Guild Wars 2

Also the clones are what are characteristic of the Mesmer. The butterflies are additional.

No, the butterflies are definitely a characteristic of the Mesmer.

Butterflies or get lost!

This question naturally arises – seeing how I find the story in GW2 beyond naive and predictable. It’s one huge cliche. At the same time, I see people intrigued by it.
So I wonder – am I too old for video game stories? Maybe they are tailored for the younger folks. I feel like I’ve heard it all before.
Is it time for me to start reading Dostoyevsky and Isaac Asimov in order to find “a challenge” for my intellect/level of maturity?

YOU GROW OUT OF DRAGONLANCE AND UPGRADE TO MALAZAN.

As far as story goes anyways. For gaming, just tolerate the weaker parts of the story. Right?

Only thing that gets to me is the Norn PS dialogue … the dialogue of both the character and Eir are so … jeuvenile and cliched it hurts sometimes.

I mean we all “hate on Logan”, but at least he had an identifiable emo personality.

Yeah, the free server transfers at this point are absurd.

Then again a lot of folks are still waiting or riding the fence about xferring to servers for positive reasons, rather than just bandwagoning.

So, tough call.

Glass butterflies?

Feast is 5,560 + 640/i, with 20cd and roughly a 1s cast (although not sure if the cd starts before or after; I’ll assume before). Assuming a random allocation of 2 illusions: 342 hps. Assuming 3 illusions: 374 hps.

MOR is 3260 x2. 10cd, 4s charge, and 1s delay between uses. 3260 * 2 / 15 = 435 hps.

So, sure MOR has a little more time investment than at first glance. However, MOR is more heal per second sustained, period. And that’s not counting any traiting for MOR.

Edit: On second glance I’m not 100% positive about the numbers on the wiki. I’d have to look in-game for more reliable heal amounts.

At maximum throttle, MOR is:

3260 x3, 8cd, 4s charge, 1s delay between uses, bonus 2500 heal. 12280 / (8+1+1=4) = 877 hps.

I kind of want to add that to my sig:

“BUTTERFLIES OR GET LOST”.

Yes, 3 sec burning every 33 seconds, everyone is kitten their pants when they see mesmer lay out that mega damage. It’s not like fire ele deals 3 sec of burning every time he farts.

Last time I ran a condition build with Torch, the burn tooltipped for 5,000 damage.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the highest tooltip of any ability in the Mesmer arsenal, and definitely the most damaging single condition a Mesmer has available across the entire class by a huge margin.

One thing about iMage is that:
Confusion scales off Condition Damage
Retaliation scales off Power

iDuelist scales off power, condition damage, and precision.

But you don’t see people kittening.

There’s always people who say: “well if you use traits x,y,z and runes x then it’s ok”. Yeah… I’ll pass.

Do you realize that pretty much every ability in the game is like that?

And heal mantra heals less than Ether Feast, which is wrong and bad. Even traited for 3 uses it heals less than Ether Feast with 3 clones out. That’s bad, for an ability with 5 sec charge time.

Mantra of Recovery has a 10 second cooldown. It has the highest sustained healing throughput of any heal because it can be used basically twice as often as Feast.

Direct usage also has no cast time, unlike Feast which can be interrupted.

In other words, Mantra of Recovery is out best heal to heal with … except it’s a pain in the kitten because it’s a Mantra.

Known issue ;-).

That’s pretty close to cookie cutter 30/30.

People rarely run mantra builds because mantras are awkward and you lose out on certain utilities that people tend to grow fond of.

As long as the pieces are under 22/23s you should make a profit.

Ironically, the prices float right around 22-23s. I wonder why .

Uh, Warriors don’t farm DEs well either. They have good instant damage, but their cleave range is small.

The only classes that excel at easy DE farming are Eles and Engis it seems.

Aside from that, Mesmers do fine in PvE.

1. Yes, clones don’t really effectively get into melee in WvW in most cases, so on-death stuff gets dubious. You can get some in (like Mirror Blade), but overall not enough to build around, so I wouldn’t try to build around it for general purpose WvW.

