Guild Wars 2

Strategic approach:

- Toughness
- Regen/heal
- DPS
- CC

Gear-wise, PvE Knight’s looks like a good match with Tough, Prec, Power.

I would use Hammer with the Toughness tree, picking up the regen per Adrenaline and the Hammer trait. From here I think I would get 30 tactics for lower cooldown bursts, then take Berserker Stance, Endure Pain, Stance duration +25%.

Basically Hammer spam, high toughness, Burst spam with Hammer as CC spam and damage.

Sounds tight, I think I might do this on my Warr for PvE pew pew after I outgrow Signets.

Weapon swap would probably be … Axe + Warhorn if I don’t need Adrenaline, or Axe + Axe if I do.

You’re trying to fit your definitions on GW2’s mechanics.

While the characteristics you listed are fine, it has nothing to do with the actual effect happening at various points in time, whether towards the beginning of the induction, for example, or towards the end.

That aside: yes there is some ability lag in laggy situations, but it is uncommon. For general gameplay, there is no ability lag.

Everyone frowns on iMage.

Prestige burn/blind should be swapped though.

The problem is you’re limiting yourself on cooldowns.

A second different weapon set basically gives you an extra ~2-3 long cooldown abilities. Losing that is a big sacrifice for no particular reason (you could just as well weapon swap spam with a different weapon set).

The main purpose would be to heavily trait out a single weapon — for example, Hammer or Axe. Possibly GS is some vague non-reality.

Limited, but theoretically “maybe” … with one caveat: thatkittentactics trait for faster swaps is too awkward until they fix it.

I chose the circus because my Noble dude had been a Noble since he was born and regretted not spending time not being a Noble. The “circus” description also stated that it was about possibilities not explored.

The circus story is not super serious, but I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Parents line seemed unlikely for a Noble, although you could stretch the RP to fit it in. What, adopted noble kid? Lol.

Untrue.

Not as easy as Elementalists, but still quite doable if you know what you’re doing.

Harmonious Mantras:

This is a cornerstone of a 30/30 max burst build, mostly because you get EM and have lots of Mantras. In order to not suck, Harmonious Mantras is usually taken as well.

Confounding Suggestions:

This one is pretty depressing. You can actually build for a kittenon of Daze, and the trait itself is not completely bad. The problem is that RNG is RNG, and no one likes RNG when a Daze iskittennear good enough. On the flip side, it turns Diversion into basically a guaranteed stun in most cases. That is neat, but short of “WORTH IT” for a GM trait.

Empowering Mantras:

Again, this is the cornerstone of a 30/30 max burst build. If you haven’t tried the build, it does a lot of damage. Downside is you basically have to sacrifice most utility stuff like Blink/Decoy/Feedback, which is a major hit.

Furious Interruption:

Yeah this I would basically never take. While Fury is nice, it’s not WORTH IT for a GM trait, especially when it’s based on something that is semi-unreliable like interrupts (where half the time you are using the CC effect to stop them from acting, prior to their action, so no interrupt).

Bountiful Interruption:

If this gave a pretty heavy load of boons, then it would be worth it. As is, yeah it’s depressing.

Prismatic Understanding:

Agree, pretty lacklust unless you intend to stealthkitten. Then it’s pretty awesome. However, no one does 30 Chaos because that’s such a waste of points.

Imbued Diversion:
Diversion hits multiple targets.
It should have hit multiple targets in the first place. Still pretty lacklustre considering daze doesn’t stack duration.

Imbued Diversion is worth the GM slot for specific group-focused Daze / CC builds.

The one thing in general that deserves note is that GM traits, much like other traits, are niche. I think it’s unreasonable to expect that GM traits should be “useful for most builds”. Traits like HM and EM I think are fine. They are highly effective for Mantra-heavy builds. Sure, there are almost no Mantra-heavy builds. But, they are “WORTH IT” for those builds.

The real issue is stuff like Furious Interruption or Bountiful Interruption, where no one in their right mind would actually invest and pick up those traits for any reasonable build, ever.

It also only heals you once no matter how many illusions are shattered so I’d go as far as to say that it’s one more of our not so awesome grandmaster traits.

Depends entirely on how much you’re shattering.

I pretty much Shatter on cooldown, so that’s a trait I’ve always been interested in.

