This is actually reverting it back to the way it used to be when the game started and I am very happy about it. ^^ Except for the internal cool downs that sucks.
Not completely, originally it only procced either Regeneration or Protection. Which was better, especially when Illusionary Membrane had no CD which meant every hit procced Protection.
And people actually complained that Chaos Armour wasn’t armour-like enough, resulting in the buff-that’s-really-a-nerf which has now been reverted (after the people who complained about the original Chaos Armour have forgotten I suppose) to what it was like before except weaker.
If you take Blinding Befuddlement back then you would see that even though the Blind does not appear the Confusion does. Plus you get about double the amount of Confusion than you would without the trait.
Really, doesn’t anyone test things themselves these days?
They should remove the Swiftness proc so it’s just between Regeneration and Protection. That’s how Chaos Armour used to be before they made Protection an on-cast effect and replaced the random proc Protection with Swiftness.
Not only would that make it more “armoury”, it would also bring it in line with all the Staff’s other random boon/condition skills: always one kitten on than a condition.
You would really want regen over swiftness? Those 150 ticks feel impactful on 17k health?
I’d take swiftness or protection over regen in any build not maxing healingpower. Regen scales well with healing but for every other spec it’s trakitten’s hard for me to believe anyone would want regen for anything other than a healing build.
Whether you like it or not that is how Chaos Armour used to work, and since they seem to be making steps to revert the change they may as well do it completely.
And I would take Regen over Swiftness actually. In combat where your speed is already reduced Swiftness doesn’t improve your speed by all that much, plus Regen can also proc Illusionary Membrane to get Protection.
Blinding Befuddlement always worked with Chaos Armour, that’s one of the reasons the trait got nerfed into the ground.
They should remove Swiftness from the random procs so it is just between Protection and Regeneration, like how Chaos Armour used to be before they made Protection an on-cast effect.
They should remove the Swiftness proc so it’s just between Regeneration and Protection. That’s how Chaos Armour used to be before they made Protection an on-cast effect and replaced the random proc Protection with Swiftness.
Not only would that make it more “armoury”, it would also bring it in line with all the Staff’s other random boon/condition skills: always one kitten on than a condition.
The last time I checked only base stats (like Precision) are inherited by Illusions, derived stats like CritChance are not (so Fury on yourself doesn’t give your Illusions extra CritChance, and +% damage doesn’t apply to Illusions either).
To be honest, I don’t feel the GW2 Mesmer is much of a control class at all. You could argue that old Confusion in WvW was a form of control, although it really was more of a “die if you do, die if you don’t” situation which is somewhat beyond control. Other than that the Mesmer isn’t that much better at control than other classes.
I don’t like hybrid builds. I don’t see a purpose in investing in multiple offensive stats that don’t “stack” with each other. The result is you don’t have the DPS of a “pure” build while having the same or worse survivability.
Torment is worth it. This build specifically is inferior to a Shatter build, or a pure Condition build.
Even in 1 vs 1 the Staff is superior over the Sceptre. The only thing the Sceptre has over the Staff is more condition “burst”, but even if you need it you only switch to the Sceptre to blow its CDs; then switch back to Staff ASAP.
I’m going to stick my neck out and say it – I think iMage is better than iDisenchanter (apart from the cooldown of course)!
:p
Yeah, the iMage is pretty similar. They both remove conditions.
…if you trait 20 points and a major trait
…with a 2x longer cooldown
…removing half as many conditions
…not removing boons
…attacking 3x slower
…with less hp
I should have clarified – in a build with sufficient condition removal, I don’t find iDisenchanter to be worth the utility slot.
And in such a situation, at least iMage (untraited) provides some retaliation – pretty decent retaliation although the duration needs a buff, and damage.
But I can appreciate iDisenchanter in a build without many sources of condition removal. I just think there are so many better skills to fill the precious 3 utility slots, that iDisenchater is difficult to justify on many builds.
