Guild Wars 2

The disenchanter uses an attack. As with all attacks in the game (only exception being merciful intervention), the attack is targeted at and must hit an enemy. The disenchanter uses a bouncing projectile. When the projectile hits an enemy, it rips two boons. When it hits an ally, it removes two conditions.

Once it hits an enemy, the projectile can then bounce to allies. The range of the bounce is roughly 400-500 range.

The attack speed of the disenchanter is roughly 4.5 seconds per attack. This drops to roughly 3.6 seconds per attack when traited.

If you have 3 phantasms up, spawning any illusion will destroy the oldest phantasm.

I’m pretty sure this was fixed quite a long time ago. I could be wrong though.

Jurica.1742:

Have you played in Go4 or ESL weekly and gotten to the finals, or even quarter/semi finals if there was a decent amount of teams? If not then you aren’t able to state that ‘from experience’.

Experience doesn’t have to be from a personal level to make a valid analysis. The vast majority of analysis conducted on any topic is conducted by people without firsthand knowledge, and that doesn’t make it any less valid.

Jurica.1742:

You have me confused. First you state that it works everywhere other than very top, then you say
“…To be saying that I’ve been making incorrect statements about what is viable at a tournament level….”.
Tournament and very top are two different things.

Hmm

Supcutie.2538:

Any Mesmer build that is half decent will work if you are a good player at all skill levels except the very top. I’ve never had a problem with >99% of players in solo queue and most team queues (except the higher end scrims) with non shatter builds (other than maybe PU because it lacks some proactive damage), like mtd for example.

cough (thanks supcutie)

Jurica.1742:

Also, as much as I don’t want to do this, I’ve gotta agree about Pyro. Despite the fact that I have huge respect for Pyro as he has incredible theoretical knowledge of the class, the problem is theory doesn’t always apply to practice. Soloq is =/= tournaments (& tournaments =/= WTS) and I don’t really know that he played in any therefore I don’t think he is one to say it works in tournaments and I think that because of that Helseths word is more valid since he’s been doing those for years.

I think you need to go back and review what I’ve actually said.

Every single time I’ve discussed the viability of these builds, I’ve made it painstakingly, explicitly, unambiguously clear that they are not viable at the very top level. Seriously, go back and look. Every time I say something along the lines of ‘at every level other than the very top’.

Why do I say this? I say it because in my experience and extensive knowledge, that’s what I’ve found to be true. The very top level of play drastically limits what is viable. Outside of that, though, many different options become more or less equally viable.

Now, it can be debated whether or not my statements hold true regardless (and several people certainly have tried that debate), but to say that I’ve been making incorrect statements about what is viable at a tournament level simply is factually false.

It’s hard to say whether or not you should start with Mesmer. On the one hand, Mesmer is flat out abysmal until level 70 or so. This is due to not having access to the necessary traits. As a result, Mesmer can be a brutal class to start with.

On the other hand, starting another class and then making a Mesmer second basically means that you’re going to be hyper aware of how absolutely awful Mesmer is by comparison. Starting Mesmer first means you have no basis for comparison.

Either way, Mesmer is not a fun class to level, not an easy class to learn and play, and not the most rewarding to master. My personal recommendation is to start with something else, and only make a Mesmer when you’re ready/able to power level it to 80 without actually playing it.

MailMail.6534:

For someone so “elite” and well respected, I expect more than ad hominen attacks and hyperbole.

Really? That’s precisely what I expect from Helseth. He hasn’t dribbled out much more than that in quite a while.

It does affect mind wrack. As a general rule of thumb, tooltips in this game are always wrong, and you should assume that until proven otherwise.

It affects mind wrack in an interesting way, insofar as the first clone benefits from the full bonus, the 2nd only from 2, and the third only from one.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Not realizing that what you say applys against and not for you is priceless.

Dis gon b gud

PorceleinEve.2973:

Like speaking a language doesn’t give you the right or reason to demand that others speak it, unless of course you are french, german or spanish, in which case it’s totally ok.

I don’t see the french, german, and spaniards demanding that we all learn their languages. They’re perfectly happy to communicate with each other in those languages, and I’m perfectly happy to communicate with those that speak english. It’s ridiculous for anyone to demand that someone else learns their language.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Yeah man, how about all of us in the DESIGNATED ENGLISH SERVERS*

*Citation needed.

These are not designated english servers. There is no such thing. The servers contain suggestions insofar as what many people may be speaking, but there are no designations for languages. Last I checked, game language is controlled clientside, not serverside. One would think that if Anet intended servers to be only for certain languages, they’d make that language control serverside.

PorceleinEve.2973:

speaking ENGLISH and then having them others coming into our servers speaking gibberish to us, gibberish we don’t understand.

Your servers? No, they’re not your servers. They’re servers belonging to Anet, hosting a multi-national game called Guild Wars 2. Anet happens to allow players to speak whatever language they kitten well please. It’s just a tiny bit presumptuous of you to try and tell Anet what they should be doing with their servers.

PorceleinEve.2973:

And omg YES you are totally right, it is extremely irritating, that’s why we’re posting about it here.

No, it’s not extremely irritating, you’re just getting extremely irritated. There’s a difference. A reasonable, rational, intelligent person doesn’t get irritated when exposed to other languages. Other people do.

PorceleinEve.2973:

It is indeed extremely disrespectful of them to not learn english to talk to us, in our own servers. Extremely.

Again with the our servers thing. If those servers belong to you, then they belong to me just as much, and I happen to not mind people speaking other languages on my servers at all, so you can just go to a different server and leave my servers alone.

PorceleinEve.2973:

This thread is indeed the height of absurdity and arrogance.

Glad we agree on this bit.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Having germans/french/spanish ppl demanding we learn to speak germarn/french/spanish in the english speaking server is downright insulting.

