Guild Wars 2

Anyone ever wonder why 90% of complaints about PU always come from thieves?

The answer is that PU allows mesmers to compete with thieves, both in a direct contest and for a similar role on a team. Previously, thieves had no competition for roaming ganker/backcapper. Now they do, and apparently it stings.

With the exception of the glamour build, pure confusion builds have always been awful. They have little to no real pressure and are countered incredibly easily. This hasn’t changed ever, and is still the case. Confusion is a condition that you happen to apply a decent amount of as you apply pressure in other forms, not something you can actually base a build around. Slow only exacerbated the problem, it didn’t cause it.

DeceiverX.8361:

the odds of acquiring aegis increase tremendously as the fight progresses. It effectively nullifies counter-stealth tactics, which, if you have ever played a thief, are declared as being CC and burst, be it single target or AoE. With clones, obviously the AoE is more preferential.

I think you’ve somehow misinterpreted pretty much every ounce of counter-stealth tactics.

DeceiverX.8361:

I am talking about actually shutting one down by killing it, and as any stealth build is countered, that comes from learning how to kill it in stealth

Yeah, you definitely have. Allow me to explain…

There are three steps to countering a bursty stealth build. The first is avoiding the burst from stealth. If you can do that, then you can survive the encounter. The second step is using various methods of control to prevent the opponent from reentering stealth. This allows for the third step, which is to burst them down.

You’ve misinterpreted this as being supposed to occur while they’re still in stealth, which is a ludicrous concept that will never work on either a good thief or a good Mesmer.

DeceiverX.8361:

Even if the mesmer reveals himself for a very brief period of time,

Very brief period of time? Let’s have a reality check here. This is a Mesmer, not a d/p thief, and we have limited ways of entering stealth. Torch 4, decoy, and mass invis (veil isn’t used in pvp). While PU extends the duration of the stealth, actually entering stealth is limited to those 3 skills, and that means a quality player can know when the Mesmer is vulnerable.

[quote=5473883;DeceiverX.8361:but any thief worth his salt playing D/P will not use IArrow as a reposition tool during combat to enable a damage sequence (AKA, switching from shortbow) because he will not have the initiative to reliably commit to a fight again[/quote]

Uh, no. A d/p thief doesn’t use iArrow to engage simply because they have both steal and shadow shot. When a d/p thief engages, the only place they want to go is next to their target. This means that they have multiple extremely effective methods of doing so without even needing a targeted blink.

Targeted blinks only matter for pure mobility purposes. Given that iArrow has no cooldown, its lesser range is vastly superseded by the fact that it can be spammed for rapid movement.

DeceiverX.8361:

Fortunately for PU condi mesmer, it isn’t really reliant on crits.

Wrong again. Sharper images provides a substantial amount of pressure throughout the duration of a fight on condie Mesmer. Additionally, mesmers gain vigor on crit, which translates not only to more defense from dodging, but more offense from dodge clones. Crits are an integral part of pretty much every Mesmer build in the game, and condie Mesmer is no exception to that rule.

DeceiverX.8361:

Dire and Perplexity made it into the test server for PvP and internally.

This is simply a lie. How could you speak with such authority on the matter without breaking an NDA, since we all know that Anet is famously tight-lipped about internal testing.

DeceiverX.8361:

and PU (assuming you meant perplexity here) went through several iterations with a planned release in the initial game on 4/15/14. Results from the test server and community theorycrafting from those on not on the test server created a huge outrage that proved mathematically that the runes, even in post-nerf state, were too powerful for the live game and would destruct the format as a whole.

Yeah, this is a lie as well. Proof is simple. If you actually had any true knowledge about what went on in the testing server, you’d be under NDA to Anet. If you’re under NDA to Anet, you’re obligated not to discuss what happens on the testing server, but here you are talking about what happened on the testing server. Breaking NDA gets you banned, but to the disappointment of all, that’s obviously not the case.

DeceiverX.8361:

As far as WvW goes, it’s a frequent complaint in-game.

No, it’s a frequent complaint among bad players/groups that don’t know how to sweep. Luckily, at least t2 and up figured out how to sweep a long time ago and don’t have that issue.

Ross Biddle.2367:

You’re claiming they hacked your account to play PvP? -_-u

The reason for hacking accounts is to farm them for gold. You didn’t lose any/all your gear/gold?

This is actually the best part.

Tongku.5326:

Fay.2357:

So this is 12 types of an inappropriate place to post this, but let me just head this off before your fear-mongering causes anyone to get anxious.

Anet uses 2-factor authentication with their accounts. If used properly, this makes it effectively impossible to hack a GW2 account without massive error on the part of the user.

Additionally, it’s highly unlikely that the Anet databases got ripped. What usually happens is that another website with less secure architecture gets compromised, and users, having used the same username and password, have their accounts compromised. This only is possible if you make the incredibly ill-advised decision to use the exact same username and password on another site that you used for your GW2 Account.

So in conclusion: If you get hacked, it’s your own fault. You’ve either failed to use 2-factor authentication properly, used the same login credentials on another site, or some combination of the two. I recommend you look to your own login schemes before attempting to blame Anet for your problems.

LOL

So …. you think that SMS is secure because A-Net PR dept told you so ?