I find it very easy to justify given it also strips boons. Besides, think of it this way: if you use iDisenchanter you don’t have to worry about getting condition removal in your traits or whatever.
Disenchanter is quite good 1v1 for fights without a lot of AoE. He’s also useful against guardians. Not so great in PVE.
It isn’t that bad in group fights either, as it can hit a lot of people with its cleansing/stripping bolt. If you get two shots out of it that’s as much as what Null Field does.
Oh and my other problem with it is its very long cast time, but it’s the same as iDefender.
What the Phantasmal Haste page shows is the time from the end of one attack to the start of the next attack, the proper attack rate would be from the start of one attack to the start of the next. Having said that, I did a quick test and I’m wrong, iMage actually attacks every 7.5 seconds compared to iDisenchanter’s 4.5 seconds. So it’s actually about 70% faster.
Well, to be fair with the trait iMage’s CD is only 20% longer, attacks about 25% slower, and I don’t think it has less HP.
But yes using iMage to remove conditions doesn’t work.
Just checked my numbers
iMage is on a 50% longer cooldown (1.5x)
The iMage attacks 2x slower, both with and without pHaste
The disenchanter does have more hp than normal phantasms, though not nearly as much as the defender.
Without the trait it is, but with the trait it’s only 20% longer (24 vs 20). IIRC Disenchanter attacks every 4.5 seconds and iMage every 6 seconds, so it’s not quite double speed. The HP I’ll take your word for it since I never noticed.
Deceptive Evasion was moved from Minor to Master because people complained that they shouldn’t be overwriting Phantasms through methods of Clone generation that is mostly out of their control. This was before Clones preferentially overwrite other Clones.
I always keep iDisenchanter on my skillbar in PvP. Mesmers like to whine about their lack of condition cleansing but the truth is we are just one Utility skill away from good cleansing, plus boon stripping. The only problem is it is not completely reliable, but that barely matters with the rate it cleanses conditions at.
It’s a Utility Phantasm, it doesn’t need to do damage.
Weapon skill positions seem to be sorted by CD: skills with higher CDs go further down. There are some exceptions but they usually occur when CDs were changed in patches.
This isn’t a new kind of Mesmer at all. Condition Mesmers have existed since release, and many Condition Mesmers already use Prismatic Understanding (before this patch).
Folks are too reliant on Deceptive Evasion, in my opinion.
It was a fact. This exact same build has existed for a long time and even enjoyed popularity once (mainly due to FLIMP’s videos), and despite having become more obscure is still played by many Mesmers.
In the post above I explained why Deceptive Evasion is so important to Condition Mesmers, and also the importance of Sharper Images. These two traits, together with Illusionary Elasticity, Winds of Chaos, and Staff Clones, are the core of Mesmer Condition DPS.
Sceptre and Torch, as interesting as they are, remain supplementary to the Staff.
PPS – Have you considered swapping the 20 in Dueling for 20 in Domination?
This would give you access to the Torch Cooldown Trait, longer Condition Duration, and the Crippling Dissipation Adept Trait for Cripple on Clone Death. Since you’re using the Scepter and Staff your clone generation is probably pretty good even without Deceptive Evasion, and since you’re not utilizing a Power Build, Critical Hits aren’t quite as important for landing / improving Condition Damage attacks.
You’d be missing out on the Vigor boost from Dueling 5, but would have 20% extended condition duration over all, plus additional Condition Removal on your Torch Skills, (something that Mesmers sorely need)
Deceptive Evasion is absolutely necessary. The focus of Mesmer Condition builds is always on the Staff, the recent buffs to the Sceptre is nice but not enough to make it competitive in a prolonged fight. And a lot of the Staff’s DPS comes from Staff Clones, so you need to be able to conjure three Staff Clones very quickly and replace lost Clones very quickly. 8s on Phase Retreat absolutely does not cut it.
The other essential trait Dueling provides is Sharper Images, which again is a huge part of Condition Mesmer DPS and is the reason why Rabid is so much better than Carrion: it allows you to translate Precision into Condition Damage.