2. If it says “on clone death” then only clones. IIRC the low-tier ones were all “clone death”, and the 25 point Dueling one was “illusion death”.

3. I’m a fan of IP because it’s pimp. It’s effective for skirmish activity — both for the <3 4x MW crits and for stomp distortion. For your builds, it’s a viable trait line investment to swap it for Glamour traits when you are Glamouring. For raw sieging, 30 Illusion doesn’t have much place though.

4. For the first two configurations of my build, Berserker’s. Rampager is not effective unless you are supporting Sharper Images. In fact, I would almost never use Rampagers on a Mesmer in WvW, because almost no useful WvW build ends up as “SHARPER IMAGES” stacking. I’d almost always rather burst with Berserker’s, or go more interesting builds with Carrion. Carrion is pretty solid … if you have a lot of condition damage. in the build I posted, only the third configuration (Glamour spam) would have a relevant amount of condition damage. The first two configs (siege and skirmish) would use Berserker’s. So, I would use Carrion for the third configuration if I could afford two gear sets.

Build concepts:

1. Banner buffbot. Bow | Hammer | Mace | Shield | Warhorn | Sword.

2. Shoutbot. Same weapon options.

3. Rifle gibbing pew pew.

4. Wait for it … wait for it … wait for it … instagib with Frenzy Bull Rush Hundred Blades combo^.

5. Leading the charge. Tank more tank Hammer | Shield. Compatible with #2, but different stat spread.

6. Catching people / intercept. Sword, immob on cripple. Hammer CC.

^ The difference between this and bad players using GS is that you actually waited for the right moment to trash someone. If you’re not comfortable waiting for long stretches of time for the opportunity to trash someone, don’t try this build in WvW.

The only build/weapon that seems dubious to me in WvW is mainhand Axe. I just don’t see getting much mileage out of it except as a sort of rare swap weapon for an Eviscerate, but even then …

iWarlock is irrelevant to condition damage. It scales based on # of conditions only. iWarlock arguably scales a bit based on condition duration, but definitely not cdmg.

And when people say “condition build”, they really mean condition damage ~_~.

I agree that Mesmer is not last though. Confusion is pretty potent.

TBH Guardians are the worst condition damage class. They have exactly 1 damaging condition, and few ways to enhance it.

For WvW, I find this build more effective for all aspects:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fgQQBYk4kCAscUPAAA+OJFAI1A

GS + Sword[Scepter]/Focus.

The blank traits have options. For heavy sieging, use phantasm enhancers to abuse iBerserker. For skirmish, use Elasticity and Mental Torment for superior burst. For heavy zerg play, you can swap a half dozen traits around for pure Glamour + Confusion spam.

The first two configurations are very much “power” builds though. The Glamour setup would use Carrion.

Edit:

To clarify, I think the challenge you’re facing with your builds is that you’ve identified certain key WvW capabilities (iBerserker), but you’re pairing it with some strange requirements that have no basis (e.g. conditions, Sharper Images, clone dissipation).

Sidenote: One of the things that may help your decision making process is the following:

1. Half of your bleed damage is level-based.
2. Sharper Images relies on precision more than it relies on condition damage.
3. How effective are clones for dissipation in zerg or siege warfare? Can clones actually get into melee range of the target? Especially when you’re talking GS clones as half your weapon set?

I mean general PvE, not dungeons. I have no idea how effective it would be in dungeons, but I suspect you would want a different build, simply because Null Field / Feedback are too good.

Edit: Note, it’s “viable” but certainly not easy in general PvE. There are other builds that sure as hell seem a lot easier simply because they’re safer and more forgiving of aggroing a veteran plaguebearer while you’re fighting a veteran abomination.

For WvW it’s viable if you play carefully. For sPvP, I have no idea. Seems like it could do ok if you were careful similar to WvW. For tPvP, it’s probably a bad build unless it magically fits your team comp for some strange reason.

