Guild Wars 2

We know that the asura used to have great underground cities, and at least six of them were was grand if not more so than Rata Sum; and that one of these cities is named Quora Sum. None of these cities have survived the Destroyers.

zexion.5842:

Staff does more damage then scepter in full power thanks. The only benefit of scepter is you get a lackluster block that kittens your survival when activated and a death beam which is only good if something is dumb enough to attack. Mobs attack slowly so it doesn’t matter. The only offhand that makes up for its kittenyness is pistol as everything else is kitten or broken.

In full Power, WoC will deal approximately 450 damage per WoC (200 direct, 250 average condition) for a DPS of approximately 600. Ether Bolt/Blast will deal about 400 damage for a DPS of about 800. So no, In full Power Ether Bolt is stronger than WoC; although if you take into account all factors (such as Clones dealing damage) the Staff is probably still the superior weapon DPS-wise in a full Power build.

etiolate.9185:

Power + Crit is best way to go even with Staff. Warlock hits that hard in groups.

There was a discussion about this in this thread (where I argued that condition damage > Power for Staff).

The gist of it is that a Staff Clone in a condition build is competitive with an iWarlock in a Power Phantasm build, and you can conjure three Staff Clones in 1 second while conjuring three iWarlocks takes at least 30 seconds. Overall Staff Clones are superior because you can achieve your maximum DPS faster, it doesn’t matter if you lose Illusions, and it has better AoE damage and support capability.

The only situation where iWarlocks are preferable is against boss zergfests, but really; any three-legged build can participate in a boss zergfest and get a gold participation medal (the only thing that matters in these events), so it is irrelevant.

technosatyr.3784:

The WoC that a staff clone casts is not the WoC that the player casts. It does not benefit from Illusionary Elasticity…which has made me question how essential it really is. If I’m a condition heavy build then my clones and I are dealing about the same amount of damage, about 1/4 each (a bit more to me cause my base hit actually deals some damage and theirs doesnt). If I take IE then I’ll be hitting for one more condition every attack, which is only about 25% damage increase. That’s not to say that 25% isn’t significant, but not nearly as critical as it would be if the clones got an extra bounce too.

A Staff Clone is not equal to a player, because their WoC has a cast time of 2 seconds (compared to you 0.75 seconds) and their Bleeding is significantly weaker than yours (possibly a bug/oversight). Overall three Staff Clones is roughly equal to one player, so Illusionary Elasticity increases your maximum DPS by 50%. That is very significant.

That never happens to me. When the enemy stealths all my Illusions just become stationary, them immediately resume attacking/chasing when they become visible.

Okuza.5210:

Actually, even with a condition build setup, scepter auto-attack (1) outperforms staff auto-attack (2) by a huge margin. Mesmer is one of the few classes, though, where auto-attack DPS is a relatively small fraction of our total DPS. Most of our DPS comes from phantasms and shatters.

How did you reach that conclusion? Just from memory a full condition build can achieve an average damage of 600 per WoC, which has a cast time of 0.75s: about 800 DPS. Ether Bolt/Blast has a damage of about 200 with a cast time of 0.5s, and Ether Clone is about 400 with a cast time of 1s: about 400 DPS. This doesn’t take crits into account, but even with crits Ether Bolt isn’t going to double its DPS; and we haven’t taken into account WoC’s boons or Illusionary Elasticity doubling its single target DPS.

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.

Dinny.5310:

Platonic, but deep emotional attachment.

I think that fittingly describes Snaff and Zojja’s relationship.

Every ability, including autoattacks, are skills. AoE Confusion is quite good at clearing out trash mobs.

RinKyu.4317:

Embolism.8106:

Losing LoS causes you to lose target. I’m inclined to think the Blink effect is simply loss of LoS.

You don’t lose targeting because of LoS.

You’re right, since now I think about it you retain targeting even if the opponent runs away and out of sight. Losing LoS can cause you to switch targets, I should say; which may simply be a targeting options thing? I am unsure now.

If Disenchanter isn’t bugged it would actually be a reasonably good condition cleanser: it cleanses 2 conditions and strips 2 boons with each (bouncing) attack. Of course, as it requires a target I still wouldn’t use it over Mantra of Resolve.