Speccing out of 20 Dueling kills your DPS as a Condition Mesmer. For us, 0/20/20/0/20 is pretty much as fixed in stone as 10/20/0/0/30 is for Shatter Mesmers.
I don’t feel the “loss” of IP at all. Offensively IP primarily benefits Mind Wrack (+50% damage) and defensively, well, Condition Stealth Mesmers already have incredible defense.
Not sure what you mean by Dom. Signet of Domination? There are better Utilities to take I feel.
This isn’t a new kind of Mesmer at all. Condition Mesmers have existed since release, and many Condition Mesmers already use Prismatic Understanding (before this patch).
Also, the Illusion traits you should take are V and VII. VII is very important because it essentially double the DPS of your WoC.
And the way to play this build is simple: conjure three Staff Clones and spam WoC. If your target dies cool. If they have decent Cond Removal they won’t, in which case use Confusing Images + Cry of Frustration and Illusionary Counter for a burst. If you succeed that should either kill them or put a significant dent in their health, and you could switch back to Staff and DPS them down.
Runes that I personally use are 2x Lyssa, 2x Afflicted and 2x Krait, for a total of +40% Bleeding Duration (including +10% Cond Duration). I also use Sigil of Doom on Torch for that extra DPS and Healing inhibition when I switch to Sceptre to burst.
Overall I like this patch, but then again I am heavily biased towards Condition Mesmers and we got a few powerful buffs. Apart from the IC nerf though I feel everything that was changed was reasonable, and even with IC something needed to be done. At least Illusions 5 isn’t a no-brainer anymore.
What mesmer runs 1530 condition damage these days? Completely impractical after the confusion nerf. And I hate to break it to you, but no one’s gonna buy all condition gear for one torment application off a block on scepter.
The fact you think Confusion is a Condition Mesmer’s primary source of damage shows how much you know, really.
Even before Confusion in WvW was nerfed there were plenty of Mesmers that ran non-Glamour (i.e. non-Confusion focused) Condition builds.
Don’t tell anyone but condition duration works on clones and phantasms xD
Old news.
+45% is a bit pointless because unless you get a full extra second you won’t get an extra tick (usually, there’s something else that governs this that can let you get the extra tick but it’s rather random). You’re better off getting 2 Lyssa, 2 Afflicted and 2 Krait.
Besides, the idea of this build is to boost Confusion and Torment duration. If you want a more Bleeding-focused build, go with the Staff as your main weapon (a.k.a. the typical Condition Mesmer build).
Rampager has less CondDmg than Rabid, and has Power instead of Toughness which is much less useful to a Condition Mesmer. There’s also Chaos 25 (if you’re going the Staff Mesmer route), and in WvW you can also eat food that increases your CondDmg based on your Toughness.
Yes, with high Condition Damage it’s up to 9k damage. I don’t see what people are complaining about.
You non-CondDmg players shouldn’t expect to deal a lot of damage with Conditions if you don’t invest in them. The fact that Mesmers fart out Bleeds and Confusion from Illusions and Shattering has spoiled many Shatter/Phantasm Mesmers, I feel.
The Condition Staff build is by no means as weak as many on this forum would have you believe, and speccing into Prismatic Understanding is quite natural for a Condition Staff Mesmer.
This makes Condition Staff Mesmers much harder to kill, and they’re already one of the most survivable Mesmer builds. Of course the tradeoff is you don’t have burst damage (and you can’t get Illusionist’s Celerity if you take Prismatic Understanding, which means 8s extra CD on Decoy mainly).
But yes, Condition Staff Mesmers still don’t work in tPvP as the idea of tPvP is burst hard or bunker hard. While Condition Staff Mesmers do have a lot of survivability, they don’t have much point holding capability. Stealth in particular is too selfish to be particularly useful in tPvP.
