Guild Wars 2

Most forms of condition removal are “bursts”, designed to remove conditions when they accumulate to dangerous levels. This is very effective against “burst” condition application but is ineffective against the constant condition application of the Staff.

A Staff condition build is very potent. With three Staff Clones and Illusionary Elasticity you can easily maintain 10 stacks of Bleeding on the target plus regular Burning bursts, and the constant influx of boons gives you permanent Fury (allowing your Staff Clones to inflict even more Bleeding) and every-increasing condition damage.

Sure your opponent can erase your 10 stacks of Bleeding with condition removal, but why does it matter when you’ll have 10 stacks of Bleeding on them again within seconds? Plus the Burning bursts cannot be prevented.

Illusions only benefit from Sigils that affect your stats, for example Sigils that give Might; which increases your Power and Malice.

Debilitating Dissipation only inflicts one of:

Weakness
3x Vulnerability
3x Bleeding

It does not inflict either Cripple or Confusion. Those are inflicted by Crippling Dissipation and Confusing Combatants respectively.

And having all conditions available from the trait is actually a nerf, as you’re much less likely to get a condition you want. As it is Weakness and 3x Bleeding are both very desirable from the trait, though the Vulnerability is not (at least to a condition Mesmer).

People are inherently selfish. Oceanics are selfish because they want to have people to play with, so they gravitate towards a few designated servers. North Americans are selfish because they don’t like the fact there are people living outside of NA time zones.

Jestunhi.7429:

Their connection to the rest of the world is awful so they insist a server has to be placed in Australia itself. How many other countries in the world do that? The only one I can think of is the US, but to be fair they are an entire continent with a significantly higher potential playerbase.

I find it amusing that you call the US “an entire continent” when in fact it is not. Australia, on the other hand, is an entire continent.

Elementalists aren’t the only Staff users, you know…

The “Mantra” bug was a bug that affected all channelling, including resource gathering. That’s what Anet should be fixing, not breaking Mantras to make a broken mechanic seem fixed and breaking more things that should not have been broken if the broken mechanic was not broken in the first place.

I really, really want Rabid equipment (and other non-craftable, non-droppable stat combinations) to be more accessible. As it is all craftable and droppable stat combinations use Power, and as a condition damage build I don’t want Power. The only way to get Rabid equipment is from Orr karma vendors and dungeons, but that’s only for armour and weapons: I still haven’t found a way to get (Exotic) Rabid jewelery yet.

End this discrimination against condition damage builds!

Clumsiness

If no skills are interrupted when you use an interrupt on a target, the next skill the target uses within 3 seconds is interrupted.

Decisive Interruption

When you interrupt a foe, the interrupted skill goes into double the usual interrupt cooldown.

Shrouded Mantras

Channelling a Mantra gives you 2 seconds of stealth. (Cooldown: 10 seconds)

Sudden Revelation

Illusions apply Shatter effects instantly without having to run to the target. (Range: 1200)

Blinding Revelation

Illusions inflict 2s Blind to nearby enemies when Shattered. (Range: 300)

Deceptive Healing

You gain a small amount of health whenever a Clone is killed. (~500 at level 80 with no Compassion)

Arcane Larceny

You steal a boon from each nearby enemy to yourself every 10 seconds. (Range: 300)

The primary problem with Mesmer AoE is that very little of it is ground targeted, most of our AoE is target-centric. A lot of the time however our target is not the best place to centre the AoE on, another mob is; but in order to optimise the AoE we then have to target that mob, throw out the AoE, then retarget our original target…

House of Mirrors

Gain stealth for 1 second and conjure a Clone in your place. This effect triggers every 3 seconds for 30 seconds.

Ryuujin.8236:

Is warden MEANT to be a stationary phantasm?

Before you say “yes” – if Warden is meant to be stationary, why does it follow an enemy if they move out of line of sight? – It’s behaving as a ranged attacker yet attacks in melee

Doesn’t seem like it’s working as intended

If iWarden moved around I’d be rather annoyed. I don’t want to chase it to be protected by its Reflection.

Effusion.4831:

Embolism.8106:

Regarding Illusions and AoEs: actually, I find that Illusions do sometimes run away from AoEs. They don’t always succeed, but they do try. Quite cute actually.

They move when they don’t have range/los on their target, but that’s it.

They do move out of AoEs sometimes too, occasionally my Phantasms would run out of an AoE away from its target (usually if they move it’s always towards their target). It doesn’t seem to happen often however.

Shroock.2934:

Rampager`s: Precision is something you WILL need, your clones don`t do any dmg, but they will apply bleed on crit, and they WILL crit a lot. With this amulet and 3 clones you can stack 10+ bleeds in no time. It also work great with Rune of the Forge + Signet of Inspiration. You will have 33% dmg reduction exactly when you need it. Extra 3,5k hp also helps.

