Guild Wars 2

Dodging does not break stealth. With Deceptive Evasion you can conjure Clones this way.

Illusionary Membrane applies Protection when Regeneration is applied, i.e. at the beginning of Regeneration. Runes of the Dolyak provides a negligible HP regen that’s much weaker than the boon, and no it doesn’t count as the boon.

zoejo.2317:

My clones have been doinkittenage for a long time. I think last time I saw them do any significant and useful damage was in a beta.

I miss Beta Sword Clone builds. IIRC they used to hit for ~200 damage per slash or something.

IMO a condition build works best with stealth spam, although any build can work well with it: it’s just that conditions are DoTs, and for the Mesmer it also means a very spammable source of Illusion DPS in Staff Clones: this means that you can maintain DPS on the target even while stealthed, plus you can roll out more Clones in stealth without breaking it.

The problem with Confusing Cry is that almost all Mesmer specs defend themselves by not getting hit in the first place, which makes Retaliation somewhat wasted most of the time. Now if it also gave your Clones Retaliation…

Lordryux.9785:

i just wish confusion would hit better in spvp like it does in WvW ;/

It’s pretty much OP in WvW, especially if you also eat +condition duration food and such. Thieves in WvW are laughable with a good Confusion condition spec.

GamerToukotsu.4219:

Xavi.6591:

While Illusionary Elasticity (bounce attacks have one additional bounce) is great, I don’t find it compulsory for pure Shatter builds.

I much prefer Compounding Power which gives you 3% more damage for each active illusion. This 9%/6%/3% also affects your Shatters (your first illusion shatters for 9% more dmg, 2nd illusion shatters for 6% more dmg and 3rd illusion for 3% more damage).

This is actually a very nice suggestion but, couldn’t you choose this as the adept Select-able trait instead?

Maybe they want Illusionary Invigoration too, or Precise Wrack; although IMO Precise Wrack is not worth a trait. Confusing Cry is a nice trait too as it gives quite a bit of Retaliation per Clone (5s per Clone I think).

sinican.9250:

Embolism.8106:

Interrupt traits only work when they actually interrupt a skill, i.e. you use Daze while your target is using a skill and the skill is interrupted.

Are you sure of that…. Daze just activates a flat skill CD on all skills… the reason it technically interrupts is because a skill isn’t activate until the cast is over so the skill is hitting CD before the cast finishes, thereby interrupting it in that fashion. With actual interrupts, it interrupts the actual cast initiating a recast CD that is usually shorter than skill activation CD.. They act differently mechanically as far as I understand.

Daze’s primary effect is basically a Silence, preventing the target from using skills for its duration. It is also however an Interrupt effect, like Stun, Push, Pull, Knockdown, Launch, etc. When an interrupt effect is inflicted while the target is casting a skill, that skill is immediately terminated and goes into a 3s (I think) CD. This is the effect that procs “On Interrupt” skills.

I think a CD is necessary, especially given that Phantasmal Healing is fixed for non-iDuelist Phantasms; but 15s is a bit too much. 10s would be better IMO.

IMO the Staff’s DPS is already quite potent with WoC + IE + 3 Staff Clones, especially considering how tough condition Mesmer builds are. While I would like WoC to not deal negligible damage 1/3 of the time, taking that away may cause the Staff to become OP.

In a condition build your primary weapon is always the Staff, since it is our only weapon that can effectively stack conditions. Your second weapon set is purely to support the Staff.

With that in mind what you use for your second weapon set is relatively unimportant, almost anything can be useful in some way when DPS is out of the equation.

Sword + Pistol is good because it gives you mass boon stripping, invulnerability, a very damaging Phantasm (iDuelist can really stack those Bleeds) and two skills to stop your opponents from running.

Scepter and Torch gives you a potent Confusion burst and a low-CD stealth: it may sound like a poor deal compared to Sword + Pistol, but IMO the stealth is worth a lot and the Confusion burst can win a duel for you if used well.

Mesmer condition builds might not stack conditions as quickly as some other builds, but it certainly isn’t slow. Remember that it’s not just Winds of Chaos, it’s also three Staff Clones and Illusionary Elasticity (effectively doubling WoC’s effect when dueling).

Confusion is mostly useful in WvW, but even in sPvP it is nothing to sniff at. Against builds that spam condition removal, a well-timed Confusion can be key to bringing them down.

Interrupt traits only work when they actually interrupt a skill, i.e. you use Daze while your target is using a skill and the skill is interrupted.

As a condition build you cannot expect to kill things quickly (except with Confusion in WvW). What condition builds are good at is killing the enemy slowly but surely while keeping yourself very well protected through high Toughness, Clone spam, the Staff’s excellent defensive skills and (optional, but IMO very effective) stealth.

