Guild Wars 2

Vennyhedgie.5369:

If you are dead, they are shatter burst mesmers using PU.
If you are not dead, they are condi mesmers, so you’ll die soon. Oh, forgot to mention, they are also using PU.
Because frig, that stuff is broken and they need to fix that perma stealth bs already

Ah, good to see we’ve got another mindless spewer of Mesmer vitriol in town. I was beginning to worry we’d driven them all off…

Protip: It’s not PU that’s killing you, you’re just worse than them.

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 can tell within 10 seconds of engaging combat certainly, but there’s no obvious tell as to what they’re running beforehand. This is the case with most builds in the game of course, being able to tell the build at a glance is definitely an exception rather than the rule.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Group utility is not the pinnacle of skills. But go on calling people disingenuous. I’ll continue watching pvp games where the whole game occurs without a single water field being blast.

Water fields are somewhat less commonly used in PvP. On the other hand, the self-blasting of fire fields is the primary method by which celestial elementalists produce their extraordinary might upkeep. Attempting to argue that blasting fire fields doesn’t have a profound impact on PvP is…foolish.

Daniel Handler.4816:

I’ll continue to duel thieves and neither of us blast might or water fields.

Quite so. However, thieves rely on leap combos through smoke fields for the majority of stealth upkeep in many builds, which, you might have noticed, was one of the other fields I mentioned as quite useful.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Don’t really care. This seems only applicable to WvW.

Water field blasting is primarily limited to WvW. This is mostly because you don’t actually need that kind of healing in any other game mode. However, I find it curious that you’re completely discounting the existence of an entire game mode. Do you care to explain why you feel that WvW isn’t important in GW2?

Daniel Handler.4816:

Are you arguing for a specific game mode?

You do indeed seem to have willfully forgotten how elementalists maintain their might stacks. I recommend keeping more abreast of the current PvP meta, it might be enlightening for you.

Daniel Handler.4816:

So is portal when used properly, or stealth, or moa. Yet we criticize the other classes who make posts asking to get their own version of the portal skill.

So you’re comparing utility only available on massive cooldowns to generic combo fields + finishers that have a variety of availability across classes? Seems like a bit of a lopsided comparison to me.

Daniel Handler.4816:

The direction was to list the fields in order of importance. Not to write snarky heavily Mesmer biased criticism.

Of course, but I felt it important to provide a bit more commentary on my decisions for the usefulness of fields. I’m sure it won’t be too taxing on your part to order them properly…

Daniel Handler.4816:

This one required comment though. I do not think you understand this field. Calling it incredibly hard to use effectively borders on falsification.

So what you’re trying to claim is that the light projectile/whirl finishers, which cleanse allies they pass through, are easy to use? In that case, kindly tell me the last time you were able to aim a whirl finisher. Additionally, explain the method by which you’ve reliably shot projectile finishers that are necessarily targeted at enemies through your allies without either pure luck or an extraordinary amount of coordination for a slight benefit.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Powerful stealth maneuvers… really? Because as far as I know two PU mass invis will do the trick.

Mass invis will only stealth 10 people, and it’s on a 90s cooldown. Blasting smoke fields can neatly bypass that target limit without difficulty. Additionally, it allows you to obtain mass stealth without forcing anything more than a thief to drop pistol 5 or smokescreen, compared to the rather significant trait investment necessary for a mesmer to stealth many people for a time.

Daniel Handler.4816:

More like rudeness. I don’t know what game mode Pyro plays. It seems like Pve. Because in WvW they don’t care about my blast finisher, and in PvP they dont care about my blast finisher.

Yes, that’s because you functionally don’t have a blast finisher. If you did, however, you’d be expected to blast fires and waters along with everyone else for the enormous group benefits it provides. Instead, you just tag along being useless whilst everyone else is contributing at that point.

Daniel Handler.4816:

We use feedback, and we time warp. Incidentally they are ethereal fields that people can benefit off of. Your version of usefulness leaves much to be desired.

Yes, feedback and time warp are very nice. I’m glad you can enjoy being wanted for the singular purpose of pressing a couple of buttons and then relaxing for the rest of a fight.

Also, tell me the last time you heard someone say ‘someone drop an ethereal field so we can blast it!’. Ah, that’s right, that’s never happened.

The most general purpose pve build is gs+sw/focus, zerker gear. This works solidly for just about anything, though in dungeons you’ll want to swap off the gs for an offhand sword instead. Traits are domination, dueling, and inspiration, taking all the phantasm boosting traits, along with any weapon-specific traits you encounter as well.