With only 15 k hp you will get 2-3 hits and get killed, since with light armor pumping toughness is not really best idea.

I personally don`t take any cond. removal since there are not many cond. build in sPvP, but that` just how I play. You don`t have to take my advice and make a Low of it

With Rabbid, your bleeds will do around 13-14 more dmg per sec, but with more pow. from Rampager`s, you, your phantasmals and Staff clone (no 2 skill) will do little more direct dmg, so difference is not that big. Especially if your foe use cond. removal.

I also don`t like glass cannon build, since in sPvP most of the time is zerg fest.

I`m not saying my build is best, I`m saying my build is best for ME. I tried many other builds and I didn`t like them, so:

Bottom line is: every build is good, but use the one which fits your playstayle most.

Rabid also gives Precision, doesn’t waste stats on Power and has more survivability versus direct damage. I already have 50% + 20% perma-Fury Crit chance, which is plenty; Rampager’s only going to add another 10%. A Rabid build also easily stacks 10+ Bleeding.

Staff Clones naturally can deal damage through Burning and Bleeding, although I’m sure you know this. I don’t see how Runes of the Forge or Signet of Inspiration have significant bearing on your amulet choice.

I did a bit of a test and with Rabid (569 Toughness) I take ~27% less damage than with Rampager’s (no Toughness). I have 15082 HP with Rabid (0 Vitality) and 18372 HP with Rampager’s (284 Vitality). As I take ~27% less damage with Rabid, my effective HP with Rabid is ~20548 HP against direct damage. Also, any healing I receive is ~36% more effective with Rabid than with Rampager’s because of mitigation.

As a condition build you should be maintaining 3 Staff Clones out at all times, there’s no point in taking Power for Warlock because it will still be worse than Staff Clones when it comes to damage. I never conjure Warlock except for Shatter Fodder. As for Duelist, with the number of Bleeds it stacks it would benefit more from CondDmg than Power anyway.

I’m not saying “your build is crap”, I’m just expressing my opinion so we can have a healthy discussion. It’s always good to have another person’s perspective on things.

Compounding Power doesn’t affect condition damage. Personally I’d go with Master of Misdirection, but that’s because I do use CoF occassionally for some Confusion burst. Confusing Cry is also worth considering (again if you plan to Shatter) as it gives 15s of Retaliation for 3 Clones.

I don’t see why Rampager’s should be taken over Rabid. Rampager’s gives less Vitality than Rabid gives Toughness, the extra HP will allow you to last slightly longer versus conditions but you’re take significantly more direct damage. It also gives Power which is mostly wasted with the Staff, as a lot of your damage is from Clones which don’t have any direct damage.

I don’t recommend not taking any condition removal either. With low HP you are vulnerable to conditions and without a cleanser the first 15x Bleeding on you will spell your doom.

Disenchanter isn’t useful because it’s slow, sustained condition removal rather than the instant full condition removal of Arcane Thievery and Null Field (Null Field isn’t an instant full removal, but it’s close enough). As condition removal is primarily important for a sudden burst of dangerous conditions, slowly removing them one at a time isn’t reliable.

This is from an sPvP PoV, mind you.

If you take Clone death traits, Clones spawning Clones can get really powerful. Personally I think it might not be as bad an idea as it seems if Anet still intends for the Scepter to be a Shatter-centric weapon, because as it is if you want a Shatter build you’d use Deceptive Evasion. Scepter’s Clone generation needs to be much higher if it wants to compete with that DE can churn out.

One thing to note is that Confusion is about 2x as powerful in PvE compared to sPvP: there’s a damage split between PvE and sPvP to compensate for slower mob attack rates.

Another thing to note is that in WvW, Confusion uses the PvE damage. This is why Confusion seems so powerful in WvW: IR CoF + Confusing Images can easily deal 4000 damage per activation.

Confusion, therefore, is literally twice as powerful in WvW as it is in sPvP.

Zid.4196:

“A multi-projectile finisher has the same effect as a projectile finisher, but only 20% chance of applying the effect; the exceptions are Vulnerability and Confusion, which are 20% both for single and multiple projectiles.”

source http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

I’m not sure how that wiki quote is relevant here. In any case the wiki can be (and has often been) wrong.

Anyways, always do your own testing. Try iDuelist with and without Duelist’s Discipline and see how their combos differ.

Traits that affect skill ranges do so by switching the skill to a different version (you can see this by watching the skill icon when you add the trait, it flips). The problem with this is the flipped skill sometimes have other differences. In this case, all projectile finishers used to be 100%, but they changed it to 20% for multi-projectiles. Someone evidently forgot to change the Duelist’s Discipline version iDuelist too.

