Guild Wars 2

Daniel Handler.4816:

Fay.2357:

I’ll have to test this out personally Kent, but that seems like a really weird implementation.

Generally speaking, when an attack applies both damage and a condition, that condition is linked directly to the attack itself, which means blinding the attack avoids the condition. What you’re implying is that the application of the torment itself and the damage that is associated with it are two separate entities, and I don’t think I’ve seen that anywhere else in the game.

Just to be clear: When you block with illusionary counter, you perform a counterattack that both deals damage and applies torment at the same time. Visually speaking, the damage and torment do not occur at separate times.

It is weird, but it is the reason why one can dodge the counter.

No, I think you misunderstand what it’s doing.

When you get hit, there’s a pause and then the counter hits. The ‘counter’ contains both damage and torment, at the same time. That’s why you can dodge the counter.

I’ll have to test this out personally Kent, but that seems like a really weird implementation.

Generally speaking, when an attack applies both damage and a condition, that condition is linked directly to the attack itself, which means blinding the attack avoids the condition. What you’re implying is that the application of the torment itself and the damage that is associated with it are two separate entities, and I don’t think I’ve seen that anywhere else in the game.

Just to be clear: When you block with illusionary counter, you perform a counterattack that both deals damage and applies torment at the same time. Visually speaking, the damage and torment do not occur at separate times.

apharma.3741:

Edit: The only time I find reveal really hurts is when it’s the stealth detection trap in WvW. 30s no stealth is extremely punishing.

As it should be. They spent supply to accomplish that.

Jace al Thor.6745:

I will say this Pyro, the movement increase they got seems better than ours XD.
However, they have a lot of heals and not a lot of damage so I’m not super worried about them. Granted the reflect could be annoying and I do like the new pets.

They’re just gonna have a bad time if anet doesn’t implement some sort of ‘assist’ system for tagging/credit.

Absconditus.6804:

Krispera.5087:

tetrodoxin.2134:

I’m jealous because everyone’s getting (way) more skills than the chrono :c

But, hey, we got F5 ! /s

I’m really happy for the Ranger/Druid thought.

Druid got F5 too! And I freaking loathe the Druid announcement. I see no reason to bring anything but Druids.

Idk, maybe if you want to do damage?

Alternatively, fix it to align with the wording and buff the ferocity drastically.

Jackums.3496:

Staff won’t be meta.

Quite possibly the case.

Jackums.3496:

Chaos won’t be meta.

Why not? Swapping out of chaos lowers your party dps with the reward of what…slightly higher phantasm attack damage on phantasms that squish in seconds anyway? Hardly a compelling reason to swap out of chaos. The only reason we spec for phantasm damage right now is because there isn’t a better option, not because it’s actually good.

Jackums.3496:

Shield is questionable.

Shield is party/raid-wide quickness, good alacrity from the new phantasm, projectile destruction, and massive break bar destruction. The only thing it doesn’t offer is pure damage, which isn’t the point here.

Jackums.3496:

Reflects will remain a priority.

In the 3 cases where you need to prioritize reflects over all else, sure. Otherwise…not so much.

Jackums.3496:

Phantasm w/ utility > pure utility. Etc.

Only if phantasms + utility produces a party dps that’s higher than pure utility. Phantasms are so weak that that conclusion is questionable.

Xyonon.3987:

And why don’t you just use AA, AA, charge MoP, AA, AA, scepter 3#, AA, AA, charge MoP, …?

Because you shouldn’t have to purposefully avoid using part of a skill chain, and the highest damaging part of that skill chain, to stop from destroying your other sustained dps.

Jerus.4350:

I always find it funny that PVE is lumped as one giant category while PVP is broken down. As someone who likes to be able to solo on his mesmer, simply no thanks. I mean for PVP it sounds fantastic, no more getting your illusions cleaved down or pierced through unless they’re attacking you specifically… yeah nice. But, when I’m so often on the top of the agro list in PVE content, yeah, no thanks, I don’t like the idea of even weaker illusions.

What PvE content do you do on a regular basis that doesn’t 1shot the phantasms already? If you’re just talking about roaming in the open world…that’s hardly challenging enough content to bother worrying about.

Xyonon.3987:

There’s one question about the warrior that bugs me the most – you try to give him an option not to trait for PS … but … what about EA? :/ I doubt any dmg build will deal so much more damage to ignore EA, a party wide ~5% dmg boost.

I made a response to this earlier, but I think the waves of highly intellectual discussion may have obscured it.

The primary difference would be allowing the warrior to do maximum dps rotations with axe instead of being stuck in GS for the might generation. It also might open up rune/sigil options.

Holy dingaling.

