Guild Wars 2

- phantasmal haste changed to give them perma- swiftness instead of increased atk speed.

That sounds like a nerf!

2.- If u’r not spected into phatasm dmg.. u BARELY EVER use phantasm.. and your damage comes from yourself rather than phantasm..

Well actually you still use phantasms, since they’re a solid source of damage. You just don’t try to make them turrets, heh.

@EasymodeX
I am not sure your calculation is the “full story”

I think you’ll find that my model is more comprehensive for the topic than that envisioned by 99% of posters.

I can do the same thing and say: autoattack with a greatsword is better than casting one phantasm:
2500| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
2500 damage in 6 seconds for phantasm
vs autoattack
500|500|500|500|500|500
3000 damage in 6 seconds for autoattack
=> so, its better not to cast phantasm ?
You have to consider more things.

Except the phantasm requires 1 minor unit of time to cast, whereas the GS1 spam requires the full time investment.

Shatter requires 0 time to cast. If you want to emply a more detailed alternative cost analysis, it takes significantly more effort than the 1 minute I put into it and will reduce the “shatter and replace” performance by only a small percentage.

First you cant compare different timespans ? 12 s vs 15 s.

Yes, you can, because I normalized it to 1 second by rating it as damage per second.

This is what we do in 7th grade.

Please, stop trying to use grade-school fabrications in a poor attempt to support your fictitious beliefs.

Then it is a different thing if you
- cast 2 phantsam
vs
- cast 2 phantasm + shatter + recast 1 phantsam + change weapon + recast 1 phantsam

Changing weapons is instant. Recasting 2 phantasms requires 2 additional units of time, which is why I extended the duration of the second example to 15s (I accounted the Mind Wrack as 1 second, to pretend that the Mesmer player in question is terrible and requires 1s to use an instant ability; this also accomodates for the fact that certain Phantasms take longer to cast than others).

If you want to apply an alternative cost to using the time units for those purposes, you could subtract about 1.5 casts of Spatial Surge from the latter example, since that is the activity you replace by re-casting the phantasms.

And you also have to consider cooldowns, casting times, the weapon swap has maybe some disadvantages….

I assume that the Mesmer player is bad, but not horribad. E.g. I assume they are able to manage their cooldowns and weapon swap timing after 80 levels of playing the class.

Numbers do not prove anything here. It is good to use them, but they dont prove anything.

Hey man, I can lead a person to water but I can’t make them drink.

We SHOULDNT need to trait for our mechanic for it to be usable – does Warriors need that?

They are usable without traiting. You just don’t like it. Incidentally you can barely spec into any trait line and NOT pick up shatter traits.

GS+Staff is fine if you use them as appropriate for the build.

If you run power it means you won’t be sitting in Staff autoattacking. If you condition, it means you will focus on clone generation when in GS. With SI+crit, condition damage is equally applicable to both weapons.

For pure DPS, Staff is not a great choice though, lol.

Zylo.6597:

Now… i hope you finaly understand what a Z axis is. Just because you sometimes can move up a mountain doesnt mean you actualy travel in the air.

The OP said that Blink has no Z-axis. He didn’t say that Blink wouldn’t let you fly in the air.

We know Blink doesn’t let you fly in the air.

However, it’s not stopped by Z-axis, because that implies you cannot move upwards or downwards using Blink.

But you can.

I don’t get hit by fringe damage because I was trained by Neo!

^ Feedback helps.

Its ONLY categorically superior IF you trait that way

False. It’s categorically superior if you have 0 or more trait points to spend, and you’re not zerging a DE boss with 50 people.

^
These two conditions apply to the vast majority of Mesmer gameplay in GW2.

I mean, bro, I even sketched out a nifty little pseudo-table showing the damage breakout. It’s clear as day to anyone who can think straight and pay attention to the timing of their cooldowns and phantasm attacks.

After 80 levels of combat, you tend to get a good feel for the behavior and timing of your phantasms and the rest of your abilities. Well, maybe that’s an assumption that goes too far for some people, but I know it’s true for me and I hope it’s true for most.

Yeah so you need to have Clones/Phantoms ready to summon, which means swapping weapons as well so you would you swap to melee weapons JUST to get that Cloe/Phantom up and have to either run into melee or stay at range and do no damage or wait for one of your current weapon set to come active again?