I mostly agree, except I still think IC should’ve been removed. Its presence higher up in Illusions just further tips the balance towards that trait line, and only serves to restrict build diversity if anything.
While I don’t feel this change was completely necessary, I think it is justified. Blurred Frenzy was a very powerful skill on a low CD, it still is. An extra 2s CD and taking Retaliation damage in no way makes the skill unviable.
… But really, I’m rather happy about this overall. If it means less Mesmers (despite the “nerfs” not being anything that major) then great.
I’m wondering what is the impact of the changes on the glamour condition (blind / confusion) build for www.
already took a serious blow in the last patch.
They’re already neutered, nothing’s changed this patch.
Completely agree. The one thing I’m unsure of is how this patch nerfed condition builds further. I’m just as upset (and insulted, frankly) as you are, but I’m curious what you see that nerfs conditions?
The illusionists celerity nerf is the condition nerf. Most condition builds use a combination of clones + sharper images + debilitating dissipation to keep up condition pressure. Now, clone generating skills have 25% higher cooldowns unless you go 25 points into illusions, and most condition builds couldn’t afford that much without sacrificing one of the other important parts. This means that if condition builds want that cooldown to keep up the clone generation, they’ll need to sacrifice significantly in other ways.
An extra 2s on Phase Retreat isn’t a big deal, Staff Condition builds rely primarily on Deceptive Evasion for Clone generation anyway. The extra 8s on Decoy is probably more significant, but not for Clone generation reasons.
Most Staff Condition builds invest 20 into Illusions, an extra 5 to get IC if they want it is hardly a stretch. It isn’t that essential either.
Looks kinda neat! I’m eager to see more rabid builds out there.
Have you thought about using the new and improved “Furious Interruption” in place of Deceptive Evasion? I was thinking it might work well with the Signet of Domination and Magic Bullet that your build uses.
I think Furious Interruption is very much a junk trait still, because Mesmers tend to have weak autoattacks and rely on Illusions to deal damage. It is the same here. Besides, Deceptive Evasion is far too important if you plan to use Shatter skills regularly.
Signet of Domination is there mostly for the CondDmg boost. Whether that’s worth a slot or not I don’t know, perhaps it would be better served with Decoy or something.
The only change I am not fully behind is the IC change. I agree that if Anet’s goal was to improve build diversity, making Illusionist’s Celerity the birthright of Shatter Mesmers and unavailable without significant investment to all other builds is the wrong way to fix the trait. I also agree that Anet didn’t do enough in this patch to improve Mesmer build diversity: it seems like they only focused (half-heartedly) on Interrupt and Condition builds, and I don’t feel the buffs are enough to make these builds competitive with Shatter or Phantasm builds.
(Also Staff Clone WoC Bleeding still lasts 2 less seconds that it should).
Okay, so Condition builds that use iDuelist’s “feature” with Duelist’s Discipline have existed for a long time, but never really caught on. With the new buffs to the Sceptre I decided to take another look.
It was a bit of a debate whether I should invest in Illusions or Dueling for the last 10 points, but in the end I decided to go with Dueling because IC doesn’t affect Illusionary Counter and better Shatter capability would augment the build better.
The nerf to Blurred Frenzy and SoI are reasonable. I would’ve handled IC differently but it definitely needed something done. Vengeful Images is a bit uncalled for but possibly is required with the Phantasm HP buff.
I’ve always felt that mantras should be channeled shouts. Take Mantra of Recovery, for instance. When activated, a mesmer will be able to move but otherwise enter an animation lock and say, “Health! Vigor! Recovery!” This will cause three pulses with the first being an aoe heal, the second granting aoe vigor and the third, aoe regen. Because they would leave mesmers vulnerable, they can be a bit more powerful than regular shouts. They should also be labeled as shouts and/or receive the same benefits from the soldier runes.
That’s an interesting and logical take on Mantras.
In the case of the Mesmer, the only diversity they introduced it seems is the possibility of Interrupt builds, and even that is dubious. Personally I don’t think Mesmer builds will change very much at all.