SEEM

DEEM

Your response in a nutshell:

I haven’t tried it and have zero justification or proof for my beliefs, but I still think you’re wrong.

/facepalm

Since there seems to be a conspicuous habit of not reading long posts, let me Tl;dr alpha’s post for you:

Tl;dr: You’re wrong. You were wrong the first time, the second time, and you’re still wrong.

Tbh I see that as a bug and feel it should be reported as such.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Fay.2357:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Or you know they could just change iDefender to stack?

87.5 percent damage reduction. Which hops to 95.875 with protection.

It might stack. The icon is different.

Tested it again.

They don’t stack. It is still broken. Two or more iDefenders do absolutely nothing. No damage is reduced after that threshold.

Its hard to argue the comparative merit of iDefender versus Bulwark, when iDefender is bugged.

Oh, oh, I thought you meant iDefender stacking with the gyro, I misunderstood.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Or you know they could just change iDefender to stack?

87.5 percent damage reduction. Which hops to 95.875 with protection.

It might stack. The icon is different.

Staff allows me to summon 2 illusions at 1200 range while approaching a boss. This is actually really key in being able to properly initiate the combo at the start of a fight.

Also. The proper way is >5. The > sign can be replaced with the words ‘greater than’. The way you write it it would be ‘5 greater than conditions on the boss’. This makes no sense.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Can you upload a video that is from the point of view of the person doing the rotations? It would be easier to evaluate.

My bad on this one Kent, I never thought to record it last BWE. I will first thing on the next one.

Hiemdal.4367:

I haven’t played in any of the betas yet, what is the damage like on the wells (calamity in particular)?

Meh.

nearlight.3064:

PU makes it really easy to survive in zerk, so I understand that it’d be a good build to learn the class on. However, especially if you do spvp compared to wvw, I’d suggest trying out other, more aggressive playstyles and builds, because eventually you’ll get to a point where you won’t need the defense from PU to survive.

PU has different purposes in WvW and PvP.

In WvW, PU allows you to turn a corner, be greeted by an oncoming zerg, and gtfo without dying.

In PvP, PU allows you to approach a point or other ongoing fight while stealthed, and then unload your burst for an instakill before the enemy is aware of your presence. Repeat that ad infinitum for additional +1ing of fights.

zzBlurryzz.7492:

Khyber.1284:

zzBlurryzz.7492:

Most people here seem to not know (even though I have stated many times) that I’ve only been playing mesmer for 5 days. I’m new to the class, not even a week in, yet I’m being judged as if I’ve been playing since BWE 1. “Ohh PU is such a crutch, you’re so bad” Yeah Im new, I want a crutch. I’ve played ONLY thief since BWE 1, never straying from D/D. I swear I’m going to have to make a thief montage next to show that I’m not an awful player, I’m just playing a new class. No wonder most people hate mesmers, the community is utter garbage for this class. The Thief forums are nothing like this. /endrant

Dare I ask, Why do you care about others opinions and why do you feel you have to go out of your way to make a whole entire video just to prove your not an awful player. I can’t say I’m ever…“excited” by any WvW video….So my opinion of yours is indifferent.

I used to do youtube for a living so making an entertaining video is something I strive for. With this video in particular I know the gameplay wasn’t 10/10, but with clean editing, I made a chill, enjoyable video IMO. Anyways. I’ve always wanted to make a thief montage but how bad of a state D/D is in has always drove me from it, but eh. w.e

Clean editing makes a video watchable, it doesn’t necessarily make it enjoyable. While editing is absolutely important (or more often, lack of excessive editing, yours is certainly fine in this regard), content of the video can’t be neglected. In this case, the content really just holds nothing of particular interest to most people. We’ve all seen shatter montages before. They’re all roughly the same. They’re all not really all that interesting to watch.

zzBlurryzz.7492:

Most people here seem to not know (even though I have stated many times) that I’ve only been playing mesmer for 5 days. I’m new to the class, not even a week in, yet I’m being judged as if I’ve been playing since BWE 1. “Ohh PU is such a crutch, you’re so bad” Yeah Im new, I want a crutch. I’ve played ONLY thief since BWE 1, never straying from D/D. I swear I’m going to have to make a thief montage next to show that I’m not an awful player, I’m just playing a new class. No wonder most people hate mesmers, the community is utter garbage for this class. The Thief forums are nothing like this. /endrant

Let me ask you this:

In your opinion, what makes your video entertaining or interesting to watch? Generally speaking, I find a video interesting for a couple of reasons. It could be showcasing absolutely exceptional play, this is always interesting. It could be demonstrating an interesting technique, build, or mechanic that someone has come up with. It could simply be an instructional video, with not necessarily exceptional play and not necessarily a groundbreaking new build, but with solid suggestions, tips, and advice on how to perform effectively.