The fact that Mind Stab does decent damage means that it probably isn’t going to get any raw buff without something else going.

Best you can hope for is “casting it on your current target”, which has disadvantages. Personally, I like the fact that I can cast it at geometry and have it will hit through walls and such. That would not be possible if it required a target. Shrug.

There are several players using the 30/30 build.

It’s close to if not the highest burst damage a Mesmer can achieve (I think 20/30/0/0/20 might be higher burst though). It simply lacks some of the more obscene survivability utilities … combined with the fact that Mantras are hard to get used to, few people run it.

It’s not really the “build” that needs to be made successful — the build is mostly straightforward. It is that it requires a significantly different playstyle in general and player learning curve / adaptation to Mantras in particular.

Edit: I ran the 30/30 build in PvE for a bit (my ego says I will not let Mantras beat me). I’m still only “ok” at using the Mantras. I’ve acquired a kittenon more gear since I ran the build, so I bet I will do insane damage now. Previously, I was still getting solid numbers even with highly suboptimal gear. Will definitely have to respec tonight and go blast some people.

48% damage buff would be a tad OP.

PsionicDingo.2065:

Ah well, lesson learned. I’m in no rush, I just needed some direction since the Whispers set was well out of my reach for the moment.

Minor sidenote: the Order of Whispers light armor shoulders do not actually show unless the helm is hidden (the helm actually covers the whole shoulder area). It’s probably not the same for the medium armor, but you should check just in case. May save you some $. You can check easily by going into the sPvP lobby to the PvP locker and previewing the items there.

1. Empowering Mantras gives a bonus damage per Mantra that is charged. Not per charge of Mantra. So if you have 4 charged Mantras, each with 2 charges, you get 4x the EM buff. Not 8×. With Harmonious Mantras, you still get 4×. You do not get 12×.

2. It’s not “wasting”, it’s an investment for a direct burst damage build with thinner escape options and less group utility (no Decoy, probably no Blink, no Feedback, no Null Field).

1. Client rendering has nothing to do with server-side position tracking. It seems like the actual teleport action may be clipping through the thin underwater gate (similar to how all teleports have a chance to clip through the ground). That, or they just zerged it fast and people are fabricating excuses.

2. As far as the change, they would have to make the lords invulnerable for it to work at all. In terms of whether it would be “good”, the primary tactical effect is that keeps would be indefensible against larger numbers, due to the ability for attackers to simply annihilate defending siege — and to simply kill defenders then jump out.

Tbh I think it’s a bad idea. It’s already too easy to kill defending siege in the majority of cases. That change would simply make it pointless to defend a keep at all against any numbers.

This sounds like it’s mainly a series of QQs / suggestions / changes proposed to alleviate feelings of Thief inadequacy due to the 900 range limitations. I think it would be more useful to take a look at suggestions related to the shortbow and pistol, and the 900 range, or thief siege capability in general rather than trying to create a new WvW mechanic which breaks a dozen other things.

Personally, I don’t see an issue since poison combo fields are insanely powerful, nevermind the Thief’s ridiculous utility during actual pushes with AOE stealth and smoke combo fields. Note: for people that don’t have a good grasp of WvW combat, range pew pew pew spam is not very relevant to decide who wins or loses the fight. In most cases, that rests on the melee or diving / pushing actions that occur to end fights. In these situations, Thieves have valuable potential roles, although HS spam is not one of them.

Pistol is ok but highly overrated.

Torch is bad unless you’re using very specific builds that work with it. Or you just really really want the stealth.

Sword OH is pretty potent. For power builds, it’s basically an upgraded version of Pistol with more damage, more defense, but less range of course.

Focus is highly potent in general but has a learning curve. It also has longer cooldowns than OH Sword or Pistol, so you would only be using it as a swap weapon and not sitting in it for any length of time.

I had about 95k. I never spent any (all the upgrades on the way to 80 are pretty transient and not worth spending $ on at any vendor, cash or karma).