Dustfinger.9510:

I know there’s a religious group in India that practices cannabalism in ceremony. i forget their name but they wait for bodies to be sent down river in funeral rights and eat small portions. But I don’;\t think they eat the brain either. Only meat.

Yes, I believe those are the ascetics of Shiva. Apparently they sometimes come and sit on a corpse, which is meant to be a great honour to the deceased and their family and people are supposed to leave him alone. They sometimes then eat the corpse for sustenance.

It is hardly a widespread practice however.

Carighan.6758:

Osicat has an interesting idea. I’d move the entire Mimic ability onto #2 Scepter, and replace Mimic with an ability copying the next ability a target uses.

Copying a healing skill would be problematic, I think.

marnick.4305:

Embolism.8106:

marnick.4305:

Since Charr are a warring species, I would expect them to eat their slain enemies and even be cannibals when needed.

While I would not be particularly surprised if that were the case, I don’t see why you would expect it. Humanity has spawned numerous war-like/warrior cultures and very few of them practice cannibalism (yes, I know eating a sapient of another species is not technically cannibalism, but it carries the same moral ramifications).

Cannibalism in humans isn’t practiced mostly because evolutionary we’re very much at risk for prion disease. Culture doesn’t have much to do with that, it’s just that cannibalistic tribes tend to go extinct.

There’s only 5 known prion infections and they all need one particular protein in the host. Species which don’t use this protein are immune to prion disease. In those species, selection against cannibalism doesn’t happen and likewise in a sentient species without this protein, cannibalism wouldn’t be the same problem.
If the Charr cranial matter is of a different kind of proteins, then prion disease isn’t nearly as much a problem. There’s plenty of carnivores practicing cannibalism in the world with Alligators being the most well known.

I wasn’t aware that human transmissible prion diseases are worldwide. Of course, you could argue that the reason for that is because cannibalism “died out” in the rest of the world.

In any case history records few cultures that regularly practice cannibalism, and the ones we do have mostly survived to recent times intact. It is possible that most of these cultures died out in prehistory, but I don’t know… the fact that there are cultures that have practiced cannibalism for thousands of years survived doesn’t really make the “prions killed off most of the cannibals” idea very plausible to me.

I’ve also read somewhere that many people in the South Pacific, where cannibalism and the associated prion disease kuru exists, are actually genetically resistant to kuru. Perhaps this is the reason why they survived while other cannibalistic cultures did not, but I find it slightly difficult to believe that similar mutations do not occur in cannibalistic cultures all over the world; if they existed.

Also, I’m speaking of cultures that regularly practice cannibalism. All cultures in the world practice cannibalism at some point, out of necessity or otherwise; but few practice it regularly.

Leo Paul.1659:

Yea I remember that when we first got to tier 1 everyone was so friendly and stuff. I like it like that.

That’s only because they think they can crush you. Once you’ve proven yourself a threat the masquerade is dropped and the QQ begins. XD

Overall I think all servers are doing very well, these last two weeks of WvW had been the most fun I’ve had. I really don’t see much “double teaming” going around either, seems like we fight both enemy servers: not always equally of course, but that’s mostly because of map control and what-not.

Carighan.6758:

I don’t mind weak skills, so long as they have low CDs. I enjoy actually getting to use my skills. :S

I absolutely agree with this. It is the reason I prefer Mass Invisibility over other Elites (unless peer pressure forces me to use Time Warp).

It would be interesting if the advent of steam creatures occurred because of study/reverse engineering of the ones that came from the future.

Well, maybe more cliche than interesting, but meh.

Do we know if asura give birth to live progeny? Even if they do that doesn’t make them mammals, they could be ovoviviparous.

Dustfinger.9510:

I’ve demonstrated that the heart can and does get worn down. That wearing it down increases the risk of heart failure and can lead to it. Your response is that it doesn’t mean it will definatlly happen. You keep changing the goal post. I’ve proved my position.

All that you’ve really demonstrated is that you don’t quite understand the aetiology and pathophysiology of heart failure, or much of what I’m explaining to you; but in any case I think we’ve derailed this topic enough. >.<

Anyways, asura may well have “stronger” hearts than humans, who knows. That wouldn’t explain their slightly longer lifespan though, is what I’m saying.