You’re a new player, and so you’re obviously not going to be particularly skilled at the class, eliminating the possibility of exceptional play. You’re playing a tried and proven build that isn’t new or different in any way. You’re also not making it as an instructional guide on how to play or perform effectively.

So what does that leave us with? Well…not much. It leaves us with a video showing less than exceptional play, with no particularly unique or distinguishing characteristics about it to keep us interested or entertained. Is it such a surprise that people aren’t jumping out of their seats to praise it?

While this is far from the only thing hobbling scepter…I tend to agree. There’s no honest reason for keeping this functionality now.

Jerus.4350:

If you think feedback + shield is enough… how often do you do a lot of the tougher reflect content? Though I guess you could say “well then they just gotta learn to dodge” but… well, then again you’re sacrificing damage potential. I’m just not convinced it’s enough, esp without mimic on that feedback.

There’s extremely little content where you actually need permanent uptime on reflects. You’re pretty much limited to uncategorized and maaaybe ascalon/cliffside. In those situations, it would probably be worth to drop staff in favor of focus, and shift chaos to inspiration for the trait…but those are niche situations.

Jerus.4350:

As for deminishing the weakness by bolstering support. The question is not whether it bolsters support or not, it’s whether it’s worth it. There’s a chart that could be made, how much damage you’d do in a situation vs how much you’d add to your team in a situation. And yes, it very well might increase in your comparison in a vacuum, but again, add in projectiles and I think that’d paint a very different picture. And also what about a more damage focused Chrono able to provide a lot of quickness and a good bit of alacrity… again just not convinced.

The math has been done for this. Permanent quickness + alacrity is more party dps than an additional elementalist. You also drastically overestimate the amount of damage even a 100% fully damage specced mesmer does. Mesmer damage is nothing sort of abysmal.

Jerus.4350:

Now we get to the stealth/skip part, that’s one thing that really troubles me. I’m often sitting on one or even 0 swappable utility slots at the beginning of an encounter having used them all up to get us through a skip. Do i sit around and wait to get my Timewarp? do I sit around and wait for the well(s)? Viel, Mimic, Mass Invis, they have long cooldowns. It’s a concern of mine.

Well, here’s the nice thing. If you’re rotating things properly, you’ll finish a fight with still 15-20 seconds of alacrity ticking on you. You can additionally roll through your 3 lower cd shatters out of combat (assuming you keep away from the aoe radius of hitting things) to maintain around 50% uptime on alacrity for some time after that. This means that the 72s cooldown of mass invis suddenly drops to around 50 seconds. In some places, that’s enough for it to be ready by the next fight. In others…you’re certainly losing a little bit of utility, but it’s generally not the end of the world, especially if there’s a bit of trash to clear first.

While I find referring to PU as a crutch to be infantile, I concur that this video is…dull to watch. The play isn’t spectacular for multiple reasons, the people you’re fighting are generally absolutely horrid, and it’s just another WvW shatter montage. We’ve all seen countless WvW shatter montages, this is nothing special.

Xyonon.3987:

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

Well then please don’t touch the skill. The last time you wanted to give us QoL it was with the warden being able to move, wich left him bugged and not attacking for almost 6 months :P

Don’t worry, Robert Gee wasn’t on mesmer then. That was the handiwork of …someone else.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

The thing is, since you will be fighting in melee range, the shield won’t be really protecting you. And even with feedback, that’s 12 seconds of reflect.

Sure, but feedback ends up on a pretty short cooldown with permanent alacrity. There’s not a lot of fights where you need continual reflects any more, for a simple reason. If you need continual reflects, then the reflects are trivializing the fight, which means anet is gonna nerf the ability to reflect, and this has happened quite a bit already.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And while the heal skill does provide condition removal, its only 3 conditions.

The mantra only removes 4, this isn’t exactly a huge difference. Condition removal is never an issue in an intelligent team anyway, every class has solid options for it.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

And there isn’t much of a reason to take staff nor chaos if you have a warrior with PS. I think this is a tl;dr version of all that I have said in the thread

And as we’ve responded to you like 12 times already, your warrior doesn’t need to take PS if you have this build and a herald, but for some reason this logic seems to be above you…

I hate to break it to you, but let me put this bluntly:

Nobody on this forum, let alone Robert Gee, who I can assure you is incredibly busy right now, is going to watch 110 minutes of somebody talking. This is a bit more than your two cents, it’s more along the lines of the whole bank account.

