Yes, thankfully Anet finally introduced Rabid jewelery; although as far as I could tell there’s no reliable way to get them.
The Block + Reflection of Mimic is awesome, just one problem: it must first be activated by an absolutely horrible effect, i.e. you must be hit by a projectile attack first that will do full damage to you, which you must then manually (as opposed to passively) “reflect” it back. Of course you can choose who to send the projectile against, but really; does that much much of a difference?
The joke with Mimic is, it has potential to be great against melee/non-projectile attacks (Block for 4s), but unless you take full damage from a projectile attack first that aspect is dangled out of your reach.
Yes, Moa Morph does actually work on Champions; although it only sticks for a few seconds and really isn’t worth it IMO.
How do you conjure three clones in one second? Mirror Images?
I find Mirror Images to be on too long a CD to be particularly effective, especially if you’re losing Clones or if you’re fighting multiple weaker enemies. Plus it takes up a Utility slot. Deceptive Evasion, create a Clone on dodge, is the best for constant, rapid conjuration of Clones.
This brings in another benefit of high Precision for these builds: it allows you to proc Critical Infusion (Vigour on Crit) more frequently, giving you plenty of Endurance to dodge.
Getting Illusionist’s Celerity and Chaotic Dampening shortens your Phase Retreat CD to about 5 – 6s, which also helps greatly to spam Clones.
I’m running a staff/sword+torch build currently. I’ve traited for condition damage and condition duration. As power and condition duration increase in the same trait line it only seemed logical that I took advantage of that power too by complimenting it with my weapons. So my staff and my sword+torch all focus on condition damage and power. Also my iwarden damage increased significantly when I focused a bit more on power.
+Condition duration is not as useful as +condition damage to a condition Mesmer because it doesn’t affect conditions dealt by Illusions.
Also, remember that condition damage is not as obvious as direct damage as you don’t see one big number showing how much damage it did. iWarden’s damage actually scales equally well with Power and condition damage if you have high Precision with Sharper Images.
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Having high Toughness reduces direct damage to you by quite a bit. It does nothing for condition damage, although damaging conditions are rarely an issue in PvE anyway.
Best case scenario IMO would be to get roughly equal amounts of Toughness and Vitality, but both stats are still very useful even if you only stack one.
Also consider that Chaotic Transference and Runes of the Undead converts some of your Toughness to condition damage. It’s not a huge amount, but still worthwhile.
GS deals less damage than the Sword but is long ranged. The Staff in a Power build is really a defensive weapon with very little damage compared to the GS.
The question then is: do you want a long ranged damage option to go with your Sword, or do you want some more defensive skills?
Empowered Illusions affects Phantasms (in fact it pretty much only affects Phantasms since Clones do negligible damage: it’s a relic trait from Beta) and stacks with Phantasmal Strength.
My first question is: is this a PvP or a PvE build?
Regarding the build itself… firstly, why Deceptive Evasion? That’s a trait for Mind Wrack builds and Staff condition damage builds, while yours seem to be a Phantasm build. Doesn’t seem like you’d benefit much from spamming dodge Clones.
I personally wouldn’t take Master of Manipulation unless you really have nothing better to take. 6 seconds CD off Blink isn’t really worth a trait.
You’ve taken Glamour Mastery, but you have no Glamour skills?
Assuming this is a Phantasm build, my recommendations are: drop Deceptive Evasion and put another 5 points in Illusions for Compounding Power. Change Master of Manipulation to Illusionary Defence. Consider taking Phantasmal Fury.
If you don’t intend to invest in Crit Chance or get a second Dueling trait, drop Sharper Images too; although it’s probably worth keeping if you take Phantasmal Fury. If you do drop it, I’d probably invest 5 points in Chaos for Illusionary Membrane.
The thing is, if you’re a Power build you’re not going to be on the Staff most of the time, as you’d get far more damage out of Sword or GS. A Power Staff build (not a Power build that includes a Staff, there’s a difference) is suboptimal.