The issue is that I always have to balance that against Deceptive Evasion and other highly useful Dom traits (+20% Mind Wrack, cough, lols).

So powerful that a single Illusion shatter becomes nearly as powerful as a 3 Illusion shatter without it.

Of the other 3 Shatters aside from MW, F2 is the only one where more is “really” better in practice. As a result, F3 and F4 are typically low-Illusion Shatters anyways. The benefit of IP becomes the fact that you can use those at 0 Illusions, which is a gigantic change.

E.g. the effect of IP for F3 and F4 are just as drastic as for a “x1 Mind Wrack”, if not more.

F2 is the only one where you can make a real case that “IP should be as potent for F2 as it is for the other Shatters”. And 1 out of 4 being “comparatively less-synergistic with” IP is not bad.

Prayer bead focus would be pretty kitten for my Mesmer.

If you’re very good at timing, there’s more than 1 build where you can re-stealth almost immediately after stealthing. The “fade-in” time covers a lot of gap, so you can be off-screen for like 95% of the fight.

On the flip side, you can go into combat from fall damage. If you roll before you go out of combat, you get lolol clones without an enemy in sight. It’s kind of funny.

Condescending much? I was actually referring to the fact that you’ll generally use one or the other of these phantasms and Duelist is usually better because of it’s longer range and thought it deals slightly less damage, it’s ability to proc Sharper Images upwards of 8x per round of attacks more than makes up for that.

Odd. I see them as balanced just fine. iDuelist is slightly safer, does better damage with Condition damage builds, does worse damage with power-based builds (including Sharper Image damage for both). iS has generally more interesting combo finishers (leap versus projectile), although the Pistol trait is apparently bugged to give too many finisher procs.

Though perhaps a different example would have been easier to understand.

Indeed: it would have made much more sense to compare iMage and iWarlock, or something, where there is a real difference, rather than a perceived difference fostered by bads who use Sharper Images phantasm army as a crutch.

Again, you don’t even understand the reference.

This combined with how Illusionary Persona works means that a single Illusion Mind Wrack with IP deals more damage than than a 3 Illusion Mind Wrack does without it, since Illusionary Persona mimics the per Illusion damage of the Shatter.

That’s an interesting conclusion you reached considering I use Illusory Persona and Mind Wrack every 10 seconds I’ve spent in combat over the last two weeks or so. It’s been quite a long time since I haven’t had 30 points in Illusion.

Your entire “weighting” example is more or less incorrect … which is pretty clear if you actually use Illusory Persona in game.

Maybe there is some real issue at low power levels, but I haven’t seen it with heavy power investment. I crit for around 2200 x2 for a 1-illusion Mind Wrack. I crit for around 1950 x4 for a 3-illusion Mind Wrack. Edit: I don’t recall what sort of buffs I had at the time, so it’s possible a normal MW would have been closer to 1850 x4. E.g. I was probably at trolls, which is infested with people and interference. Then again this applies to both numbers I mentioned.

More illusions are a benefit to me, and IP itself is a benefit to me. I’m not seeing the problem.

Like extra bounce, I would actually want to get a build around it but since only I get the bounce it’s pretty pathetic. It’s not even specified what gets the bounce and it’s only one of many bugs that bother me. Anet ignores the mesmer and I have no idea why.

You know, as cool as it would be, Elasticity applied to staff clones would be riding the line of “overpowered” pretty hard. That would make staff clones do a kittenon of damage …

So this is better isolated as a bug with “range projectile chain attacks”.

Wonder how many classes have this type of auto.

You’re welcome. It seems that some other players were distracted by things like “builds” and “fighting”. As the Blimpie commercials indicate, repetition is the best way to get people to remember the basics. For PvP success, it is “be there”.

Block/parry abilities have a slight delay before they are fully active.

Working as intended.

Several types of autoattacks also have delays.

Working as intended.

The majority of attacks in this game have an actual animation that needs to be completed (or part of which needs to be completed) before damage is actually applied.

This allows for interrupting the ability and forces the player to actually learn the timing of their class.

This also allows for additional optimization such as using instant abilities during the animation of other abilities (e.g. using “FOR GREAT JUSTICE!” while casting the Rifle Burst ability).

Working as intended.