You’ll be able to do pretty much whatever in PvE built like that. It won’t be absolutely optimal for every situation, but you won’t run into any issues either. Just adjust your weaponset and utilities for the encounter you’re walking into.

Embolism.8106:

IMO Shield being useless in PvE is fine. Defensive weapons tend to be in the current DPS-or-bust meta (and IMO this is what needs fixing, not professions). Might as well complain about the Staff and the Torch.

The difference is that shield is one of the basic hallmarks of the elite specialization. In its current form, Anet is basically saying ‘yeah, have this new weapon, but don’t use it in any of the new content we’re giving you with the expansion, because it sucks’. See the problem?

Ok, a few things.

First: The party you should be aiming for is 3 eles, 1 warrior, and 1 Mesmer. PS, banners, and the aura from warrior makes them a non-optional part of a party.

Next, about boon share. This build doesn’t do it, not really. You don’t generate the boons that parties really need in abundance, hence why a PS warrior is necessary for might, and why ele blasting or some other stuff is necessary for fury. You say 100% quickness uptime. How? You only get quickness from time warp, where’s the 100% from?

Next, I have a hard time believing that mimic is even remotely worth it compared to well of calamity, considering the offensive aspect of that well, and the 4x shorter cooldown.

The build certainly has plenty of reflects. I have my doubts that any of the new content will allow you to use reflects well on bosses, since Anet has only made more and more projectiles unreflectable as time has gone on, and this means that traited focus could even be too much for many fights.

Lack of stability obviously isn’t an issue, since there’s literally about 2 fights in the entire game that stability is useful on. Aegis isn’t an issue for the most part. While it can be nice to have, guards only have about 2 aoe aegis skills, both on hefty cooldowns. Losing that won’t make or break anything.

Overall, it’s interesting. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s really worth running in groups. The glaring issue with it is that in non-organized groups it’ll be worthless. The requirement of people to stand on the wells the entire time means that you need at least rudimentary coordination in your team, and most pugs are considered a success if everyone is able to walk and talk at the same time.

Just as a quick note:

Saying that you can get might and healing elsewhere other than fields is disingenuous verging on flat out falsification.

With a water field, one field can be dropped and then blasted by many people at the same time. Not only does this avoid 5 target aoe limits (as each blast has a separate limit), it also provides burst healing on a scale that’s not even remotely accessible otherwise.

Might is a similar situation in that spamming blasts on a field can stack many people up to 25 might, a feat that can’t be accomplished in any other realistic way. Additionally, stacking 25 might at all is more or less limited to a PS warrior or spamming blasts on fields. Since PS requires hitting mobs, the only viable way to stack 25 might on a group out of combat is with blasting a fire field.

No matter what way you look at it, fire and water fields are uniquely powerful in this game, and nothing else even comes close. They provide unique and extremely powerful capabilities when used properly.

As for the fields…

Poison: Useless. Weakness is easily obtained with other skills, and poison projectile finishers are underwhelming.

Light: Awful. The light aura is low duration and really niche, can’t be shared easily, and doesn’t really have noteworthy effects. The projectile and whirl finishers are incredibly hard to use effectively.

Dark: Awful. Why waste blast finishers to do aoe blindness when there are so many other ways of doing that? The life steal mechanic is really weak too.

Lightning: Blasting this gives incredible access to group swiftness. The other effects are less noteworthy.

Ethereal: Chaos armor is okish, but if you’re blasting for chaos armor, you could instead be blasting for might/healing, which would be better.

Fire: Obviously fantastic.

Water: Also obviously fantastic.

Ice: It’s ok. The frost aura defensive boost is very significant, but it’s difficult to maintain in any realistic fashion.

Smoke: Fantastic. You can accomplish extremely powerful stealth maneuvers by blasting smoke fields that can’t be done any other way.

Shield 5 is a quite reasonable skill to be sitting in the 5 spot on the bar. It’s not like any of the other offhand non-phant skills do amazing dps. The issue is that our damage is so reliant on phantasms that having a phantasm deal no damage is an enormous setback.

I still feel that it shouldn’t do damage, but it really needs to lay the utility on thick to be worth it.

More analogous to a coilgun/Gauss gun… But I like it. Might have to try this sometime.