Making charges regenerate encourages people to not discharge the final charge of a Mantra so it could regenerate instead of having to channel it again, so that is not an option.
Currently Mantras do not go into CD until the final charge is used. This means that the time between the use of the first charge and the use of the final charge is effectively added to the CD of the Mantra.
For Mantras that rely on short CDs as their selling point against equivalent skills (e.g. Mantra of Recovery, Mantra of Resolve), you’re basically highly encouraged to use all the charges of a Mantra in quick succession, if not back to back (as is the case with Mantra of Recovery): if you wait too long between the first charge and the final charge, you’ve effectively lost the reason you used the Mantra over an equivalent skill and have played sub-optimally.
Even for Mantras that do not have equivalent skills, the way it works now still means that you are punished for using your charges smartly. It creates an unnecessary dilemma between conserving charges for use at the optimal moment and spamming charges to get more uses over a period of time. Not to mention it is annoying having to discharge used Mantras, wait for their CDs and recharge them again between battles.
So basically I’m suggesting that Mantras start counting down their CD when you use the first charge instead of the final charge. It would make careful, smart use of Mantra charges much more viable and greatly improve the quality of life of Mantra users.
There are disappointingly few changes for the Mesmer compared to other professions, which seems to be the trend with all patches. This still isn’t the trait overhaul we were promised at the end of Beta (to be delivered before release, as it were).
I think it is about time Illusionist’s Celerity got nerfed. It was ridiculous that such a powerful trait costs only five points to take. As long as it is untouched no Mesmer build will ever not include it.
Having said that, I would’ve preferred if they removed the trait entirely and reduced Illusion skill CDs by about 10% across the board. Illusions is already the Mesmer’s most “compulsory” trait line, it really doesn’t need another powerful GM trait to reinforce that.
The main thing I’m sad about is the PU change in the previous leak has disappeared. And I’m still hoping for further polish regarding Empowered Illusions, our Signet traits and more generally useful Manipulation traits. Oh and Glamour traits… beh. It seems like the only traits they improved are the Interrupt traits, and even those changes are questionable (I don’t see Furious Interruption seeing any use for instance).
Confusion. It is supposed to be the signature condition of the Mesmer, but well; it isn’t. Confusion is far more often applied “as an aside” from Shattering than stacked for its own sake.
Torment is supposed to be a signature condition of the Necromancer. I don’t mind if we don’t get much access to it (although I would love for Mantra of Pain to inflict Torment… it makes sense…).
I have a suggestion to improve Confusion scaling off CondDmg from 7.5% to 10% (so a 33% increase from now, or 66% of PvE Confusion scaling instead of 50%).
Hello everyone, I am attempting to reproduce the issue and would like to get some more information if you can/applicable to your experience.
1. Did you have fast ground targeting box checked under options? (F11)
This makes any AoE spells land directly at your feet/location instead of giving the radial that can place the spell at another location within range. If you have that option checked, you would need to be almost directly atop the NPC you wanted to use it on.
2. Did you receive a tassi box and the event UI (upper right corner) updated?
Upon receipt of the box, the event UI would display text to use the kit on the specified NPCs.
3. When you have the tassi box equipped, are you using the #1 skill to bring up the radial for targeting the NPC’s that will prompt the conversation to progress the story? If you use just the [F] Key, that will only bring up a generic conversation and not progress the event.
4. If the event UI updated after receiving the Tassi box, when you scanned the characters did the event UI update again to cross their names off the list?
5. Before you left, was the event UI updated and had you speak with Kiel to end/complete and you received rewards?
6. If you left earlier before the event completed and were able to get back in, did you destroy the tassi box from your inventory to receive a new one that would progress the event and allow the scanned representatives to relay their conversations about the events that happened?
1. No, and this is not my issue.
2. Yes.
3. Yes, but I missed one of the NPCs (the Healer) and exited the instance.
