Guild Wars 2

Nuka Cola.8520:

i started using it cuz of the awesome glitch. It then been fixed yesterday and i’m still running it not because its better than pistol but because its different and a weapon i ignored since launch. I think anet is ignoring this weapon because no way anyone who cared could leave it that bad. Prestige for example, why doesn’t it stun for 1sec and gives poison for 5-10sec like the Irukandji in fotm? I mean the skill is on 30sec CD, how is 3sec of burning/meh base damage and 3sec of stealth justify this long CD? It doesn’t so decrease CD to 20 or significantly increase its base damage. My pick would be 1sec stun, 3sec burning (not the stupid 3,1/2 of burning it has), same base damage and 5sec of poison.

Can’t tell if serious…

People use Decoy and don’t complain about its CD, why do people complain about The Prestige when it actually has a shorter CD?

Your condition build is almost identical to mine, though I daresay you play it better than I do. A few questions:

Do you think the build would be more effective if the Sword is used instead of the Sceptre? I find Confusing Images difficult to use if your opponent isn’t distracted (i.e. group fights), as your target can generally negate most of it and you are quite vulnerable (and visible) during the channel. It feels to me that Blurred Frenzy serves me better, especially against Thieves; and Illusionary Leap provides a much needed root.

Why do you use Signet of Inspiration? I personally don’t find it useful as it doesn’t provide Swiftness consistently enough, and I’m generally in no hurry to get from one place to another. Is there another reason you use it?

Have you considered using Pain Inverter? Personally I love it, you can use it with CoF for a huge AoE Confusion burst; and it also lasts considerably longer than Shatter Confusion. Effective in duels and absolutely devastating against groups.

What do you think of +40% Condition Duration food instead of -40%? I find it greatly increases the effectiveness of my Confusion (especially if your enemy is using -40% food), and enemy condition builds seems rare enough that it’s generally safe to run without condition removal: I use none and have not died to enemy condition builds (yet).

Carighan.6758:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

At the same time, a build specced purely around healing others is still not as useful as a direct damage or tanking build, if you’re going support then there simply has to be more to your gameplay than just regen and burst heals, for any class..

This is why I think we have too little ready access to healing support.
Plus, Restorative Mantras and Regen Fields are in the same trait line. Fittingly the one which gives +Compassion, but it’s still a bit iffy. No baseline healing utility, either.

What would be if, for example, Mimic was a targetted spell, used on anyone, which copies spells as the target uses them. You can press it again during it’s 5-10s duration to cast the currently copied ability (say it only copies Healing / Utility skills?), to use that specific ability.
So I could in theory use it on a Ranger in our party, have her put up a Healing Spring, then put a second one up myself.

I had a similar idea about making Mimic fire an interrupting projectile, and if a skill is interrupted Mimic becomes that skill. The problem with copying healing skills is that… well, that’s overpowered, because healing skills are balanced on every profession having one and one only; they are not balanced against other skills.

I’m surprised people would say The Prestige’s CD is too long, it’s the shortest CD stealth we have. And comments like “we don’t need The Prestige because we already have Decoy!” just bleeds ignorance, use both and you essentially can stealth (and drop targeting twice as often.

In case you don’t know, The Prestige’s CD used to be 20s. There’s a reason why that was extended.

The Torch is worth it if you do not intend to treat your two weapon sets equally, i.e. you have a primary set that you spend most of your time on with the other set being secondary and only switched to when you need something specific.

This is the case for almost all condition Mesmers. The Staff is the only viable condition weapon, therefore condition Mesmers tend to stick to it all the time. The second set then is usually chosen for a specific purpose, with less emphasis placed on the general effectiveness of the set.

For me, I choose the Torch, as I run a stealth build.

As a very rough rule of thumb, Healing skills benefit from Healing Power by having its value added directly to the amount healed. Non-Healing skills that heal generally get only a percentage of Healing Power added to its amount healed. Regeneration, as pointed out, benefits the most from Healing Power, thus for any profession you should only invest in Healing Power if you are able to maintain Regeneration.

Overall though, I still find it a relatively useless stat considering other stats scale better and generally affect more things.

I run a stealth condition build (no Glamours) and I don’t find it too difficult to take camps solo. My preference is to engage all the mobs at once instead of drawing a few away: it’s faster and you don’t get problems with mobs resetting if you accidentally pull them too far. AoE Confusion (Cry of Frustration + Pain Inverter) is really effective even against mobs, and if things get too sticky just cloak and churn out a few more Illusions for the mobs to play with.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Actually, this is torch 1.0. The torch worked exactly like it does now way back in the beta weekends, and they changed it to have the ridiculous channel with the release of the game.