IMO getting lots of stealth (and Prismatic Understanding) synergises very well with condition builds, because conditions continue to tick and you should also have Staff Clones out to stack more conditions and also muddle things up a bit when you reappear.

Note that Confusion inflicted by each Illusion shows up as a separate Confusion splat, so if you’re using Trident Clones, iMage and/or Confusing Combatants you may see multiple Confusion splats for one skill activation.

I already play a stealth-heavy build (all four stealth skills + Prismatic Understanding) before this buff, and it’s a very tough build: although not really a “bunker” build because that suggests you could hold a point by yourself, which you couldn’t due to the very mobile playstyle (might just be me, I tend to move all over the place unless I’m trying to pretend to be a Clone) and the fact that you cannot contest a point while stealthed.

Veil is actually 4s of stealth, and you can run across it again after your stealth ends (provided you don’t break it and get Revealed) to stealth again. Even so I too prefer Mass Invisibility over Veil, mainly because Mass Invisibility doesn’t take up a Utility slot: funnily enough I value Utility slots far more than I do the Elite slot.

There’s no reason why you can’t take both however if you’re serious about cloaking allies.

They do. It just isn’t reflected in the tooltip.

FYI, this thread comes up in this forum every three days or so. I really hope Anet would fix the tooltips.

Fay.2735:

Embolism.8106:

I’d love to see this replace the useless Mantra of Concentration.

Mantra of concentration isn’t useless. I’ve used it quite a few times for certain dungeon encounters and it can be incredibly useful for pvp as well.

It may have uses in PvE because you can see huge CC attacks coming and proc Stability preemptively, but you’re really better off getting a utility that will get you out of said attack.

In sPvP it has absolutely no place, 1.5s of Stability x2 is not worth taking at all over the Mesmer’s other, more powerful, utilities. Stun break? Pffft, the Mesmer has far better stun breakers (Blink and Decoy for example: the former is also far better at dealing with CC moves than 3s of Stability is, since you can use it reactively instead of preemptively).

There is a way over the gorge that allows you to quickly reach the enemy base from yours. Send a Scout or two to hide near the enemy base and snipe gift carriers after their allies abandon them thinking they’re safe.

Really don’t see why this is an issue at all, if Clones did 0 damage at all levels it will make no difference.

Does anyone else get a pang of nostalgia when they use the Clone skill in Snowball Mayhem? Clones that actually deal good damage… sigh.

The reason I prefer Mantra of Resolve over other condition removal skills is because both Thievery and Disenchanter require a target and can be countered by the enemy, and Null Field’s CD is too long and it only removes one condition per pulse anyway. Resolve on the other hand removes two conditions instantly and you can use it two times, and after those two charges are used you only need to wait 20 seconds to charge it again.

3s charging time is much better than 4s.

I’ve been using Mantra of Resolve for condition removal for a while now, and I like it. The buff to Mantras has only increased its usability.

I’d love to see this replace the useless Mantra of Concentration.

IMO Veil’s CD should be reduced to 60 seconds and MI’s CD reduced to 45 seconds. Compare and contrast Shadow Refuge: yes, Shadow’s Refuge is not strictly superior than either due to different functionalities, but I know if I had the choice I’d take Shadow Refuge over Veil or MI (and MI is meant to be an Elite?),

The Kodan have Koda, which they seem to believe is omnipotent and omniscient. Of course, whether Koda actually exists is up for debate given there’s no physical evidence of his existence (with the possible exception of the Voice’s rage): all things considered Koda is quite similar conceptually to the Abrahamic God.

What iMage needs is for Anet to fix the bug that prevents Illusions from benefiting from +condition/boon duration, e.g. from Master of Misdirection. Do that and the iMage will scale much better in condition builds.

The Prestige needs its channel removed so you can do things like heal or channel Mantras while stealthed. Having the Burn be activated is a nice idea too, although not required IMO.

Illusionary Elasticity is a must-have trait for anyone serious about running the Staff as their primary DPS. Deceptive Evasion is up there too.

I don’t think Illusionary Elasticity lets Mirrored Blade hit an enemy more than twice: untraited its final bounce is to an enemy, so with the trait the extra bounce would be to an ally.

IMO you should be able to get the effects of Confusing Enchantments, Dazzling Glamours and Blinding Befuddlement for two or even one trait rather than three. Personally I’d scrap Confusing Enchantments and make Dazzling Glamours inflict Blind on placement, entry and exit. That way you only need 30 points instead of 50 to get these effects.