If you want to give feedback, make it directed and to the point. Bullets work nicely for this. Headings do too. Mindblowingly long youtube videos do not.

apharma.3741:

I’m sure I mentioned the mistlock instability in another thread not too long ago about protecting phantasms from bosses.

Yeah, you did. I’ve had this writeup ready to go for about a week and a half now, but couldn’t post it for…uh…reasons.

Jerus.4350:

Strengths I see are Reflects for sure, Skipping, and Condi cleanse as a main 3, of course we have a lot of stuff to offer but if I had to say there were 3 things I did the best, it would be those.

So the shield provides projectile destruction, and if you’re in a situation that requires reflects, you’ll swap off calamity for feedback instead. The heal well is cleansing 3 condies in an aoe + a large heal every time you use it. If that’s not enough cleansing, your party has some serious issues. You can swap from BD to PU, swap on MI, and double tap it for an instant 20 seconds of stealth for skipping.

Jerus.4350:

Weaknesses, well, it’s mainly just one, the impracticality of illusions, the way they can die so quickly, even the 1s of distortion hasn’t been enough in my experience considering it’s only phantasms. So I don’t think shatter becoming stronger will really fix that issue, help yes, eliminate no.

This build completely eliminates that weakness. Instead of trying to do damage yourself, you’re making everyone else on your party do far more damage. Providing permanent alacrity and quickness to the other 4 members of your party makes your effective dps (the amount of damage that your party gains by having you there) higher than an additional elementalist.

Jerus.4350:

So the idea of calling it “The” chronomancer dungeon rotation is a bit off to me. I’d call it something like the Illusionary warrior, or buffbot extreme. It’s nice, it has certain qualities, but I just don’t see it playing to mesmer’s strength fully, and I don’t see the weaknesses of the class disappearing such that it’d allow this build to be an optimal setting outside of a few niche cases.

I’m curious. What strengths of mesmer do you identify exactly, and what standard weaknesses of mesmer does this build not eliminate?

Note that this doesn’t work in PvP, because the minimap there is different. It works in WvW and PvE though.

Phantasms are already 1shot in most situations, so reduction of hp further doesn’t actually impact them…but it makes this change an easier pill to swallow for the folks who will go ‘Mesmers getting buffs?! Oh hell naw!’

@Zenith: I felt that aoe should still be a viable option when dealing with phantasms, but it shouldn’t be possible to simply spam aoe without actually paying attention. This change makes it so that the person using the aoe actually has to pay attention to you and your phantasms or risk losing target, and therefor damage.

@Embolism: I was thinking of several actions. First, phantasm tooltips should be updated to contain something along the lines of ‘phantasms can only be damaged by targeting themselves or the Mesmer’. Additionally, phantasms should have a permanent visible buff saying ‘this entity can be damaged while targeted directly or while the Mesmer is targeted’. You’d also include this stuff in patch notes of course.

@Skcamow: I think this solution would work effectively for necromancer minions without modification. Since ranger spirits can’t move anymore, I think this would work well for them too. Ranger pets are a little tougher since there’s such a wide range in their characteristics (defense/damage/mobility), and I’d shy away from recommending this system for them without modifications.

Ithilwen.1529:

At your suggestion, I invested in a gaming mouse. That eliminates the issue with shift + keys if I understand accurately.

He isn’t actually saying that shift+keys is bad, he’s saying that sometimes he degenerates into manually clicking skills.

That being said, both gaming mice and using key modifiers (shift, control, etc) work well, it just depends on your personal preference. I have huge hands, so I have no issues binding my shatters I ctrl+12345, because I can reach that easily. Fay, on the other hand, has tiny hands and can’t reach that far, so uses a gaming mouse to activate a lot of keybinds instead.

Ithilwen.1529:

Jump dodging is a habit I never developed since I double tap movement keys to dodge. This would perhaps help you avoid the jump.

Jump dodging is a really useful skill to know, but it’s not always the right thing to do. It allows you to do a maximum range jump even if you’re in combat, crippled, or chilled. This is really used I for obvious reasons, but it does have the downside that chaos mentioned of being able to get immobilized in midair.

Double-tap to dodge is generally regarded as the wrong way to go. The reason for this is that it’s imprecise compared to using a keybind. It’s easy to accidentally activate it during normal movement, whereas keeping it to a keybind makes it very controlled.

Alrighty folks, this is gonna be a pretty long one, so buckle up.

What Would Change?

The biggest change is as follows:

Phantasms can only be damaged if either the phantasm itself or the Mesmer that owns it is targeted. Attacks used without a target will not deal damage to the phantasm.

That’s the core of the idea. In addition to that, phantasm hp would be reduced significantly, allowing for the phantasms to be destroyed much easier when actually targeted.