Indeed. It’s interesting to see people praising Anet for “buffs” when they are, actually, Anet’s mistakes that they’ve finally reverted after a few months…

See also: Mantra channel time “buff”.

But yes, it’s good that they at least did revert it, despite the initial change being totally uncalled for and the revert taking a few months to occur…

I’m still undecided whether Prismatic Understanding is truly worth a GM trait given that we only have two sources of stealth that don’t have long CDs, and one of them doesn’t work with half the trait. The boon applying aspect, while helpful (particularly for blocking AoE interrupts when The Prestige was channelled), is very slightly redundant: it certainly helps against channels, AoE or just lucky shots, but stealth is decent at mitigating damage already.

Having said that, I still use it and like it.

They clarified it in the notes that “stealth no longer resets a mob’s threat level” or something like that, so all it means is that mobs won’t act like they just met you after you come out of stealth… if that makes sense.

Unless this was ninja-fixed in the patch, Trident Clones also don’t wield weapons: an old bug, but one worth mentioning here while the Devs are actually reading this forum.

I wonder how many people know that this bug isn’t entirely new: it existed before and was fixed, and now has resurfaced.

Nretep.2564:

And the combination with [Mender’s Purity] (condition removal on heal) would be reduced alot. (When mantras’ charges will be reduces to 1)

I don’t care about that as I never use Mender’s Purity: I don’t find it sufficient condition removal by itself, and I’d rather keep my heal and my removal separate: sometimes you’d want to cleanse Immobilise or Chilled but don’t necessarily need a heal.

And to be honest if you’re using a full on Mantra build (30/30 and 5 in Illusions, that’s 65 already) you will not have any points remaining for Mender’s Purity anyway. Plus you’d likely be using Mantra of Resolve which is actually quite good.

But seriously. -20% power and +40% CD so it can work with a 30 point trait that no one will take unless they’re railroading themselves into a niche build. One must ask… why?

EasymodeX.4062:

Well yeah but the problem is that HM would double the power of the Mantras, making it more of a must-have for Mantra builds than it already is.

The first change to improve Mantra smoothness, if they’re reverted to one charge default, would be the removal of HM. It’s a terrible trait IMO, far too big of a power jump. Even now some Mantras are balanced around HM and are relatively weak without it (MoP, MoC, and to a very small extent MoR based on nerfs since it was changed to work with HM).

I still remember the old value for MoR healing: 6520, or 3260 per charge. A 20% nerf in effectiveness, plus almost 40% longer CD, just so it can work with that horrid trait.

I personal run a condition build that places an emphasis on stealth. It is quite powerful in skirmishes, as you have nearly all the power of a condition Shatter (IP is not utilised but really doesn’t make too much of a difference), the natural tankiness of condition Mesmers, and stealth which can make a huge difference especially when outnumbered. The build is very similar to FLIMP’s condition build (almost identical, actually).

As skirmishes are all I’m interested in in WvW, the build suits me just fine.

EasymodeX.4062:

There was a time when MoR was only 1 charge baseline.

Uh huh.

Which was great, as you got the entire heal instantly instead of getting a half now and the other half one second later: which, by the way, indirectly increases its CD by 1s.

And no, by more healing I don’t mean the one charge version healed more than the double charge version, the healing nerf occurred after Mantras transitioned to two charges default.

I’d much rather Mantras be reverted back to one charge, really; along with other changes to improve their “smoothness”. The inability to regenerate charges for partially discharged Mantras is one of the primary annoyances to using them.

Nretep.2564:

8s Heal CD rocks.

There was a time when 8s was the base CD of MoR, and it also healed much more than it does now. I miss the old MoR.

I guess it’s sort of like the “essence” that envelops and permeates worlds, very roughly analogous to Oblivion in TES or the Fade in Dragon Age. I don’t really like the implementation of the Mists in Guild Wars however as it seems far too “explored”, stripping it of the mysterious quality it might otherwise have.

Bridge between realities… it’s probably more apt to think of it as the sea that separates islands of realities, or the space that separates planets of realities… although we don’t know much about other realities apart from the fact that humans and their gods came to Tyria through the Mists.

Snoxx.7943:

In my opinion, glamour confusion builds are very easy to counter, but most ppl are clueless about game mechanics and just kill themselves.

Any Confusion build is not difficult to deal with if you just stop mashing your keyboard for a second and pay attention. Fortunately for us, 99% of WvWers don’t understand that.

Kylia’s got a really good tip there actually. A condition Mesmer is not going to kill you fast unless you let them, and you let them doing so by trying to kill them fast. Slow down, be aware of what’s going on, maybe pack a condition removal, and a condition Mesmer should not be a significant threat.

