mostly when attacking a defended location through a general chokepoint. A few times to place it on a side of a Portal so the porting allies have an extra culling advantage.

^

And that is why WvW players have and will leave the game.

Warhammer had a good model for PvE gear gating and progression: the “PVE STAT”.

Vaguely similar to “Agony”, all gear had a PvE tier rating in Warhammer that had a significant adjustment to damage output and intake. Every item slot where your “ward level” was too low for the PvE content, you dealt 10% less damage and took 10% more damage (up to 50% more damage taken and -50% damage output, with 5 under-tier armor slots).

This enables gated PvE gear tiers / progression without affecting PvP.

The other option is to correctly remove WvW from the PvE gear context, enabling sPvP gear only for WvW.

Link to original discussion/comments?

Don’t forget that heavy Vuln stacks will increase the damage taken in the usual way.

I see: your attempt to look like an idiot by correcting an idiot was in actuality a clever ploy to make me look like an idiot, and now we look a trio of fools.

How sinister to drag innocent bystanders into this well of depravity.

Rune of Air would synergize well with this.

If I recall correctly, last time BG made it to T1, they had a great first day and first weekend augmented by a ton of trash talking, then petered out and lost it. Eventually their population dwindled from xfers and they bombed the next few weeks.

Hopefully not a repeat?

Manticore Five.9867:

Flurry gives more bleeds for every level of adrenaline and it immobilizes, not stuns. That said, you don’t get a lot more bleeds, so spamming L1 flurries is perfectly viable. Sword has a leap finisher so you can get fire armor leaping into your fire field.

Giving up hammer, you’re giving up a lot of interrupts. Although immobilize is nasty, it isn’t an interrupt.

1. Last I checked, Flurry only gives a longer Immob duration at higher adren, not more bleed stacks. Could be wrong, /shrug.

2. I think the concept of using Sword/x is more related to Sword/WH so the build could be more adaptable to the mobility demands of general WvW.

I think it’s obvious that Hammer provides more raw capability.

Kurow.6973:

I’m trying really hard to come up with a word to describe you that won’t get me an infraction…but it’s SO HARD!!!!

When it comes to PvP (especially sPvP), thief is probably the MOST predictable (aside from bad players playing things like BC-Frenzy-HB), and EASIEST to kill class in the game right now. They’re like a fly. At best, they’re annoying…nothing more.

An easy example: friend of mine was complaining about P/D thieves in WvW about a week and a half ago. Then I showed him how to counter it. Now he laughs every time he encounters a P/D thief as it’s become effortless for him to make the pests run for their lives unless they wish to stay and die.

…and for the record…balancing ANYTHING based off of WvW is a joke.

Your ALLCAPS make for a convincing argument.

Incurafy.6329:

Albane.8367:

Does the warrior have an ability on that greatsword with a 6 second cooldown (time to recoup the initiative cost) that can regen him for 2800 health, cure 2 conditions, make him untargettable by all enemies, increase his movement speed by 50% and lasts 5 seconds?

No, and neither do Thieves (oh, and it lasts 3 seconds, not 6).

Please, take your ignorance elsewhere,

Bolded the relevant parts.

Eviscerate would be counter-productive if you are focusing on high-yield Longbow bursts.

Sword/WH would be a better combo since you could still leverage the fire field.

Charge isn’t on a 6 second cooldown.

Just sayin’.

Warhorn does not cure conditions, just movement impairing effects, once.

There are traits …

Yeah I almost never play sPvP, so I don’t see it as a node-control tool.

The duration is higher than I thought it would be, so the low% isn’t too terrible. Also Chaos Storm would fill in some of the gaps of duration.

I wonder if ANet will do anything about the Pistol trait granting 100% combo finishers. If not for that, I think Torch would be a much more interesting option, although iD is still stomps on it for bleed stacks.

Edit:

Are you using Portal for the sPvP node-purposes or primarily as a tool for multi-Blink on a longer cooldown?

Are you finding you get a decent poison uptime with the Orrian rune set?

Ah yeah, Staff clones. Good times.

Right, if you’re using Confusion a bunch, duration becomes a big deal. Sharper Images is the only condition damage delivery that ignores duration.

Except, not really.

Well yeah, I run 30/30 glass cannon most of the time.

Fay.2735:

The only problem I have with mantra builds is Mantra of pain is underpowered

It’s not.

“Your Power Spike hits upleveled scrub invader for 4,277 damage.”

Still takes juicy chunks out of 80s in exotics.

The key for MoPain to work, however, is to make sure you’re using it during the animation of other attacks, else it’s a waste.

How are the two builds significantly different from each other?

Honestly they seem pretty similar in approach.

1. Halting Strike is completely horribad. When I originally tested the damage, I had to re-test it 12 times because I couldn’t believe my eyes.

2. Mantras are fine. Zzzz. More suited for WvW instead of sPvP, however.

3. Mantra of Recovery, by itself, has very high heal throughput per second. With any Mantra traits, it crushes the other heals for throughput. Still constrained because of its mechanics, but that is the cost of the most potent heal.

Oliver.7201:

I would really like some opinions on what people think of this build, even if its bad.

That’s the basic outline of my wvW Glamour build.

Couple notes:

1. Going full-on Glamour is pretty potent in large-scale WvW. It was particularly brutal back when turtle stacks were popular. You can imagine how much turtles like standing in Null Field (killing stability and protection) along with Feedback, bonus blinds and a good stack of confusion. Best part is half the damage output of the turtle is projectile-based. Really nasty. Just have to time it with the rest of your forces, which is what voice comms are for.

2. For large scale WvW, use Focus with Warden’s Feedback. I also get Medic’s Feedback and take none of the Glamour traits in Insp, oddly enough.

3. Using the same condition damage gear, you can swap a few glamour traits out for better 1v1 capability when you are not with a large WvW group. This is mostly a utility and maybe 1-2 trait thing.

4. Using the same 20/0/0/20/30 trait setup, you can full swap to power gear and GS for a power-based Shatter build (with Warden’s feedback instead of Deceptive Evasion).

Use condition damage gear with traits that give condition damage and provide more methods of applying conditions. Use weapons that apply damaging conditions. Maybe some defense stuff, too.

I like Mass Invisibility.

Mimic is already pretty trollish for 1v1s that you can prepare for or predict. The issue with Mimic is that other things are OMGWTFBBQ AWESOME. E.g. Mesmers have some of the most no-brainer awesome utility skills in the game, so decent utilities like Mimic seem bad.

What if you launch your MWx3 and immediately hit Mirror Image + Decoy. Do you get 3% * 6?

Edit: Your results don’t show clean +9%, +6%, and +3% damage bonuses.

Different teams use different patterns and methods of communication. Some teams have 1 person primarily calling, some teams have individual chatter. Shrug.

Quit crying.

It should easily be viable for leveling, but I doubt it will be popular due to lack of Warhorn/Sword/GS, e.g. the “get around the map” weapons.