Guild Wars 2

Dawdler.8521:

Esplen.3940:

Go back to the Charr forum.

But my Mesmer is a Norn

NornxCharr is a thing now. Haven’t you seen Rox + Braham?

Don’t forget to use Chaos Storm on yourself 1-2 seconds after they go stealth. Also use GS Wave to push them out of SR and reveal.

Dawdler.8521:

Fay.2357:

That’s not a good thing really, just a thing. Mods are mods, not devs. They don’t have any relation.

True, but when a kitten just want to be scratched, it doesnt matter if its from a hand or rubbing against a stool.

Go back to the Charr forum.

Meanwhile, I’m going to have to get used to not having a Blink anymore.

If you’re running shatter, you don’t benefit from phantasms critting that much. Additionally, they won’t be alive that long. Yes, when you clones crit, they will also apply bleeds, but clones hit much slower than phantasms (other than Sword and Staff Phantasm).

I would say Berz for Shatter. Assassins is good if you have phants out and are planning on keeping them out.

AI tend to realize that you actually want them to attack when you get hit as opposed to when you attack. If you run runes similar to Rune of the Golemancer where they spawn anything, it’s especially bad because you’ll get hit, drop a summon, and the summon will go retaliate against whatever hit you, forcing you to get in combat (if you weren’t already before, I think that they can summon off of Aegis breaks).

You can put a bloodlust sigil onto your underwater weapon and then swap your land weapon after getting 25 stacks.

The only reason why I can see it having an ICD is if they had it coded where it stacked like F4 Distortion so you could potentially get permanent Invulnerability (which might screw up with AI causing yourself to not be able to hit them after a while). That second part is entirely conjecture on my part.

Anyways, the only way I can see it being useful/viable for Mesmers is by having a 3 second ICD starting from when it procs (“100%” uptime, assuming you get a kill every 3 seconds as soon as it ends) or by having it refresh like Chaos Armor (instead of stacking, it simply refreshes duration to 3s if it’s less than 3s).

When I pug or run around in open world, I tend to use Celestial + Travelers.
When I do dungeons, I have a dedicated group where I run exo Zerk + Scholar (upgrading to Assassin + Ranger, just finished the Asc set, but need the runes).

For swiftness in the dedicated group, we have a boon duration Guardian who constantly drops Symbol of Swiftness so we usually all have 1m+ swiftness.

If I pug for a dungeon that my group doesn’t do (namely Arah), I switch back to my Celestial set. I have opted out of running blink unless absolutely necessary, as well.

Typical build is:
6/6/0/0/2 (very, very flexible depending on the situation).
S/S/F
Signet of the Ether
Mantra of Concentration
Mantra of Resolve
Feedback
Time Warp

Switch to Greatsword for tagging and Staff for world bosses.

I was contemplating getting Traveler or Speed for my Ascended set, but I don’t really care since I’m used to being able to survive that extra hit with my Celestial in bad groups, anyways. (Still not used to getting one shot by Lupi kick with 0 grubs…)

This build is still viable for beating Liadri. I swapped in Phantasmal Defender for my last utility just to help mitigate damage (same as Feedback). Probably not the most efficient, but it lets you run around and spam illusions until the very end when you face her off with your sword.

I always run PUG, so people being out of position is nothing new to me. I’ve had the worst things possible happen so much that I’m not really surprised when things go wrong and just prepare for it (which usually involves terrible builds that can accommodate that).

hendo.1940:

Using Staff on Lupi allows me to avoid the projectiles if I accidentally roll twice too soon.

blurred frenzy/energy sigils/distortion/feedback

This isn’t very useful if we’re meleeing,

Which you should be doing, because — no joke — ranging Lupicus is actually hard mode because it makes him unpredictable and lets him use his more deadlier skills.

it is useful to be able to be flexible.

Feedback, stability mantra. You can now break out of two bubbles if they spawn on you and you can reflect spray and projectiles. Your main hand sword allows you to evade heavy burst damage, your focus allows you to apply swiftness so you can move in quickly after AOE life drain, warden allows you to reflect spray if feedback isn’t up. That covers you for basically the entire fight – very flexible.

I’ve probably spent more time practicing Lupicus and pushing for fast kills than you have doing entire Arah paths – so I feel like I know what I’m talking about when I say staff isn’t a good choice.

All of which is solo “speedrun” plays. I’m not saying that they’re not the better ways to play, but when you PUG as much as I do, you need to be ready to play the full idiot method. If I have to, I can even revert to a 0/4/6/4/0 build that lets me solo Lupicus while ressing teammates. Yes, it’s not fast. Yes, it’s not clean. It gets the job done, and that’s what matters at the end of the day.

