Guild Wars 2

You happen to be somewhere in the middle therefore you perceive anything beyond your reaction time as OP. When in reality you are just a tad slow.

Human reaction to something they are prepared and waiting for is 0.18-0.3 seconds.

Watching for a Thief CND at 900 range gives you 0.2s of slack time.

Also, this assumes:

1. The player is drawn (lol WvW).
2. You identify the player.
3. You identify the player as a Thief.
4. You identify the player as a Thief with a Dagger offhand (can be assumed after #3).
5. You can discern the CND animation at 900 range (can be assumed with risk after #3 — e.g. wasting dodges just because you see a Thief is kind of silly, but this is where you want to go with your argument, so why not).

The basic model is “dodge by premonition, or die”. At least the CND-Mug-BS combo no longer deals 35,000 damage like it did back with Orbs in WvW.

RTL has a 2.0s travel time (max range) down to 1.0s travel time (midrange).

I’ve been 100-0’d by Ele burst something like twice since release. The animation is rather obvious, you know?

I never said I have a problem with it.

You cite it as dangerous. What is a poor scrub like me to think when a random poster on the forum is citing the biggest joke of a burst damage ability as dangerous?

Unfortunately I’m just a random baddie, so I need big flashy animations like a hugeass ball of lightning hurtling towards me to react properly, and my feelings are hurt when I insta-die from scary Thieves.

The real kicker, though, is the time spent working with the mantra. With ether feast, I hit it once every 20 seconds for a large heal, and that’s it.

Indeed, that’s the cost of using Mantras.

The benefit is that you can execute the heals while using other abilities, and that the heal uninterruptable.

With a 30/30 build, the heal throughput is rather convenient. For example, when sieging in WvW, Ether Feast simply cannot keep up with the damage intake. MoR can deal with the sustained damage much better. I’m at the wall for twice as long as the vast majority of other players — and I’m doing it in full glass cannon gear. If I used Ether Feast, I would have to simply back away for long periods of time waiting on its cooldown. With MoR I only back away to recharge it.

Remember, while Mantra recharging has the obvious alternative cost, most “normal” utilities also have their own costs that you bypass by using Mantras. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dropped a Null Field and been aggravated at how long it takes to cast and then to activate. Dropping a Focus4 then iW for a Whirl finisher? That’s 3 seconds before you get a cleansing bolt. And you spent ~1.5 of those seconds doing zero damage.

Until you actually have to recharge, Mantra builds come out way ahead. Not only do you get the effects immediately, you were actually attacking during that time.

This means that the decoy and veil both don’t quite last long enough to charge even a single mantra.[] Also, a mantra build wont have more than 1 non-mantra utility most likely, meaning that every 30-40 seconds you will have the stealth to almost charge up one mantra. Seems a bit underwhelming.

Decoy and Veil last long enough, but I wouldn’t use those tbh. You can also recharge around LoS, or when simply de-aggroing your opponent.

Again, that’s a matter of Mantra management.

It’s nice that you’ve “tried” Mantras. Have you played with a full Mantra build for 20 hours straight in sPvP, grinding PvE (and story quests — those tend to be more packed with action), and/or WvW?

Using Mantras effectively is like playing a new class. If you play an Engineer for the first time, you can’t expect to be proficient at the class immediately. Mantras have a slew of playstyle differences due to their unique mechanic that is basically inverted from almost all abilities in GW2. You have to managing timing much differently, manage positioning differently, look at different spots on the screen. You also have to un-learn IP depending on build if you’ve been mostly using that (I had ran that for a long time prior to using a Mantra build).

It took me grinding 8 story quests in PvE, along with a full map clear of straits through cursed shore before I was able to not embarass myself with pressing 6789. I still didn’t even use Mantras well back then, but I didn’t feel like an idiot pressing the buttons. I’m not the best player that’s ever graced online gaming, but I’m also not too shabby. The learning curve of Mantras is real and is as steep as learning how to manage illusions and shatters.

Should they be buffed? Ehhhhhh, only on the very fringes perhaps (or something more than a fringe buff for MoC). I think the reduction to the 3.25s charge time is fine for the most part.

frans.8092:

He is saying the ele can have a 100% crit on those 403 and 336 base skills, while a thief has around a 60% crit chance on base 503 and 403 (806) skills. With sufficient +crit damage crit can hit really hard.

Thieves can autocrit from stealth. Anyone can autocrit on a weapon swap.

Random mechanics insertions do not an argument make.

Throwing dots on a board doesn’t mean much unless you connect them.