WvW is usually pretty good for karma acquisition, usually. Kinda depends on activity though.

Edit: To clarify, there were long stretches of time when my gear was below my level by very large amounts, lol. Ohwell.

No. The only way a portal can be set up into a keep is as follows:

1. Mesmer exploits through geometry using bugged teleport skills that allow them to clip through the ground. This is a bannable exploit.

2. Mesmer blinks up / past impassable terrain due to bugged pathing issues (cough garrison inner west, cough, gj HOD, cough). This is also a bannable exploit. Sidenote: Bay also has some terrain where this can actually happen.

3. Mesmer was inside the keep from a prior time when the Mesmer had access to the keep, and hid. This is legit, and all Keeps actually have enough room where sloppy defenders won’t find the Mesmer hiding. Edit: The east keep in the borderlands has some really good spots for this, actually. The west keep has water in general, which can be good for hiding, although there are only a few semi-ok spots for hiding.

I suppose the long and short of this, aside from the part where you should cease completely misrepresenting what ANet posts, is that you don’t seem to realize that Mesmers can only place Portal ends at their feet. E.g. the Mesmer actually has to walk to wherever they place portals.

I have no idea how you only have 30k Karma … that aside, I would pick up a full suit of green magic find gear, then get to farming for your exotic crafted set. Probably pick up a mystic weapon along the way if the stats match your build.

^^^

Seriously.

Just wow.

My current theory crafted spec is as follows: 20-20-0-0-30. Priority being given to Illusions during leveling with secondary being Dueling for the crits/mobility/bleeds in mostly that order. Majors would be: mental torment/GS training, PFury/DEvasion, PWrack/haste/IP. With MT being substituted with empowered illusions(advice?) and compounding power being a leading competitor.

That’s similar to the spec I use for PvE pew pew pew.

You should definitely try out the Elasticity trait with Mirror Blade.

MT vs. Empowered Illusions: MT is better for fast kills on most things in that build. Empowered Illusions is stronger for kiting at max range, or running around. E.g. any situation where you don’t feel comfortable running up and dropping a 3x+IP Mind Wrack every 10 seconds. EI is also better if you are running Phantasmal Haste and plan to leave your phantasms up for sustained periods.

I wouldn’t get Painful Wrack. Compounding Power is more useful in general. Then again I’m currently using Painful Wrack so I can laugh at more MW crits. Lols.

Sidenote:

Staff is good but it is overrated. Staff is good for defense, but I just kill kitten.

Yeah, but with that build I use deceptive evasion anyways.

Those traits do not justify Mirror Images, though. MI is more for burst combos.

I use Sword/Warhorn on my swap for movement or kiting.

For my actual fight set, MH Axe is very consistent and mobile multitarget sustained DPS with 111111111111111111111111111. Not exciting, but /shrug.

Sword MH seems meh for actual [PvE] fighting [against normal mobs] when you could just kill the mob directly with Axe. Sword OH is nice though for bonus defense with offense.

Warriors are fine, but they’re subpar at 1v1, which is what a kittenload of players focus on.

I haven’t watched the video, but based on the comments, it needs to be stated:

The DE problem that people are facing at level 80 is basically the following context:

- 40 allied players
- allied players AOEing continuously on a spot where mobs are known to spawn
- mobs are about to spawn, or run to the point while invulnerable
- mobs spawn / become invulnerable
- all mobs die with ~2.5 seconds

The challenge is to do enough burst damage to tag as many mobs as possible in those 2.5 seconds to get credit for loot.

The best build for this is obviously a power shatter build with Illusory Persona and GS for iBerserker. iB is quick enough out of the gate to tag for damage in most circumstances. IP gives a solid instant AOE damage with both MW and Cry.

Chaos Storm, while nice, has a very long cooldown and is typically ineffective for intense DE farming.

The end.