Zaxares.5419:

GuzziHero.2467:

I wonder if Charr could/would eat Harpy flesh? There seems to be no shortage of them. Their ‘matriarch’ must be a very busy lady…

Harpies may be sequential hermaphrodites, similar to clownfish. All harpies are born (hatched?) as female, but when they reach maturity, one or more of them change sex to male. Heck, maybe the “matriarch” is actually the sole male of a colony and breeds with all the remaining females.

I seem to recall a Charr NPC once saying that the worst thing she ever ate was roast harpy. “Like chicken coated in sewage”, I think her words were. It might have been at the Ashford Forum.

The title “matriarch” doesn’t make much sense then, shouldn’t it be “patriarch” instead if it’s actually a male during that life stage? Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case.

Correction. Confusion damage is not halved in sPvP: it is doubled in PvE. The split in sPvP/PvE damage was a buff, not a nerf.

The sPvP version is the original. During the Beta they doubled Confusion damage in PvE because of complaints that it is useless due to slow mob attack speeds. WvW uses PvE versions of skills because it is, after all, tied to PvE; and is not concerned with profession balance like sPvP is.

An autochain with variable range is just asking for trouble IMO, and a spammable Daze and Blind is rampantly OP.

Losing LoS causes you to lose target. I’m inclined to think the Blink effect is simply loss of LoS.

Dustfinger.9510:

You have already listed age as a risk of heart failure, in your own post but here it is. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/educational/hearttruth/lower-risk/risk-factors.htm

The amount of tissue was only one example. “With aging come a number of physiological and morphological changes that alters cardiovascular function and lead to subsequently increased risk of cardiovascular disease, even in healthy asymptomatic individuals” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_disease “Vascular aging: facts and factors”. Frontiers in Vascular Physiology 3 (325): 1-2. “Aging is also associated with changes in the mechanical and structural properties of the vascular wall, which leads to the loss of arterial elasticity and reduced arterial compliance and may subsequently lead to coronary artery disease” “Ageing and vascular ageing”. Postgrad Med J 82: 357–362. Dilated cardiomyopathy- (both greatdanes and humans can suffer from) The muscles of the left ventricle stretch and become thinner (dilate). Dilating causes the heart muscle to weaken, and over time, the condition can cause heart failure. Often, the cause of dilated cardiomyopathy can’t be determined. Such cases are called idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dilated-cardiomyopathy/DS01029/DSECTION=causes

Humans produce similar results becasue we don’t base out descisions on late age heart functions. We are talking about the ability of the heart so in that reguard it is similar. Any other favorable aspect is irrelevant. And if you admit that a case can be made for 2, then what is your real point? You admit 2 is applicable.

If you read what I wrote again: age is a risk factor for atherosclerosis, which can lead to infarction, which leads to necrosis and reduction of the heart’s ability to compensate. Age is not a risk factor in the sense “the heart is wearing down”. Plus, age is not the primary risk factor for atherosclerosis, lifestyle factors are far more prominent.

“Aging is associated with changes to the vascular wall”: you know that doesn’t mean the heart, right? It means blood vessels, in other words it’s exactly what I have said about aging and atherosclerosis. I’d also like to point out that “increased risk” doesn’t mean you’ll get it, quite often having just a single risk factor won’t significantly elevate your chances of developing the condition; it’s when multiple risk factors (e.g. age + diabetes + hypertension + dyslipidaemia) are present that you have to worry.

As for dilated cardiomyopathy, if you read further you’d notice that it is not a “natural aging” thing: it occurs most commonly in people aged 20 – 60, that’s not old (over 65 is considered to have increased risk of infarction). Read even further and you’ll notice it says it is caused by damage to the myocardial wall “most likely produced by a variety of toxic, metabolic or infectious agents”, may be due to “fibrous changes from a previous myocardial infarction”, or may be a “late sequelae of viral myocarditis”.

“Humans produce similar results because we don’t base out decisions on late age heart functions.” I’m not sure what you mean here, I’m quite sure animals don’t either (again I ask: do you think animals instinctively know if their mate has any cardiovascular risk factors?).