Esplen.3940:

I thought the Shield was supposed to apply Stop and not Stun (the difference being Stop literally pauses the animation versus stun canceling it).

Although if that were the case, you’d have to be careful which stunbreaker to use or you might interrupt yourself after breaking the stop, lel.

Not sure where you heard that, but that’s never been the case as far as I understand. Stop is…not a thing. I’m pretty sure you made that up.

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.

Quadox.7834:

Fay.2357:

Quadox.7834:

Levetty.1279:

Short Answer: Stealth

Long Answer: Stealth is broken in this game

Yup, also, it has the best mesmer offhand trait in the game going for it.

Not really. Most builds seen in PvP are power PU, which doesn’t take illusions. Only condie builds will be taking illusions, and those are far worse and far rarer in PvP.

It still has the best mesmer offhand trait in the game.

Only if you’re planning on running it with PU and camping stealth. Otherwise, it’s pretty bad. The pistol trait providing massive cdr through interrupts is very strong, bug notwithstanding. Additionally, the focus trait providing high uptime on reflects is incredibly strong.

MailMail.6534:

Point blank, signet of ether is usually not best for squishy builds, but they are amazing in tanky builds that can maintain phantasms.

Sorta. Ether feast is still better for healing than the signet, especially if you have any healing power. SoE only becomes useful if you actually use the active…but then that means you lose the healing.

I’d absolutely love to do this of course, it’s just a matter of finding people that will consistently show up and play the raids.

@Alpha:

Chill affects attunement swapping.

You also need to consider the other part of my suggestion, which is allowing slow to work on bosses. This would make it so that the iCaps potentially perform another powerful function in a fight. Extending dps windows can potentially be massive, and slowing bosses/mobs down allow your squishy teammates to dps happily without dying.

Alternatively, make it so that what the shield does right now has value in PvE.

Defiance bar bosses are immune to slow, making the phantasm totally worthless. If they weren’t immune to slow, it could potentially be a valuable way to extend burst windows and protect your team.

The bouncing attack is worthless for giving alacrity to your allies. If it instead pulsed aoe alacrity every time it attacked (5 target aoe ofc), it would instantly become a usable method of providing solid alacrity to your team.

While it’s easy to just say ‘oh, let’s make the shield phantasm hit like a swordsman so that it’s competitive dps-wise’, that’s really boring and just perpetuates the mindless stack-n-smack meta of PvE currently. If the utility purposes of the phantasm actually had meaning in PvE, we wouldn’t be so reliant on trying to keep up with the engies and eles on dps.

Ultimately, this is far more important than buffing the damage on it, because if the utility we bring isn’t meaningful, then there’s no reason to ever bring a Mesmer. We can’t even hope to compare to the damage output of warriors, revenants, guardians, and thieves, let alone Elementalists and engineers. What we offer to teams is utility, and until the whole range of that has actual value, we’ll always be nothing more than a troop transport with a bit of glitter spray.

Quadox.7834:

Levetty.1279:

Short Answer: Stealth

Long Answer: Stealth is broken in this game

Yup, also, it has the best mesmer offhand trait in the game going for it.

Not really. Most builds seen in PvP are power PU, which doesn’t take illusions. Only condie builds will be taking illusions, and those are far worse and far rarer in PvP.

Scapper.4236:

The swap in and out of Torch to scepter is plenty of blast for me, considering I provide different skills, Feedback, Timewarp. Mesmers are not considered unviable, they just tend to be incompetent players in pve which lack skill. :P

Really? One single blast, on a 30 second cooldown, that doesn’t even blast when you press the button, but 3/6 seconds later is enough for you? And providing a couple of random ethereal fields, the least wanted field in almost every situation in the game is enough for you?

Different strokes for different folks I guess. You prefer to be useless, I prefer to be useful.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Wait… can chronos stack nearly a minute of stealth? With that much, they could portal and recapture keeps easily.

You can do that without chrono too… Unfortunately, people can see the torch explosions even if you’re in stealth, so you’ll only succeed at that if the enemy team is blind.

At any rate, while wells certainly still felt rather clunky and were difficult to get the full effects out of, they’re leaps and bounds better than anything else we’ve ever had, so there is that…

FLIMP.8172:

Hi All,

I’ve been playing my mesmer quite extensively lately but only in Ranked PvP and was wondering if people were interested in Ranked PvP videos?