And IMO zerging bosses is irrelevant because the only important thing in this situation is whether you get credit or not, as any contribution you can provide to a huge zerg is quite minimal regardless of your build.
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Without knowing the exact traits you’re using (although I think I have a pretty good idea) it’s difficult to give much feedback.
Do you use Illusionary Elasticity? That allows Winds of Chaos to hit the same enemy twice (assuming there’s no other enemies nearby), effectively doubling your personal Staff DPS. Three Staff Clones are also roughly equivalent to one extra you casting Winds of Chaos.
Personally I’m only FotM level 15, I imagine level 20+ is much more difficult so I can’t comment. I’m very happy with a Staff condition build however: as you say it’s very durable, and I don’t find its damage worse than a Power build (which I have been using until level 10).
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As far as I can tell only stealth causes target drop. Add Veil to that list too (though I don’t recommend using it).
I’m pretty sure Mirror Images doesn’t cause target drop, it may simply seem that way because they’re conjured nearby and just happen to facetank something that’s flying towards you.
The best way to finish off a Thief IMO is conditions, given how low their base HP is. Ramp up 10+ Bleeding on a Thief and it will likely topple over and die even if it stealths and tries to escape. Confusion (especially in WvW) can make a Thief kill itself in an instant, giving it no chance to escape at all.
“has better AoE and support capability. "
En-light me, I can’t see the better support ability of a staff over a staff.
The key is in what Illusions you use. If you are keeping three iWarlocks out you don’t have any Staff Clones to provide extra multi-target damage or boon support.
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Whatever the case a Mantra healer is boring to play since all you’re doing is spamming Mantra of Pain. It might not really affect your DPS too much since a lot of Mesmer damage comes from Illusions and Shatters, which you can conjure quickly between Mantra channelling (and Shatters are instant so can be used while channelling).
Power staff users do not rely on iwarlock only. They rely on warlock, blurred fenzy, and MW. They all hit like trucks in a power build and they can hit at about the same time when in melee range.
Personally, I’m a new fan of power/cond hybrid builds. I find the extra damage from MW and CoF and BF is outperforming anything I ever got from sharper images, though I do miss the extra vigor from my precision build.
That isn’t a Staff Power build, that is a Sword Power build (or rather a Mind Wrack build) since you rely on your Sword for your primary DPS and use the Staff for defense/support. The OP is asking for what’s best for the Staff specifically.
I’m also against hybrid builds, IMO they bring nothing to the table that a pure Power or condition build doesn’t; and pure builds are more optimal. Because of the way stat combinations work it is previously impossible to create condition build that isn’t a hybrid, but with new equipment from the Lost Shores update a pure condition build is becoming a possibility.
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The Spear’s mobility skills are pretty good, and Feigned Surge actually does pretty good damage. My main problem with it is that Spear Clones only use the first attack and not the entire chain: there’s no reason for this, it’s not like Scepter where the third hit does something Clones shouldn’t do.
Oh, and it would be nice if Slipstream was a spherical volume or something so it can actually push enemies away and is more usable for allies: a line really doesn’t work in 3D underwater combat. Oh, and if Vortex actually did damage every pulse it would be nice…
But I digress. This thread is supposed to be about the Staff.
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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.
So what I’m hearing is condition damage is important, of course, but neither power nor precision is that useful for a staff. Is that correct? I figured toughness was more for melee types, but I guess if I don’t need any other stats, maybe it will be helpful. Or perhaps vitality would be better?
P. S. Yes I’m talking about PvE. I know worrying about stats is probably not necessary simply for leveling, but I still want to know the best practice.
Also, does power affect condition damage at all, or are they completely different stats?
Precision is very useful for the Staff because of Sharper Images, which allows your Illusions to inflict Bleeding on criticals; and the critical chance of your Illusuons is the same as yours.