This would obviously be a pretty huge change, so I’m going to go through and try to analyze the effects it would have on every aspect of the game.

Why this mechanic?

I picked this mechanic because it already has an existing implementation in the game. One of the mistlock instabilities causes non-targeted mobs to take half damage. This means that implementing this idea wouldn’t be entirely new development, but could pull from an already existing mechanic.

Effect in a 1v1 (Self)

Not going to lie, phantasm builds and phantasms in general are going to take a hit here. Since either the Mesmer or their phantasms are generally targeted in a 1v1, this means that the damage reduction portion of the change will rarely activate, but phantasms will be easier to kill due to their lower health.

However, given the recent focus on incorporating shattering into most/all builds, I don’t see this as too huge of an issue. If a decent shatter cadence is maintained, phantasms should still last long enough to do their job and then shatter.

Effects in a 1v1 (others)

Folks fighting you won’t notice a huge difference here. Phantasms will squish easier, but they’ve always squished pretty quickly. The only time when this change might be noticed is if someone is attempting to simply spam aoe without bothering to choose a target cough d/d ele cough, in which case the phantasms will get a lot harder to kill.

Effects in a PvP Teamfight (self)

This is where the change really starts to shine. Generally, team fights have enough aoe pressure that you’re lucky if a phantasm survives for more than one attack. With this change, the phantasms will be resilient unless directly targeted.

At this point, your personal positioning and playstyle starts to matter more as well. If you’re bunkering down on the point, you’ll be a main target and will be taking a lot of damage to your phantasms. If you’re more of a transient target playing a bursty role or more of a lockdown support, you’re going to be in a position to avoid that direct targeting most of the time, which lets your phantasms really do their job.

Effects in a PvP Teamfight (others)

People are going to start noting that Mesmer phantasms actually do things if they’re left alone. Since the phantasms have low health, removing them will be as simple as a quick target and then autoattack, but it will be forcing a direct response to the attack rather than laying aoes as normal and letting that be sufficient defense from any phantasms.

On this note, it’s extremely important that this change is communicated well. If it is implemented without communication, the simple mechanic of needing to target to do damage will appear to be a broken damage immunity without more investigation. Communicating the change ensures that everyone knows what’s going on with the phantasms, and how to react to them.

Effects in WvW Groups (self)

This is one of the areas where the most marked improvements will occur. Currently phantasms are guaranteed to die instantly upon their use (instantly minus one second with protected phantasms). With this change, the phantasms will remain as dangerous attacks until targeted and killed. Since targeting the Mesmer itself will be rare in this environment, it means that the phantasm will need to be the entity that gets targeted.

This will put mesmers on a much more even footing with most other classes in respect to area damage (yes, even with chrono wells). This will allow us to use aoe phantasms such as the zerker and the warden to actually act as a more persistent aoe similar to what other classes can do. It also allows for a boost to the strike team role as it lets single target phantasms perform their job, whereas they simply die before even getting an attack off right now.

Effects in WvW Groups (other)

People are going to start noticing phantasms now, and will need to react to them. If you put a lava font or meteor shower or combustive shot or any other strong aoe near a group, it forces a reaction of some sort, whether to move or block or otherwise mitigate it. Now, phantasms will cause that too, in the form of targeting and then killing. This will be a new aspect of response that hasn’t ever been needed before, and people will probably take a bit of time to adjust to it.

Effects in PvE

This one I’m most unsure about, primarily because I don’t know if monsters use a targeting schema that lines up with how players do. However, I’m going to assume that they do, and analyze it based on that.

Random aoes and cleaving attacks will no longer deal damage to phantasms, as they must be targeted. If the boss actually turns and munches on it it’ll die, but not other than that. Additionally, this actually makes it advantageous for the Mesmer to not have aggro from the boss, since that targeting would also allow the phantasms to die. This may be particularly helpful in raids, as aggro mechanics have been suggested as being an addition here.

Overall in PvE, this change provides a decisive mechanic that a Mesmer can use to sustain their phantasms much more effectively. It’s not perfect survivability and isn’t intended as such, but will drastically improve the damage capabilities of Mesmer in PvE.

Fringe Cases

This section is pretty much just about the pDefender. Unlike the other phantasms, this phantasm functions purely off of being an hp sponge for your group. This means that the hp reduction inherent to this change would not allow it to work.

I’m not entirely sure how it should be handled quite honestly. The change could simply not apply to it, or apply in some sort of limited aspect without the hp reduction, or its specific mitigation mechanic could be modified.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it. This suggestion, if implemented, would completely revamp the function and form of phantasm survivability in this game, pushing it from purely health-based, which scales poorly in PvE and WvW, but too strongly in PvP and 1v1, to a mechanic based system that scales appropriately throughout all game types. This change would not have a negative impact on the abilities of others to fight a focused battle with a Mesmer, but would enhance Mesmer offense in the areas that it is typically extremely weak in: large fights and PvE.