Lets compare abilities.
Mug: 504 base damage.
Cloak and Dagger: 504
Backstab: 806 (MUST take time to get behind him.)
Lightning Strike: 403 damage. (about a 40% chance to apply to this combo.)
Total damage if everything goes well: 2217

Bonus 15% on all the attacks. Bonus tick of poison. Three stacks of Vuln. Extra 10 Might [14%].

(504 + 504) * (1 + .6 * 1.1) * 1. * 1.15 * 1.14 + (806 + 403) * (1 + .6 * 1.1) * 1.03 * 1.35 * 1.14

= 5375 avg

Edit: I forgot to throw in the poison. Ohwell.

Arcane Power: 0 Damage, makes next 5 attacks critical.
Ride the Lightning: 336 Damage.
Updraft: Knocking them down.
Arcane Blast: 470 Damage. (20% base damage for knocking them down.)
Arcane Wave: 470 Damage. (20% base damage for knocking them down.)
Lightning Strike: 403 Damage (20% base damage for knocking them down.)
Lightning Strike: 403 Damage (20% base damage for knocking them down.) (sigil of air.) (about a 80% chance to apply to this combo.)
Total damage if everything goes well: 2432.

336
363
628
403
403

(336) * (1 + 1.1) * 1 + (363 + 628 + 403 + 403) * (1 + 1.1) * 1.2

= 5234

Le shocke. Almost as much. I wonder if the autocrit on BS would be better:

(504 + 504) * (1 + .6 * 1.1) * 1 * 1.15 * 1.14 + (403) * (1 + .6 * 1.1) * 1.03 * 1.15 * 1.14 + 806 * (1 + 1.1) * 1.03 * 1.15 * 1.14

= 5357

Not much difference I guess.

Still, not bad all things considered.

Now if RTL didn’t have a travel time and a hugeass obvious animation, combined with the loud sound effect, you’d have a real competitor for CND Mug BS.

Edit:

Although the Norn elite stealth action in the video made me laugh my kitten off.

The identity crisis persists through mantra management. The problem is that by burning any mantra other than MoP, you have stuck yourself with at least a 20ish second recharge on 4% of your damage.

Maintaining the full 4 Mantras is not really necessary fulltime. That’s the first mental hurdle you need to clear to run a 30/30 build.

5560 + 300 + 3* (640 + .1*300) = 7781 per 21s; 371 hps sustained throughput.

[2620 + 300*.4] * 2 per [10+3.25+1] = 5480 per 384.6 hps sustained throughput.

So anyways, an untraited MoRecovery has higher sustained throughput than a maximized Ether Feast by a small margin. HM, and then with the Mantra cd trait:

[2620 + 300*.4] * 3 per [10+3.25+2] = 539 hps
[2620 + 300*.4] * 3 per [8+3.25+2] = 620 hps

These arguments are old and very tiring, especially when they stem from pure ignorance rather than the common inexperience.

Yes, but Cloak and Dagger and Mug are 60% critical chance, while his combo is always 100% critical chance, therefore Cloak and Dagger has a chance to hit significantly less then his combo.

Zzzz 15% damage for the next 5 attacks.

As a simple arithmetic exercise: 3113 > 1850.

His combo doesn’t change much, and he retains all that damage easilly.

All the “half a Thief’s damage”, ok.

A thief can get 20% damage under 50% health, but he must sacrifice 100% critical chance while in stealth to get this trait, so therefore his Cloak and Dagger, Mug and Backstab combo all require a CHANCE to critical hit.

Ok and?

You are throwing out a lot of random traits and effects — much like Stiv trying so hard to fabricate potential scenarios where other classes may have almost as much damage in almost as little time (but not really) compared to Thieves.

Are you going to actually put those together into a rational argument to somehow demonstrate that the Ele can output more than half the damage a Thief can in less than twice the timeframe?

Edit:

Anyways, I’m out. This discussion is the same as the last 50 iterations of “lol CND Mug BS” — Thieves fabricate a ton of excuses how significantly more damage in significantly less time is similar to other classes, with random tangents about how other classes should by obligated to run with 2k Toughness / more than 3.1k armor to avoid instant death, etc.

Despite the fact that the numbers are pretty blatantly clear.

Things don’t really change much I guess. Shrug.

Daecollo.9578:

EasymodeX.4062:

Daecollo.9578:

Eh, you didn’t watch that elementalist video where he was killing people faster then a thief could?

Actually no, because I don’t watch youtube videos at work, usually.

Uh, then can you wait until you put down comments saying they can’t and argue with people about it? it makes your arguments one sided if you don’t even look at the evidence.

So, after taking a look at the video, it appears that the Ele is getting good hits with with LS and RTL, basically a 10k combo whose cast time is basically dependent on how far he is (RTL travel time at 600 units per second).

The base damages for those two abilities are 403 and 336. The base damage for CND, Mug, and BS are 504, 504, and 403 (806), respectively.