1. Why do you think I have a “melee weapon set”?

2. Did you know that sword has a 600 range teleport? It also has a 2 second invulnerability so you … actually stay in melee.

Does it matter? if they die they die – If you shatter and get Confusion on and they DONT use that burst damage attack then thats 3 clones/phantoms pretty much wasted

Does it matter? If your target gets obstructed or blocked by anything — say, a random enemy clone — the iDuelist volley get rofled? I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve been hit by iDuelist in WvW.

It might not be how they are meant to function, doesnt stop that happening though i have seen many a time they will suddenly get stuck somewhere and explode without anyone near them.

No, really, you’re not describing how they actually function.

Not really, as soon as you know which one is the real one you dont really lose them in target though, i can target someone have them run away, go LoS and still i will be targeting them

KK.

It’s pretty funny that you still don’t accept that with good timing, it’s categorically superior to shatter and resummon to reset the phantasm attack timer and extra shatter damage.

That’s odd, I didn’t think the Spatial Surge ticks accumulated since they are (or were) slower. Suppose I’ll have to look tonight.

Sidenote: your 4k damage number makes a hell of a lot more sense if you’re talking about 3x 1.3k crits. Like I said my gear is horribad (for a power build) and I expect that I’ll double my damage with real gear, so that would make sense.

You can never say “oh i will do this when this happens, do that when that happens” its all about the current situation, if you have the OPTION to swap then you can but that isnt always an option

Oh, I always make it an option when I shatter with the intent to resummon.

That all depends on IF they use Zephyr and try to unload, so they dont do that and you dont get that damage

Kind of like your 3 iDuelist fantasy requires that the person survive for what, 18 seconds of phantasm pew pew, while restraining themselves from looking crosswise at them and blowing them up in about a half second.

I have seen LOADS of times where Phantoms/Clones will just stop the moment they hit a little change in the terrain and then just blow up doing no damage or anything to anyone

That’s not how they actually function.

its like what 3 attacks at the most – if they die, they are the clone, if they take huge chuck of health in damage they are the clone if they move away when you move towards them they are the real mesmer

Congratulations, you just made the enemy waste 3 attacks worth of time every time you summon some clones or drop yourself from their vision. That’s a hell of a lot more than most classes get.

2) For CC Break, I’ll use Decoy over Blink. It too has the Stun Break, Stealths to break targeting (And Marking), and Leaves behind a Clone. Said clone traited to Cripple in an AoE when killed.

Generally speaking, the majority of CC events occur with the enemy immediately following up with:

- a melee AOE (bull’s rush → hundred blades is a common example; immobilize + pistol whip is another)
- a ranged burst sequence, often involving a channeled stream attack (rifle/ranger volley)
- dive/chain AOE CC (Guardian Hammer AOE, Symbol of Wrath→spin2win)

In these events, Decoy won’t do much and you’ll still eat a lot, if not most of, the damage. Blink, on the other hand, will get you out of range of the exact combo they were setting up with the CC.

A lot of the issue is that Decoy will break stuns, but not knockdowns or immob or daze. So you’ll still be in the same spot taking the damage. Blink bypasses that restriction.

Lets say 3,000 damage per a Phantom per a attack thats 9,000damage at least with no crits

I get a shortbow ranger hitting zephyr and rollfacing 15 attacks into my 5 stacks of confusion after I Mind Wrack (for the record, that’s in the neighborhood of 7500 damage) about as often as you have 3 iDuelists up plinking a non-afk target in PvP.

Now the first set 3,000 damage then summon the second one so it will get 2 attacks off before the second can be summoned

Oh …

You’re one of those people that don’t swap weapons.

I feel dirty now.

You are also taking in that the Shatter will work – ignoring terrain which they get stuck in as well as the fact that most classes will be able to destroy the phantoms with AoE attacks and such

Lol. Shatters are pretty reliable.

Also … yeah I totally agree on AOE attacks blowing your iDuelists up. Lol.

Using Shatters isnt 100% accurate and doesnt always work

Does “obstructed obstructed obstructed intercepted obstructed” sound familiar for your iDuelist?