The asura believe that the Six are very, very important parts of the Eternal Alchemy, i.e. huge, important cogs in the workings of the machine of the universe. Depending on your interpretation that may or may not qualify them as “gods” from an asuran perspective. They certainly don’t think worshipping them is part of the agenda however.

The norn do not doubt the existence of the Six in general, but they do not consider them “gods” in the same way they don’t consider the Spirits of the Wild as “gods”: to them the Six are spirits just like the ones they revere, except they represent ideas (Balthazar would be Spirit of War, Genth would be Spirit of Death, etc.) instead of animals.

The Sylvari are probably the closest to real world atheists. They hear the humans speak of gods, but are skeptical as they have not seen any evidence of godly activity. The only difference from real world atheists I could see is that the Sylvari are genuinely open to the concept of gods, while real world atheists tend to be strongly against any form of theism. Technically the Sylvari aren’t agnostic as they implies a belief in a higher power that can never be proven to exist.

I doubt you would find many humans that are truly atheist, although many humans are starting to believe that the Six are no longer worthy of worship as they’re no longer actively helping humanity. In this sense their belief bears some similarities to the Charr.

Sylvari are the only race that can come close to RPing that, I think; but it’s difficult to equate atheism in a universe with physical gods to atheism in a universe without (as far as we could tell) physical gods. Of course, if you don’t consider the gods to be gods, but merely very powerful beings (like the Charr do) you could argue that is atheism. But then, what makes a god a god? Gets rather muddy.

RECRUITMENT IS OPEN

Submitting an application is simple: just say that you wish to join. A short backstory for your character is desirable but not required.

Your alignment, role and/or items will be PMed to you after recruitment closes.

Recruitment will be open for a week, or until the GM decides that there are enough players.

Current Players

This is a Mafia/Werewolf game. To those who do not know how this game works, read on.

THE FACTIONS

There are two factions: The Villagers and the Lunatic Court. The Villagers win when every Lunatic Courtier is dead. The Lunatic Court wins when the number of Courtiers is equal to the number of Villagers at the end of a Day Phase.

As a Villager, you know only your own faction alignment and whatever special abilities you may have. You have no knowledge of the alignment of other players or their potential abilities, unless they choose to reveal it to you. Whether they’ll tell the truth or not is another matter.

As a Lunatic Courtier, you of course know who you are and what you can do; but you also know the identity and ability of every other Courtier. This allows you to coordinate with your fellow Courtiers to bring down the Villagers.

THE PHASES

The game is played in turns, with each turn having a Day Phase and a Night Phase. The Day Phase lasts for 48 hours, during which players are allowed to talk to each other. Every player must also publically vote for one player they want dead: for Villagers, this usually means voting for whoever you think is likely to be a Courtier. At the end of the Day Phase, the player with the most votes against them is lynched.

• When voting, please bold and underline the name of the player you are voting for so it is easier for the GM to tally the votes. Should you change your vote later, do not edit out your old vote: strike through it instead.

The Night Phase also lasts for 48 hours. Players are not allowed to talk to each other during this phase, with the exception of the Lunatic Courtiers; who are allowed to confer in private. During this phase, the Courtiers hold a secret vote, invisible to the Villagers: at the end of the Night Phase, the player with the most votes against them is killed.

ROLES AND ITEMS

Some players will receive a role or an item at the beginning of the game. These roles and items confer special abilities that can be used during either the Day Phase or the Night Phase. Instructions on how to use your special ability will be given along with your role or item, should you receive one.

INJURY

Players can become injured, preventing them from voting during the Day Phase or using special abilities for two turns (i.e. two sets of Day-Night Phases). They may still however communicate with other players as normal. Injury can be caused by certain special abilities and events. An injured player cannot be injured again until they have recovered from their current injury.

ADDITIONAL RULES

• Private messaging between players is allowed, although Phase restrictions apply: i.e. during the Night Phase, Villagers are not allowed to private message anyone while Courtiers are only allowed to private message each other.

• Dead players may not talk or private message anyone. They may however make one last post roleplaying their death, although this post may not reveal any information.

• Private messages from the GM are confidential and should not be revealed to anyone else unless the GM states it is okay to do so. However, information regarding your alignment, role and items may be revealed truthfully if you choose.

• Lynching will not occur at the end of a Day Phase if there is a tie, or if the top voted player has less than 25% (rounded) of the votes of remaining players.

• You may abstain from voting during a Day Phase, although doing so for more than two consecutive Day Phases will result in your death.

• A Day Phase may be ended immediately if more than 50% (rounded) of remaining players agree to do so and the top voted player has more than 50% (rounded) of the votes of remaining players. A Night Phase may be ended immediately by the GM if no more action can be taken.