Most mesmer videos I see are WvW so not sure if there are any interests for this. I might make one just to see what the response is but if there is anything in particular you’d like to see, please let me know

Cheers,
FLIMP

I think the difficulty with PvP videos is that they’re really difficult to make interesting at all. A PvP video gets sorta meaningless as a montage, since the very point of PvP is playing the game mode and winning, but actually watching a full PvP match is just boring in most cases.

You can certainly go ahead and try, but just be aware that there’s significant inherent difficulty in making a watchable ranked PvP video.

Quadox.7834:

A recurring problem is that, despite fairly strong skills, most off hands never see any high level play because they aren’t defensive enough to play on standard shatter marauder mesmer. Even staff had/has problem surviving vs multiple people compared to the stealth on torch. I think the correct way to handle the problem would be to nerf stealth somehow, rather than buffing other mesmer offhands. Not sure how.

So just to be clear here… You acknowledge that torch is used over all the others because non-torch offhands don’t have the defense to let mesmers survive in matches. Therefor, you conclude that torch should be nerfed.

The abuse of logic here makes my eyes water.

Loony.3714:

I was expecting someone else to have said this by now but I’m pretty sure signet of ether is the best heal in PvE by a fair amount. Its in a really good place and doesn’t need to be changed, especially with the signet trait so readily available

The signet is only better in PvE because you don’t need the healing and it allows for higher phantasm uptime. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement though, and it’s still worse than the mantra if you need to pump out high reflect damage (despite how horrid HM is).

There are a couple variations of meta builds for dungeon running. Zerg Mesmer, on the other hand, is an unforgiving job that sucks to play. You’re literally only there to drop portal and veil. You can’t do any good damage, you can’t do any good disruption, and you can’t really do any good support. Until chrono comes out, go ele if you want to Zerg, don’t waste your time on Mesmer.

Fancy Noob.8475:

ok thanks for the info guys. how bad was the harmonious mantra nerf because it would be a really good if it was a 5% buff per stack instead of 3%.

The HM nerf took an already underperforming trait and turned it into pure and unadulterated garbage.

Ok, you’re so hilariously wrong I’m not entirely sure. Lets take a look…

Electro.4173:

Necro has one on a rarely used minion skill (and a skill which is mostly used as an escape and not a finisher), one on a second unreliable minion skill, and a single weapon-based Blast finisher.

Necro has (realistically) putrid mark and bone minions. The bone minions, while less commonly used, give them 2 blasts on a 20s cooldown, which is quite strong. Putrid mark is another blast on a 20s cooldown.

Electro.4173:

Ranger only has one outside of unreliable pet AI (and even then only two).

Ranger certainly is a bit lacking, but their single 30s cd blast finisher on warhorn is miles better than ours on the prestige.

Electro.4173:

Guardian has two on weapon skills and one on a summon which seems difficult to properly use the blast on.

LOL

Sorry, but the implication that guardian doesn’t have much access to blasts just made me laugh. Mighty blow is a blast finisher ON A 5 SECOND COOLDOWN. That they have other blast finishers too is just icing on the cake.

Electro.4173:

Thief only technically has two, though the fact that one is a weapon skill and the whole initiative aspect helps.

Thief has two. Both are incredibly strong. One is an instant utility, the other is a spammable weapon skill.

Electro.4173:

Heck, in general I’d say any class that isn’t Engi, Ele, or Warrior are all pretty close in their general lack of blast finishers.

And in general I’d say that this is the most inaccurate statement I’ve seen on these forums all week.

Most of your post is just random whining, but I’ll take this bit:

maeggle.6021:

Most importantly, a decent shatter combo delivers more damage than a mug + backstab + auto chain in equal time,

Really?

Backstab + auto chain = 4.66 skill coeff. Mug is something more, but not listed.

2 clone + ip shatter + 2 hits of mirror blade = 4.24 skill coeff.

In other words, you’re wrong.

maeggle.6021:

of which most is AoE in a 240 radius (equals the size of the side cap nodes).

Technically speaking…yes, most of the damage is aoe. However, a very significant portion is single target: mirror blade and air sigil procs.

maeggle.6021:

It’s not tied to engaging from stealth, just helps to setup the stun / immobilize,

Good luck landing that combo on someone paying attention when you’re not engaging from stealth. Mirror blade is slow and obvious. The only way you can reliably land it without stealth is with a CI proc…which means you’ve already been fighting and got interrupted by the mesmer in order to land it.

maeggle.6021:

and it also benefits from the above mentioned vuln stacks and partly from shattered boons.