Did i say i was the best PvP player in the world? No, am i decent? Yes

You don’t swap weapons.

sure that might stop you getting hit once or twice but is it going to save you in the long run? very unlikely

Working as intended. Clones are not intended to tank for you. That’s why you have Distortion, Blurred Frenzy, Phase Retreat, Chaos Armor, Diversion, Mantra of Distraction, Decoy, Blink, Feedback, Arcane Thievery, Phantasmal Defender, Prestige, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Illusionary Counter … I think I missed about half a dozen, but my old age causes my memory to fail all too often nowadays.

Most players (me included) will not use any attacks on mesmers other then Auto attack until i know its them

So … what you’re saying is that the enemy Mesmer basically has you running around idle spamming 111111 for [X seconds] until you find the real one?

How long does it take to find the real Warrior?

The cool down reduction would really only benefit GS 5 in my build (6 second reduction) since I am already traited in Illusionists Celerity (5% reduction) and the other skills have decently short cool downs already.

The cooldown reduction effects stack. The tooltip is bugged to only reflect one of the two traits.

GS2 bounce range is 600 or so, so.

I suppose that’s a sad tradeoff for getting a cripple and immobilize on the leap.

I was running basically that exact build yesterday and the day before, and I was critting for 650-800 on mobs, max.

Just to clarify, you are talking about Greatsword’s first “autoattack” ability that hits 3 separate times / not accumulated with “flurry” UI display mechanics and can be spammed every second right?

Because based on that I would expect your iBerserker and Blurred Frenzy to crit in the 12,000 damage range, each.

if you get 3 phantoms up then why would you destroy them 3 Phantoms doing 2-3,000 damage every seconds – thats like 9,000damage every 6seconds (Phantom Dualist) Plus they get benefits from giving conditions, high crit chance and such

I pretty much never get 3 phantasms up in any fight worth talking about, because they either die or my target dies.

Also, last I checked, shattering two phantasms and immediately resummoning two phantasms also gets about 75% of a free attack sequence, so it’s something you want to do anyways to accelerate phantasm attack cycles.

So the shatter damage is free on top.

Literally, you’re talking about:

5000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0

10000 damage in 12 seconds (833 dps)

versus:

5000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5000 | 2500 (shatter) | 2500 (first resummon) | 2500 (second resummon) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0

17500 in 15 seconds (1167 dps)

It’s pretty obvious that shattering and re-summoning is more DPS. However, the vast majority of people in the world have a hard time with math, analysis, and basic modeling. Not surprising but it’s tedious to read this absurdity over and over.

“intelligence”? Its not really rocket science – The Mesmer is the one that is MOVING that is about all you need to know, slightly different for downed state but when they are up – the real mesmer is the one that is moving, all clones and phantoms will only move when the target goes out of range

Lmao. No offense, but this means you are inexperienced at PvP. It’s pretty easy to abuse LOS, stealth, and teleporting behind the player / attacking out of their immediate field of view to abuse clone deception. The entire point centers on delaying their ability to click the correct Mesmer target. If you attack them from behind, and they see 3 targets, they need to take at least a moment or two to identify the correct Mesmer. If you teleport behind them and summon clones, they need to do this process again. If you duck behind LOS for even 1 second and use any ability, they need to evaluate who is the Mesmer … again. Call Target mitigates some of this, but there is still a lot of room to work with. The best part is when you duck behind them / out of LOS and they need to process whether you’ve stealthed and dropped the Call Target or not.

In no case should the deception last more than a second, but in most cases you should get a half second of the enemy retargeting, which can waste their cooldowns or simply delay their actions.

I have to admit I’d be shocked to see a 4k crit on spatial surge. My current gear is pretty bad (and actually not optimized for power at all), but I only crit up to like 650-700 with that exact build.

Edit: I never noticed a difference in damage on the third hit; I’ll have to pay more attention.

So you were doing up to 8000 damage per second using the Greatsword autoattack?

I’m pretty sure your GS1 was not critting for 4k :P.

Pretty sure phantasms do a kittenload more damage than ranger pets, just saying.

The staff is a condition damage weapon while the greatsword is direct damage power weapon.

GS is actually one of the better Sharper Images weapons.