And while a case can be made for natural selection not being part of human evolution in recent years, that doesn’t equate human evolution to the artificial selection of domestic animals because it lacks the inbreeding aspect that produces most of the congenital abnormalities in the first place. It doesn’t matter if there’s no natural selection to weed out unfavourable mutations (especially not when the effect is so evolutionarily recent) when there’s little risk of them occurring.

GuzziHero.2467:

I wonder if Charr could/would eat Harpy flesh? There seems to be no shortage of them. Their ‘matriarch’ must be a very busy lady…

I’d like to know exactly how harpies reproduce: we don’t seem to see any male members of the species, unless their males are outwardly indistinguishable from females (which I guess is a distinct possibility).

Mantra of Resolve is IMO the most reliable condition cleanser simply because it’s instant. If you really want to keep conditions off however the best choice is the GM trait Shattered Conditions, which removes a condition per Clone per Shatter.

marnick.4305:

Since Charr are a warring species, I would expect them to eat their slain enemies and even be cannibals when needed.

While I would not be particularly surprised if that were the case, I don’t see why you would expect it. Humanity has spawned numerous war-like/warrior cultures and very few of them practice cannibalism (yes, I know eating a sapient of another species is not technically cannibalism, but it carries the same moral ramifications).

I too stick with Mass Invisibility, purely for my own use (although I do occasionally use it to help my allies initiate). The 90s CD is far more appealing to me than the more powerful effects of MM/TW, plus an extra stealth (albeit one with an agonisingly long cast time) is always welcome.

How many tests do you do? Maybe you didn’t look at it for long enough: it is random after all.

Knote.2904:

That skill is definately very very strong.

Although instead of reducing the pull range, I think a good compromise would be to make it suck targets onto the center point instead of yanking them past the curtain, this would nerf it’s ability to fling people off walls and ledges a bit but also make it much better tool for gathering things to be aoe’d, and would work much better with iWarden.

Yay/Nay? =p

That’s what it used to do in Beta, except with double the range. I loved it as it let me pull all enemies in PvP towards me to be served a helping of Blurred Frenzy.

Well, actually I think what it used to do was pull everything towards you instead of the curtain, but still.

Does anyone know how old Snaff was when he died? I remember in some asura dialogue he’s mentioned to have “died young”, but he certainly doesn’t look young and we know asura don’t live much longer than humans. Unless they show signs of aging much earlier than humans do?

Dustfinger.9510:

I bolded the relevant part. The heart weakens with age. Medical science knows this. The heart breaks down and gives out unexpectedly. Medical science knows this as well. Human beings also breed “unnaturally” (since we almost never choose mates based on how long their heart can carry them) and develope heart defects which means their heart can not break down as much as someoneone without born defects. but there is always breaking down no matter what. some without defects have thicker tissue while others will have thinner yet still perfectly healthy tissue. the one with the thicker tissue can take more wear and tear. That’s just common sense.

Some peoples hearts have the capacity to live 90/100/120 years. Just like some dogs hearts take carry them to 9 years while other dogs hearts carry them to 15 years. Both are canines. The diffrence? The genetic encoding that dictates how much were and tear the heart can take. All people do not have the same heart capacity. Reletivly healthy elder people in their 80’s have hearts that are incapable of taking them to 100 years old.

I don’t know what else you want. it’s a medical fact that people die of heart failure with no known factors beyond the normal wear and tear of old age. it happens. it’s not a myth. it’s not just some theory i came up with. Nor is it some untested philosophy of how i think the world works. it happens. it happens before people reach 100 years old. You’re arguing with reality.

That’s actually a typo, I meant to say when the demands from the body exceeds the heart’s ability to compensate. Anyways. Let me reiterate:

If people die of heart failure, they invariably have had a myocardial infarction prior or are suffering from a condition that increases the body’s demands, for example obesity. You do not develop heart failure with no past history or risk factors. You say this is a medical fact: I challenge you to find literature that backs up your claim. I’m fairly certain there is none.

I’d also like to draw your attention again to what I said about cardiac hypertrophy. While I’m sure people are born with variations in the amount of cardiac tissue they have, that is irrelevant as the heart is capable of increasing its mass if needed. Congenital factors that can lead to heart failure are things like septal defects (hole in heart), various structural abnormalities, a genetic susceptibility to things like type 2 diabetes, and so on.