Power and condition damage are completely separate stats. The former affects direct damage, the latter affects the damage dealt by damaging conditions.
This thread’s replies are so clueless.
Staff needs power, even to a higher extend than Condition damage. The latter being nonviable in PvE and iWarlock having most of his damage scaling with power. Indungeons 3 warlocks with maxed power + autoattack/Storm support > any crappy confusion/conditon damage there can be (on mesmer ofc).
A Power Staff build that relies on iWarlock only can work, but is unreliable: iWarlock is on a CD, you need about ~30s to conjure three (assuming none gets destroyed and your target survives for that long, which pretty much prevents you from achieving your maximum DPS against anything but very tough mobs), and while your iWarlocks will hit pretty hard with Power your own WoC will not.
With a condition Staff build on the other hand a lot of your damage comes from your Clones (which attack more than 3 times faster than iWarlock and can deal similar amounts of damage through Burning/Bleeding), and you can conjure three Clones within a second and reconjure them instantly if lost. Also, investing in condition damage greatly improves your WoC, and Staff Clones can give boons or hit two mobs at once.
Overall, a Staff condition build has similar maximum DPS to a Staff Power build, can achieve its maximum DPS in 1 second instead of 30+, doesn’t care if it loses an Illusion or two and has better AoE and support capability.
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Trident clones ALSO use the beta version of Sirens call, which is why they throw up confusion instead of doing damage and giving boons (just a fun fact).
The Beta version of Siren’s Call also heals allies, so that’s nice too.
The only thing I think power from staff would benefit is shatters.
Shatters benefit from power so if you shatter then power is important.
Correction, Mind Wrack benefits from Power. Cry of Frustration benefits from condition damage, and while it isn’t in the same league as Mind Wrack (mainly because of its long CD) it can be quite powerful with a condition build (about 2000 damage per skill activation at level 80 with Illusionary Retribution).
On the other hand with Illusionary Retribution all your Shatters inflict Confusion, so Mind Wrack will also scale reasonably well with condition damage. And Staff Mesmers should always have Illusionary Retribution as Illusionary Elasticity is a must.
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If you intend for Staff to be your primary source of DPS then you definitely want condition damage. Precision is also extremely helpful if you take the Sharper Images trait (which you should since you need Deceptive Evasion anyway), allowing your Staff Clones (which are approximately 33 – 50% of your DPS as a condition Mesmer) to inflict extra Bleeding.
The Staff doesn’t benefit from Power very much, only the iWarlock scales well with Power and if you’re going for full condition damage you would only conjure iWarlock for Shattering anyway as your Staff Clones will do more damage.
And no, conditions cannot crit.
The best stat combination for a Mesmer Staff build in terms of DPS is Rabid, i.e. CondDmg-Toughness-Precision. Unfortunately it is a rather elusive stat combination to get in PvE/WvW.
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Staff Clones use a Beta version of Winds of Chaos: the projectiles travel along the contours of the ground (meaning it cannot travel across gaps and has greatly reduced range up and down ledges) and Bleeding lasts 5s instead of 7s. Staff Clones also attack much slower than you do. Illusionary Elasticity doesn’t affect Staff Clones either, although getting a second hit on your own WoC is still very powerful.
It’s not a question of what weapon you use, it is a question of what build you’re going for. Mesmer builds come in roughly three flavours: Mind Wrack builds, Phantasm builds and condition damage builds, and the three builds don’t synergise together. You’ve basically taken traits for all three, nothing wrong with that per say but you won’t be performing as well as you could if you focused on just one.
The preference of bouncing attacks that affects enemies and allies is enemy-ally-enemy-ally. Expect WoC to hit only one enemy most of the time. In order to more-or-less guarantee hitting two enemies (or hit the same enemy twice) take Illusionary Elasticity.
Note that Illusions cannot be the target of WoC, the only reason they sometimes get hit is because they’re in the way.