Tbh, a lot of the problem with the Scepter’s vaunted ‘clone generation’ is:

1. Shatters have a cooldown. Almost any build in existence can generate enough illusions for your main shatters. That degree of surplus clones is irrelevant, unless you’re doing extreme clone generation. In which case, just take Deceptive Evasion and call it a day.

2. Scepter’s main clone generation is on the autoattack, and autoattacks suck. When I play my Mesmer, I make a specific effort to autoattack as little as possible by using “non-suck” attacks. The block->clone is infrequent. As a result, when you compare the raw clone generation between a 4.8s Mirror Blade versus Scepter … Scepter has an advantage, but it’s not by a huge margin. Comparing it to MH sword … Scepter has an advantage, but it’s only by a moderate margin.

which is otherwise an extremely dumb trait since Cry of frustration scales with condition damage while Retaliation scales with power but that’s par for the course for mesmer – everything is antisynergetic as hell

Or, the Retal trait gives power-based Mesmers a better reason to use Cry of Frustration rather than let the button collect dust.

Yes, but also if they’re not actually in the middle of an attack that very moment. Keep in mind that in a lot of kiting or running situations, players are not using abilities continuously.

Any brain lag on their part will also result in time where this trait would apply.

1) F2, F3, F4 should be rebalanced so that they are more front-loaded like F1 is. That way a single Illusion shatter is more worthwhile. I.e. Distortion grants 2s for a single Illusion and +0.5 seconds for each additional Illusion. That way there is a benefit to shattering more illusions, but the unreliability of Illusions isn’t as big of an issue.

F3 and F4 are already frontloaded. A Daze grants “silence” and interrupt. 3 Dazes grants the same interrupt and a little more silence.

F4 lets you avoid the big whateverthekitten you’re trying to avoid. A 3x F4 will let you avoid whatever you were trying to avoid, plus some bonus collateral attacks.

As I said, F2 is the only one where your argument has any basis.

2) Illusionary Persona needs to be rebalanced to take into account the weighting. In my example I showed that how it currently works causes a single Illusion shatter to deal as much damage as a 3 Illusion shatter without it.

It is not. My 1x+IP MW crits for 5200 damage. My 3x/noIP MW crits for 6300. That’s a 21% increase.

“As much” damage is your baseless spin you’re attempting to apply to your argument in order to justify your view of the world.

Bottom line is that 1x Mind Wracks are dumb in any event. You’re arguing that bad and sub-standard method is more technically efficient using an irrelevant metric than a more effective and more relevant method.

MW has a 10s cooldown. I have way too many illusions in any build to come close to shattering 3x every 10 seconds for MW alone. If I waste a MW cooldown on a 1x shatter, I really don’t mind that IP helps cover some of the abject failure of Mind Wracking with only 1 illusion. Part and parcel of the trait, and consistent with IP’s effect on F3/F4.

As you said, IP is worth it just for the ability to do a Shatter without any Illusions (especially Distortion), the fact that affects F1 so drastically and that isn’t even a big deal to them is a bad thing.

Don’t even try to pull this kitten with me.

The current characteristic where IP supports a 0x/1x shatter relatively more than a 3x shatter only mirrors its performance scaling with F3/F4. Hence, IP works consistently across most of the shatters (except F2).

There is -zero- reason why IP should perform linearly for F1, and then in an exponential decay fashion for F3/F4.

Nice flip-flop on your assessment of F3/F4 between the beginning and end of your post though.

if it’s okay for Mind Wrack to be balanced like that then it should just be innate.

What is innate? The scaling? The scaling is already innate. IP’s affect on scaling is consistent for F1, F3, and F4. What are you kittening about? That F2 should be re-tuned for some irrelevant perception of balance?

Yeah phantasms are straight up damage even though iWarden reflects with trait or blocks without it, and iBerserker has a cripple, and iDuelist has broken combo finishers with the trait (assuming that is true; haven’t tested it myself), and iSwordsman is pure beatdown, and they can all be shattered for damage/confusion/daze/invuln/moreconfusion/vulnerability/conditionremoval/heals/vigor/might depending on traits.