Regarding the Great Dane thing and artificial selection: who you choose as your mate has nothing to do with this (do you think animals instinctively know if their mate has cardiovascular risk factors or not?). Artificial selection has a tendency to cause genetic abnormalities because 1. it often involves breeding of animals that that are closely related, a.k.a. inbreeding, and 2. they are not exposed to survival situations where specimens with unfavourable genes are less likely to pass on their genes to future generations.

While you could make a case of 2. being present in the last 5,000 years or so of human society, 1. (which is what forges these unfavourable genotypes in the first place) is not applicable.

EDIT: Sorry for derailing this topic, although it is still relevant as we’re discussing what factors could explain the differences between the lifespan of different species; which is evolutionarily linked to breeding rate.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Blog post from charr week proves they don’t – the female charr that was pregnant had one child.

One example doesn’t prove anything: that may be atypical for charr.

Mechos.5640:

Just to add to this topic somewhat:

The average Asura lives 5-10% longer than your average human, and a Charr’s natural lifespan is a little bit less than a human’s (I think it was mentioned as being 65 or something like that). Sylvari, nobody has any idea what their lifespans are, and Norn are the longest-lived, able to maintain their good health well into their 120’s, maybe longer.

That all sounds right, although I expect norn (and also charr) generally won’t live to their full lifespans given their lifestyles.

Avorniel.5708:

well this is taken for wiki :-

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion

Illusions derive the following attributes directly from the mesmer: precision, power, condition damage, critical damage, armor, and healing. Illusions do not gain any benefit from the mesmer’s vitality, condition duration or boon duration. Additionally they are neither affected by the damage of the mesmer’s equipped weapon nor by any of the various non-stat effects of weapon sigils or armor runes.

Wonder if this is correct or not ?

It is correct.

Time Warp: it does have a limit of 5 people. This is evident in dungeons where not everyone will get Quickness because Illusions can also take up a slot.

Mass Invisibility: No Mesmer uses Veil, its CD is too long to waste a utility slot on. Mass Invisibility is similar: consider the implications of an Elite skill being similar to a (weak) utility skill. Compare with Shadow Refuge. Oh, and MI has a limit of 5 targets too.

Moa Morph: have you seen the new Moa skills?

Portal: I quite agree, though mostly for WvW.

Stealth, Clones and Teleportation: Clones are the core of the profession. As for stealth and teleportation, the Mesmer doesn’t use those effects more than some professions do.

Reflection Madness: The Mesmer does indeed have the best reflection capabilities, but the only reflection skill most Mesmers use is Feedback. Masterful Reflection only works with the Distortion Shatter (rarely taken), Mirror only lasts 1 second and is a weak heal (and therefore never used), Mimic is far too gimmicky to bother with (again very rarely used), and Warden’s Feedback we’ve already talked about.

Condition/Boon Management: Have you played a Necromancer?

Distortion: Mesmer is not the only profession that can get evasion or invulnerability on demand.

Overall it feels to me that while you know the basics of the profession, you do not quite grasp its details (and the “buts” in many of our abilities). Also, you’re not going to fit all those abilities in one Mesmer, often investing in one area will force you to diminish or drop others.

The Torch is good as part of a secondary, supportive/defensive weapon set. It should never be used as your primary damaging weapon set as other off-hands contribute much more in that regard.

Personally, I use Scepter-Torch as my secondary weapon set in sPvP, switching to it if I need another stealth (after using Decoy and Mass Invisibility). Since I rely on the Staff for most of my DPS and defence, an offensive off-hand is of limited use to me.

With that in mind I would suggest not taking the Torch into account when thinking about stat distributions, it won’t contribute much damage no matter what you do.

The reason why Great Danes tend to die of heart disease is because their evolution is unnatural: they are artificially selected for by humans, which in their case led to a very high prevalence of congenital heart defects due to sheltering from the effects of natural selection.

Let me explain things a bit. When greater cardiac output is required from the heart, the heart compensates by contracting faster and harder. When the increase in output demand is chronic, for example due to hypertension; the heart will eventually compensate by undergoing hypertrophy: it becomes bigger to increase the force of its contraction. This is all normal and also occurs in regular exercise.