Sure, removing boons with the shatter is a pretty key thing that mesmers do, I’ll give you that one.

maeggle.6021:

You don’t lose damage potential when you don’t use stealth, which enables the mesmer to use its stealth mostly defensively and occasionally offensively.

Except you sorta do. As I just said, it’s very difficult to land that shatter combo on someone paying attention if you’re not engaging from stealth. While stealth isn’t an integral part of the mesmer burst like it is for thief, it still remains extremely important.

apharma.3741:

Yeah I’ve got my eye on this but we’ll see how it goes in the reveals and stuff. Just as mesmers wouldn’t/didn’t like people crying about chrono being OP before release and everything I don’t think we should cry either.

I don’t think it seems OP, but I’m a little miffed at them giving power block mechanics to another class, particularly the one that’s immune to it.

This is a question we’ve been asking since the game launched. We’ve yet to get an answer.

docMed.7692:

Fay.2357:

docMed.7692:

You’re recounting it entirely inaccurately & skewing it towards your perspective. Fay stated SR by itself was an OP skill;

This is a lie. What I did was take your exact argument from a post you had just made, and applied it to SR. You have reasons for MI with PU being op. I took those same reasons and applied them to SR, and resulted in the same conclusion. You didn’t like that ofc, and so have spent the past hour trying to lead the discussion away from that flaw in your “logic”.

docMed.7692:

In the current meta, not speccing SA and just throwing down SR is useless and only serves as an escape (not to re-open on a target, which is the opposite of what mesmers do – they will Mass to simply wait/setup for a burst).

Let me tell you a secret.

Thieves use SR offensively just like mesmers use MI offensively.

I know, hard to believe, and it’s a tough concept to understand, but it’s actually true.

I’ve already said in posts repeatedly that thieves use SR offensively… but it’s only because they’re ahead in a fight and speeding up the victory they already see; which means you were out-played significantly and/or a thief +1’d a fight and decided to blow his wad.

Let me be more clear.

Mesmers use MI in the exact same way that thieves use SR; both offensively and defensively, for a burst in a fight or for a fast +1. Any attempt to say otherwise is pure lunacy.

I also enjoy you trying to ignore that I took your ‘mesmer is op’ arguments and applied them to thief instead.

docMed.7692:

You’re recounting it entirely inaccurately & skewing it towards your perspective. Fay stated SR by itself was an OP skill;

This is a lie. What I did was take your exact argument from a post you had just made, and applied it to SR. You have reasons for MI with PU being op. I took those same reasons and applied them to SR, and resulted in the same conclusion. You didn’t like that ofc, and so have spent the past hour trying to lead the discussion away from that flaw in your “logic”.

docMed.7692:

In the current meta, not speccing SA and just throwing down SR is useless and only serves as an escape (not to re-open on a target, which is the opposite of what mesmers do – they will Mass to simply wait/setup for a burst).

Let me tell you a secret.

Thieves use SR offensively just like mesmers use MI offensively.

I know, hard to believe, and it’s a tough concept to understand, but it’s actually true.

docMed.7692:

Thieves don’t have invuls (less you count vamp runes),

Has zero bearing on burst from stealth.

docMed.7692:

clones, phantasms, access to reflects (short of a terrible utils/elites that nobody uses and/or warrior steal)

Has zero bearing on burst from stealth.

docMed.7692:

not to mention they can’t 1-shot burst a single class out of stealth (unless they catch another glass class like thief/mes with no util’s up or spec a gimmicky build that is useless in a majority of scenarios). No thief runs +power on reveal.. lol?

Mesmer can’t 1-shot any class from stealth either unless it’s a glass spec. You must have missed the memo, Anet nerfed our burst so that it’s not as high as before

I appreciate your attempts at misdirection and outright distortion of facts, but it won’t help your argument.

docMed.7692:

Fay.2357:

docMed.7692:

Fay.2357:

docMed.7692:

I’d just love to see mass/PU get nerfed a bit in duration (down to 6 seconds or so) to keep players not in stealth from simply wasting all evades/random dodges trying to predict when the burst/shatter is coming.

This is amusingly hypocritical. If you think an elite skill with a 90s cooldown and an enormous 1.75 second channel that gives 5s base stealth needs to be nerfed, you’re out of your mind when thief can get even more stealth on a lower cooldown without trait investment or a long channel by just dropping shadow refuge. Yes, you can be knocked out, so try dodging next time.