So, the Ele basically does significantly less damage than a Thief (note: it’s hard to see, but it seems like he’s getting up to 13k spikes when you add in Sigil of Air and so on, where a Thief would be combo’ing for >20k — should be up to 25k or so — on a similar upleveled glass target), and takes a variable amount of time up to 2.0s to achieve that.

The Thief takes 0.75 total time to achieve more damage. Luckily, the Ele can recast LS pretty quickly.

You’re not really helping your case.

Edit: Next up someone is going to refer to the power Necro video with “unstoppable 15k bursts” that take 5 seconds to set up. And yet nothing will change.

Stiv.1820:

EasymodeX.4062:

A Thief kills you before pure reaction is possible.

Here is the crux of the problem. This statement is personal to you. They kill you before reaction is possible for you. Not for me, not for many others. I know it’s hard, but not everyone is equal and Anet does not need to balance for the lowest common denominator.

Hehe lowest common denominator hehe.

You’re the one that has problems with Hundred Blades.

I’ve died to it maybe twice since this game went open beta.

Crux of the problem is that you have a cognitive dissonance where you perceive a Thief’s 0.5s burst to be equivalent to another class’s 3.5 second burst.

You perceive a Warrior’s 1.75s Kill Shot, or almost 1s Bull’s Rush + 3.5s HB, or a Mesmer’s 0.75s MB + 0.75s iB + instant F3 + 0.25 MI + instant dodge + instant F1 …

You perceive these 1.75 – 4.5s sequences to be “as fast” as your own 0.5-0.75s sequence.

This error in perception is personal to you, although you share it with a lot of Thieves.

Daecollo.9578:

Eh, you didn’t watch that elementalist video where he was killing people faster then a thief could?

Actually no, because I don’t watch youtube videos at work, usually.

Obsidian.1328:

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I don’t only go by what ANet sets as rules for fairplay, or any other game-producer for that matter. There is such a thing as unspoken rules of conduct and sportsmanship that are above any written letter. This idea that you should do whatever they let you get away with is juvenile and corrupting.

I wouldn’t suggest that ANet’s word is law on what’s acceptable. However, anything in-game that isn’t completely broken (e.g. glitching through walls), is fair game — and if ANet explicitly cites anything as unacceptable, then that’s, well, cheating. Their game after all.

In the general case, though, I don’t care if it’s “cheesy” or “cheap” or “unfair”. I feel no guilt for abusing design flaws — that’s basically my reward for applying my brain to the game design (or in various specific cases, applying group coordination to the game design).

That’s pure PvP in my book.

I can’t tell if you don’t really play against good players or what. Any warrior who simply opens up with Frenzy+Bull+100b is a noob. Good ones are extremely hard to deal with and mix it up a lot more. Usually GS + S/Sh or Ax/Sh. Good warrios either count evades or Bullrush as soon as you start an evade (ermergerd takes twitch) which makes it impossible to avoid.

Oh please. You can use any number of effects to still counter that. You can:

1. Steal to another target.
2. Shadow return off Sword2 or the utility.
3. Shadowstep with the utility.
4. Death Lotus or Flanking Strike if it’s an immob / not BR. You could alternatively straight up DL/FS the Bull’s Rush if it’s not Frenzied.
5. Blind the BR.

Pretty sure you can Withdraw/RFI the combo, but not 100% on that.

I’ve actually spent quite a few hours in sPvP on a glass GS Warrior (it’s hilarious to play if nothing else), so I’m fully aware of the timing and how to nail people with BR even when they’re making an effort not to die. Next you’re going to tell me to force a cooldown with Rush. Jfc sit down, son.

In any case, on my Thief I can literally ignore a Warrior for half the kitten fight with random cooldowns.

The difference is that you are reacting to the Warrior. A Thief kills you before pure reaction is possible. Pre-action becomes mandatory, rather than value added.

CND-Mug-BS is basically the only class / attack sequence in the game that fits that profile.

It takes twitch to avoid mesmer pulls (borderline impossible),

Luckily those don’t actually deal >15k damage, and you can use instant abilities out of the knockdown.

hammer hits from both guards and wars.

You are reaching really, really deep.

It takes twitch and positioning to avoid mesmer burst,

Good thing you can see it coming 4-7 seconds in advance.

a teleport+churning earth.

1.5s in advance.

Yes it takes twitch to avoid Thief burst but the difference between all of the above and Thief is all of those examples

Is that you have 0.5s to react to the Thief. You get 1.5-6 seconds to react to all the other nasties in this game.

Not only that, in more dynamic situations such as WvW, you actually have to identify the “add” as a Thief (within 0.25s).