Heart failure only occurs if the demands from the heart exceeds the heart’s ability to compensate: i.e. eventually there is a point where the heart cannot hypertrophy any further, and if demand increases past this point the heart has “decompensated”: we call this heart failure. Hypertension does not cause the heart to “age”: as long as blood pressure is within limits and does not increase further the heart can continue working as normal.

What does get damaged by hypertension are the lining of the coronary arteries, and this damage plus other factors like dyslipidaemia and smoking can lead to atherosclerosis; a major risk factor for myocardial infarction: if an infarct occurs, that will cause necrosis of heart tissue and reduce the heart’s threshold for heart failure.

So no, the effects of hypertension are not an “accelerated aging of the heart”, the main way hypertension causes heart failure is by damaging the endothelium of blood vessels; which combined with other factors (poor cholesterol control, smoking, etc.) could lead to an infarction.

To summarise, what I’m trying to say is that the human heart is a very efficient organ and, if there are no genetic, environmental or lifestyle insults, has the capability to work well past the human lifespan. In other words, you will almost certainly die of some other cause (the ones that limit human lifespan to ~90/100 years) before you die of “natural” heart failure.

Dustfinger.9510:

That’s not true. When people die peacefully of “old age” comforably in their bed with no known pathalogical infermities their hearts simply stop working. They don’t need an unhealthy pre existing heart condition for this to happen.

The reason their hearts stop working is because they died from another cause. The heart cannot simply “stop working” because as long as there is oxygen, cardiomyocytes will continue to contract: although if the pacemaker system is compromised it could cause them to contract erratically or even in a way that causes the heart overall to fail to pump; but that requires damage to the pacemaker system, which is part of the heart, which means the person does have a pre-existing heart condition/risk factors.

Heart failure (which is when the heart is unable to keep up with the body’s needs) only occurs if either the body’s needs increases (e.g. due to hypertension) or if the heart suffers an injury, for example from a myocardial infarct (a heart attack) or rheumatic heart disease (which is an infection).

People do not develop heart failure for no reason, there is always an underlying cause for it: but while advancing age is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (mainly atherosclerosis, which can lead to myocardial infarction and eventually, heart failure) it does not in itself lead to heart failure.

In Frostgorge Sound, the Kodan often mention how their children are the most vulnerable to Icebrood attacks, as the Icebrood burrow through the bottom of their sanctuaries. There’s also Sons of Svanir talking about how they plan to kill Kodan children after having murdered their parents.

My point was that heart failure does not naturally occur in healthy humans, it is always pathological. A human who has zero cardiovascular disease risk is almost guaranteed not to develop heart failure in his/her lifetime. In other words, the human heart in general is not a limiting factor to human longevity.

On the flip side, a “stronger heart than you need” does not contribute to longevity: it may give you a survival advantage as your heart will be better equipped to deal with sudden increases in activity, for example when fleeing from a predator; but in civilised societies this kind of survival advantage is almost completely negated.

Since a “better than normal” heart does not increase your lifespan, the only way the heart could be a factor in the differences between the lifespan of two species is if one species has a “worse than normal” heart. Humans, however, have a heart that is perfectly capable of sustaining us till we die of some other cause; as long as you don’t have a congenital abnormality, make stupid lifestyle choices or get certain infections. Therefore the heart cannot be a factor (at least not in the sense of “heart failure being a natural progression of life”) in why asura live longer than humans.

GS Clones have the highest rate of Bleeding application with Sharper Images, followed closely by Sword Clones.

And Clones can crit even when they do 0 damage, so Sharper Images is useful regardless of level.

Phantasmal Defender works like this.

When iDefender attacks, it applies a buff called “Illusion of Defence” to nearby allies (I think the range is 600). This buff causes any damage taken to be split with the iDefender.

Apparently using two or more iDefenders bugs out the effect and causes no damage splitting to take place at all.

It’s not my most important trait, but I really like Debilitating Dissipation: mostly because it’s fun watching Clones explode in my enemy’s face.

You can get Crippling Dissipation or Confusing Combatants for the same effect, but IMO they’re not as good as DD.

There are too many factors that affect lifespan to say “this is the reason why they live this long” or “this is the reason why they die quickly”. In this case, healthy, fit humans are unlikely to suffer heart failure during their normal lifespan; so a stronger/less stressed heart is unlikely to be a factor for the asura’s slightly longer lifespan.