Oh I agree, the class is not “perfect”. But, it is amazing. I think the class is pretty far past “neat”. Neat was when I figured out Mirror + Adventurer runes + Deceptive Evasion was hilarious.

I wouldn’t call most of the current issues “issues”, since that implies some meaningful degree of severity. There are a lot of minor issues like pathing as you say, but these are generally infrequent and can, for the most part, be worked around by the player.

The only “significant” issues around are iLeap’s range, iMage in general, Prestige sequencing and mechanics, and some usability/“QOL” tweaks all around.

“solid” thats questionable, when 1 Phantom doing an attack does MORE damage then shattering with 3

Not really.

I also get 4 stacks of Might and 4 stacks of Confusion when I Shatter, in addition to Vigor. Depending on mood swings I may also get 4% raw damage from vulnerability stacks.

again when 1 Phantom out does the damage of Shattering why would you destroy them?

Aside from being incorrect, you, and most players, need to realize that Phantasms don’t just “do damage”. They do damage 6 seconds later. It not a complicated concept, but seems to fly over the head of most. You (abstract-you) seem to perceive the full future timeline as a single compressed event, when that is not the reality. Boggles my mind.

if you get that target thing, you STILL have it after you rbing out new clones so you get ZERO benefit in the confuse department

You seem to want clones to distract human enemy players for long periods of time, as if they were NPCs.

Not gonna happen. Do you think Thieves are happy when I follow them even though they’re stealthed because I know exactly which way they’re going to move? Are they crying about stealth being useless?

Human players use intelligence to mitigate some of your tactical advantages, including clone deception. Therefore, you must use your own intelligence and tactical acuity to gain advantage and maximize clone deception. It’s still there even if it won’t fool a player for long.

I was talking about how they are MEANT to get attacked to protect you, except in most cases the mob will run right past them and go right for you no matter what

That’s an interesting mob AI / aggro discussion. I started another thread to try and get more observations on the topic. I’ve had builds before where clones were actually highly effective at drawing mob aggro. I could go entire fights and get minimal or no aggro from mobs.

Hm, I wonder if SI bleed ticks or other DOT sources are being attributed to the Mesmer immediately on Clone generation, thereby picking up aggro. E.g. not letting the Clone say hello upon spawning.

For example, in the above rotation, I’ll generally shatter when GS 4 has maybe 3-5 seconds left before recast.

You can run the timing tighter. When you command a Shatter, your Illusions immediately stop counting towards the cap (the purple bubbles in this case are not accurate). So, you can immediately re-summon.

Usually I will hit Shatter in the middle of the GS2 animation and combo into GS4.

Below is the build I currently run (10,20,10,0,30), and while it works well, I still can’t decide whether I can optimize it more.
[…]
While I enjoy contributing to the shatters and the utility of F3/F4 when in a pinch, I’m wondering if they’d be better spent in Domination or Chaos for damage or survivability.

If you are shattering often, then you are not getting much use out of that Chaos trait. If you are using GS as primary, then the GS Trait in Dom will benefit you significantly. If you are not moving into melee for shatters, then the 30 point Illusion trait is less effective.

I would generally recommend dropping the points in Chaos and moving them to Dom. If you are not going into melee for Shatters, then drop the last 5 points in Illusion. If you are Shatters semi-often but not “very often”, then drop another 5 points from Illusion (e.g. drop the ‘Might on Shatter’ trait).

From there you have various options. If you use Staff primary over GS, you can swap the GS trait for the Staff trait. For certain Game Purposes, you could even hit up 30 Dueling and get Mantra stacking (not recommended unless you actually want to learn how to use a full set of Mantras, which can be painful).

Other options — 15 Inspiration is always a reasonable survivability play. In general you could always get the Mantra heal trait as a random option.

So different things … the main changes are to evaluate your personal playstyle and determine whether you really are shattering often, shattering in melee, and whether you use GS or Staff as primary.

Should be able to but not 100% positive. However, during normal stealth (e.g. Decoy) you can cast basically any non-offensive ability without breaking stealth.

Yeah basically. Swapping the burn and blind and allowing the finishing effect to trigger when the channel breaks are definitely needed improvements.

The channel is there for a reason though: so you can’t use other spells while stealthed.