I’ve said it before: there’s not much that needs to be changed. All ANet needs to do is to:

1. Nerf the damage of Mug (I recommend halving the direct damage and adding condition damage to make it more flexible for more builds).
2. Make the CND damage instant rather than delayed, with the stealth taking effect after the cast. E.g. “dagger and cloak”.
3. Increase the cast time of BS by 0.25s [optional].

The second item is the more important part. I include #1 because Mug is silly in the current design and it sucks balls in my heavy condition damage builds. #3 combos with #2 if additional time is necessary.

The gist is that the change makes the CND-Mug-BS combo something that is more reasonable to react to if you are, in fact, paying attention and see it coming.

However, you compare it to ether feast which has a massive base healing + a maximum of 1.3 scaling per healing power, and MoR suddenly becomes a bit wimpier.

If you are able to recharge MoR on cooldown, even without any Mantra traits, then it is competitive in raw heal throughput. With Mantra traits, it generally stomps on Ether Feast for heal throughput by a significant margin.

The problem with MoResolve is that it is not generally possible to refresh it during an intense fight. It is great as a 1-off condition removal, and that is it.

Technically it’s a 2-off (3 with HM). Also note its cooldown time. The result is that this comes down to “what is an intense fight”? If you have expect full contact for the duration, then Mantras are going to underperform due to the simple fact that you have to charge them. If you have anything less than full contact, all of a sudden you get a lot more condition removal a lot more often using MoR than other utility slot alternatives.

The problem with HM/EM is that they give mantras an identity crisis. The one encourages more use of mantras, and the other encourages leaving the mantras there as a passive damage boost.

It’s only an “identity crisis” at first glance. Once you work out a pattern of “Mantra management”, it’s not a big deal. Generally, I don’t pay much cognizant attention to my Mantra charges or cooldowns anymore and just use/recharge them by habit. The one thing ANet needs to do regarding this subtopic is to tweak the skill icons to make the difference between “charged” and “not charged” more clear. The main culprit here is MoResolve. The others are easily discernable.

As I said before, there are a couple of niche builds for mantras, and most revolve around keeping them as a passive damage boost, long range nuking, and never actually engaging in a fight, because mantras are unbelievably bad for anything that involves a skirmish.

Except the part where you can instadown any glass target at 1200 range, every ~14 seconds. The player can still engage reasonably well using normal Sword sequences and so forth. However, it would be more for chasedown and finishing, due to the defensive risks of the Mantra build.

I mean, I can down a glass cannon Thief by using Mantra of Pain without any other buttons. I actually had a GC Dagger/Dagger Ele max range lightning rush me in front of a keep, and I 100->0’d him as he traveled to me (well, more accurately it was about 100->10, and then he died right after he came out of it).

The weakness, of course, is that an IP build offers a bit more defensive capability, along with more flexible use of utilities (note: when skirmishing, a 30/30 Mantra build should usually use Blink as the third utility, so this advantage for IP builds is more about Decoy/NullField/Feedback/etc, not Blink).

Kinda shooting high in terms of power, but the 3.25-sec channel is risky and has a high opportunity cost.

This is a good point, and is probably one of the more interesting set of suggested changes I’ve seen. I would go with 1 stack of 5s Might per second for MoPain though.

At this rate SOR will be in tier 5.

Rofls.

lettucemode.3789:

Obsidian.1328:

Lulz, what was up with that article?? It pretty much condones winning at all costs, even by cheating. By that logic we should get rid of all referee’s in all sports and just have it be a free-for-all. :/ If you were being sarcastic then I’ll ‘lol,’ but I couldn’t tell :P

You missed an important detail. The article says that you should use any tournament-legal move to win. Cheating in the form of hacks or kicking other players in the shins is obviously not legal in tournaments, nor is ignoring the referees/rules and having a free for all.

That’s one of the most important articles (if not the most important article) ever written about competing in games, please don’t dismiss it so lightly.

^

This. Most players that have been gaming a while would recognize the article in a heartbeat.

The bottom line is that you use what tools are available — if you are playing to win. If you’re not, don’t cry about losing.

Abusing culling is cheap? Use it.
Hiding Mesmers in a keep? Use it.
Turtle/stacking/zergballing? Use it.
Placing Trebs in unassailable positions? Use it.
Catapult AOE’ing through gates? Player AOE through walls? Use it.
Food buffs? Consumables? Use them.
Ninja golems? Of course.
Porting golems between zones (is this still possible)? Sounds like a plan*.

ANet will change whatever ANet feels like changing. If they “fix” or otherwise change those strategies … well, there will be new ones.

The article also mentions “real” cheating — breaking the game and community agreed-upon rules. In the context of GW2 and MMORPGs in general, this basically centers on hacking, jumping up walls, through geometry, spam bombing voice comms on other servers, etc. Those are ‘cheating’.