The AoE size of Into the Void used to be double the current size during Beta. The current size of the AoE is I believe 600: shrinking it to 300 would make it almost melee range only.

The other uses you listed for TC: Swiftness is mostly useful out-of-combat, reflection requires a trait and is highly unreliable due to the curtain’s low height (the slightest difference in elevation causes it to fail).

I’m pretty sure the trait works (couldn’t test it myself at this time, but I use this trait and I haven’t noticed any drop in my Confusion duration in the past few weeks). Bear in mind that +condition duration does not affect conditions inflicted by Illusions, which means that Master of Misdirection has no effect on iMage, Trident Clones or the trait Confusing Combatants.

I’d replace Precise Wrack with Illusionary Elasticity. A 10% increase in Crit chance, especially when your Crit chance is already 40 – 50%, is not that significant; plus without Power your Mind Wrack damage is quite low even when it crits: and since all your Shatter skills inflict Confusion (due to Illusions 15) it probably does more condition damage than direct damage anyway.

Illusionary Elasticity on the other hand doubles the damage your Winds of Chaos do while in medium to close range. That’s far more significant than a small crit chance increase to a skill on a 10s+ CD.

I might also add that using a condition damage build myself, I almost never use Mind Wrack: the only Shatters I use are Cry of Frustration and Distortion. Unless you reconjure three Illusions immediately the paltry damage your Mind Wrack does will be less than the damage your Staff Clones would’ve done, and while it is perfectly possible to reconjure three Staff Clones every 10s or so; it will tax your Clone generation rate and may leave you temporarily unable to recover if say an AoE wipes out all Clones at once.

Cry of Frustration on the other hand has potential to do a lot of damage, and using it every 20 – 30 seconds or so is just about right to augment your AoE damage without compromising your Clone generation.

IMO Carrion is a good complement to Rabid as it provides some much-needed Vitality while still maximising your condition damage. Rampager’s may provide a lot of Precision but it has no defensive stats and doesn’t give as much condition damage.

I still prefer to go full Rabid if possible however.

Sonnet.9840:

Stealth skill (Decoy), not skills.

Unless they use Mass Invisibility, a 90 sec cd elite that is situational at best or Veil, also a 90 sec cd slot skill that I haven’t seen used probably ever in sPvP.

Maybe some players use oll three to good effect, but I haven’t seen any.

There is a fourth stealth skill, The Prestige; which is slightly more spammable than Decoy. It is not commonly used however as it requires the Torch, which has the worst Phantasm.

Mesmers who are serious about stealth usually use The Prestige, Decoy and Mass Invisibility. Veil is never used as it really isn’t worth a Utility slot.

Time Warp does at least boost Trident Clone attack speed, as using it can cause the target’s Confusion stacks to jump from ~10 to ~20. Since your own Siren’s Call doesn’t inflict Confusion this can only be from Clones.

ManCaptain.3154:

Embolism.8106:

Restorative Mantras + Mantra of Pain. 2.6k group heal every 5 seconds. Is that healer enough for you?

And yeah, to do that you completely shut down your own DPS, since you can’t do very much else while channelling a Mantra.

This not only shuts down DPS, but it also requires you to cast all the time (that is no clones and other stuff). Even though 2.6k group heal sounds a lot, I think heal eles and various classes with aoe spam or strong regen provide much more in terms of support (boons, cond removal, some damage) even if they heal slightly less.

You can easily get Clones and Phantasms out during the time you’re discharging the Mantra. As the actual Mantra is instant it can be done while doing other stuff.

Metabolic rate is not the only determinant of rate of aging, there are many other factors that can affect a species’ lifespan. I don’t doubt asura have a higher basal metabolic rate than most other sapient species, but that does not necessarily mean they have shorter lifespans.

Plus yeah, it has already been stated that asura live slightly longer than humans.

Psaakyrn.5794:

Is the part about Elasticity not affecting staff clones still true? I’m asking because someone edited the wiki to say that it affects clones, and would like to know if someone made an error there. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_Elasticity

I’d take everything the Wiki says with a grain of salt: some editors don’t check their own claims, which leads to a lot of misinformation on there that people then quote.

I just tested it again to make sure, and yeah; the Wiki’s wrong.