Zid.4196:

I don’t consider myself an expert in condition builds (yet), but since you have pistol/ether field/malice, keep in mind that confusion follows different rules when applied by projectile finisher, which is to say, 100% success chance even if the finisher is normally 20%. So the iDuelist will apply 8 stacks of confusion on top of whatever bleeds it crits.

That’s because you’re using Duelist’s Discipline, which bugs iDuelist out and makes its attacks 100% projectile finishers.

What do I like about my Mesmer? Well, I play a condition build with all three Clone death traits and some investment in Confusion, and the part I like most is watching my enemies kill themselves; by killing Clones and/or through Confusion.

I also like the fact that I’m very slippery. Finally found me? Stealth or teleport. Acting like a Clone after disappearing from your opponent’s LoS works wonders. Finally caught me without an out? Chaos Storm over both of us, Dazing you and giving me Aegis. And after that I still have multiple uses of Chaos Armour (skill and combos) to reward myself and punish you when you finally get hits on me.

I suggest you take at least 15 points from Chaos and put it into Illusions for Illusionary Elasticity. This allows your Winds of Chaos to hit your enemy twice in a 1vs1, plus you get more condition damage and can use CoF more often if you choose to utilise Confusion.

3s Moa Morph on 60s CD isn’t really Elite worthy IMO. That isn’t really better than Magic Bullet, 2s Stun (which stops target from moving as well) on 25s CD.

Regarding Illusions and AoEs: actually, I find that Illusions do sometimes run away from AoEs. They don’t always succeed, but they do try. Quite cute actually.

Making hotjoin 5v5 instead of 8v8 has been asked for since Beta. IMO it really needs to happen, 8v8 is too much and really, if they shrink the size of each game we could get more full games and less partially full games.

AFAIK marking is only lost if the target stealths (Thieves are far more annoying to lock than Mesmers are), and most Mesmers only use one stealth skill: Decoy, which is on a 32s CD. If you mark a Mesmer and it cannot stealth for whatever reason it is very easy to focus it.

Finding the real Mesmer amongst Clones is really not that difficult. Clones generally do not move, even Sword Clones stand around for a bit between attacks; so if it’s moving around it’s most likely the real one. Also, Clones pause between autoattacks, the real Mesmer usually does not. Other indicators include lack of off-hands on Clones, lack of personal Signet effects, and having lots of boons (Staff Mesmers tend to be like this).

For the Downed Clone, the Clone is the one that appears first; and the real Mesmer has a red skull arrow over its head. I’m surprised people still execute the wrong Mesmer.

Good Mesmers may pretend to be Clones by not moving and pacing their autoattacks after leaving stealth or teleporting, which may be a bit more difficult to distinguish; but few Mesmers stand still and none (that I’ve seen so far) pace their attacks to match Clone attack speeds.

A condition build with Staff Clones, Confusing Combatants + Debilitating Dissipation and Cry of Frustration + Illusionary Retribution + Confusing Cry is quite good at making enemies seal their own doom.

If your target dies, existing Clones will also trigger on-death effects.

Confusion being the Mesmer’s main damaging condition is a misconception. The Mesmer’s main damaging condition is Bleeding from Staff (+ Illusionary Elasticity), Staff Clones and Sharper Images. Burning is also significant but in the Mesmer’s case is more burst damage. Confusion, while powerful, cannot be sustained like Bleeding can and is very much a secondary/tertiary source of condition damage.

Despite its weaknesses, the Mesmer’s Downed 2 is still one of the better stomp-disruptors, as it cannot be countered by Stability or Invulnerability and works no matter how many stompers there are.

Eles definitely need a Downed 2 that actually stops a stomp.

I’d like to see MoRec get its old healing back, MoRes cleanse 3 conditions, MoC grant 3s Stability, and MoP be reworked to something else… say, inflict 3x Confusion (and given a much longer CD for balance and so that Mantra Mastery isn’t wasted on it). It could also be renamed Mantra of Confusion and be given MoD’s chant (Obfuscate, Disorient, Confusion), and MoD could get a proper chant that ends with “Distraction”.

I’d also like to see either channel time reduced to 3s, and/or have a trait that reduces channel time. 4s is too much and doesn’t correspond to the length of the incantation anyway.

3260 per charge was what MoR used to heal. After release they nerfed it to 2620 per charge for no apparent reason: it was rarely used before in PvP, now it’s completely unused.

The CD used to be 8s too, they nerfed it to 10s when they made MoR work with HM. Really though, I’d rather HM be removed and keep the 8s CD.