As always, I’m open to suggestions on how to improve this idea.

Embolism.8106:

In an effort to remain on-topic…

Embolism.8106:

@Pyro:

If you can stack 25 Might easy between BD and Herald (or whatever your preferred Might stacker is), would it be a better to go MtD instead of Shattered Strength? It’s not much damage but it’s still something.

Do you think you’d get more Alacrity/damage from using Illusionary Reversion/PoM for more Illusions? From what I can tell from the video a lot of Shatters weren’t full Shatters, but perhaps taking one or two of those traits would beef them up.

Re MtD: Yeah, sure. I wasn’t running with a herald mostly, so it helped keep might higher on me, but obviously it’s unnecessary if you’re party capped already. MtD is by no means going to make a particularly noticeable difference in dps, but I suppose it’s more than nothing.

Re IR/PoM: I tried IR actually. It turns out that you can actually maintain permanent alacrity on yourself without improved alacrity as long as you maintain a good shatter cadence. However, it made it more difficult for me to maintain it, and meant that I ended with less after a fight. With improved alacrity, I’d still have 15-20 seconds of alacrity ticking away after a fight, meaning that any cooldowns I used towards the end kept going down. That was particularly noticeable when I wanted to respec real quick into PU for MI on a skip.

PoM definitely could be better than compounding power though. That’ll reduce cooldowns on echo of memory by a ton, which would help both with alacrity uptime and just generally having a defensive cooldown available.

Yep, I specifically avoid this trait because of how it screws with skill queuing and such.

For those questioning my assessment of Mesmer damage as worthless…have you seen recent speedruns with a Mesmer? The Mesmer literally drops portal, time warp, picks up an fgs and runs to the next boss. Obviously Mesmer dps output is not the crux of what makes a dungeon group clear faster.

Specifically though, let’s look at domination vs chaos. What does domination give?

Well, it gives a boost to damage from vuln, this ends up as a 12.5% boost at 25 vuln…but it’s personal only, and we know how awful our personal damage is.

Domination also gives a 15% boost to phantasms…but this build has a high rate of shattering, the shield phantasms don’t do strong damage, and phantasms tend to squish quickly anyway, so this boost will be very minor as well.

Lastly, domination will boost our mind wrack damage by 15% (doubt you’ll get the inactive bonus much vs bosses). This makes a bit of a difference, but ultimately it’s still not that impactful. MW will at best be about 12k damage every 6 seconds or so, which is 2k dps, so a 15% boost gets us another 300 dps. Hardly worth mentioning.

Ultimately, swapping to domination gets you extremely little. Staying in chaos means you can make sure the real dps classes keep turbo mode on as long as possible.

@Chaos: I put a build link earlier in a post, you may want to update the op with it.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

All of this sounds quite powerful. I have a concern or two, though. Firstly, who is handling reflects in an ele/ele/war/rev/mes group? Does the build swap out calamity for feedback as needed?

Yes indeed, that’s what I was doing.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

-snips valid worries about sub-par groups-

So here’s what I’ve found. As long as your group has at least their heads screwed on the right way, this build will take a bunch of so-so players and make them top notch. From what I’ve been able to experience, it excels at carrying people because dealing damage is easy, while staying alive to deal that damage isn’t always. This build pumps out a massive quantity of aoe healing from the heal well (though somewhat less now that the cd got increased on it), and that keeps people alive. Additionally, even a somewhat clueless ele or warrior is going to dps that leaves you, a mesmer, in the dust. As long as your group has at least some clue, your boosting them will be more efficient at finishing a dungeon than trying to do it yourself.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#1: How does the personal damage of this build compare to the practical damage of a phantasm focused build? I’m thinking of something like Dom/Duel/Chrono, running Alls well that ends Well, Improved Alacrity, and Chronophantasma.

Personal damage is ok, but not as much as a phantasm focused build. That being said, phantasm focused builds are obviously rather variable, depending on how fast they get squished.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#2: The full specs of this build aren’t listed. I’m assuming Chaos is for BD and Chaotic Persistence, and Illusions is for Celerity and… shattered strength? I’m noticing that in the attempt to build a fully support focused set, that there are a lot of dead traits with minimal impact. I’m think that there might a solo-friendlier version that swaps out Illusions for Dueling (Deceptive Evasion, Fencer’s Finesse, Master Fencer, Critical Infusion. Not sure how useful Phantasmal Fury + Sharper images is here). I’m also considering domination for its shatter traits, but am hesitant since illusion summoning is important here, which means that deceptive evasion and celerity are much needed traits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWncfCtfilfC+fCUrhlejyMAugMqeUb1XF9GitZD-TRBXgAAK/U3fIUfQv6PPKBJFQEDjA-e

That’s what I used. If wanted to update the OP with that link, it might be helpful.