Just LOL

If you follow tech news, and I dont mean PR crap from Apple or MS or Google, or the stuff you find on CNN but actual tech news, you will understand that using these at certain times (for example right now) with certain hardware that your SMS and/or authenticator works on, when there are new unpatched vulnreabilities announced, puts you and your account at much higher risk of getting hacked then not using them.

2-factor authentication is very straightforward. If your account is accessed from a new location, it is locked for use until verified from a secondary source. As long as you control access to that secondary source, your account is secure. Now, if both your secondary source and primary source (main account) have been compromised, that stops working of course, but it makes it a lot harder to achieve. There’s vulnerabilities in any system, but 2-factor authentication, when used properly, is pretty much as close to foolproof as it gets.

Phloww.1048:

I know that not every utility/weapon is usable in PvE (well, other than certain situations to use specific ones). My concern is if the wells and shield will be the only things to bring from now on (making Feedback, Portal, Time Warp not as viable).

Feedback will always be tossed on if reflects are needed.

Portal will always be tossed on if you need portal.

Time warp is still the default, gravity well isn’t particularly great in PvE.

Everything else is meh. Aside from wells being legitimately decent utilities, everything else is just bad.

So this is 12 types of an inappropriate place to post this, but let me just head this off before your fear-mongering causes anyone to get anxious.

Anet uses 2-factor authentication with their accounts. If used properly, this makes it effectively impossible to hack a GW2 account without massive error on the part of the user.

Additionally, it’s highly unlikely that the Anet databases got ripped. What usually happens is that another website with less secure architecture gets compromised, and users, having used the same username and password, have their accounts compromised. This only is possible if you make the incredibly ill-advised decision to use the exact same username and password on another site that you used for your GW2 Account.

So in conclusion: If you get hacked, it’s your own fault. You’ve either failed to use 2-factor authentication properly, used the same login credentials on another site, or some combination of the two. I recommend you look to your own login schemes before attempting to blame Anet for your problems.

DeceiverX.8361:

How is there a 32% chance at getting no aegis? Unless the distribution of odds isn’t even among the boons, I do wonder how you’re arriving at that conclusion.

A special form of wizardry that Iike to call ‘simple math’, though I actually did math slightly wrong. The real chance is 26.2%.

PU can choose from aegis, might, swiftness, protection, or regeneration. That means that every time a boon is granted, there is a 4/5 chance (or .8) that it will not be aegis. 6 second stealth means 6 boons are given. .8^6 = .262, or 26.2% chance.

DeceiverX.8361:

A player can plan his moves perfectly and know exactly where an opposing mesmer is, time his attacks based on cooldown cycles, etc., and have his plans to counter the mesmer’s stealth and possibly the rest of his future-planned moves, get shut down by RNG.

This is so completely false, I’m not even sure where to start. Countering a bursty build has nothing to do with killing them in stealth. It has everything to do with predicting the burst and avoiding it. If you know where they are and what they’re doing, then it’s child’s play to avoid the burst.

DeceiverX.8361:

As you said, since the trait is still good because of the stealth, and my complaints are about the boons, and not about the stealth at all, why are you defending the boons?

I discussed the boons because you made laughably incorrect claims about them. I wanted to make a point.

DeceiverX.8361:

Single-target skills hit the first target connecting with the weapon’kittenbox. Even if the real mesmer is targeted, a clone-on-dodge or any clone on the side swung by will absorb the hit in full.

No, that’s only true for a projectile attack. A true single target attack, say corrupt boon, backstab, or many others don’t actually have a real hitbox at all, they simply apply the effect on the target.

DeceiverX.8361:

The teleport is blink? As a utility, it’s the lowest-cooldown ground-target teleport in the game.

Uh.

DeceiverX.8361:

Yes, Infil Arrow has no cooldown

Lol.

DeceiverX.8361:

but realistically speaking, outside of back-capping or just running away from combat, this ability isn’t used in combat situations as a reposition for subsequent attacks or damage.

No, this is absolutely false. SB5 is used for repositioning in combat, and general mobility whenever necessary. You can’t just say ‘oh, this ability isn’t actually used’. That’s ridiculous, of course it’s used, and used well.

DeceiverX.8361:

Dire isn’t mathematically the best PvP set ever designed? Sub-optimal? Are you kidding me?

No, it’s not. And no, I’m not kidding you. Dire is suboptimal on any condition class that relies heavily on critical strikes, and that includes mesmer.

DeceiverX.8361:

They removed this set from sPvP because it was so overpowered on every single class.

This is a lie. The set never was added to PvP, it was never removed.

DeceiverX.8361:

They did the same for perplexity.

This too is a lie. Perplexity runes were never added to PvP, not removed.

DeceiverX.8361:

Are you new or something and have no idea what the history of the game is or how to optimize for PvP? —snips random ad hominems and incoherent grousing--

I’m quite aware of how stats work in PvP, and how to optimize builds. I do have what might be considered a fairly extensive amount of experience and credibility on that topic.

DeceiverX.8361:

T1 might have enough keep-campers to sweep out a few mesmers. Otherwise, though, it’s widely considered as breaking WvW defense at the moment.

Really, widely considered as breaking WvW defense? That’s amusing. There’s a lot of things people consider as widely breaking WvW defense (arrow carts, facerubbing doors, various other mechanics), but mesmers are not one of them. If they were really that bad, you’d see threads about it. There’s only one thread, and it’s on the third page.