Yeah those damage numbers are significantly off and I’m not 100% positive about the timing numbers, but I haven’t done super precise testing of those, so /shrug.

The damage numbers for the main phantasms should scale to the following ballpark (I did a test awhile back on the heavy armor golem, using a power build):

iDuelist: 1400
iWarlock: 1500 (3 conditions)
iSwordsman: 1600
iBerserker: 1350

Ah right, Greatsword bug for Mirror Blade:

Mirror Blade seems to check for LOS at both the beginning and end of the cast. Most range abilities in this game only check for LOS at the end of the cast*. This causes issues with detailed kiting where you may not be facing your target at the beginning of the cast while dodge rolling or otherwise moving.

• I’m not 100% positive about this and if anyone could confirm/deny this behavior for targeted range attacks in general, that would be helpful.

^

I agree with the sentiment, however the vast majority of range (and melee) abilities in this game function in that manner. It is an intended design mechanic to allow the players to “waste” attacks if they are out of range or LOS. Generally, many people believe that the initial clone on iLeap should simply have a 900 range rather than 600.

What if Mesmers are already amazing?

So you think it is “fine” that most our dps comes from Phantoms?

Most of Mesmer DPS in a phantasm build after 12 seconds comes from phantasms.

Go figure.

Guess you think it is also fine that our unique mechanic wants us to DESTROY them for some measly damage that doesnt even compare to keeping them up?

The damage is solid if you trait for it. In addition it can be mostly free damage if you have good timing. In addition, you get many, many effects throughout all the trait trees for using Shatters.

Guess you are also fine with destroying them and loses all the benefits we get from the traists – 9% extra damage, 9% reduced damage and the Movement buff

I’m not sure if you’ve read and/or understood the tooltips, but Clones will suffice for those traits as well. I don’t know about you, but when I Shatter I can typically summon 4 or more Illusions immediately after. Ironically, you can only have 3 out anyways, so …

Guess thats all “fine” is it?

Yeah, pretty much.

1. Shattering is broken – Lose too much damage as well as benefits from destroying the clones and it is better in 99% of situations to keep them up

It’s actually better in 99% of situations to Shatter the Phantasms at the correct time.

2. Phantoms do WAY to much of our damage – we have to rely on them WAY to much, without them we would be toast to nearly every class

You choose to rely on them for damage. And then you complain about relying on them for most of your damage …

3. Clones DONT confuse people its easy to tell which is the real player – its the one that moves and the one that uses abilities other then the 1slot skill of the weapon

They’re not meant to fool people easily or for long. They do an adequate job of temporary distraction if you move in specific ways; e.g. dropping LOS so they don’t actually see you, using stealth, moving behind and in front of them via swaps and blinks.

4. Clones are pretty much useless in PvE very little damage and even the AI mobs ignore them most of the time

Staff clones produce WOC. Sword clones increase your total damage by 1% per attack. All clones can crit and bleed via SI. They absorb projectiles. They can all be Shattered.

Ranger pets seem to take around 10 seconds to revive from what I recall, although it’s different in and out of combat. Although, IIRC they auto-revive in 45s in combat, but my memory is fuzzy.

I was just confirming your perception of the order of magnitude of Illusion fragility compared to pets contrasted to their frequency.

Also, Mesmer Illusions revive slowly?

What would you consider a fast revival versus a slow revival? What “revival” time valuation would you place on a Guardian’s Spirit Weapons?

Seems like it’s the multi-part abilities (iLeap, the parry on Sword4) that are being affected by the cooldown issues. I wonder if the second part of the ability is coded as “valid for Sword-affecting traits”, and whether the cooldown on the initial part (iLeap) does not start until the second part (Swap), bypassing the cooldown reduction of the Sword trait.

Meh.

So would you say that Illusions die 5-10 times as easily as pets?

This thread to discuss clone aggro observations.

I’ve switch between various builds in PvE, and one thing that struck me as odd recently is that my clones tend to pull a lot less aggro when I use Sharper Images.