*Critically vulnerable to the kittenING QUEUE MONSTER, however.

30/30 Mantra build’s still good for those, just not the best.

Conversely, shatter builds are critically weak in any hard siege and “meh” in any large scale fight in general.

I’m serious, and I would love to be proven wrong, but I have yet to figure out a way to use mantras for their normal effects that can’t be done better by another build.

The individual Mantras are relatively effective by themselves (although the stability one underperforms because Blink and Decoy are so good in comparison).

Mantra of Restoration has relatively good heal throughput, activates with no cast time, and has the miscellaneous benefit of multiple “on heal” procs. Naturally, this comes at the cost of the recharging it.

Mantra of Resolve is basically on par or superior to most other condition removal methods. Null Field has twice the cooldown, for a somewhat different effect (strips boons too) and ethereal field. On one hand, it does more, but on the other, its cooldown is simply significant. When you’re getting plinked with conditions you have to remove with some frequency, MoR will remove 4 while Null Field will remove 1. And it will do so instantly (for example, while casting your heal, or in mid-dodge, or while casting MI or TW or something else).

The other removals you cited are poor comparisons because they offer condition removal via other means — they do not directly conflict with MoR. This is a question of “how much condition removal do you need in your build?” and “do you need the security of a condition removal on-demand?”.

Mantra of Pain is rather good for bursting targets. However, it is critical that the player practice / learn to use it while using other abilities. It took me about 10 hours of using MoPain before I used it during other attacks by habit. As a separate “sustained DPS” type of ability, of course it fails due to the Mantra recharge. My highest crit was on an upleveled scrub in WvW for 4900 damage. Regardless of their up-leveled-ness, this damage is higher than 1 full Spatial Surge at max range, and can be executed at the same time. This means that, while spamming it, it effectively doubles your damage output until you run out of charges. Combined with the delayed Phantasm attack and other delayed damage (Mirror Blade travel time, for example), as well as a possible Mind Wrack, you can get extreme bursts without using restrictive combos like Mirror Images.

Mantra of Distraction is good for what it does — two shots of instant daze. Most would use SigDom, but the crux is the tradeoff between instant execution versus “instant” recharge. And it cools down faster than SigDom.

Mantra of Concentration, as I stated above, is generally out-classed by Blink/Decoy, unfortunately. It’s really the only “underperpar” Mantra, although it is still effective enough if you intend to run 4 Mantras anyways.

Generally speaking, Mantras have better cooldowns compared to other similar abilities, at the cost of the recharge time. The most counter-intuitive part about using Mantras aside from having to recharge them is that Mantras are actually better used for a sustained fight, rather than a burst fight.

However, the recharge times are prohibitive in a full-contact “sustained fight”.

Thus, they are best used in a sustained skirmish where you can engage/disengage fairly often. In WvW this basically occurs all the time around most of the map.

Point being, MoP isn’t a utility. It is a damage skill, and therefore has no real place on a utility bar.

Unless you desire damage beyond damage. Kekekeke.

Edit:

Well, that’s just the base Mantras.

For general use, MoResolve is probably the only notable Mantra, because it’s rather good at what it does. MoPain is plenty viable in a power-based damage build, but most would probably want another utility rather than the elevated burst damage. Mesmer utilities are rather good, after all — which is probably the #1 issue with Mantras. They are on par for utilities compared to most in the game, but Mesmers have a really kitten fine selection of utilities, so Mantras become lackluster.

Then, of course, there is HM/EM and then RM. There’s not much to say about HM/EM — they add a huge amount of power to Mantras and make the 30/30 Mantra build. I don’t see anything wrong with them really. I think most players feel offended that they had to give up their favorite of Feedback/Decoy/Blink/IP to use those traits.

^

I wouldn’t use Berserker Stance for those stats, pretty much ever.

Daecollo.9578:

This isn’t true, elementalist can also instantly kill people. (even faster then a thief can.)

Sounds cool; post the numbers (max glass on glass).

I know they can combo pretty high, but few run full Berserker so I can’t get a good handle on their maximum.

Rofl.

You funny bro. Mantras are ok.

Edit:

Whoops, if I didn’t add something like “Mantras are ok” then I would probably pick up an infraction.

What you are talking about is not having situational awareness. You know what direction people will likely be coming from, it’s not hard to have that in the back of your mind while you are fighting/strafing around.

In sPvP, sure. WvW tends to be more dynamic, especially with culling.

Most thieves run a signet, same with all other professions, takes just targeting them for a second to know what they are.

A second is about twice as long as you have before you die.

It really doesn’t matter because any GC build will ruin your day in a 1vN fight so you need to assume that’s what you dealing with until you know for sure.