In order to reach the amount of stealth that a thief can get simply by using shadow refuge, we have to burn an elite, another stealth skill, and be traited for PU. If you really think those should be nerfed, then you’ll surely agree that SR should only give 8s maximum, and the radius of the skill should be dropped by 25%.

Yea if you took the time to read any of my posts you would see a recurring theme of me constantly mentioning that SA is OP (which adds to stealth duration) and that thieves can be just as annoying in this concept – the only distinction I made is simply that mesmers can enter stealth in much safer locations, where as thieves either sit in a defined spot (SR location) or black powder >> HS through or swap + SB-2 (we of course, just like mesmers, have access to a couple instant stealth options >> e.g. spec’d steal, and/or utils).

I’m glad you were amused nonetheless.

As I had already said, shadow refuge does what I described without any trait investment, SA is not part of my argument. It does all those things, and yet you simply call it ‘annoying’ instead of calling for nerfs to it.

Why is burning a 90s cd elite along with another stealth skill while also traiting PU op but simply dropping SR and standing in it for 3 seconds isn’t?

Ah right, because SR is a thief skill, and thief skills are never op obviously.

SA is what allows for thieves to easily reset in a SR (full condi clear, increased stealth duration, constant HP regen [300+/tick], added stealth to both yourself and your target when rezzing)… what are you talking about. Any thief that throws down shadow refuge as a means to simply enter stealth & re-open is already behind significantly in a fight if they don’t have SA. Sure they can escape or dodge around if they’re running acrobatics, but re-opening without getting the condi-clear/full heal would be death in this current meta anyways. Trying to analyze ‘skill vs skill’ (as opposed to discussing how the build as a whole functions) is pointless; do you know warriors can axe burst skill for 15k+ without ANY investment? Dang must be OP k-appa!

If stealth without lots of condie clear and healing isn’t op, then explain to me why you called for a nerf to mass invis + PU just now?

You said “to keep players not in stealth from simply wasting all evades/random dodges trying to predict when the burst/shatter is coming”.

None of that has anything to do with heals or condition removal, just pure duration. So why is that op on a Mesmer but balanced on a thief, even when the thief can do it more often with less investment?

You’re obviously arguing with an enormous double standard in favor of thieves, even if you’re not aware of it. The rest of us can see it plain as day though. Every single argument you’ve used as to why thief stuff isn’t OP could be applied to Mesmer stuff as well, but you don’t. You call for nerfs to Mesmer instead, because you’re blatantly biased.

docMed.7692:

Fay.2357:

docMed.7692:

I’d just love to see mass/PU get nerfed a bit in duration (down to 6 seconds or so) to keep players not in stealth from simply wasting all evades/random dodges trying to predict when the burst/shatter is coming.

This is amusingly hypocritical. If you think an elite skill with a 90s cooldown and an enormous 1.75 second channel that gives 5s base stealth needs to be nerfed, you’re out of your mind when thief can get even more stealth on a lower cooldown without trait investment or a long channel by just dropping shadow refuge. Yes, you can be knocked out, so try dodging next time.

In order to reach the amount of stealth that a thief can get simply by using shadow refuge, we have to burn an elite, another stealth skill, and be traited for PU. If you really think those should be nerfed, then you’ll surely agree that SR should only give 8s maximum, and the radius of the skill should be dropped by 25%.

Yea if you took the time to read any of my posts you would see a recurring theme of me constantly mentioning that SA is OP (which adds to stealth duration) and that thieves can be just as annoying in this concept – the only distinction I made is simply that mesmers can enter stealth in much safer locations, where as thieves either sit in a defined spot (SR location) or black powder >> HS through or swap + SB-2 (we of course, just like mesmers, have access to a couple instant stealth options >> e.g. spec’d steal, and/or utils).

I’m glad you were amused nonetheless.

As I had already said, shadow refuge does what I described without any trait investment, SA is not part of my argument. It does all those things, and yet you simply call it ‘annoying’ instead of calling for nerfs to it.

Why is burning a 90s cd elite along with another stealth skill while also traiting PU op but simply dropping SR and standing in it for 3 seconds isn’t?

Ah right, because SR is a thief skill, and thief skills are never op obviously.

docMed.7692:

I’d just love to see mass/PU get nerfed a bit in duration (down to 6 seconds or so) to keep players not in stealth from simply wasting all evades/random dodges trying to predict when the burst/shatter is coming.