DeceiverX.8361:

Except mesmers in organized play are a thing. Not in sPvP (okay, it is being abused in HJ by a few (I’m looking at you, and you know who you are :P)), but obviously cele ele facerolling is much better there when the format prevents so many builds from being viable due to innate stat problems. I know of many guilds who run three to five mesmers partied to maintain permanent stealth within a keep or SMC, chain-portaling inside, etc. Some go as far as suggesting a boon duration build for maximizing aegis uptime as to allow for them to be unhittable from a single attack from a sweep from PU. Unless you get a lot of guards sweeping a large area, you’re not going to find remotely good mesmers. Any mesmer getting swept is just sub-par. A guildmate of mine is renowned on our server for always being inside SMC and never being swept out despite our enemy’s best efforts.

Competent enemies will always find a mesmer. You can use engies with lock on, stealth disruptor traps, or simply just watch for the prestige explosions which, as I mentioned earlier, are seen regardless of stealth. I’ve never had issues finding mesmers stealthing in my keeps, but that might just be because I’m good at this game shrugs.

In conclusion

You’re wrong again.

Xaylin.1860:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Nothing that stacks intensity is redundant. How does this even make sense? Further, the DD bleeds are not dependent on crits, enabling non-crit builds to take advantage of the trait.

It is redundant. Or how would you feel about two traits in Adept where one gave Bleeds on crit and one gave Bleeds on hit by chance? That’s exactly the same. Just that it is even more limited in case of DD.

If you see this as build diversity… I really don’t find that appealing. That aside, Dueling is more about crit than on hit. We would still be stuck with a conceptual flaw.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Xaylin.1860:

If it worked you just had two Bleed traits for your Duelists which becomes extremly unpredictable and hard to balance.

“Extremely Unpredictable” in what way? The math is precisely calculable for DD. …

And how do you account for different builds with different crit chances and the combined effect of those traits? Ultimatively it probably will be balanced around high crit build and the on hit chance will be underwhelming in any other scenario. Not very desirable, really.

You realize that phantasmal fury and DD share a spot, right?

Silverkey.2078:

tobascodagama.2961:

Silverkey.2078:

Well cheesy PU clone-death got replaced…

…by cheesy PU shatter (condi or power).

I guess that means the cheesy part was really PU all along, so they actually buffed the cheesiness.

OR, people like to call anything they don’t like “cheesy”.

Well being honest, playing against a PU mesmer is not fun. Especially as a mesmer since we have like 0 AOE and always need a target to create our clones (though they at least follow the target out of stealth).

In PvP, I usually love duels. I just don’t have that against PU mesmer.

Now for the cheesiness, I do think PU makes things cheesier. Mesmers have decent active defenses to sustain a fight without stealth, and it is way more entertaining to do. With PU, you don’t need to think as much, since stealth will almost always save you if you’re a half-decent player.

This post is literally exhibit A of ‘some people label anything they don’t like as cheesy’.

You’ve just said that you don’t like PU builds, therefor they are cheesy. That’s neither logic nor reasoning. That’s you taking your personal preferences and attempting to use them to tarnish other players, which is disgusting.

This entire post has either been written from an extraordinarily misinformed perspective, or with the explicit purpose of lying.

DeceiverX.8361:

Near-constant Aegis and Protection coming up every few seconds

Near constant aegis and protection? Hardly. If a Mesmer with PU uses the full 6 seconds of stealth, they still have a 32% chance of not even getting aegis a single time. Hardly ‘near constant’.

DeceiverX.8361:

as these boons randomly popping hard-counter any kind of strategic play,

This makes zero sense. How does a couple of boons ‘hard counter’ any kind of strategic play? What they do is give slightly more protection to the Mesmer once they unstealth, hardly game changing. I guarantee you that if PU gave no boons, it would still be a meta shatter pick purely for the stealth duration.

DeceiverX.8361:

Combined with clone bodyblocking

Really? Try targeting the Mesmer next time instead of just randomly spamming your skills in their general direction.

DeceiverX.8361:

blur, and the lowest cooldown teleport in the game

Blur and the lowest cooldown teleport in the game? In a bursting build? If you’re a power bursting build, you need greatsword. Blur is on mainhand sword, and phase retreat is on staff. You’re mixing like 3 separate builds into one in a sad attempt to call mesmers op.

DeceiverX.8361:

As far as WvW goes, condi dire PU is the single most unbalanced build to ever exist.

Hardly. Dire is a severely suboptimal stat set to even use on a condie Mesmer instead of rabid.

DeceiverX.8361:

Played correctly, it ha literally zero counters except for vastly outnumbering it, including directly revealing it through Sic ’Em, Analyze, etc, due to innate durability not seen on other professions with such access to stealth and its constant damage requiring no setup.

Literally everything said here is a lie. Revealing the Mesmer is a very direct counter. Even a tanky class will die rapidly when exposed to pressure from multiple people.

Also, constant damage with no setup? Condie Mesmer means shatter condies, and shatters require setup. The other primary application of conditions is the scepter torment block, and to say a reactive block-counter requires no setup is a unique stance to take.

DeceiverX.8361:

It has become a staple in most organized group play both small scale and large scale

No it hasn’t. You’re just wrong.