You can react to glass specs of any class — except a BS Thief.

I personally always turn my attention to Thieves when they show up for two obvious reasons. They are the highest, fastest burst risk and they are the easiest to kill and stomp.

Warriors are infinitely easier to kill and stomp. Thieves are among the more obnoxious classes.

AoE/Cleave will keep a GC thief downed and cripple their rezer at the same time.

That sounds a lot different from, say, all the other classes in the game.

If you are any good at FPS games

I’m relatively proficient at FPS games.

you should have no problem avoiding this, there is no need to dumb down GW2 for you and others like you for the same reason they will never remove head-shot damage from Counter Strike. The game requires twitch, sorry.

The only real mechanic that “requires twitch” in this entire game is to pre-emptively counter 1 build from 1 class.

I suppose the lesson here is that all players should roll Thieves. Sounds like balance to me.

Human male; I use OOW armor.

Arabian ninja kitten.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mantras don’t need that. If they had it, they would be even worse than they already are

How are Mantras bad?

=O

Orikx.9671:

Quite frankly if anyone thought we had enough coverage to win T1 they weren’t paying attention to what was actually happening in T1.

This.

I’m sure the ex-T1 SOR (ex-SBI, ex-JQ) fully grasped the concept that “full coverage” means a gigantic kittenton of coverage, but many players … shrug.

Regardless, optimism hits reality.

SOR still has top-tier NA coverage with “good” coverage during other times.

Now, about those kittening bullkitten queues. God kittening kitten I haven’t been able to get into WvW for the past week because I don’t have 3 hours to sit in a kitten queue without ADHD’ing and playing something else. FEEL THE RAGE OF A THOUSAND QUEUED SUNS.

I’m always on the lookout for Thieves adding on. It’s not hard to see someone approaching. I don’t zerg so maybe that’s your problem?

Lol, nice one. “You must be zergling lulz”.

No.

Incidentally most fights rarely last as a 1v1, if they ever even begin as 1v1. Random adds from 2-5 players is a common occurrence.

Also, if you have the time to “be on the lookout” in all directions for Thieves adding to the fight, then the fight you were part of must have been a joke.

Not to mention the +0.5 seconds it takes to identify the incoming player as a Thief.

If they don’t b-venom then it’s the tink tink of daggers and your health chunked down.

If they haven’t already executed BS by the time you hear the “tink tink” of daggers, they are horrible and should delete their characters.

Either way, there is plenty of time to react between C&D and backstab.

There’s 0.25 seconds between the damgae of CND and the Backstab.

Regardless, this is still massively faster and less counterable than any other class’s kill combo.

It requires pre-action whereas all others can be countered via reaction. This is a common issue with stealth burst in other MMORPGs and while ANet attempted to eliminate that with Thieves in GW2, they failed — primarily due to the mechanics of Steal, surprisingly enough, and not stealth at all.

Shatters are an integral part of the Mesmer class, and you should use them regardless of what build you choose.

That said, the main non-Shatter/phantasm/clonespam builds off the top of my head are:

1. 30/30 Mantra DPS build
2. Glamour spam build, 20/0/0/20/30 or thereabouts; several variants optional
3. Random support builds whose specific specs I’m not aware of because I don’t do support builds (check other threads for more information)

Edit: For picking people off at long range, nothing really beats the 30/30 Mantra build.

General comment: I once tried to make an Adren spam build which utilized the “% cooldown reduction on burst skills” trait (30 in the last line IIRC).

Problem is that it’s difficult to actually consistently generate THAT much adrenaline (since that trait conflicts with the -20% adren cost one), unless you break your build in other ways.

Berserker Stance is actually something I plugged into the build and it was more or less effective although I didn’t like using it for other reasons. A -5s cooldown on Berserker Stance would make it worthy of actual use in more builds, IMO.

Edit:

One other way to improve the overall “state of stances” is to add another trait somewhere that gives a useful boon on Stance use, or clears a condition on Stance use, or add a modest personal heal on stance use. Berserker Stance is already the lowest-cooldown stance, so it would get particular synergy with those types of traits.

Make Stances the selfish alternative to Shouts. Shrug.

Hummm.

My dude chants when he charges the Mantras. I think that balances any aesthetics.

I don’t mind the effects being subtle in combat. Generally speaking I prefer not to alarm my targets with big flashy graphical effects

HB is pretty bad.

Thankfully GS has whirlwind attack to make up for HB’s crappiness.

Probably because a thief using this kill combo is far squishier than a rifle or greatsword warrior.

Except, not really.

CnD has an easy recognizable animation. You have to react when you see CnD, because when you are down it’s too late.