I can run Sword/Focus + Greatsword (or Sword/Sword) against Lupicus and do great, I know. I can use Distortion against Lupicus, yes. But when my teammates don’t dodge grubs and try to melee, then it’s better to just range in P1. When my teammates don’t know how to use reflects or sit in them in P2, it’s better to use Feedback when I can and then play safe when I can’t Feedback his barrage. In P3, if that one guy decides he wants to not sit under Lupicus, then I will sit under Lupicus until it’s not safe and range him when I have no escapes readily available. In fact, this is where Staff is ABSOLUTELY perfect. If you’re stuck in a bubble, you can use Phase Retreat to get out and you’re also out of range of another bubble attack.

You can keep refuting me all you want, but that doesn’t prove anything. From the beginning, I’ve been stating that it’s not the BEST way to play, but it’s a possible way (in regards to Lupicus). And yes, I do know that Warlock has one of the highest single target damage skills in the game. I’ve had 3 of them hitting 4k per on Shadow Behemoth which is a level 16-ish area. That was a long time ago, and I don’t think it’s possible to get numbers that large anymore.

I love how your post kind of just trash talks everyone without actually posting anything useful.

Regardless, what works for specific people is nothing that you can say is wrong. Sure, it’s not the best, but that doesn’t make it wrong (it can, however, still be bad).

Using Staff on Lupi allows me to avoid the projectiles if I accidentally roll twice too soon. This isn’t very useful if we’re meleeing, but after having played Arah P123 daily for a few months (not recently, however, since everyone does melee), it is useful to be able to be flexible.

I’ll go more into my point but I’m busy right now.

Are you sure? It’s been a while, but I’m quite sure in stuff like CoF P1, when you do the Might Stacking, your Phantasms do a significantly larger amount of damage when using Signet of Inspiration as opposed to leaving them there. When selected, they had 25 stacks of might so I just assumed that was the factor…

I’ve used Sword/Pistol + Staff for a long time. It’s possible to be used against things like Lupicus effectively, but it’s still inferior to Sword/Focus + Greatsword in terms of raw dps. Of course, since I go PUG’ing, it’s good if I can play support that keeps everyone alive while reducing incoming damage (without using Protection and Aegis.<)

Bloodlust/Speed since I haven’t gotten around to updating my sigils. Always being poor…

It’s pretty much the same thing, I mean you’ll have at most 4 seconds of no activation, but that’s not a big deal.

Also, the reason for picking Air is if you don’t want an AoE hit and you pick Fire if you do want an AoE hit. So going for both wouldn’t necessarily be beneficial.

On-kill stat stacking sigils.

Any runes that give you stats or Might (Might on you goes onto your phantasm, which means your Phantasms can have 50 “stacks” of Might).

Phent.9350:

Now all gm traits are crap, i want some statement from devs how the kitten we supose use them, i want to see the movie how they make build and play in tPvP with decent team. Power Block was only one that fell nice, was entery to the build diversity, other traits was dull an useless on relase(especialy Disruptor’s Sustainment this trait is the splap in the face, rather joke than something usefull)

All I gathered was:

• Veil is a circular field, don’t worry about running through it, just cast it on your teammates.
• Clones are op, let them solo and make sure to shatter them so that things will die.
• You only need to auto attack once, so make it count and kill them with one auto attack.
• Veil lasts long enough for a mob to get confused, de-aggro, and then die before regening back to full.
• Mirror Images has a cast time.
• Blink does damage, use it past enemies to instantly kill them like a boss.
• Don’t use Temporal Curtain to pull an enemy back. Run through it for super speed* (does not work if you already have Swiftness).
• Chaos Storm will apply Agony, Confusion, Death, Cripple, and Black Lungs.
• We have an instant-cast Cantrip attack with Staff that burns an opponent, instantly killing them.
• Mirror Images actually spawns Phantasms that we can command with secondary skills.
• Mind Wrack is op.
• One dodge roll as a mesmer is about 1000 distance in-game.
• Portal lasts for 15 seconds.
• Dat one auto attack. Make it count.

shimmerless.4560:

I agree Neurophen, I really wish GW1 was still alive at this point.

Sadly the GW2 devs intend this game to be geared for a certain audience (it took me a long time to realize this, even though the “Back to School” thing should’ve been a huge warning sign). If you want to play games intended for adults I’d look elsewhere.

Actually, the game is catered more towards casuals than children in schools, although a lot of the hardcore players tend to be college students or around that age-range, from what I’ve seen.