• Extensions to a Day or Night Phase may be granted on a per-case basis.

• Roleplaying is highly encouraged, but is not mandatory.

You find yourself lying on cold, hard earth, with no recollection as to how you got here. There is a throbbing pain inside your head and your body feels stiff all over. Slowly, you push yourself up and look around.

The first thing you notice is that you’re not alone. There are people all around you: some are unconscious, but most seem to be waking up. Judging from their bewildered expressions, they are just as confused as you are.

A cursory glance at your surroundings makes one thing painfully clear: you are not in Tyria anymore. The geometry of the gravestones and walls that surround you are distinctively non-Euclidean, and you’re quite sure the Tyrian moon does not sport a maniacal grin. The otherworldly mist that permeates the air further reinforces the alien nature of this landscape.

“GREETINGS, MY SUBJECTS!” A voice booms. You swivel you head to locate its source, but it seems to be coming from everywhere. “IT IS YOUR GREAT HONOUR TO BE A PART OF MY LITTLE GAME…” A pause for dramatic effect. “LUNATIC INQUISITION!” The voice cackles madly for a few seconds, then stops. A few people exchange bemused looks. “WELL? WHY AREN’T YOU LAUGHING?” It demands. “ARE YOU NOT HAPPY? YOUR MAD KING SAYS… LAUGH!”

Without warning your mind bursts open: against your will you start cackling, and soon the whole graveyard is alive with insane laughter. “MUCH BETTER,” said the voice, satisfied. “NOW, THE AIM OF THE GAME IS SIMPLE: ENTERTAIN ME!” With that ominous note, the voice cackles one last time; its echoes reverberating between the graveyard walls. Then silence.

What is the current status of the game?

Jairyn.6913:

Iruwen.3164:

Jairyn.6913:

• staggering your illusion’s distance from the target can help your stack Diversion, stripping champion mob’s control immunity

I didn’t get that one, could you elaborate?

I’m blanking on what it’s called, Defiance or something. The buff a champion gets when it suffers a control effect makes it immune to the next 3 (actually, it scales to the number of players present). As each illusion counts as a separate Diversion, staggering them out so that they each hit separately will count as three dazes and peel off three layers of control immunity. Diversion doesn’t stack, though, so you have to get the timing/placement right such that each illusion casts its Daze before the next reaches the target to shatter.

You don’t have to stagger them out, using Diversion with 3 Sword Clones and Illusionary Persona at point blank range will remove 4 stacks of Defiant regardless. Staggering them out just causes the Daze to last longer, but even if they all hit at the same time they still count as 4 Dazes.

For all we know human healing magic could be superior to modern medicine. The lack of certain lifestyle factors could also help increase life expectancy.

Also note that the maximum age someone could live to (as far as this could be determined) is relatively similar across human history, it’s the chances that people will live to see that age that varies. Also bear in mind that life expectancy at birth is heavily skewed due to infant mortality rates experiencing a much steeper decline with time than adult mortality rates.

iDuelist is bugged in that it is normally a 20% projectile finisher, but if you take the Duelist’s Discipline trait it becomes a 100% projectile finisher.

As far as I know this bug has not been fixed, but I didn’t test this.

The Confusion damage dealt by each Illusion and yourself is shown separately. So say you have 9 stacks of Confusion on a target, with every 3 stacks inflicted by a different Trident Clone. If 9 stacks is meant to deal 1800 damage, when the target activates a skill the damage will be shown separately for each Clone; i.e. it will show as 3 splats of 600 damage.

Another bug linked to this is that if an Illusion dies, condition damage dealt by it will no longer show up, although it will still work. I also think that Confusion splats sometimes just don’t show up if there’s too many numbers flying around, but I have nothing to back this up.

If it’s PvE, HP may be linked to WvW bonuses. +% damage never works for condition damage, only for direct damage.

I’d say Mesmers have another role in WvW: they make a group seem larger than it is, which could affect enemy morale and how likely individuals are to flee. The fact that all enemies are shown as “Invader” or “Defender” could make Clones quite confusing in even small engagements.

Pyroatheist.9031:

deltanium.7543:

deltanium.7543:

Embolism.8106:

Duelist’s Discipline is broken: in the sense that it is too good. It makes every single bullet from iDuelist a 100% projectile finisher, instead of 20%.

Seriously?

equips nullfield and feedback and enslaves a fire elementalist.

Edit: Tested. You are absolutely right, there is no way a 16 stack of confusion should occur with the help of 2 iDuelist shooting a single salvo each through a nullfield… 5 times in a row. That’s essentially one chance out of 5 to the power of 80 or a statistical impossibility.