I think the build is slightly all over the place. Given the rough layout I assume this is meant to be a Mind Wrack build: in that case I would take Mental Torment instead of Empowered Illusions, drop Confusing Combatants and get Illusionary Persona (Illusions Grandmaster trait).
As for utilities, Signet of Inspiration is not that great, and neither is Signet of Illusions (the HP bonus doesn’t work immediately, which makes it rather worthless). Moa Morph is a PvP Elite, it isn’t effective in PvE: if you have a good racial Elite I’d use that, the Mesmer’s Elites are generally not that good for (solo) PvE.
I too like using Mantra of Resolve, but that’s mainly because we don’t have anything better. Arcane Thievery and Phantasmal Disenchanter both require a target and fail if the target blocks/dodges/stealths/moves out of LoS, which is not acceptable when you need to remove a potentially lethal condition. Null Field’s CD is long and it is not instant, place it removes one condition per second and lasts only four seconds. Mantra of Resolve however is instant, has two charges and is on a relatively short CD of 24s.
A possible reason why the Defender dies so easily is that it actually transfers damage from all allies (and Illusions) in range, not just you. AoE attacks can therefore bring it down very rapidly.
Signet’s effect does not kick in until about 5 seconds after the Illusion is conjured, which makes it rather pointless as that’s when you need the extra health to keep them alive.
Also, Phantasms are more fragile than Clones, despite what the main site says. Clones used to be more fragile in Beta but then they greatly increased Clone health, without touching Phantasm health.
Precursor prices continue rising and players implore Anet to do something about it. When Anet does something about it players complain Anet is cheapening Precursors.
I realise it’s not necessarily the same group of people making those complaints, but I hope you see my point: Anet cannot please everybody.
The fact of the matter is, Precursor prices had to be brought down: if they continue to rise they will only become more and more unreachable by new players, a group that will continue to increase throughout the game’s life. It is much wiser to do something now instead of say a year later, when much more players have been frustrated by the ever-increasing price of Precursors.
While I can understand why you’re upset, it is for the greater good.
I do use a stealth build that has Prismatic Understanding (+1s to stealth) and all four stealth skills, although it’s for fun and likely not optimal (specifically Veil I don’t feel is worth it).
It’s a condition damage build, so my primary weapon is Staff; because of this my secondary weapon set is for defense/support only, so the offensive power of the Pistol and OH Sword is not relevant.
Veil never fails for me, and it can give me 10 seconds of stealth by running over it again after the first stealth expires (though you have to be quick as the Veil expires soon after); so it is good if you need to hide for a while but still isn’t worth the 90s CD IMO.
Decoy only fails if you have an attack in transit and it hits while you’re in stealth, for example Winds of Chaos’s bounce. To prevent this just ensure you haven’t fired off an attack within a second or two before you use it.
For my other utility skill I use Mantra of Resolve for condition removal. If I want to optimise my build I’d replace Veil with Blink.
When a Mesmer casts a Shatter skill, all existing Illusions (i.e. the Illusions being Shattered) stop counting towards the Illusion limit. This allows the Mesmer to conjure new Illusions without replacing any of the Shattering Illusions.
For sPvP, I use Blink, Decoy and Mantra of Resolve.
Definitely Precision. Mesmer condition builds rely heavily on Clones for damage, i.e. Staff Clones or any Clone (except Scepter Clones) with Sharper Images; and Sharper Images requires crit chance to work.
If you think the scepter is a bad tool, trying checking out my video here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPaiEXhe_1MIt can be amazing when used right. And it hits like a truck on low-defence builds (glass cannons get hit for 500 on the first 2 hits, the third hit deals 1k).
And how, may I ask, does that damage compare to the GS or the Sword?
IMO, Confusion should be re-introduced to Ether Clone, and Scepter Clones should use the entire Ether Bolt chain except their Ether Clone doesn’t conjure a Clone (but does inflict Confusion).