CND has a small animation and you have 0.25 seconds to recognize it at 900 range. Kill Shot is a blatant animation and you have 1.5 seconds to recognize it at 1500 range.

Order of magnitude of difference. Well, not quite. I guess it’s closer to 6x difference.

I have no problem avoiding C&D+Mug+BS with only 13K HP. You turn to stone before the Thief renders. That’s your queue to shadowstep.

1. You assume you know a Thief is there, when you are in WvW with active battles occurring.

2. You assume the Thief is bad and uses Basilisk in WvW, when it it completely unnecessary and telegraphs their position and actions.

3. Your sequence requires 0.25 reaction on the stun from Basilisk or you’re down.

I’d prefer to stick to realistic examples.

me im not.9357:

My sole complaints—- culling AOE is being used by all 3 servers. I don’t know that Id call it a clever use of mechanics since we all know culling is busted, but I struggle calling it an exploit either since its being used so much by everyone these days. In any chase, it does feel a little cheap.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

Shrug.

Edit:

Insert random sidenote: “zergballing” is generally countered by uncapped AOE effects, whether the classic arrow cart spam (which doesn’t work in the open field), or via specialized WvW builds like Glamour Mesmers or other uncapped AOE effects.

In the CnD combo you have to consider also CnD which has 0.5s cast time.
So basically it is CnD (0.5) + Steal + Backstab (0.25) = 0.75s and requires correct timing of 3 skills and has 900 range

1. The damage is at the end of the CND, and I said “on reaction”.

2. Complaining about “correct timing” is irrelevant. It takes about 5 seconds of practice to be able to do the combo reliably. Ham-fisted neanderthals can even macro it if they really want to.

Kill shot is 1.75s doesn’t require coordination (1 key) and has 1500 range

Kill Shot requires a resource buildup (e.g. they can’t use it at the start of a fight), and has a very clear and blatant animation. It also does less damage.

Hundred blades is 3.5s but it’s aoe, channeling 9attacks and deals more damage

This must be a joke.

Pro and cons… hard to say this is OP that isn’t.

I didn’t say it was OP. I just said it was much faster than other kill combos for no apparent reason, with less telegraph as a random and unnecessary bonus.

This also works only if you don’t see thief coming, if u can see him going your direction, it’s just L2P problem of how to dodge.

How do you dodge something that has nearly zero telegraph? Do you randomly waste your endurance on any target within 1200 regardless of what they’re doing?

Braxxus.2904:

Stupid character limit: I also play wuvwuv. I enjoy it. I roam. I do small man. Your warriors are being carried by zergballing. That’s all it is man.

That, or the zerg is getting carried by Warriors.

Embolism.8106:

One of my ideas was to give Ether Clone a very short Blind, which would improve the Sceptre defensively as well as making it a Confusion-based weapon when you take the trait Blinding Befuddlement.

This is a useful idea, although I would say that the Scep3 attack should be slightly reduced in damage while being reduced in cast time as well.

Astus.3508:

clones attacking the nearest enemy instead of the character’s target (also causing them to shatter on the wrong target.) I wish we had communication on whether these things are as designed or on the fix list for future patches.

This only applies for DE clones, and in my personal opinion it’s working as intended.

I wonder how the Scep2 and Sword4 targeting works though (if you have target A selected and block target B, is the clone assigned to A or B? edit: I think it’s A, but not sure).

Hiki.9310:

Build diversity – There is only one way to get semi reliable condition application and that is for the mesmer players to limit their build options to just using the rabid amulet and taking the trait sharper images. With the current weapon skills and traits, builds that use shaman, carrion and rampager’s suffer from a lack of condition application and damage.

There are 4 general condition builds.

1: Sharper Image spam with clone spam, emphasis on iD and GS clone uptime.
2: Combo field / confusion variant of #1 that abuses iDuelist trait for stacks.
3: Shatter hybrid using Carrion for good MW and Cry numbers, with Elasticity (e.g. does not use precision and gets low Sharper Image output).
4: <insert composite defensive / support build that uses Staff as a primary DPS vector>

There are a few variants of all the builds, primarily related to the usage of Torch and/or Scepter. Prestige will tooltip for >5500 damage of burning with a condition build. Even though it has a long cooldown and is unwieldy, that much potential damage is nothing to sneeze at. Players have noted in the past that Scepter3 has good power scaling “for a condition attack”.

These are all options. There’s also a PvE/WvW versus sPvP discrepancy where Rampager becomes a not-bad option for PvE/WvW (it has moderate CDMG — the sPvP Rampager has low CDMG) if you use shatters for Might (Might will help supplement the slightly lower raw CDMG).

When I get the motivation, I think I will acquire a set of gear for WvW for that build … sigh. kitten kittenty PvE farming. Also kitten WvW queues for good measure >_<.