I ran with my GS/Sword/Focus [no SI] build for quite a lot of PvE farming (didn’t bother to respec after WvW), and I would get some mob aggro, typical, but my Clones would also draw a lot of fire. Mobs would also stop at Clones and try to beat them down prettykittenoften. I could go half or most of a fight without mobs looking cross-wise at me — or when they did, I could distract them with other Clones/Phantasms without too much hassle.

I recently respec’d and picked up Sharper Images due to various reasons, and I immediately noticed that mobs started beelining me a hell of a lot more than before.

Anyone have similar observations? Wonder if the bleed aggro is being attributed to the Mesmer?

Another separate thought: anyone noticed mob aggro trends with or without Signet of Illusions? Sometimes I used it, sometimes not. I think I’ll stick it back on tonight and see if that affects the aggro patterns.

Good thing it comes with a stealth and blind, too! With a the optional conditional removal if you trait for it. And the damage is AOE and combos as a blast finisher!

Also, it’s not a specific build; it’s simply stacking condition damage.

So exciting, let’s keep talking about the tooltip of the same ability over again!

My idea to fix illusions

Are Illusions broken?

currently it is even inferior to a pet class.

Mesmers can summon Illusions 5-10 times as often as pet classes can summon pets.

Pet classes inferior to Mesmers?

Yeah, for some reason my iLeap clones actually leap to their target 9/10 times, and I just have to prezz teh buttonz when the clone, err, leaps and looks like it’s near the target.

I have to admit I don’t blink when I’m tracking the clone’s leap though. I watch it like a hawk. An eagle. An eaglehawk, nephew of falconowl, so I can press 3.

I’m all for clone AI and pathing improvements (making iLeap’s clone leap more than once would be nifty, maybe with a 2-3s cooldown, or giving it a minor boost in movement speed), but trying to re-design a skill because players are essentially bad is simply bad design.

In theory:

- Assume you drop about 800 damage per second, non-crit.
- Assume you have a 70% random crit chance at a 2.0x crit multiplier.
- That’s 800 dps base, up to 1360 DPS.
- Throw in some bleed damage, assuming 3 stacks at 55dps each for another 150.
- 1500 dps.

Can assume that Strength runes would improve stacks by 20%. Assume that’s +2 stacks, or 70 power and malice. Malice adjustment would add around 3.5 bleed damage per tick to an assumed ~3 bleeds, or 10 dps. Power adjustment would add around ?20 base dps?. Or 34 after crits. That’s 1550. Add a flat 5% on top for 1630 DPS.

For Ogre, dunno how fast rockdog attacks. 850 damage per 4s? 7s? That’s 120-220 DPS after it spawns. 1620-1720. Another 4% on top (assuming it applies to the dog as well) is 1685-1790 DPS.

For Divinity, you’re getting a bonus 60 Malice for some negligible 9 DPS. The crit damage increases the multiplier to 2.12×. Don’t recall how much 60 Precision would be for crit%, but let’s be conservative and say 3%. Base critted DPS with the malice adjustment will be up to 1455+150+9= 1614 DPS.

So: Ogre is top dog, but assumes that the dog actually spawns and goes about its business is an effective manner. If the dog dies, or doesn’t spawn, Ogre immediately loses its edge. It is also single-target only from what I’ve seen (I don’t use it).

Strength is a solid play, but assumes a good ~10 stacks of Might normally. If you normally run with less than 10 stacks of Might on average, Strength underperforms.

Divinity seems reliable, and the DPS assessment does not include the miscellaneous benefits of +60 Heal, Toughness, Vitality. Naturally, relies on a solid crit% and Fury uptime.

The above numbers aren’t super precise or anything, and the power coefficients are probably a bit off, but just eyeballing the rune set it looks like they’re all vaguely on par with each other, with the above conditions/constraints.

Leap doesnt require a target aswell…

Several Leaps and Leap-like abilities require a target. Most notably at least 2 of the 3 Guardian leaps require a target; I remember this specifically because I was testing how well a Guardian could escape with said leaps, and being annoyed that they were unusable.

and the problem is that Blink makes a path over the ground, so hills that are accessible walking are no problem. Problem is that blink has no Z axis. So when there is small difference in hight and no way arround you well end at the edge of the hight difference.