Does anyone remember that time that ANet said they only added the ICD on Shatters as a band-aid until they fixed the bug that caused multiple shatters going off simultaneously to copy on each other (6 clones shattering at once would cause up to 6 shatters of both types)? Oh wait, we still have the ICD, that’s right…

Before we had the ICD on shatters, we could cast 2 shatters with 6 clones within less than a second, which caused all 6 clones to shatter with Mind Wrack while also applying about 18 stacks of Vulnerability and giving yourself upwards of 15 stacks of Might.

This typically involved using macros, though. (Spawn 3 clones → Diversion → Decoy/Mirror Images → Mind Wrack.)
This bug is still “do-able” but the timing makes it really ridiculous and it’s not really worth the effort at all.

Blurred Frenzy used to count as Invulnerability, which means it didn’t count towards the daily dodger, but it stopped fields, retaliation, and ignored lightning shield.

Phase Retreat used to be a stun breaker, now it’s usable while cc’ed but doesn’t break the cc.

No, like, I wear my Fancy Winter Clothes and my clones wear them as well.

I see clones with outfits on in PvP.

And you can reduce Phase Retreat to a 5 second cooldown, so…

Would an ICD really do anything? Unless you’re going to rotate AoE disrupts like Illusionary Wave, Temporal Curtain, Chaos Storm, and Imbued Diversions, you’re most likely not going to need to worry about an ICD, anyways… unless the ICD is 10 seconds, in which case, ouch (unless it’s target specific!)

It seems kind of spontaneous when they decide to stop attacking. I had them hitting a gate in EotM, then they stopped, then I moved to a different gate and they still didn’t attack.

Also, they occasionally don’t attack non-summoned mobs and they occasionally attack summoned mobs…

Pyroathiest.4168:

Zepidel.5349:

anyone try the new +1000 healing power on interrupt GM trait?

Wouldn’t that instantly increase the regen ticks from your illusions that you pretty much have 100% up time on by ~100 per second?

what about our main heals?

I know some builds go 25 to grab the 15% phantasm dmg, its only 5 away but it is worth it?

100% uptime? That’s interesting. How are you proposing to get an interrupt on the dot every 4 seconds?

I don’t know the exact numbers, but rotate off of: Mantra of Diversion, Signet of Domination, and 2 of iWave/cStorm/tCurtain.

Zepidel.5349:

anyone try the new +1000 healing power on interrupt GM trait?

Wouldn’t that instantly increase the regen ticks from your illusions that you pretty much have 100% up time on by ~100 per second?

what about our main heals?

I know some builds go 25 to grab the 15% phantasm dmg, its only 5 away but it is worth it?

I can see that working with Focus and Greatsword, but the synergy of a Phantasm build and an interrupt build is mostly for a support Mesmer, which is probably only going to occur on PvE bosses where you can sit back and spank it, anyways. I wouldn’t go 6 points in just to get 1000 healing power on interrupts.

At a level 80 zone, you can get your clones to do around 150, but that’s basically the same as 1-4 damage in a level 30 zone.

Sigil of Speed seems to be 100% uptime on swiftness for the price of one sigil on your primary weapon set.

I don’t have any pictures, but I hopped on after not getting on in a long time. (GW2 has been slowly getting less optimized on my machine. I now have to run on subsample to not get a headache from 8 fps at peak.)

I have a Sigil of Speed on my Focus that I’ve had since… well, since I got that Focus, which was a long time ago. My reasoning was that I wanted my Focus to go fast and it would help me go fast. Of course, it wasn’t a very good idea at the time as it stopped me from synchronizing Temporal Curtain cooldowns and made it a pain (just like Signet of Inspiration or someone giving you 2s of swiftness with a skill).

However, I don’t know if this was recent, but I was just killing things in low level areas with some friends and I took a peak at my Swiftness after taking a pit stop to sell and it was at 3 minutes. I popped on Signet of Inspiration and started killing things as fast as possible. I managed to get up to 6 minutes before stopping and Signet of Inspiration gave around 1-3 minutes of swiftness with each usage (I think it’s 2 minutes 20 seconds per Signet of Inspiration and then you just keep re-casting it whenever it’s up).

Probably a bug, but this is a cheaper alternative than getting Runes of the Traveler, so I thought I’d let you guys know.

Celestina.2894:

Nar.8327:

Main hand pistol please!!!

I have been mourning the lack of this option since the BWEs.

We have TWIN pistols named after Lyssa!

WHY WE NO DUAL PISTOLS ANET!? WHY!?

Lyssa is also the patron god of Thieves.