Sidenote: Axe does not have a 0.5 delay on the first or second swing of 1. The third part has a 0.5-ish delay as the player winds up the triple chop. There’s also a castbar to highlight the animation and channel.

In the majority of PvP games, the #1 most important thing that decides most fights and games is having the right people at the right spot at the right time.

So much else is irrelevant.

So, we were about to lose our tower in a borderlands, because we were fighting 1v2 and had to execute a large defense at the keep.

The enemy had ~20 people in our tower moving up to the lord room.

Naturally, I’m already near the tower because I’m fast like that.

We had about 30 people incoming from the keep defense, but naturally 20 people versus lord >> 30 people at 2000 range away.

So I drop a portal on the wall under the lord room, and jump off the back of the tower to drop another portal in front of our incoming 30 people and spam “USE PORTAL” in /say (so they see the bubble over my head).

Some people got smashed in the lord room. I think they were mad.

Tips to staying Stealthed In Plain Sight:

1. Always combo your clone generation. It’s much easier for your opponent to discern “you versus clone” when you “just do a clone”. So summon 2 with different abilities. E.g. roll forwards with Deceptive Evasion, and hit Phase Retreat as you finish your roll. This will place you back at the original clone spot-ish, while the enemy watched your “dodge roll”. This will often lead them to attack your forward clone (the one generated with Phase Retreat).

Another combo example is using iLeap on an opponent, then using Decoy then Swap. They would have to understand the mechanics of Swap and realize that that is what you used, or else they will likely attack the Decoy clone.

2. Use Line of Sight. A shell game with your clones only lasts so long — against good opponents, a very short time. So you abuse line of sight to reset the game. LOS is best abused by using:

- terrain, duh
- drop a clone and Blink behind (through) your target; they fall for it every time
- in a melee frenzy, drop some clones and then use iLeap -> Swap (but stagger it)

Remember, when the opponent turns around, they have to re-assess which targets are clones and which is you. This is why rapid clone generation in near-melee range can be brutal. As long as you don’t smashed by AOE, you can make it very, very hard for your opponent to get a clean target on you.

3. Stop and move, stop and move. Short controlled bursts. Every time you insert some form of real deception attempt (either #1 or #2), stop for a moment and play dumb with autoattacks. By a moment, I mean literally only 0.5-3 seconds, depending on how badly the enemy’s getting trolled. Ideally, you’ve blown some cooldowns so there’s nothing particularly awesome that you’re delaying by throwing some 11111.

Never go Full Clone.

Anyways, when you move, move big with a lot of stuff. The gig’s up so use your abilities and don’t hesitate. Then finish with a deception and play Clone again. Stop and go, stop and go.

You know, the attack speed of Mind Stab was increased a huge amount in the prior patch. It’skittennear instant now.

Not sure why people are griping about the “delay”.

So what you’re saying is that I could drop a Time Warp, then Moa + SigDom someone for 6 full seconds of Quickness-enhanced beatdown. Bonus points for extra Mantra of Distraction throw in.

This sounds balanced.

Oh man, Whaler is the pimp.

Mesmer’s own Hundred Blades right there.

You know, Ettins have more HP/toughness than the average mob.

First I dont use shattering skills as it kills my phantasm which are doing way more damage. The build has 769 condition damage, and 63% crit chance, and it has max dps you can make using a phantasm builds.

You’re posting a “MAX DPS” build without Empowered Mantras? With a Staff? And without Compounding Power?

I guess most WvW or sPvP mesmers hope they don’t “shine Sauron’s Eye” on us.

This, basically.

Phantasms aren’t really balanced with one another. i.e. Swordsman vs. iDuelist.

I know, it’s sad how bad iDuelist is compared to iSwordsman, isn’t it?

-Shatters still aren’t very balanced, Mind Wrack is the only one really worthwhile for a single Illusion shatter because they haven’t worked on weighting the other shatters yet. So everything is balanced around the potential of a 3 Illusion Shatter, so anything less than that is 1/3rd or 2/3rds of a ‘balanced’ skill

Lol, no. Do you realize how overpowered it would be for a 4x Mind Wrack without any reduction in damage per MW? Good god I’d crit for 10k with it. I really don’t think it’s fair to drop over half the HP of a poor kitten after I took the other half off with a double Phantasm combo.

I’m going with power x coefficient, and weapon damage is either flat or also x coefficient.