DeceiverX.8361:

keep and tower defense is almost ignored at the moment

This isn’t even remotely true on any active wvw server.

DeceiverX.8361:

as there is next to always going to be a mesmer or three hiding somewhere to provide a portal as soon as RI goes.

This is why you sweep. Good players do it, and keep their objectives. Bad players don’t, and lose them.

DeceiverX.8361:

With no tells on stealth, it makes them much more difficult to spot than any other stealth-based class.

This is a lie. Visual effects from the prestige can be seen even if you’re in stealth when you use it. Mass invisibility is a massive and obvious channel, and veil produces a distinctive persistent ground effect.

In conclusion

You’re wrong.

Jurica.1742:

Fay.2357:

Curunen.8729:

How about a totally different trait?

Arcane Generosity – Trigger Arcane Thievery while having at least 3 different conditions and taking damage under 50% health or receiving up to at least 3 conditions when under 50% health.

This doesn’t work because arcane thievery needs a target. If it triggers while you have no target, it would just fizzle.

It could work the same way as the necro passive signet it randomly chooses a target.

This could work. It would become:

Case arcane thievery on hit when you have 3 or more conditions on you.

Regarding the random recharge of utility skills like improv…I hate improv and how it functions with a passion. It’s a zero skill trait that now and then randomly has the potential to completely change the course of a fight. It needs to be deleted and replaced with something that isn’t the quintessence of praying to rngeesus to save your kitten in a fight.

Noss.4105:

Blur, Distortion and mirror effects last 33% longer

This is an interesting one. Blur would be sorta odd given that it’s primarily linked to blurred frenzy, but the other two could be worth it. You’d probably want a 50% boost though, since mirror is a 2s base duration.

Noss.4105:

Refill your endurance at 25%

Workable, but really boring. Also assumes that you’re in need of more endurance, which isn’t a guarantee.

Noss.4105:

Creating a clone transfers one damaging condition to that clone. 10s ICD

This is interesting, but it smells like an inspiration trait, not a dueling trait.

Noss.4105:

Recharge your utility skills by a small amount when struck below the threshold. 33% hp, 5s/15% recharge, 15-20s ICD.

This one is sorta odd, it almost incentivizes getting smacked around at low hp. I feel like it just wouldn’t have enough of an effect to be noteworthy. Now and then it would recharge your skills a bit, but it would be impossible to rely on that trigger for anything concrete.

My suggestion: Multiple attacks against a target apply a stacking debuff that causes it to take increased damage from the Mesmer and its illusions. Attacking another target will reset the debuff to the new target.

Curunen.8729:

How about a totally different trait?

Arcane Generosity – Trigger Arcane Thievery while having at least 3 different conditions and taking damage under 50% health or receiving up to at least 3 conditions when under 50% health.

This doesn’t work because arcane thievery needs a target. If it triggers while you have no target, it would just fizzle.

Noss.4105:

How about if it simply recharged your Decoy at 25%/50%?

Then it would be useless unless you not only equipped decoy, but also used it before you hit the threshold. To my knowledge there is no trait in the game that only functions on a single utility skill, and that’s because it would be a terrible design decision.

Katran.9186:

Fay.2357:

There’s already an active thread on the front page about this, was making your own really that necessary?

There was no thread at the first page this morning. Is scrolling through 20 pages to create a thread necessary?

Your thread was created 5 hours ago. A post was made in the existing desperate decoy thread 9 hours ago. I guarantee you that it didn’t drop off the front page in 4 hours, you just didn’t see it.

There’s already an active thread on the front page about this, was making your own really that necessary?

Daniel Handler.4816:

• Fourth, please get back to the point of boon sharing. Alacrity and quickness are fine, but one is not a boon, and its not exactly boon sharing if its only 1 boon. I realise that sharing quickness and giving alacrity is very important, but can we see how well mesmers can share the other 10 boon they have access to. For instance, the mesmer can uniquely share 2min of regeneration because the base duration of BD for distortion is quite high.

On this topic:

The build I was using was NOT a boonsharing build. I took BD, and had an incredibly high rate of shattering, and this manifested itself in happening to produce a rather significant amount of might (10ish stacks), and vigor (close to 70% when considering the pulses from the heal well on a 12s cooldown). This, however, was not the intended purpose of the build, just something I noticed happening.

The purpose of the build is to produce tremendous uptime of alacrity and quickness on your entire party. When I first started using it, I assumed it would fit into a team composition containing a PSEA warrior for might, and other assorted sources of fury. Producing this quickness and alacrity is something unique to chronomancer; no other class or build can do this, even in a remotely similar fashion.

Now, as it so happens, the 10ish stacks of might produced open up the possibility that a PSEA warrior might not be necessary, considering the amount of boons that revenant is able to produce.

All that being said

The particular chronomancer build I was using has absolutely zero bearing on the topic of this thread, namely the fact that revenant is actually better at providing massive boon support to a party (quickness and alacrity notwithstanding) than a dedicated mesmer boonshare build, while producing top tier dps at the same time. An additional point mentioned was the passive permanent upkeep of swiftness due to simply activating a utility contrasted with the given reasoning for nerfing the swiftness from SoI. These points all remain valid and rather puzzling for the most part, until you consider the additional information of which devs designed the classes, and which classes seem to have been designed with anything remotely approaching balance in mind.