This is amusingly hypocritical. If you think an elite skill with a 90s cooldown and an enormous 1.75 second channel that gives 5s base stealth needs to be nerfed, you’re out of your mind when thief can get even more stealth on a lower cooldown without trait investment or a long channel by just dropping shadow refuge. Yes, you can be knocked out, so try dodging next time.

In order to reach the amount of stealth that a thief can get simply by using shadow refuge, we have to burn an elite, another stealth skill, and be traited for PU. If you really think those should be nerfed, then you’ll surely agree that SR should only give 8s maximum, and the radius of the skill should be dropped by 25%.

maeggle.6021:

Some former main mesmer players I know and play with switched to other professions because they consider the current state of mesmers unbearable, some of them even expressed, they don’t think they can get better at the game when the profession and their players rely on the current imbalances.

If mesmers were so unbalanced and crazy strong, we’d see them dominating in tournaments. Unfortunately for your “argument”, they don’t dominate in tournaments. They’re at least played in tournaments now, which is a step up from before…but hardly ‘unbearably unbalanced’. Any Mesmer main that switched to another class due to recent buffs isn’t a Mesmer main, they’re just a hipster that wants to be a special snowflake and always play the worst class in the game.

Praise Geesus!

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Edit: oh yeah.. And people are rallying off our clones. Plz fix this yesterday.

They did fix it yesterday. /thread

Edit: Nothing gets past me!

Chaos Archangel.5071:

(OMG AND DAT THIEF SPECIALIZATION /hypetrainnn)

Meh. Remember when the meta thief build was s/d on both sets? When they did literally nothing but steal, dodge, and mash 3? I remember, and it sucked. Not particularly pleased they’re bringing that feel back.

@Chaos: As you said, this build is highly reliant on being able to have a lot of shattering going on. Longbow warrior is able to easily maintain very high uptime of a rather painful and very large aoe field. That’s a very toxic environment to illusions, and will make it extraordinarily difficult to do any shatters.

I’ll be blunt. I think the stated concept is interesting and could be worked with. I also think the linked build is nothing short of disastrously bad.

You’ve stated you want this to be a hybrid build, but you’re using full dire or dire/rabid mix except for your weapons, which are carrion. This means you’ve basically got 180 more than baseline power in this build; a far cry from hybrid. Additionally, your crit chance is 9%. You could have 2500 power, but without critting your damage is going to be absolutely pitiful.

At the same time, you’ve failed to take the most potent condition damage trait we have: MtD. You’re essentially relying on the scepter and torch skills to get the job of condition pressure done for you, and those are going to fall short in a spectacular manner. What this build really is…is a condition damage build without any good condition pressure. It’s quite bad.

So, how do you fix it. First, you take MtD. Stop trying to stack might, you’re not an ele, it’s a waste of time. The most might you’ll end up with in this sort of build will be 10-12 stacks, and only for a couple seconds after burning a bunch of cooldowns. Instead, if you actually land the shatters you used to stack that might, you could instead have more than that many stacks of torment on your target.

Since you’re not might stacking, aristocracy runes are pointless, which brings us to the point of gear. Your gear is condition damage, and not even remotely hybrid. You’re going to need at least 50-60% crit to make this worthwhile, so go ahead and replace all that dire with rabid armor. I’d replace the weapons with zerker as well. Now you’ll have a decent crit chance, ok crit power, and better power. For runes I’d probably take a power based set, perhaps pack runes.

Next, I’d probably ditch scepter in favor of sword on one of the sets. iLeap is such a fantastic setup skill for shatters, and also helps with illusion generation. I’d probably link it with torch, that way you can more easily cast it from stealth.

I’d also probably take either master of fragmentation or ineptitude. MoF would actually work decently here, but ineptitude is great for obvious reasons. Both outclass malicious sorcery.

Lastly, I’d consider dropping mirror images for the cleanse mantra. You’re taking restorative mantras already, and you’re a bit low on condie removal in this build, so it could work well.

No de, no blinding dissipation, no stealth, and your only condition removal is on restorative illusions.

Basically, this build is food for any celery elery that glances your direction, as well as any thief that goes after you. You’d have a hard time dealing with a longbow warrior as well, or any sort of engie.