It was indeed said by the Anet Loremasters (forgot who or where) that Humans and Norn cannot produce offspring together.
The main problem, apart from Mantras being balanced around traits and therefore quite worthless untraited; is that if you partially discharge a Mantra during battle you must fully discharge it, then wait for it to cool down, then channel it again if you want to get yourself back to fully charge the Mantra. If you’re using four Mantras that can quickly become a nightmare.
They cannot. They also don’t seem to be closely related, as the Norn had been on Tyria since at least the time of Jotun dominance; and the Humans came to Tyria from beyond the Mists not all that long ago.
Similar appearance is most likely the result of convergent evolution.
Depends on your ratios.
With full malice no power it’s best to have only clones.
With a mix of malice and power it all becomes a lot of math…at some point phantasms will make sense.
With no malice and a lot of power you can use staff in a shatter build but dont expect a lot of damage from the clones autoattack.
lol math….
don’t listen to this guy, no disrespect…..
but the staff is just point and shoot, honestly. It’s the laziest weapon ever, and a mystery to me why ppl say mesmer is hard when all you need is a staff and a little patience. Look up Mr.Prometheus guides if you really want an in depth view at all the mesmer weapons. Aside from that, its just hit skills on cd, stick move, #2 out of chaos storm for bonus chaos armor.
He is talking about what Illusions to use when using the Staff as your primary weapon, and he’s absolutely correct.
If you have lots of +condition damage at some point a Staff Clone will be more powerful than any Phantasm (except for iDuelist), so to optimise your DPS you’d want to know whether having Staff Clones out is better or having a Phantasm out is better. The math involved is for build optimisation, you certainly don’t need any maths when you’re wailing down on the enemy.
The reason the Staff is so commonly used is because even in non-condition builds, the Staff has excellent defensive capability in Phase Retreat, Chaos Armour and Chaos Storm (which gives Aegis to allies and Dazes enemies). You wouldn’t use a Staff to DPS in a Power build, you use it to escape sticky situations.
As per title.
This problem is most evident in the Mesmer: any condition inflicted by Illusions are not affected by the player’s +condition duration stat. The same problem may affect boons applied by summons and +boon duration, though I have not tested this.
Of particular note is the Mesmer’s Master of Misdirection trait, which increases Confusion duration by 33%. Unfortunately this does not work on the Phantasmal Mage or Confusion inflicted by the Confusing Combatants trait, which generally makes them a waste as they only inflict 3 seconds of Confusion.
All damaging conditions cease doing damage if the person who cast the condition dies, even though the condition itself continues to tick on the target.
This is a problem for professions that have NPC allies that can inflict conditions, especially the Mesmer; because if you Shatter your Illusions or if they die to a sneeze all their conditions stop doing damage. For condition Mesmers, this can be devastating and makes Shattering almost completely non-viable.
As per title. Everything you do underwater, from attacking to healing to gathering resource nodes, takes half the time to complete than on land.
As a Mesmer for example, Mind Blast (our Downed 1 ability) is 2x as fast underwater than on land, which is part of the reason why our underwater Downed seems so powerful. Ether Feast likewise casts much faster underwater than on land.
A few patches ago Anet “fixed” a bug that made Mantras take half the time to channel underwater. That was actually not a bug, it is because of this bigger issue. What Anet should do is fix this bug and remember to revert the Mantra band-aid “fix”.
If Anet is going to balance underwater combat, this bug would be a very good place to start.
Also note that the stealth lasts for 4s (entire cast duration) rather than the stated 3s in the description.
Are you using Prismatic Understanding?
IMO what needs to happen is The Prestige should be reverted to the Beta version where it did not need to be channelled, allowing you to dodge and cast defensive/healing spells through the stealth without breaking it.
I don’t know why they changed it from a perfectly fine and normal stealth skill to a channelled one that doesn’t let you do half the things people use stealth for (casting non-offensive skills).