Katanasama.9702:

Tips to kill a mesmer/ not die to a mesmer:

1: Do not travel alone… that’s asking to get jumped.

Mesmers are mostly trash for chasedown. Best tip to not die to a Mesmer is to walk away.

You’re dissing / hyping abilities without considering all gameplay segments. Basically Time Warp is unimpressive in WvW due to its 5 player cap and the mobility of battles in general. TW is good, but not great. Its greatest value is the part where it’s a combo field. MI isn’t particularly better in WvW, but the lower cd makes it more flexible for use.

It’s easy to manipulate the scoring to adjust for pop [im]balances.

Long time ago I made a few suggestions where the point accrual for a tick were reduced by half the “missing” (undercap) population. E.g. if 2 servers were at cap pop in WvW, and the third had 0 pop, then total point accrual would be reduced by 33/2 = 16% (for all 3 servers).

This would not remove the coverage imbalances, but would mitigate them slightly.

The only side effect would be that the glicko may have a hell of a time with it, because low-coverage servers (and matchups) would end up with lower total scores, making it more difficult for servers to rise up in tiers.

Phantasms are 0.75 – 1.00 casts.

Clone abilities tend to be somewhere between instant to 0.75 seconds. IIRC Mirror Blade is kind of the longest one at 0.75.

Lol@ time dilation.

Hammer Warr with CC spam is basically CC support.

I would say a tank spec Hammer + x/Mace combined with the shout cleanse Runes and a Shout build would basically be a support Warrior, and relatively useful.

Gear-wise would still be Soldier stat, or similar tank style.

Seems odd that people always focus on heals when speaking of “support”. Guess I played too much DotA and LoL.

Yeah abusing that with Staff helped a ton while I was leveling way back when.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Lets see…. cant count self shatter since if you were right next to them clones would insta shatter:

- dodge clone + dodge clone + weapon clone > 3
- mirror + decoy > 3 clones off queue
energy weapon and vigor should get you ready for:
- weapon swap then weapon clone + dodge clone + dodge clone > 3

so that is 3 + 3 + 3 + yourself = 10. The OP is correct. Anet should delete 9 out of every 10 Mesmers to even out game balance.

Use runes of the adventurer for more endurance. Gggggg.

The tradeoff is boon duration. The healing power tradeoff is not significant.

Edit:

I’ve seen mixed information on the duration of Lyssa boons. Something to test with throwaway (e.g. salvage to pop the runes out after) PvE gear before committing.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

SoR should have taken Hills from JQ light years ago , instead they want to take our bay when JQ is trying to take it as well. SoR must be too scared to fight JQ.

Does this qualify for a “2v1” shot?

I mean it’s lunch time; not sure I really want to get tipsy before heading home from work, ya?

Rofl.

There’s really not much else to say.

BS takes about 0.25s to go off, still less than a second for reaction.

Kill Shot is 2s on reaction.

Hundred Blades is 3.5s with a 1.5s BR to prep it. The CND combo is basically 2x – 4x as fast as other kill combos.

Shrug.

Huh. I don’t know if I really accept a spec without Illusory Persona as a “shatter build”.

All Mesmer builds should utility shatters in general, and MW for power-based burst in particular.

When I’m bursting someone with a 30/30 build, shatters are only 25% of the damage output. Even less for sustained.

Maximizing WvW damage is 30/30/0/0/10.

Because clones don’t path up or down walls, and Spatial Surge crits for 4k are juicy.

Of course, maximizing damage comes at a price.

Shatter spec should still source 60% or more of their damage from abilities and phantasms.

There’s also the extra-rare kittenes running Mantra builds, but we’re special.

It takes less than half a second for the CND + Mug + BS to land, from 900 range. You don’t react to that in WvW when there are tons of players with every spec imaginable in the fray.

2. Nah, its counterproductive to shatter in this build.

You should consider it. First, you should always use a shatter once every ~10s or less, simply because you can resummon 3 phantasms and clones about that quickly regardless of build.

Second, group Vigor is significantly more useful to your group than personal Vigor.

-What’s the most important boons for groups?

Vigor, Stability are the most important, followed by Protection and well-timed Aegis. Fury/Might/Regen kind of tie it up for generic boons. I mean a stack of 25 Might is better than Stability, usually, but that’s unrealistic.

Vigor is basically an Aegis on a 5s cooldown or so.

Edit:

One other significant thing to consider is for PvE/WvW to use Lyssa runes to combo with SigInsp. IIRC Lyssa is still 10s of the boons in PvE/WvW, so >15s with your boon duration. Combine that with the relatively low cooldown of, say, Mass Invis, and it could work well for a group that needs to go manmode on something.