60% of Thieves fail if you Blink immediately.

The next 30% fail when you use Decoy or any defensive ability after the Blink.

After that, it depends. Blinking is the #1 counter though, because it moves you out of their burst combo. Many opening combos include Immobilize, Stun, and/or Daze — Decoy will not help you because their damage will still hit you (PW or Heartseeker trolol). Most will burn way too much initiative whiffing to follow up effectively.

You clones hit for a couple hundred at 80?
My sword clones are lucky to hit 20 dmg on the first two hits, and 10 dmg on the last of the chain. Just what are you feeding your clones?!

I’m going with “he had two clones attacking and the numbers overlapped”.

So you’re saying that these higher tier players are so good that they can IMMEDIATELY recognize and target the mesmer when he has or puts clones up with ZERO seconds of delay? I’m sorry, I just have trouble believing this.

When you’re Neo, you don’t even see the clones. You just see the player.

Alexander.5012:

but it’s still about what precision,cd and power does to your damage, not about your actual output.

So … this is basically: (weapon + power) * (1 + crit% * critdmgx)?

Because that’s kind of boring …

And I might ask you, what do you base it on? You should share your spreadsheets on every abillity, master of masters, or are you just guessing?

I play a Mesmer and pay general attention to the numbers that pop up.

From time to time I pay closer attention and observe that iWarlock’s tooltip of ~80 damage results in about 1500 on the heavy golem, which is similar to iSwordman’s tooltip of ~490, resulting in about 1600 damage on the heavy golem. Then I giggle and proceed to ignore tooltip damage ratings throughout the game.

As stated, if you’re basing pretty much anything off the in-game tooltips, start over, lol.

No offense, but did you really read my post? This is only for the theory of balancing precision/power/critical damage atm.

I calculated damage on each abillity based on power/weapon power and the equations behind them.

How did you calculate the damage on each ability when the tooltips are dubious across the board, and especially whacked for Phantasms, which are a significant fraction of Mesmer damage output?

Nevermind the other thread which highlights that the Mind Wrack tooltips are also inaccurate.

Are you sure all 14k was from Mind Wrack?

Some mix of:

1. 2x Mass Invis (1 initiate, 1 escape); 1x Moa (specific counters); 2x Time Warp
2. Perma Swiftness. Have 1 person use Centaur runes + Mantra of Recovery or Mirror. While you could use Focus, that would require inter-player communication and run the risk of Curtain being down when a fight happens. Centaur runes are the easiest and most reliable method.
3. One person with Glamour spam to pack Null Field, Feedback, and possibly Veil.
4. One person with a Shatter build to aid in finishing players.
5. One person with Staff for Chaos Storm to counter melee dives.
6. One person with hardcore boon stripping (likely a Shatter build).
7. One person with AOE Diversion (likely a Shatter build).

Generally, I would go with:

- 2 Shatter builds — one AOE Diversion and the other boon strip.
- 1 Glamour build that supplies Chaos Storm as well. Scept/Torch, Staff.
- Other two dynamic. Probably 2 hybrid phantasm builds. One of them should bring Pistol + 15 Illusion for bugged regen.
- Only need ~3 Feedbacks. Other two should bring Null Field. Glamour person brings both ofc.

Edit:

For a lot of specific effort stuff like Portal combos, it doesn’t matter. Those can be swapped out of combat. I think the Glamour person might pack 1 Portal for in-combat though.

14k is pretty extreme; I would think he would be running 10/30/0/0/30 for Illusory Persona and Empowered Mantras. Stack some extra Might on himself and he could maybe possibly do somewhere near 14k.

You had to have had a pretty good stack of Vulnerability on you too …

the uprising.6317:

Good god, are all of you so thick? I’m stating something about the overall design of the mesmer.
[…]
Clones are still useful in higher level play for that half a second invulnerability, target loss, and fear of a shatter, I won’t contest that.

The main problem is with clones, in that the huge majority of the time, there is no deception involved.
EDIT: I’m not saying Mesmer is “weak”. I’m saying they should have skills that deceive EVERYONE and skills that blatantly deceive NO ONE. Them having tons of skills that only deceive noobs is just bad design.