As people have said, +condition duration has no effect on conditions inflicted by Illusions. I would get 6 Runes of the Undead instead.
….
The point Anet is trying to make is that Illusions are not pets, they are spells cast on the opponent’s mind: hexes if you will: that could be removed by destroying its physical manifestation.
This is the exact reason they must not be considered as attacks. You cannot mess with peoples’ minds because they use block or you are blinded?? Confusion should also not obey those rules either.
Without actual hexes Mesmer is less of a Mesmer..or we should have real hexes then?
The justification is you could block the spell that, if it hits, will mess with your mind, and if the Mesmer is blinded they won’t be able to aim the spell properly.
As for people discussing 33% duration traits, assuming it works, it’d be 33%+maybe 20 points in dom for 20% extra duration. That’d be 4.59 seconds, or one or two attacks at best in PvE and dungeons. At 3 stacks at 80 in PvE that’s about 1k damage per attack in a balanced build. Maybe a bit higher if you push condi damage, but in turn you kitten your power/precision stats, which affect all other phantasms and Mindwrack that make a larger part of your PvE contribution than Cry of Confusion and iMage.
The iMage should really mirror Confusing Images from the scepter attack. Then it’d be actually competitive with other phantasms.
You assume the only possible PvE build is a Power-Precision based build. Full condition builds, using Staff Clones and/or iDuelist/iWarden for Illusion-based condition damage, are perfectly viable. Although given how good condition-based iDuelist/iWarden are iMage will need to be like 2x better to even be considered.
None of the buffs to Torch and Scepter actually buffed their condition damage. There’s iMage’s change from 1x Confusion 9s to 3x Confusion 3s, but it’s highly debatable whether that’s actually better: personally I think no, and it definitely still isn’t worth the 30s CD.
It’s aimed at people who love torches. I, for one, loved the concept behind torches for Mesmers, and this buff makes it viable on the same level as pistol and focus for me.
I hit 1k when emerging from TP to nearby players in WvW running a Condition Bunker build, not to mention the lovely burn.
And the iMage now applies 3 stacks of confusion on a 6 second cooldown, meaning I can keep my enemy confused half the fight without having to use Confusing Images or shatter my clones.Torch is now properly viable as a weapon choice.
Portal, on the other hand, needed a nerf. They couldn’t nerf the distance so they nerfed the cooldown. Now this essentially wastes a space on your Utility bar for 90 seconds which should turn people who use it to annoy others away from the spell.
We may see the CD reduced in the future, maybe with Portal having a cast time where the Mesmer has to stand still to cast both sides of the portal.For now, be glad we’ve been fixed and stop crying over a single nerf to the Mesemer class.
I love the Torch too, for PvP. But buffing The Prestige’s direct damage doesn’t make much sense when the Torch is very much a condition damage weapon… for me it now does an extra 150 damage, wow. And the iMage change would be a buff if Illusion conditions can be affected by +condition duration, like Master of Misdirection; but as it doesn’t it really isn’t much better than the previous version apart from being more difficult to cleanse.
I agree Portal needed a nerf, my incredulity was in how Anet decided to nerf it. Increasing its CD does absolutely nothing to address its issues, you can be sure people will still use it in WvW to abuse the culling bug and move Golems around, and tPvP will still see plentiful Portal use to cover multiple points at once. The only thing this will do is annoy people who use Portal for themselves, and self-Portaling is absolutely fine: it’s its group support capability that cause issues.
Burning is a CD, its damage/duration are tied to your CD damage/duration.
I know that, hence why I said damage/duration though the patch says damage only.
Regardless, it is a pointless change and seems to be aimed at… nothing whatsoever. I really scratch my head at how Anet does balance. (+30s CD to Portal fixes it? lolwut)
I thought they increased its Burning damage/duration, but no. They increased its weak direct damage so it’s slightly less weak. What was the point of that?