Thankfully the majority of WvWers just rush in and spam everything they’ve got, making them easy prey to condition Mesmers even when they outnumber the Mesmer. A few days ago I was defending a camp by myself against ~5 enemies, and one Confusion burst later 3 of them were on the ground.

I use it all the time in Fractals. The difficult part is getting your teammates to understand that they should retreat to a safe distance so they can be revived properly, and not go rambo on the boss (and promptly get downed, then killed by Illusion of Life, then blame me for killing them…).

You can reach 4000+ with condition damage boosters and a sizable burst (e.g. CoF + Confusing Images), so 4500 is not at all far-fetched.

While Vitality certainly helps, IMO your best bet is to invest in condition removal; IMO if your build isn’t designed with decent Vitality to begin with (especially with a profession like the Thief) then you’d sacrifice less by getting some condition removal instead. It’s also the best way to deal with Confusion, which is more likely to be applied in bursts rather than like a DoT.

Since you’re both hit by large Confusion stacks at the same time, the culprit is most likely Cry of Frustration. The way to deal with that is the same as with Mind Wrack: dodge the Shatter. If she is an asura, she may also have used Pain Inverter at the same time (which, by the way, is my favourite combo: 9 stacks of Confusion on an unsuspecting group is devastating).

Other things to consider is to have instant condition removal (far too rare in WvW and one of the reasons why condition builds can cause such havoc), use stealth (it messes up Shatters), or indeed just wait it out. Although in WvW you’d likely have to wait 5 – 7 seconds for Confusion to wear off as any WvW condition build will likely use Rare Veggie Pizzas to extent their condition durations.

Winds.3087:

What we really need is fix of temporal curtain reflect.

I can get behind that. As it is it’s extremely low and therefore fails to the most miniscule differences in elevation.

We have enough skills to screw up enemy projectile users, we really don’t need more.

50%? It’s much closer to 100%, really.

It always irks me when people claim “Confusion is nerfed in sPvP so obviously Anet thinks it’s too powerful”. Such ignorance.

Snoxx.7943:

I think it’s because Blink is a utility skill, and utility skills are never combo finishers.

correct me if I’m wrong

Off the top of my head… Stomp.

I don’t understand why people keep trying to lecture on the merits of Confusion (everyone knows its OP in WvW) when the actual topic is about condition and boon duration not working on Illusions.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Healing power works, insofar as the only healing phantasms provide is aoe regen pulses.

Trident Clones heal when their SC bounce to allies (another relic of Beta: seriously, why are Anet’s fixes always half-baked?), but the amount is so miniscule it makes no difference.

Esplen.3940:

Embolism.8106:

Would be nice if it affected Phantasms however.

The only phantasm it would affect is Phantasmal Mage as it is the only Phantasm with a bounce.

Then again, it would make Torch useful, so I guess.

It would also affect iDisenchanter.

I generally sniff at hybrid builds like these, but it seems like this build is more about support; so I suppose it could be forgiven. Still, I’d rather focus on either direct damage or condition damage rather than trying to fulfill both: if you could minimise offensive stat investment without compromising DPS, that’s more defensive stats you could incorporate.

In this case I’d personally forget about direct damage (that means dropping Empowered Illusions and Compounding Power) and use only iDuelist and iDefender.

Revelations.3154:

I’m sorry but I have to point some out regarding Mesmer application of conditions. Other than confusion by design Mesmers are not meant to have super long condition duration like other classes. We are however designed to have very strong short duration condition application. The trick is to apply the most damage within that short duration make sure it “ticks” for the highest damage possible. If you playing for duration you’re during it wrong… Let’s just say in WvW/PVE my Condition damage hit’s 3k… ;P

You’re missing the point. This is a bug that makes the Mesmer benefit much less from two stats than other professions.

And I’m not sure what you’re on about. If you’re going for Confusion in WvW you’re almost certainly trying to maximise Confusion’s short duration (no idea where you got the idea that we have long duration Confusion from) with Master of Misdirection and Rare Veggie Pizza, in fact “playing for duration” as you put it is a a large part of making Confusion super OP in WvW…

The fact that one of our traits does not work with iMage and iWhaler should make it obvious this is a bug. That’s 50% of our default Confusion skills that don’t work with the trait.

I’m inclined to believe this is WAI. If it affected Clones I think that would be rather OP, remember it’s doubling WoC’s DPS against single targets. As it is it’s about +33% to your Staff DPS already. Would be nice if it affected Phantasms however.

Once they fix things like +durations not affecting Illusions and Clone WoC inflicting only 5s Bleeding instead of 7s, I think Mesmer condition would be okay.

The only exception I know is Phantasmal Defender, which has significantly more HP than Clones.