Daniel Handler.4816:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Same way people are atheist. And not hypocrites. Provide proof first.

This isn’t religion, this is GW2 build analysis and expectation.
Atheism is grounded in the premise that religion makes elaborate, ungrounded claims that step outside existing scientific understandings based in insufficient or no evidence.

A major GW2 patch changes everything, existing assumptions are always questioned. Revenant is an entirely new class, there ARE no existing scientific understandings.

The current meta isn’t valid past the change, until it is proven to be so.

In short no, you are wrong, and you are indeed a hypocrite.

Yes. It is a new class. Which is why people going head over heals about the revenant-chrono meta, without providing sufficient mathematical proof, are worthy of skepticism.

Because as of right now no one has come forward with substantial evidence to the claims. You are asking me to prove a negative. Much in the same way that Christians challenge atheists to prove the absence of god. I cannot prove that revenant is not the better class than x. What one can do is prove that revenant is the better class than x. And so far no one has managed to do that. To construe burden of proof with hypocrisy is weird.

I can say that the math was done for the chrono support build I’ve been using. I can’t remember exactly what thread it was in, but math for giving a party permanent quickness and alacrity was done, and it came out substantially above the addition of another elementalist.

Carighan.6758:

Firelysm.4967:

Sorry to sound ignorant, but isn’t mesmer standerd BS of spamming and hiding 90% with post-trait-changes? Sorry in advance, those builds just have no value in 1v1 or XvX fights.

Eh? You mean you got killed by a PU Mesmer? :P

More like got killed by any mesmer. The way that person talks pegs them as the type to just complain and cry OMGPUOP when getting killed by a mesmer, even if they’re not even traited into chaos.

Fanolian.8415:

I find that I don’t summon Illusionary Avenger a lot of times because I interrupted my channeled block with my own skills if I am not blocking.

This sounds like a personal problem, not an issue with the skill itself.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Afaik Pyro is saying he did the thing “really really fast.”

Honestly not sure what you’re referencing, can you elaborate?

Carighan.6758:

Fay.2357:

You’re probably using the wrong build then. Mesmer can keep alacrity up on their entire team for 35s in the right build.

Hrm… that’s once per time split, right? 5 wells of 2s each + 3s directly from a specific well, and then… um… twice that, that’s 26 seconds. The phantasms I guess, 3×1s each every 6s I think, firing 5 times in those 26s, that’s a lot. But yeah, pretty much doing nothing but working on Alacrity plus the team has to stay in all the wells.

Here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Swiftness-and-Boon-sharing-Herald-vs-Mesmer/first#post5464793

RE 5-man team analysis: Given that aoe effects are limited to 5 targets, it’s reasonable to make the analysis assumption that within your 10 man raid, there will be a 5 man subset that is devoted to providing dps output. You can then analyze that 5 man group as you would a normal team. This obviously neglects various things such as alacrity’s affect on defensive and mobility cooldowns and the like, but it’s good enough for a baseline analysis.

Curunen.8729:

Oh, now the beta’s finished.

Sad not to be able to play chrono for another month.

D: back to PoE I guess.

When you say permadeath, are we talking a dead is dead type thing? If so, that means defense is priorities 1 through 5, and everything else comes after.

You’re going to want a condie build. This has the advantage of dealing damage while also remaining very tanky and evasive. I’d recommend staff+sword/torch. Sword isn’t a condie weapon compared to scepter, but blurred frenzy is one of the best defensive skills in the game. Torch has stealth along with burning. Staff has a very low cooldown blink that allows you to kite easily, good access to chaos armor for defense (and protection when traited) and chaos storm has great defensive benefits.

You’ll want to use rabid armor probably with undead runes, since those give a good amount of toughness. Dire would be best for survivability, but you need the crits from rabid for various things.

You’ll want to trait dueling, chaos, and illusions or inspiration. Dueling gives you bleed on crit, and clone on dodge, as well as vigor on crit. Chaos gives you cooldown reduction on staff, defense from illusions, and PU for increased stealth duration and defensive boons while in stealth.

Illusions decreases your cooldowns further and can give you a boost to condition damage. Inspiration is a utility and defensive traitline that can give condition removal, projectile defense, or situational utility traiting.

If you’ve got any more questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

Elias.4028:

Since the original thread was closed because mesmers couldn’t keep it civil, I will try again.

Thanks op, I needed a solid belly laugh this morning.

Anyway, to quote our least favorite salad…‘this won’t end well…’

Treyu.9714:

what about stats?

Fay.2357:

zerker gear.

Treyu.9714:

and runes?

Pick your favorite power-based set. Centaur are nice for open world, due to the swiftness.

Treyu.9714:

could you elaborate a bit on it to complete the build? or link a build? thanks

There’s not really a whole lot more that needs to be elaborated on in the build. The important traits are the ones that boost phantasm damage and/or weapon specific cooldown traits. Past that, take the traits that are most useful for the situation. Similarly for utilities, take what’s useful for your situation. You can swap those out depending on what you’re doing.

Dawdler.8521:

in order to avoid PTSD.

I’m thinking you mean RSI (repetitive stress injury). However, I’m fully willing to accept the possibility that making that many siege manually could result in PTSD as well.

Zenith.7301:

Yeah, pretty close to what I experienced.