As for other Mantras, MoP, MoRes and MoC are all crap. MoP does minor damage and is only useful for hardcore burst builds (which the Mesmer is bad at anyway), MoRes frequently fails to cleanse the more pressing condition (such as the 20 stacks of Bleeding) if there’s more than two, and MoC… 2s of Stability, really? MoD is the only Mantra worth a kitten

One of the things I hate about multiple charges is that if you only used one charge during a fight, you must discharge all the other charges, wait for it to finish CD and channel it again to be fully ready for the next fight. This is one of the reasons why I’d prefer Mantras to be powerful one-charge spells with no option to increase number of charges.

Most Mesmers run around all over the place while Clones are generally stationary, so it’s usually very easy to tell which one is the Mesmer if they aren’t out of LoS or cloaked. Also, Clones have long pauses between attacks, which gives them away if you observe the battlefield for a second or so.

In general I do not find enemy Mesmers difficult to distinguish at all. Stealth and teleports disrupt me far more than Clones do.

kagenin.5231:

I though that it means you do extra damage to people who are stunned, dazed, immobilized, etc, which to me makes more sense considering which trait line it’s found in.

If they’re CCed then they would be inactive, would they not?

That would make the Elite completely countered by condition removal. Null Field in particular would eat this Elite for breakfast.

timecookie.8570:

Confusion from Phantasmal Mage (Torch5) lasts for 9 sec while he attacks every 6s. Currently every stack of confusion I place deals 177 damage. Now do the math 177 by the number of actions you can do within 9s.

Plus it grants retaliation. Although this boon may be more mysterious, be sure that it can deliver great damages.

Let’s say your opponent uses 10 skills in those 9 seconds (a reasonably generous estimate). He takes 1770 damage.

Compare this with any direct damage Phantasm, they easily do 2000+ damage with Power builds and can crit too. Actually, forget direct damage, compare this with a condition-based Duelist (Sharper Images): mine can easily apply 4 or 5 Bleeds in a salvo, that’s about 2400 – 3000 damage right there; plus about 500 – 800 direct damage. Oh and it has half the CD of iMage and can proc combo fields.

As for Retaliation, iMage’s only lasts 3 seconds and the damage scales off Power, so if you’re built for condition damage (as you would) it wouldn’t be that significant.

Now tell me again that iMage is fine.

The channel time of Mantras is 4s, not 3s. If it were 3s (and it used to be in the Beta) I would be reasonably happy with it.

EVERYONE, COME! ! Axe Throw Pull

kitten-

The humans and the charr have been at peace for a while now.

The premise of GW2 is the five major races uniting together against the Elder Dragons. Racial wars would make no sense in this context. Plus the idea of GW2 is that you race does not restrict your options.

One thing to note about high armour is that, compared to high health, the effectiveness of healing on you is increased.

Projectiles fired from inside the Feedback bubble is instantly reflected, it doesn’t have to hit the “wall”. So if the target of the projectile is inside the bubble it will still be reflected.

Warden’s Feedback. Makes Temporal Curtain reflects too and reduces both their CDs by 20%.

They do it considerably more often with Phantasmal Haste. Warden’s tradeoff is that it’s stationary, except it isn’t much of a tradeoff in PvE as mobs are generally stationary too.

EasymodeX.4062:

Lol!

They let me succeed, but it seems like you’ll have to find something else that works for you.

Maybe Anet can implement an “iSucceed” button for you?

I already have things that work for me (I too use Illusionary Persona in PvE), the point is Mesmers should not need to go to such lengths just to secure a participation in this kind of DEs. All other professions have easy-to-use AoEs right out of the oven.

The only Phantasm this trait is worth using on is iWarden, as it makes it whirl non-stop. On all others the effect is small or non-existent as far as I could tell.

Agreed. I would prefer if we could ground target iWarden, but if not this is the second best solution.

EasymodeX.4062:

Awww man, let’s keep making more excuses rather than succeed!

If the ideas you raised actually results in success you would have a point.

Illusionary Persona is nice, except it requires you to be right in the middle of the mobs and of course a 30 point investment in Illusion.

Mind Stab is tiny. Phantasms can fail to appear if the target you’re conjuring on dies during the cast, which happens in these events. Illusionary Wave doesn’t do enough damage to tag targets.

Reaper of Grenth is a human racial.

In PvE I’d definitely go for the Focus. Mobs don’t run around so usually take the entire Whirl from iWarden, and if you take Warden’s Feedback they won’t avoid the reflection either. Temporal Curtain is great for moving around the map.

I do agree. Our primary source of AoE (or at least, what Anet intends to be our primary source of AoE), Mind Wrack, is simply not possible to use when mobs die in the middle of conjuring Clones. Similar problem with AoE Phantasms.

In general I avoid events that involve masses of trash mobs, they’re not worth a Mesmer’s time usually.