1. I’ve used Blink for about 40 levels in PvE and about 100 hours in sPvP and WvW.

2a. The Z-axis is fine. You can teleport up hills as long as there is a valid pathing up the hill in your frontal arc the vast majority of the time (note: the pathing does not need to be directly ahead of you). In fact, it has a stronger uphill z-axis capability than the leap you envy.

2b. Going downhill, Blink will save you fall damage and the snare, which can be significant depending on the circumstances. Leap will get you killed.

3. The one you thing you have to avoid doing is trying to Blink at the very edge of a vertical cutoff.

4. Leap’s only benefit is that it can traverse short chasms.

5. Leap can’t be used while stunned or knocked down, feared or dazed. Not positive, but pretty sure it can’t be used while Immobilized. Blink is so much better at basically everything except for jump puzzles. Le sigh.

So, yes, do your homework.

Levetty.1279:

Because Immobilize is next to useless in PvE and in PvP you have more chance of the enemy deciding to stand still and do nothing while you kill him then for any bit of the attack to actually work.

Why do you never want any changes that actually make the Mesmer useful?

I’m sorry: unlike lesser Mesmers when I press 3, it actually works most of the time. Apparently my button press is special in some way. I wish I could share the secrets of pressing “3”, but I simply find it natural and intuitive.

Odaman.8359:

That is unless they wanted to swap the abilities (we leap first) and keep the immobolize… then it wouldn’t be a big deal, although it’d probably still have z-axis issues.

I would agree on that, except I guarantee the ability would get a nerf. 600 range instant AOE Immobilize? Heh. You’d also delay the Blurred Frenzy combo by 1 hit, /shrug.

1. In terms of min-maxing, there is always a “best” if you can define the situation narrowly enough.

2. Focus+trait can “break” certain fights in PvE. Other than those situations, it’s not 100% mandatory or anything.

3. In WvW, there are many segments of gameplay. Due to the nature of WvW, many or most of those different segments synergize very well with Focus. There are some WvW aspects where it may be similarly effective to choose another weapon, but those are few and far between.

Blink does not stop working when there is a “small bump in the terrain”. It can also teleport up hills. It also doesn’t require a target. It also breaks stuns. It can also work during knockdowns or immobilize.

There is so much troll in this thread and I didn’t start it.

iSwordsman is pretty brutal.

Sword clones also have low synergy with Sharper Images.

So for a S/S primary build I would generally recommend:

1. Get some phantasm buffing.
2. No SI necessary.

This basically necessitates 10/10/0/0/5 as the skeleton. From there you can go Shatter heavy (30 Illusion) or tanky (15 Chaos/Insp), or for something specific (Glamour support — 20 Insp 20 Illu, or Mantra heals with 10 more Dueling and 20 Insp). Pure phantasm army would take you to 25 Insp and 20 Illu (need to confirm Haste works on iS — there was some people reporting it was bugged).

Also have to consider what your secondary weapon set is.

But you have to find land terrain to use the Sword.

But good call.

I’d almost prefer a condition removal shatter over the daze, but i’m sure there’s some mesmers out there using the daze.. I think they’re in the minority though.

I use Diversion all the time in my burst rotation, but I have Illusory Persona, so.

I find it useful for two events:

1. Leap-Blurred Frenzy. The immobilize cuts dodge of course. Diversion cuts ability-based escapes for a moment. I use it after blow up my illusions with Mind Wrack.

2. Interrupting an anti-stomp skill. Usually I use Distortion to go invulnerable during a stomp to evade all that cheesy kitten, but when that is down, a timed Diversion can interrupt their cheese.

That said, an untraited Diversion is pretty meh. On the flip side, it can get pretty interesting with the right traits …

The second is people who think it’s fine, and want minor tweaks to various skills. To this second group I say: the Mesmer is not supposed to be a pet class.

The Mesmer is fine for the most part and I don’t play it as a pet class.

The burn is around 3-4k, AOE, with a full condition build. The damage is pretty high all things considered.

If you can find land terrain under the world, (like the edge tip of a tree trunk sticking 1 pixel out of the water), you can walk onto it and use Phase Retreat, Mirror Images, and sometimes Blink to get back overland.

There’s usually some terrain somewhere although it may take a bit to find it.

It’s kind of a major pain in thekitten that none of the underwater weapon skills will force you back into the overland.