It’s pretty fun, except when the kitten boss kills my continuum fragment before I can even finish the combo but I should probably do continuum shift before even reaching melee range since iLeap can be cast from range as well.

Didn’t want to be a buff bot, but this is pretty nice. If a revenant with facet of nature is around, this will boost the quickness uptime so much ;O

Yeah, I’ve had the fragment killed once or twice, but if you’re careful about when you execute the combo (at the very start before the boss really gets going) you shouldn’t have any trouble.

Granted, this role is certainly a bit non-traditional from the gw2 standard meta, but I look at it from a different perspective. Currently the mesmer primary role is as a troop carrier. This new build fills a role requiring continual upkeep of cooldowns and rotations involving nearly every skill you have, and the reward is a drastic boost to your party members. It’s you being actually useful to a party in a real and noticable fashion, and it’s literally the most fun I’ve ever had in gw2 dungeons.

Zenith.7301:

Ah, ok, and are you taking seize the moment to gain quickness as soon as you continuum shift and squeeze more skills in? Or did you go for Lost Time/Chronophantasma?

I talked about this in the other thread, but here’s the rotation. I use chronophantasma for this, since it helps with illusion uptime.

3 illusions (staff 2+3 because they remain at range and safe, I’ll use that while approaching the boss), then swap to sw/shield and use iLeap for the third illusion. Immediately shatter f5 so that they don’t have time to get squished. Drop time warp first, because it has a very short channel and will boost the speed of the rest of this combo. Then roll through all 4 wells and shield 5, order here doesn’t matter so much, just do it as fast as possible.

If possible, position yourself so that shield 5 doesn’t hit a wall, otherwise it’ll go poof.

If you roll through that rotation rapidly, you should cast all 4 wells and shield 5 and have about a quarter second before you pop back out of f5. Once you do, drop all 4 wells again, and do shield 5 again. At this point you want to be shattering everything except distortion (and potentially diversion, depending on the boss) off of cooldown. You’ll want to be dropping calamity and the heal well off of cooldown as well, for alacrity uptime. The quickness well and shield 5 will come off of cooldown at about the same time, so use the quickness well cd to time when you need to be back in sw/sh to drop them again. Lastly, try to keep chaos armor up, since you’ll be getting an enormous rate of cd on chaos storm (which actually does really solid damage) with both alacrity and chaos armor when using chaotic dampening.

Don’t use the alacrity well or time warp once you’ve finished the initial combo unless it’s purely to end a fight. That entire combo has a cooldown of 45ish seconds, which is the cd of continuum split when traited in illusions and with permanent alacrity. If the fight really takes that long (it shouldn’t), just make sure you’re ready to get 3 illusions up once CS comes off of cooldown to start it up again.

Zenith.7301:

In fact, I’ll do it right now. Consider me intrigued ;o. If anything, it should also improve my solo experience since one of my gripes compared to playing my revenant or necro was my lack of might/fury stacking avenues while solo roaming in Verdant Brink.

It’ll work for solo, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. It’s anything but optimized for personal damage. You sacrifice that for the insane uptime on quickness and alacrity. As a side bonus, you also share the boons from BD, provide a lot of slow (for mobs without breakbars of course), and you actually have an insane aoe healing output from the heal well on a 12s cooldown (vigor too).

Zenith.7301:

I could have sworn boon duration did not affect alacrity. Might is gonna be stacked from your eles nd PSEA warriors, if not for the Revenant who’s also going to give the group 50% boon duration.

Persisting Flames is 100% uptime on fury for your team.

So we’re down to 50% vigor uptime (which a thief with trickery will also provide, or a ranger with Nature Magic which is already part of their vanilla meta build variations) and 12-15% boon duration for quickness in exchange for the other “useless” minors and an adept and master trait that won’t benefit you much as a power build.

I’m not convinced, but we’ll see. If condi mesmer becomes a thing in PvE, I can see Chaos as a used line. Not seeing it for a power spec.

Boon duration doesn’t affect alacrity, but it affects quickness. I’m able to reach the 35 seconds of alacrity purely from my well rotation, but to reach 35s of accompanying quickness requires chaos for the boon duration. Additionally, chaos allows you to really double down with the damage support from the aoe 10-12 stacks of might you share while doing the rotation from BD. I posted about it in the beta build testing thread, you should give it a whirl, it’s extremely fun.

lujate.5432:

I think he’s joking.

Only half joking. The reality is that staff ele outperforms anything non-chrono mesmer can do by generous factors of 10. The difference is simply night and day. Mesmer can do a little, but 90% of the time you’re mostly useless, and staff ele is just monstrously powerful.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Zenith.7301:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Zenith.7301:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Except the revenant doesnt share boons it pulses them.
The revenant has a lot of on demand utility. But as a result it is generally inferior to its the counterparts from the main classes.

We have access to all boons in game. Revenant does not. We can share quickness, vigor, resistance, retaliation, aegis better than it.

I made a revenant and a Chronomancer. The Chronomancer was the superior boon support by far.

lol I’d love to know what dps build you’re running that’s giving your allies 10 might and perma fury.

you get perma fury from the dueling tree, and might stacks of that high or greater from illusions + strength runes/pack runes/travelers or frequent greatsword+ that trait. then just use the signet 1-4 times and tada.