1. You already accept that Clones deceive players in higher level play. Therefore your original summary statement is incorrect: Mesmers do have skills that deceive everyone (Clones). The difference is that they deceive good players for short durations, and poor players for longer durations.

2. Other skills can “deceive”, including the simple use of stealth or blink to move out of the enemy’s LOS.

3. The purpose of these “deception skills” are multiple. Clones provide multiple effects, and the deception is only a single, minor one. Checks above quotes. Ah, you also agree with this.

So, in conclusion, clones provide multiple effects and the deception component scales based on the competency of your opponent.

Working as intended.

My clones deal 2,000 damage on MW crits, with a bonus ~300 bleed damage every time the clone itself crits.

I like my clones yo.

iWarlock does a lot of damage even with 0 conditions.

As stated, if you’re basing pretty much anything off the in-game tooltips, start over, lol.

No offense, but the iWarlock discussion kind of indicates to me you probably don’t play a Mesmer.

Agree, good catch!

So?

It still takes a half second to a second to ID the correct Mesmer.

Free 1s Invulnerability. GG no re.

Potentially, but between paper and practice, the issue is that many of those CCs will not actually interrupt things — they will continue to CC the target when they are already CC’d, or the targets will simply not be using an ability in that moment.

So, I wouldn’t really eye those particular traits. Maybe one of them if you randomly get there.

Well, my Cry of Frustration doesn’t do “88%” of much of anything, since it crits for 600, hitting for around 250-300. I’m not sure what stat I have anywhere that is “300-350”.

It’s clearly only a representation of scaling, however the representations are all inaccurate at any detailed level.

This is very clear when you compare Phantasm tooltips. iWarlock has some sort of absurdly low tooltip, even though it hits for the same ballpark iB/iS. iS’s tooltip is strangely low. iB’s tooltip is actually higher. And, they are incorrect relative to each other as well. And then you compare a Phantasm tooltip to a regular attack (like Sword4 counterattack), and they are completely off.

So, all that said, I don’t see the relevance of the detailed values or relations of the tooltips. They’re erroneous across the board to one extent or another.

AOE Diversion. 50% Shatter reset. Signet Shatter reset. Mantra of Daze. Signet of Dom.

Runes of the Mesmer.

AOE Daze, spawn, reset, AOE Daze, spawn, [take damage] AOE Daze again.

GG.

Needs team support for the actual killing. Pistol/Staff would be useful for the multi-target CC spam in this situation.

As a general note, I don’t mind the damage being higher than the tooltips. Just saying.

As a minor sidenote: based on the logic of the scaling to “multiple” illusions, the 100/135/175 seems counter-intuitive. A 100/145/175 would make more sense.

Generally, most of the tooltips are a bit off, so. Shrug?

(I mean you’ve seen the iWarden tooltip damage right? Even if you x12 it, it’s still rofl.)

Seriously, every single mesmer build needs Clone on evade. Every single mesmer build needs shaper images. Every single mesmer build needs high crit chance. That’s horrible design.

Uh, no.

Rofl. That’s far, far from true.

ours just blows our unique function away…

Phantasms are not the Mesmer’s “unique function”. Shatters are.

Phantasms are overblown Clones.

Seriously. Mesmer has Portal in WvW.

If you want to kitten about Mesmer run speed for PvE exploration / world completes, that’s one thing.

But WvW? Sigh …

You know, the tooltip indicates that a 3-illusion shatter is not as strong as 3x 1-illusion shatters.

What’s this thread about?

Also, I got 4 crits on Mind Wrack last night for a total of 8,000 damage. Wait till I get more gearz ~

At 1,999 power you are supposed to do 1,835 damage for each tic of the channel.

No, it is rated at 1835 for the full channel.

Mantra of Concentration is ideal for stun breaks and, most importantly, guaranteed stomps with a stab that can be activated mid stomp. If you have the timing right, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you short of a downed stealth/port.

Totally agree, except I use Illusory Persona Distortion for that!

Hehehe.

1 GS Guardian AOE spin, in a hybrid or tanky build (e.g. they at least have +5xx power on amulet), can typically wipe most if not all of a Mesmer’s clones + phantasms in one go.

Thing is, most players in sPvP lean towards single target builds (I MEAN HELL, LOOK AT ALL THE PISTOL MESMERS). Mesmers, particularly phantasm army types, are more vulnerable to AOEs than most classes.