Also, the channel on Prestige is working as intended. It would be overpowered to have a debuff, stealth, and high damage component without the channel.

I didn’t mean build options. I mean that in each of these builds, there tends to be one or two mechanics that you rely on while the rest are rendered near-useless.

You’re being narrow-minded in your perception of the Mesmer class. The only build which really suppresses other mechanics is a 100% phantasm army build, and that’s only if you play the build poorly or if your opponents are terribad.

Any shatter build will be using phantasm DPS. Any power build will be using phantasm DPS.

Any phantasm build should be using shatters for utility at a minimum (daze/invuln).

Mantra builds still use phantasm DPS in a very big way. Most mantra builds can also rely on Mind Wrack a great deal.

If there is an awesome build out there that uses everything, then let me know I’m wrong, but I’ve yet to see one.

There is no awesome build, only awesome players.

Every moment when your target does not have a castbar for an ability, they will take 5% more damage from you.

It adds up to a reasonable amount of time, but 5% is lame. Should be 10% and it would be worth the placement of the trait.

You do more damage when your target is not doing something.

…

Working as intended.

I once did 16,000 damage to a Ranger using Feedback after he popped Quickness.

I laughed mykitten off.

I ran a similar build in sPvP for a bit.

I stacked condition damage + venoms, using Carrion gear. Basically set it up for max condition damage and infinite restealth.

Pretty trollish build, but it kills slightly slowly since you need to pace the re-stealths. Of course, not doing “perma stealth” and using the blinds and stuff is more intelligent, but perma stealth trolling is too fun.

Go to the sPvP lobby and let the boss dudes hit you.

Gear in sPvP is equalized.

In WvW, your stats partially scale.

Level 80 players in full exotics will out-stat players leveling by a pretty good margin, still.

There should be an option for defensive abilities like this to cancel the existing cast, or perhaps a global cancel-cast option.

All actions can be cancelled by a “high-priority” action. From what I can tell, high priority actions include all abilities with CCs, heal slot abilities, and many utility abilities.

It may be simpler, and lower cooldown abilities can be cancelled by higher cooldown abilities, but I’m dubious about that. I seem to recall that it really had to do with CC abilities.

You cannot cancel a “special” attack with an autoattack, but you can cancel any generic random attack with a “special-er” attack.

Generally, the logic seems to be that “if you press your 30-second cooldown CC button, you should be sure of it because the engine will accept it and interrupt whatever you’re doing; conversely you cannot interrupt your 30-second cooldown special ability via normal means (non-dodge)”.

It is absurd that something as reactive as a parry ability is put in an ability queue…

It will cancel your autoattack, and should cancel many other attacks, but the main point is that the current QQ about parry/block abilities is not any “ability queue” (which is probably not what people are being frustrated about).

It’s that the parry/block abilities literally have the character moving their weapon into the parry position for about 0.3-0.5 seconds before they are actually able to parry. People can’t accept that they need to plan ahead for parries, and that parries are not intended to be 0.05 second reflex blocks. Working as intended? Maybe not, but probably.

DE tagging is not hard.

You just spam tab into iBerserker and hit F1 with Illusory Persona. Throw in F2 for more random AOE damage.

Most players find PvE slow because they use phantasm army builds, which have the longest build-up time for long-term DPS. Of course, normal mobs in PvE last all of like 5 seconds with a burst power build, so they QQ.

Outsiders looking in often see the Mesmer as a difficult-to-play class with a lot of options, but this ends up being untrue.

Or, when you get even more proficient with the Mesmer class, you start seeing more of the options that are actually there.

Off the top of my head, viable builds include:

- Mantra 30/30 burst
- Shatter power
- Shatter hybrid
- Shatter support
- Clone spam/expire Staff
- Phantasm army
- Bunker army
- Glamour star
- Power no SI general (Phantasm/shatter/direct)

There’s probably more that don’t come to mind. Probably several support builds, since I don’t really do support.