Wait wait wait wait wait. It stacks CONFUSION with a 100% chance? That is FAR beyond being a 100% combo finisher, because 100% combo finishers don’t have a 100% chance to stack confusion in an ethereal combo field. If that is true…..that is REALLY broken.

I’m fairly certain Confusion is applied 100% of the time by 100% projectile finishers. I never fail to have Confusion inflicted on my target when I use Mirrored Blade through Feedback or Null Field.

Vendris.4201:

I’m going to pick on thieves a little – where is my chance to react to a thief backstabbing me out of stealth? It does far more damage than my phantasms, and I have no chance to deny the attack.

Well, you do actually have a chance to deny the attack, by using Riposte/Counter or casting Chaos Storm on yourself (which has a good chance of giving you Aegis and Dazing the Thief). You could also use a stealth skill yourself to prevent them from acquiring you as a target, use Distortion, etc.

It is more difficult than countering Phantasms of course, but it isn’t impossible.

Zid.4196:

I like thieves. They are the last remaining class that dares to 1vs1 me in wvw. Everyone else I have to chase.

I think it’s more the fact that Thieves tend to shadowstep right to you and start initiating their combos, then promptly die to Confusion backlash: at least that’s what tends to happen when I encounter Thieves in 1vs1 WvW. It’s not so much they don’t run, more the fact that they don’t get the chance to run. >.>

Osicat.4139:

@ Embolism, ssssshhhh With so many things not working lets keep this a secret from the devs to balance things

Think of it as a test for the devs. I see so many bugs that weaken the Mesmer being mentioned over and over again in these forums with no fix in sight: let’s see if the devs will be more willing to fix bugs that empower the Mesmer.

Duelist’s Discipline is broken: in the sense that it is too good. It makes every single bullet from iDuelist a 100% projectile finisher, instead of 20%.

Using stealth yourself (and abuse culling back!) helps immensely as well. Unless they use Thieves Guild your culling abuse > theirs due to Illusions.

I do wish people will stop saying they nerfed the sPvP damage when in fact Confusion has never ever received a nerf: the split in Confusion damage occurred as a buff to PvE and WvW damage, sPvP damage was never touched.

Zaxares.5419:

Embolism.8106:

Zaxares.5419:

Zyrusticae.7245

I’m seriously thinking Asura are not mammals. They may be ovo-viviparous or histotrophic viviparous.

That is entirely possible. In a world with fantastical creatures that can petrify you with their gaze or that are far too huge to realistically support their own body weight, who’s to say that Asura aren’t part of a new type of Order that is warm-blooded, has hair, but are ovo-viviparous?

That isn’t very far-fetched. See monotremes.

Don’t monotremes actually lay eggs though? We do know that Asura give live birth to their progeny.

They do, I’m just saying that you don’t need “it’s a fantasy world” to justify a mammalian species producing eggs. Although asura might not be mammalian: I don’t think the devs have said anything about that.

Okuza.5210:

Go to the mists golems and test it. Staff auto-attack is at best 50% lower DPS than scepter. Best scepter auto-attack dps is 2x worst staff dps (ie. melee range for scepter, over 600m for staff without nearby bounce targets). Scepter clone production rate is also potentially the highest of all our weapons; actual rate depends on your range to target.

Basically, scepter/1 DPS is roughly equivalent to greatsword/1 DPS with an inverse distance relationship. Melee scepter is the same as max range GS. Max range scepter is a a fair bit better than melee range GS (about the same as 300m GS).

Did you take condition damage into account? According to my calculations Staff DPS (taking into account average condition damage) is much higher than Scepter DPS while in a condition build, and that’s without taking into account boons applied by WoC or powerful traits like Illusionary Elasticity, or the fact that Staff Clones deal significant damage on their own (and also apply boons).

Scepter Clone generation rate is really not much of an advantage when any build serious about using Clones will take Deceptive Evasion, which more or less caps out your Clone generation rate no matter what weapon you use. Plus Staff has quite decent Clone generation itself.

Nuka Cola.8520:

the reason why i don’t spvp and will never do until i care about another class or ANET completely over nerf mes. How they come out with this decision is above me… If confusion (which is far from being OP) is halved then why not half stealth on thief, remove half the amount of minions necros can have or another stupidity? glass cannony builds are already much better for pvp AND pve but they still make it worst, lol anet sometimes.

Confusion damage was never halved, it was doubled. sPvP Confusion damage is the original, PvE Confusion damage was a later addition: Confusion used to do the same damage in PvE as it did in sPvP, they then buffed the PvE damage.