There definitely are some dead traits. Master of fragmentation and illusionary defense are the two largest offenders in that regard. You could definitely swap out illusions for dueling, that would certainly get you a bit more damage. The reason I’m taking illusions is for the cooldown on shatters, specifically the cooldown on F5. With illusions and permanent alacrity, F5 drops to 45 seconds, which means that’s the cooldown of my full combo.

Dastion.3106:

Robert Gee.9246:

There has been a lot of discussion on this point so I’d like to explain a bit about the decision to change the Illusionary Avenger’s attack type and how we ended up with the attack that we’re showing in BWE3.

The main feedback we got from BWE2 was that the effects applied by this phantasm were unreliable and hard to control. We wanted to make a more reliable way to apply alacrity and slow that players could respond to which is why we ended up with the AoE attack.

We had tried other ideas but the important aspect of the one we chose is that it keeps the delivery method consistent. We considered many of the versions suggested in the feedback threads such as the one where he throws the shield but applies alacrity around himself, but realized that this basically amounted to two different delivery methods in one skill. While this kind of behavior is okay for player skills we felt that it was too complex for a phantasm attack. This attack already has different effects based on if it hits an ally or an enemy so it was important to us to keep the attack on the Avenger easy to understand for both allies and enemies. This is why the PBAoE version was selected.

Shouldn’t that same logic apply to iMage then? Their delivery method is the same as the old iAvenger.

Is there a reason a Phantasm needs to have a direct attack? What if he channeled a brief block effect on himself (making him a somewhat more study Phantasm) that sends out a wave/ripple of minor damage (to trigger things like Sharper Images) and slow to enemies and Alacrity to allies near him?

Here, I’ll even attempt to sway you with a terrible pun. Call the effect the iAvenger uses “Stitch in Time”, then code it so that it effects 5 enemies, 5 allies but count the Avenger as one of the allies so that 9 players max are effected total. A stitch in time saves 9. It’s a very appropriate name for a deft move just before you release an expac. Soo many levels.

I’m hoping that if the iAvenger change goes over well, that type of thing will be implemented elsewhere. There’s no need to jump into it too fast though.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Interesting. So, presuming the fight lasts 30 seconds, what would the optimal rotation be for double sword and what would the optimal rotation look like for scepter? When beta weekend 3 comes we could just test the optimal rotations for both builds vs golems in hotM and compare the coefficients. Another question is would you run scepter/s s/f or s/s scepter/f to try it out with? I’d volunteer to test it out but I don’t have access nor am I good at math ( at all ).

EDIT: and how does dueling compare to domination?

Honestly, it all comes back to this central issue:

Your autoattacks do absolutely awful damage compared to every other class in the game. Your phantasms do damage, but get smushed by every boss in the game. All this time and effort you’re putting into dealing more damage culminates in a grand total of not very much.

That’s why this build was created in the first place. Alpha ran the numbers, and it turns out that keeping permanent alacrity and quickness up on the remaining 4 members of your group, assuming that you do zero damage and provide zero boons other than quickness/alacrity, contributes more damage than adding an additional elementalist.

So then I went and ran the build. It turns out that it does okish damage for a mesmer, while also sharing a solid amount of might as a by-product. Then I played herald and realized that it’s just a walking boon stick with zero effort, and that culminates in the conclusion that with herald and this chrono build, eles don’t need to stack fury and warriors don’t need to take PS and gs for might.

So that’s all just additional icing on the cake. The build by itself, doing absolutely nothing but quickness and alacrity is worth more damage than another ele. On top of that, it (along with herald) lets warriors spec for full damage rotations away from PS. On top of that, it does ok personal damage for a mesmer.

frifox.5283:

Fay.2357:

summons frifox for a dps test in BWE3

no hot = no bwe or chrono goodies for me

though, if its just measuring dps then I’m all ears

Yeah, you shouldn’t need HoT, I can feed you all the buffs you need.

I can guarantee you nothing is happening until HoT is settled in.

Inspiration has a negligible effect on illusion survivability. Phantasms normally have 5.8k hp, and with both 20% from inspiration and 50% from the signet, that only gets up to 9.86k. Ultimately, any boss of reasonable difficulty is going to 1-2shot that, particularly big world bosses like wyvern or more difficult dungeon bosses/higher fractals.