The build is relying on the hope that there won’t be any strong cleave pressure, otherwise you’ll rarely get good shatters off. You’re also relying on being able to avoid conditions by leveraging interrupts…but that’s simply not realistic in most environments without some way to disengage.

vana.5467:

Hence why I called it an “indirect” buff.
Semantics aside, the point is that it makes PU even more desirable compared to the alternatives, and I think that’s a silly thing to do.

An indirect buff is a change that buffs something without directly changing that particular mechanic. For example, if they made stealth give a baseline boost to movement speed, that would be an indirect buff to PU. It doesn’t directly change PU, but since PU provides stealth, it indirectly buffs what it does.

The veil change is actually an indirect nerf to PU. It makes the PU bonus provide a smaller flat amount of stealth when combined with veil. What it does do is it makes PU more necessary to have a veil that’s even worth putting on your bar. This isn’t an issue with PU, it’s an issue that stems from veil being garbage.

Tbh, a BD condie shatter build should be able to tear most power shatter builds a new one, particularly if you’re using sword. Blurred frenzy allows you to dodge the bulk of their bursts if you combine it with a stunbreak quickly enough. Blinding dissipation can be used predictively to help with that as well. High toughness from rabid allows you to eat a couple bursts without dying, and landing a couple full shatters will literally outright kill most power shatter builds due to lack of cleanse.

Condie shatter is considered worse than power shatter in teams due to being functionally useless against a lot of popular matchups, not because the direct matchup between it and power shatter.

vana.5467:

tobascodagama.2961:

vana.5467:

Except for veil. They sure gutted that one.

I intentionally left that out, since nobody actually ran that even while it was bugged.

WvW players do.
It’s an indirect buff to PU in a game mode where it’s already near mandatory.
I’m not happy about being even more reliant on this trait.

No, it’s not a buff to PU at all. It’s just a nerf to anything not running it.

Iavra.8510:

Skills queued up before you go into stealth will still hit you.

This is markedly apparent when using Mesmer scepter. If you just spam 1 while standing still, someone can stealth while you’re executing the first attack of the chain, and then will be tracked and hit in stealth by the following two attacks.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

@Arshay Duskbrow.1306 I don’t find any other light armor shoulders that don’t sick out too much, look to dressy or frilly. The hipster scarf was honestly last resort.

I usually have shoulders turned off. I’ll turn them on if I happen to be using my TA shoulders or T2 sylvari.

Can confirm that pre-patch no sort of rallying behavior in any way, shape, or form worked with any illusions. You need to pay a bit more attention to what your opponents are doing, Alpha.

Raizoul.8374:

messiah.1908:

Raizoul.8374:

Are you sure? did’t know that detail. For example sigil of doom procing of geomancy or a shatter randomly hits only one enemy

yes sure
its 10 icd is for each unique enemy
doom only hits one enemy

cool, thanks

On another note what do you guys think about geomancy vs energy. One slot in each weaponset is for Doom. Altho all this depend on the particulars of each build..

Energy, no contest. It’s without a doubt the strongest sigil in the game unless you absolutely need something really specific from your sigils.

Iavra.8510:

Quadox.7834:

Iavra.8510:

Clones aren’t waiting in stealth, they continue attacking.

I’m all for nerfing PU, but let’s fix The Pledge first and see how this turns out.

Dont fix the pledge. It is actually a good trait. No good mesmer currently takes the pledge or the illusions line. For gods sake dont nerf it.

Illusions is the #1 line for condition builds. And you can look at it in any way you want, the trait is bugged and needs to be fixed.

Yeah, the trait is both badly bugged and horribly conceived. Rewarding you for sitting in stealth in the form of more stealth cooldowns is rather boring. It should either be a flat 20% or something incentivizing offensive play such as cd per stack of burning applied.

Dodging ultimately isn’t the primary defense of a squishy build. That’s your last line of defense, the thing that you have to resort to if everything else fails.

Your primary defense is positioning. If you aren’t in an easily attackable position, it becomes harder to attack you. If you don’t get into the middle of a fight except to unload damage and then vanish, it’s much harder to get a consistent amount of pressure onto you. You need to keep a close lookout for significant ranged threats, such as LB rangers or mortar engies, or other classes that can be dangerous to you without having to play on your terms with positioning, and eliminate them first.

Essentially, make it difficult and unrewarding to attack you, and you’ll end up safer as a result. If someone does ultimately get to you, now you’ve got to use your active defenses. You’ll need to dodge, avoid attacks with blinding dissipation, evade with blurred frenzy, and most importantly stealth and relocate to a better position.