Signet of Illusions, last time I checked, applies its HP buff at 10s intervals, which means quite often the buff will not kick in until after the Illusion is destroyed. I would not use it for its passive.

All skills are bugged underwater: they all take much less time to cast than they would on land. Anet completely missed the point when they “fixed” Mantra underwater channel time when it’s actually ALL cast times underwater that are bugged. Including harvesting.

I don’t really care if it gets nerfed as long as Anet turns Mimic into something that isn’t a mess. Even if it is OP now it is still a poorly designed skill that shows a lot of tacked on “fixes”.

Glamour is a utility skill type. In general, utility skill types do not exist as weapon skills.

Besides, the idea of Glamours are that they bend time and space in an area, Chaos Storm doesn’t really fit that idea. Time Warp does though, but I expect it’s too powerful a skill to make it benefit from Glamour traits.

So is Chaos Storm for that matter.

If iMage was affected by +condition duration, then using Master of Misdirection and Rare Veggie Pizza would mean almost 100% uptime of 3x Confusion (without Haste). That’s not bad I’d say, at least in WvW where you can use foods and Confusion hits super hard.

And yeah, I still don’t understand why they made The Prestige a channeled skill. For one thing it makes it vulnerable to AoE CC, like Stomp and Into the Void.

See, if Master of Misdirection and other +condition duration affects iMage, it might actually be reasonable. The same goes for the trait Confusing Combatants and the new iWhaler.

Forget Mesmer condition build balance, this fundamental bug needs to be fixed first. You cannot build on a shaky foundation.

Couldn’t put it more eloquently than Curuniel did.

You guys are all sidetracking. The OP raised a critical issue of condition Mesmers that really needs to be addressed. As it is condition Mesmers do not benefit well from +condition duration (and to a lesser extent +boon duration), which is bad bad bad and must be fixed.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Pirlipat.2479:

So a developer-statement like posted before by Yollm is a fine proof, but your arguments are not.

I see, so by your reasoning we don’t even know if charr and norn are mammals?
They posess all features of mammals and they have practically “mammal” written all over them but apparantly that is not enough.

All jokes aside, I merely stated they posses the features that classify mammals, nothing else. Would you be so inclined as to show me those warmblooded/livebearing reptiles? Because I have never heard of such beings.

There are ovoviviparous reptiles, which give birth to live young (although the physiology is different from placental mammals), and there is speculation that dinosaurs may have been warm-blodded.

Physically there is definitely a resemblance.

The reason why you don’t hear many GW2 players say this is because the asura are a self-styled master race, while the house elves are a completely subservient slave race. The general demeanor of these two races are complete and utter opposites.

A layperson who knows nothing about the asura apart from their physical appearance will naturally consider them similar, but for us GW2 players it is difficult for us to associate arrogant asura geniuses with sniveling house elf servants.

The defensive golem is passable in that it can take a bit of damage and dish out a bit itself, plus its shield is helpful. The offensive golem is rather fragile. The suit is utter trash.

It has to be more than just an “energy armour”: remember that Death Shroud also grants you new abilities and prevents you from using your old ones. This is why I think it is a sort of “phasing” away from reality.

I won’t, simply because the Inquest smothers individuality, and asura are all about individuality. Inquest mooks are just that: mooks. Faceless henchmen. That’s not the asura way.

If I’m to be a part of something like the Inquest, I’d create my own; like what you character does in the Infinity Ball storyline.

I think of it as the Necromancer stepping halfway into the Mists, not quite here and not quite there… their physical bodies become immune to harm, but disturbances to this fragile state dissipates the life force required to hold it, eventually pulling the Necromancer back into this plane.

My keybinds are Q for heal, ERF for skills 789, Caps Lock for Elite, Tab for weapon swap and “`” for interaction. A few more changes that I probably missed, but those are the ones most relevant to me.

For Feedback it increases it by 2s, for Null Field 1s. Unsure about the other two but I think it’s 2s for Veil and 3s for Portal.

Given that Sceptre Clones only ever use Ether Bolt instead of the entire chain, making Ether Clone inflict Confusion would not change Clones at all.

But Anet wants Confusion to be a “rare” condition, that’s why they removed it from anything that can spam it.

UnknownFreak.2805:

EasymodeX.4062:

Absorb Kill Shot, shoot 3 Kill Shots?

No it only absorb the first projectile, but the other are reflected, but I think the first projectile is also reflected not sure.

also it would be nice if you was able to reflect moamorph(unsure if possible), and then echo(if possible(unsure)) it again after, and then make your moamorph

He was responding to the idea of absorbing a projectile giving you multiple casts of that projectile.

Only projectiles can be absorbed/reflected, Moa Morph is not a projectile.