Melee range scepter gets me 10 autoattack rotations in 31 seconds.
Sword gets me 10 autoattack rotations in 24 seconds.

So this means we’ve got .32 rotations/second of scepter and .42 rotations/second of sword.

A full rotation of scepter has a damage coefficient of 1.75
A full rotation of sword has a damage coefficient of 2.3 without boons and 2.1 with boons.

This means that scepter has a total damage rate of .56 coeff/second, while sword has .966 without boons and .882 with boons.

However, now we can work in confusing images. Confusing images has a coefficient of 2.5 over a duration of 2s, for a total coeff/second of 1.25. This does, however, take up the space of autoattacking, leaving us with a bonus coeff/sec during confusing images of .69.

With permanent alacrity, confusing images occurs for 2 seconds every 9.92 seconds. This means that the total coeff over 9.92 seconds for scepter will be 1.25*2+.56*7.92 = 6.9352.

Accordingly, the total coeff over 9.92 seconds for sword will be simply .966*9.92 = 9.582 without boons or 8.74 with boons.

However, this neglects the effect of malicious sorcery! Lets do that now.

Malicious sorcery is a 15% as increase, which increases the scepter coeff/sec from .56 to .644.

It also is a 20% cdr for confusing images, bringing the base cooldown to 9.6, or the alacritied cooldown to 6.336. With MS, the coeff/sec of confusing images now rises from 1.25 to 1.4375, and you’re able to use that for 1.7 seconds every 8.036 seconds.

So with all that, the final coeff over 8.036 seconds for scepter becomes 1.4375*1.7+6.336*.644 = 6.524.

The sword coeff over 8.036 seconds becomes 8.003 without boons, or 7.08 with boons.

So

Assuming all that math is correct, permanent alacrity on scepter with malicious sorcery allows it to get pretty close to sword autos on a target that has boons, while a bit farther from a target without boons. Sword is still definitively better though, assuming you’re able to maintain 100% uptime on actually autoattacking…which is actually a really awful assumption.

Things start to get a lot more complex once you take into account things like dodging, summoning phantasms, or bosses that move around. The less time spent actually autoattacking, the more scepter will gain on sword, since scepter damage is biased towards a skill with a cooldown, and sword is reliant on actual autoattacking. I’m not quite bold enough try and simulate it taking into account phantasm summons and such (I’ll let frifox do that if he wants to), but suffice to say that once all is said and done, sword and scepter are going to be very similar in terms of damage output.

Devata, I have no idea what wonderland you’re living in, but hop into the game and actually use the skill. What you’re saying simply doesn’t occur. Yeah, you can use another skill to keep track of the cooldown, but saying that’s a reasonable way to do it is 12 types of ludicrous.

Actually, I’m curious now. With permanent quickness and alacrity, melee range scepter very well might be higher dps than sword. Since sword doesn’t benefit at all from alacrity (blurred frenzy is like. .2% dps increase over the auto if I remember my frifox stats properly) scepter gains significant headway in the form of confusing images.

summons frifox for a dps test in BWE3

I love sandy, but he’s not fully informed about scepter. Due to how the auto functions, it performs faster the closer you are to the target. At melee range, it becomes very similar to the attack speed of the sword. He also doesn’t seem to realize that confusing images actually does more damage than blurred frenzy, in a quicker package now that it’s been buffed.

I still wouldn’t normally recommend using scepter for various reasons, but the particular case discussed here makes a lot of sense for it.

In my build, I use mainhand sword because I need the instant clone from iLeap to start the rotation, and I want the defense of blurred frenzy to be available.

So let’s clear some stuff up shall we?

FrenchFry, would appreciate it if you stopped completely ignoring everything that’s been said and regurgitating your already misproven talking points…

Rev maintains permanently 10 might, fury, and swiftness. If they want to drop the swiftness (since there’s plenty of that around) they can maintain more permafury and 15 might instead.

With a rev nearby, the 15s base duration of might from MW goes up to ~22 seconds, plus a bit more from other stuff and we can call it 25 flat. This means that out of combat, the mes can hit MW off cooldown and maintain 6-9 stacks of might, pushing the out of combat permanent upkeep to 21-24.

The instant you engage the fight, the rev pops their F2 for more might, swiftness, fury, regen, and protection to instant cap the party off at 25 stacks, after which the stacks are maintained by the mes rotation and the lower level rev upkeep.

In conclusion

Everything you’re basing your arguments on is wrong, which makes all of your arguments wrong. I don’t really expect you to accept this, but I like to be clear for everyone else.

@Embolism: shattered strength is self only, but the build does use illusions, yes.