Obviously your post has nothing to do with PvE, as usual. Because the meta PvE build is dom/dueling/chrono. No illusions, and mesmers don’t use anything but scholar runes. Fury from dueling comes on mobs with under 75% health, so for the first 25% hp of a raid boss you are generating no fury.

I don’t even know why I bothered responding when as usual it’s gimmick WvW builds.

…What high horse are you on. If my build had anything to do with pve I would say that perma fury might or swiftness is completely irrelevant as elementalists outshine it. Warriors outshine it. The revenant does absolutely nothing that cannot be replaced by another class or isnt useful in pve. You are getting angry that you can’t have only the good parts from an otherwise lackluster class.

They have great uptime on stability and protection. Nothing else they can do matters. Unless suddenly people feel comfortable going condi in pve, and then maybe bringing a revenant is useful.

Currently, revenants do very quality power dps in PvE. They have great spiking power, and additionally spread permanent aoe fury, swiftness, 10ish stacks of might, and occasional regen and prot without needing to anything more than roll through their rotation as normal. If you really think that’s “lackluster” in PvE, you’ve got a bit of a reality check needed.

Milkey.6894:

When I’m running past mobs and stealth, my scepter1 attacks and breaks my stealth immediately. Is there an issue with this?

Turn off your autoattack.

Michal.4513:

The only change i rly want to see, is … and better apply of Alcarity.

chuckles

You’re probably using the wrong build then. Mesmer can keep alacrity up on their entire team for 35s in the right build.

tobascodagama.2961:

Entropy.6784:

Well of Recall seems to have become obsolete with the glorious changes made to All’s Well that Ends Well.

Yeah, I agree. But, I admit I’m seeing it from a PvP perspective.

In PvP, Well of Recall just can’t compete with Well of Calamity or Well of Action. In PvE, I could see the extra Alacrity potentially being worth more than the damage from WoC. But I’ll let the PvE experts settle that one.

In PvE, take all 3.

Yeah, it’s pretty awful. I take phantasmal fury in builds that are totally not suited for it just because I don’t want desperate decoy.

Cynz.9437:

high dmg? check
aoe dmg? check
high ranged dmg? check
blocks, invuls, team/own buffs? check
teleports? check
stealth? check
pets? check
multiple CCs? check

What, you don’t have enough yet? Why not just ask for iWin button?

/facepalm

Fay.2357:

Gonna be testing out PvE support. I can maintain 30-35s of one solid permanent block of alacrity AND quickness on a party. Build is chrono/chaos/illusions, sword/shield + staff, heal well, calamity, quickness, alacrity, then time warp.

Tested this in CoE so far. Results are incredible.

When we engage, we have alacrity and quickness until the boss dies. Additionally, I spread ~12 stacks of partywide might, 50% uptime on vigor, and still do quite okish damage (for a mesmer). The warrior in my party was talking about how he hardly even used autoattacks, just continually rolled through weapon skill rotations.

Gonna be testing out PvE support. I can maintain 30-35s of one solid permanent block of alacrity AND quickness on a party. Build is chrono/chaos/illusions, sword/shield + staff, heal well, calamity, quickness, alacrity, then time warp.

LOL Nemesis. This guy is truly a shining gem of lunacy that we can all chuckle about.

rogerwilko.6895:

Are the [GUIDE] Lyssa’s Grimoire: The Mesmer Handbook and [Guide] How To Mesmer in Dungeons still relevant?

I want to read a bit about what the Mesmer role is (in PvE).

Lyssa’s Grimoire is still up to date and relevant.

How to mesmer in dungeons is still relevant, but the builds in it aren’t up to date. The information it contains on how to play and what role you play is still absolutely accurate and worth learning.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

What’s unfair about it?

You’re using advanced arguing techniques such as simple logic and the capability for rational thought. That’s a rather unfair advantage when having a discussion with someone like that.

The biggest potential issue I see is if the mechanics are somehow extremely hostile to illusions. That would put a pretty big dent in the dps of a Mesmer raid.

Answer 1: No. You can only proc the cooldown reduction one single time per individual wave.

Ultimately, bouncing attacks are okish offensively, but really problematic with friendly effects. You can get decent use out of things like mirror blade and winds of chaos only because you can personally position yourself to take advantage of it. Phantasms are dumb, and won’t do that at all. Additionally, as was mentioned elsewhere, it’s a really odd mechanic.

Me: ‘This phantasm gives you guys good stuff’
Party: ‘So to get the good stuff, should we stand next to the phantasm?’
Me: ‘Nope, to get the good stuff you have to stand next to the mob the phantasm is attacking’

It’s really counterintuitive, and links being able to provide helpful support to having your party in a potentially really odd position, on top being limited to only hitting one or two people as opposed to a full 5 target aoe.

Anet needs to just split phantasm attacks so that the offensive portion retains the bounce, and the support portion is a pbaoe pulsed buff centered on the phantasm. That makes the support from phantasms actually usable while still limiting their offensive aoe capabilities.

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Zenith.7301:

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

I plan to use the shield a lot thank you very much. And yes, in PVE.

Feel free, but the fact that you plan to use it doesn’t change the fact that its current form is really awful for PvE, and using it will be a mistake.

I disagree. Used it often with success in pve during the betas. It’s a nice weapon. I’m sure you’re the type who thinks if people disagree with you they are playing wrong, but no amount of such statements can discount my actual experience.