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mesmers have the easiest access to the best stunbreakers of any class. Stability is not even close to necessary.

And that being said, there’s a mantra that provides 4 seconds of stability on a 25 second cooldown.

^this. Staff blink

Stop spreading misinformation.

Staff blink (Phase Retreat) is NOT. A. STUNBREAKER. (anymore).

It’s not so much the heal as the prevention of damage.

Effective healing at its’ finest.

bri.2359:

I run a shatter mes 20/20/0/0/30, and do not trait for mantras and have 0% boon duration. I have no plans to change this for a build just to max stability …

If you’re running shatter, use iLeap, Blink, Decoy, and potentially Mirror Images as stunbreak.

You can also use Phase Retreat to force the opponent to not hit you while you wait the cc out (doesn’t stunbreak anymore).

If you’re afraid of getting pushed or pulled, read your opponent and roll dodge.

I kinda wish Compounding Celerity also gave +5% movement/second while out of combat up to 25%, moved up to Master or Grandmaster and changed to +20/35/50% movement while in combat based on Illusions.

Would be really strong, but also worth the spot in Master/Grandmaster Inspiration.

PvE bosses.

You won’t need the extra healing if you reflect.

Some scenarios:

Dungeons:
Alphard in Arah.
Belka in Arah (or is it Dessa? I can never tell).
Uncategorized Fractal (the entirety, even the stairs).
Grawl Fractal (both boss fights).
Kholer.

Open world:
Anything that shoots you.

If you’re going to sum it up for the layman, running Scholar isn’t very efficient. Most people won’t stay in the health threshold and, if they do, they typically aren’t dealing damage themselves. They’ll be damaging via Conditions/Phantams.

However, this is just overgeneralization, since we are overgeneralizing the PvE meta.

Ptolemy.5086:

As usual too much information or too little. If you are about to do maps on mesmer then start with runes. I recommend traveler. Expensive but worth it. So far i can’t find better rune and it is good for WVW as well. There is few better runes for pure DPS but 25% speed bonus for mesmer is a huge deal

If cost is an issue, grab some Runes of Speed instead.

Qaelyn.7612:

Cyninja.2954:

Try playing every class to 20 or 30. If you find one that you really enjoy, stick with it.

But again, that’s not a good way to judge mesmers, because they are not at level 80 like they are at level 20.

I’d have to agree with this, but also bring it to the next level. You can’t really experience all the professions until you get them to max level.

Heart of the Mists is a good testing ground, but it doesn’t let you test it out in a nice manner. Sure you can hotjoin matches, but that’s jumping into the deep end and it may not even be how you’d like to play.

Personally, I’d make whatever profession intrigues you, bring it to the Heart of the Mists and then read/test what you like on golems.

From there, figure out what build you want to run and then see which profession you like the most.

Start playing that profession and don’t work towards your aforementioned build that you made. Work on something random and silly. Then, when you’re max level, switch into the build you wanted to play. From there, your instincts will show you how to build yourself. It’ll be a terrible build, but it’s better to have your own build than to follow someone else’s cardboard box cutout build.

If you need, at max level, use the cardboard box cutout builds you find as a reference and then add your own flare and tweaks.

Honestly, if you really want to play a Mesmer, it’s better to pick it up as your first profession (or right after Engineer/Elementalist).

The reason why is that if you play something “easier” (in regards to being beginner friendly) like Ranger/Warrior, you’ll feel like a Mesmer is too much effort and ridiculously hard.

If you run with a Mesmer at the beginning, you won’t realize how difficult the game is until you swap into something easier (or get access to whatever makes a Mesmer easier).

Although people state that Mesmer is hard before level 40, that’s not particularly true. It’s just that after level 40, Mesmer’s become easier to play. Using Deceptive Evasion is a godsend for solo players, but it isn’t exactly required. I didn’t start using Deceptive Evasion until ~300-600 hours into Mesmer, which was well past hitting level 80.

I was able to solo my first Champion at level 45 (it was level 53) without the use of Deceptive Evasion (although my tactic was just as cheesy).

I have to agree with what CrazyAce has stated in his third paragraph. Mesmers while leveling are subpar and won’t have the crazy numbers that other professions get (it’s theoretically possible to hit for ~3.5k in the tutorial on a Warrior and Guardian level 1, assuming the first boss actually has that much health, which it doesn’t), but they do come with very reactive gameplay (although every profession is reactive, arguably) based on positioning of you and your units (cough illusions cough).

Unless, of course, you choose to be Phantasm. Then you don’t have to pay attention to positioning of your units.