To success WHERE? Are you in a dungeon running guild or plan to do any raiding? What’s your higher level PvE experience?

Some people would say they run cleric staff guardians to success in PvE, doesn’t make them any less a hindrance to an optimized group.

I’ve been playing since the core games bwe1. I’ve done everything except craft a legendary. Multiple times.

And yes it was just fine. Sorry your experience differed, but that’s no call for condescension. Maybe try asking how mine differed without the implied insults would be better.

For the nth time, successfully completing PvE content is in no way, shape, or form a proof of good play. Observe the similarity here:

Morfedel: I’ve successfully completed PvE content with a shield. This means the shield is good weapon to use.

Me: I’ve successfully completed most dungeons in the game with less than 5 people in my party. This means that doing dungeons with less than 5 people is a good way to play.

Obviously the second statement is absurd, and it’s very clear that the first statement is ridiculous as well. Your use of shield has less than zero bearing on whether or not it’s a good weapon.

Additionally, you’ve only completed existing PvE content, all of which is brain dead easy. Raids are promised to be drastically more challenging, and challenging environments don’t always have room for absurdly ineffective builds like the ones you run.

You know which builds I’m running? Go ahead and tell me then what they are.

Or shut your ignorant mouth. Going around calling my builds ridiculous and ineffective when you have no idea what I’m even running is not only absurd and insulting but moronic as well.

Well, I have a fairly solid memory, and I remember quite a few times in the past where you attempted to defend running an obviously bad build with the ’I’ve completed dungeons, so it must be good’ defense. It’s not worth the effort to actually dig them up, but this encounter and interchange has happened before, multiple times.

Now, I could be wrong, and you could be running meta builds that are properly thought out these days, but the rather absurd aggressiveness of your response says somewhat otherwise.

That’s funny. I’m aggressive. And you’re an angel :-)

And you’ve reused the same arguments too. Welcome to the club. The difference being that I don’t go around telling people they suck because they disagree with me.

Not all of us are mindless kool-aid drinkers who can’t think outside the box. You go ahead and stay in your box if that’s all you can handle, but after starting and deleting a more hostile response, I decided to drop out of this pointless argument. It’s not worth the effort

Of course I use the same arguments! Mine are logically sound, while yours boil down to ‘I completed CoF p1, and this makes me inherently amazing at the game’.

Ultimately, evaluating builds and weapons with a critical eye for effectiveness is not something that everyone enjoys or is good at, and there’s no shame in that. Additionally, there’s really no inherent issue in using sub-optimal builds and weapons, as long as you’re aware of what you’re doing.

As always though, my problem is when people come to the forums and claim that their special snowflake way of playing is fantastic when it’s actually just not all that great. Doing that is tantamount to willfully misleading people that actually want advice on good and skilled play in the game, and needs to be challenged.

Particularly with the advent of potentially challenging raid content, knowing how to use builds effectively, and knowing what builds are effective is extremely important. When people come looking for that advice, they need to be able to safely receive it instead of getting spammed with ‘this build that’s totally so great I’m the only person that ever thought to use it’ builds.

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Zenith.7301:

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

I plan to use the shield a lot thank you very much. And yes, in PVE.

Feel free, but the fact that you plan to use it doesn’t change the fact that its current form is really awful for PvE, and using it will be a mistake.

I disagree. Used it often with success in pve during the betas. It’s a nice weapon. I’m sure you’re the type who thinks if people disagree with you they are playing wrong, but no amount of such statements can discount my actual experience.

To success WHERE? Are you in a dungeon running guild or plan to do any raiding? What’s your higher level PvE experience?

Some people would say they run cleric staff guardians to success in PvE, doesn’t make them any less a hindrance to an optimized group.

I’ve been playing since the core games bwe1. I’ve done everything except craft a legendary. Multiple times.

And yes it was just fine. Sorry your experience differed, but that’s no call for condescension. Maybe try asking how mine differed without the implied insults would be better.

For the nth time, successfully completing PvE content is in no way, shape, or form a proof of good play. Observe the similarity here:

Morfedel: I’ve successfully completed PvE content with a shield. This means the shield is good weapon to use.

Me: I’ve successfully completed most dungeons in the game with less than 5 people in my party. This means that doing dungeons with less than 5 people is a good way to play.

Obviously the second statement is absurd, and it’s very clear that the first statement is ridiculous as well. Your use of shield has less than zero bearing on whether or not it’s a good weapon.

Additionally, you’ve only completed existing PvE content, all of which is brain dead easy. Raids are promised to be drastically more challenging, and challenging environments don’t always have room for absurdly ineffective builds like the ones you run.

You know which builds I’m running? Go ahead and tell me then what they are.

Or shut your ignorant mouth. Going around calling my builds ridiculous and ineffective when you have no idea what I’m even running is not only absurd and insulting but moronic as well.

Well, I have a fairly solid memory, and I remember quite a few times in the past where you attempted to defend running an obviously bad build with the ’I’ve completed dungeons, so it must be good’ defense. It’s not worth the effort to actually dig them up, but this encounter and interchange has happened before, multiple times.

Now, I could be wrong, and you could be running meta builds that are properly thought out these days, but the rather absurd aggressiveness of your response says somewhat otherwise.