Keep in mind, however, that +X% does not affect your Phantasms and only affects your raw damage output (not condition damage). This means your auto attacks and reflects will be stronger, in addition to a few other weapon skills and Mantra of Pain and Mimic.

cyberwolf.5830:

kittenter the easiest way to kill thieves is turn them into moa then burst.
Yesterday I’ve found a thief that was almost all the time invis, I tought they nerfed this stuff but apparently it still work (or maybe another build with the same result).

There’s always a perma-stealth build. It’s typically really, really weak and used for poking and prodding someone until they die (or if they’re generally weak, aka most upleveleds).

The strategy is to wait for a solo roamer to come by and then snap at him and hopefully get him while he’s unaware. Another strategy is to go after upleveleds at the back of a zerg and kill them really fast before you get spotted. A lot of time in zergs people won’t react to getting hit.

If you can keep up your Phantasms, Signet of the Ether is just as good. But if you ever have to press 6, just use Ether Feast instead. That’s the tradeoff.

In PvE, if you decide to use SotE basically forfeit the use of a healing skill. Don’t bother activating it, because it’ll punish you. If you want a healing skill and SotE, grab Restorative Mantras and plop Mantra of Pain in as your “heal”.

keenlam.4753:

I suggest run it a few times with a guardian friend to protect u with stability and blocks so that next time u know where to go and don’t get lost (even for a mere second). Once you are familiar with the run, it’s just a matter of timing your dodges and defensive skills (stealth, aegis, blink, stability, etc.)

If you don’t know where to go, let me tell it simple and straight.

ALL THE WAY FORWARD UNTIL YOU HIT THE WALL.

TURN RIGHT.

TURN LEFT.

ALL THE WAY FORWARD.

Proceed to turn right and pick any of the 6 holes to move left. When and if you pass through a group of mobs, roll dodge as your nose touches them.

???

Profit.

Guardian.5142:

You may want to level with GS and Sword/Sword with a power build if you really just started out and then swap later. Just thinking its probably faster…

Pistol or Focus might be better as offhands. While the sword is useful, it’s not very strong in AoE (neither is Pistol, but it at least has a stronger AoE CC and the dps single target is faster to get pumped out).

I have a post somewhere about what/how to build while leveling, I’m going to scrounge for it.

EDIT: Found it, click here

Torch4 : The Prestige.
Focus4 : Temporal Curtain. (—> Into The Void.)

Decoy
Mass Invisibility
Blink
Veil

Start with TC —> ITV so you don’t get IC. Start running. Use The Prestige. When you explode, if you get revealed, instantly activate Decoy to bypass Revealed. If you get knocked down, use Blink to get back up. Use Veil --> Mass Invisibility when Decoy is about to wear off. If you need to wait for any reason after getting past the main corridor, use The Prestige again, then wait on Cooldowns and Rinse/Repeat.

If you’re forced to wait even longer, proceed to run around the pillars and whatnot (I’m assuming you’re talking about running through the corridors right before the bosses).

No traits required.

Qaelyn.7612:

Valarauka.2719:

If you’re going phantasm based, I’d take almost anything else over Mirror Images – that skill is actively counterproductive to keeping phants out.

Not really understanding what you mean here.

Dealing damage with Phantasms and running a skill that creates 2 clones = override hell.

Staff 2 hasn’t been a stunbreak for a few patches now.

Also, it can be comparable in terms of sustained DPS vs bosses when you utilize the Warlock if you’re using a power build or with conditions via 3 clones + autoattacks.

To keep up with a Greatsword DPS, it pretty much has to be a sustained fight.

A full zerk thief that spams Heartseeker will die very quickly to any retaliation. I was roaming solo in WvW and got caught off-guard by a full-zerk Thief. Didn’t expect the HS spam (used to fighting Condi Thieves) and so I didn’t react until I went down. While down I brought him to about 5% from full before dying (mind you, this was in the downed state).

I went back to where he ganked me and… surprise, surprise, I get ganked. This time I rolled as he started, casted some CC on him so I could get some more casting in and then just nuked him with Phant strikes —> shatters. He barely scratched me.

Xyonon.3987:

Guard is using racial skill -> not “allowed” to show the strengh of a class.
Mesmer Warden bugged -> Pistol and he’s faster too.

I’m impressed by ranger and ele o.O But well lightning hammer >_>

I think without the hounds, it’d probably be about 9-10 seconds. To be fair, most of the Guardian Elites are support and the only way to utilize an Elite in a solo like this would be to use F1234 —> Renewed Focus during the buffing period. Even then, the dps add wouldn’t be significant.