Really? I might be wrong (hint: I’m right), but the only thing I’ve seen in this thread is ignorant english-speaking people demanding that others speak english. I’ve not seen a single instance of any non-english speaker demand that you learn their language. Maybe you’re confusing threads, games, or realities, hard to tell.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Imagine how insulting that is, having all those arrogant entitled germans, insisting that german is the -only- language they’ll be using when they taxi into our perfectly fine and full english servers for an event cause their own lil’ servers can’t do it.

I’m just really bemused by this server ownership that you seem to be deluded with. Since when did Anet sell you their servers and give you free reign to manage them? Oh, that’s right, they didn’t. You’re just dribbling out statements about how you own these servers and the foreign scum can just geeet out. It’s simply preposterous. If you end up with german-speaking folks on the same map as you, guess what? Anet put them there. Take it up with Anet if you don’t like it, and I think you’ll find that Anet will happily prefer a large group of polite germans over one obnoxious person

PorceleinEve.2973:

These folks should not play -any- mmos till they go learn a bit of english so as to not insult everyone with their over the top entitlement.

My goodness, please tell me you’re just trolling. This statement could be framed and hung on a wall designated for ‘Logical Delusions and Absurdity’. In the same breath you’re both insulting people as being entitled AND demanding that they go and learn english so you don’t have to exercise your brain just a tiny bit.

Conclusion
Less xenophobes on these forums would make them a better place.

Sylvari has the best looking armor in the game.

Also, we glow.

Relshdan.6854:

makes it a social justice issue where there was none….yuck. stick to giving out great mesmer advice.

Pointing out the absurdity of demanding people speak your chosen language is a social justice issue? No, I’m thinking it’s more of a reality check. This is a big world, and you speaking a language doesn’t give you the right or reason to demand that others speak it.

How about those other people? They’re speaking their own language and understanding it just fine until you came along speaking gibberish to them. It must be incredibly irritating to them to have all these people speaking garbage english to them when there’s the perfectly fine language of (insert language here) to speak. It’s just disrespectful that you haven’t learned their own language to communicate properly with them.

Ultimately, this thread is the height of absurdity and arrogance. Demanding that other people bend to your whims is not only foolhardy, but insulting to all other cultures. If you don’t want to interact with other people, I’d recommend that you stop playing any online games. This way, you can be safe and isolated in your basement without needing to worry about scary encounters with other languages and cultures.

Xaylin.1860:

And how does that change the fact, that a CI build doesn’t bring anything specific a shatter build wouldn’t when looking at the argument you made earlier? You are the one bringing up channeling and CI itself has no advantage there. A shatter Mesmer can easily bring the same utilities and weapons.

I just fail to see how CI builds are more justifiable in Stronghold than they are righ now.

Well, CI always benefits from easy interrupts, whereas non-interrupt builds less so. Interrupting the channel means a guaranteed immobilize and such, and can put someone on the defensive of a fight immediately.

On the other hand, it’s also easy to set up a nasty normal shatter against someone standing there channeling. The best kind of cc is the one that kills them.

CobraPolo.1723:

I’ve had this happen to me every so often, always figured it to just be lag as I mostly do WvW however as of late it has been happening way more. I’d say minimum 2-3 times a day for me now.

Well, if it’s happening that often it should be easy for you to record and show that it’s actually happening. As I and Ross said earlier, until somebody catches this on video, it should be assumed that it’s not actually happening.

Dethl.2875:

Jessica Boettiger does… I think. I’ve never seen her on anything other than her mesmer (Wubbuffet), anyway.

This is true, Jessica mains mesmer. She’s also not really someone in charge of balance at all.

Sweeps.3059:

Do we actually know of a Dev who main’s a mesmer?
Anet if there is such a person we request you have them play in the stronghold developer battle royal and not kittenter as most esl players go shatter and everyone playing the same spec is boring.

No balance devs main mesmer. I’m sure somebody that works at anet (does that count as a dev?) mains mesmer, but nobody important does.

Dondagora.9645:

Simply put, I feel like we’re gonna be mainly good at shepherding bombs across the map.

I actually sorta disagree with this. Swiftness and/or consistent stealth is going to be what’s best at doing that. This basically means warrior/ele with easy perma-swiftness, or thief for perma-stealthing.

I do think that the more open and varied nature of these fights means that power shatter is probably not going to be the only effective build though.

StormHawk.9862:

Fay.2357:

StormHawk.9862:

Alright, thanks for everyone’s input about commanding, however I still need some builds, so please post.

You’ve been given a lot of information, tips, and advice in this thread. Instead of just demanding that people make builds for you, why don’t you try and come up with something all by yourself, and then we can give you further feedback on what you make.

I am thankful for what information everyone has given and have never demanded a build, so please don’t say that.

I mean…

StormHawk.9862:

however I still need some builds, so please post.

StormHawk.9862:

tl;dr: gimme an optimal trait build

So there is that…

StormHawk.9862:

The reason I’m asking for a build is because I’ve pondered so many ideas,

So then take one of those ideas and make it into a build. It’s not like the first build you come up with must be the one that you will use for the next year. Take those ideas, consider what you want to do, how you want to do it, and make a build that you think fits. Post it here, and see if people feel that it does what you want it to do.

StormHawk.9862:

Alright, thanks for everyone’s input about commanding, however I still need some builds, so please post.

You’ve been given a lot of information, tips, and advice in this thread. Instead of just demanding that people make builds for you, why don’t you try and come up with something all by yourself, and then we can give you further feedback on what you make.

You’re commanding, you’re not going to do damage.

See, here’s the thing, and this is why you don’t command on a mesmer. If you want to do any damage in WvW (and you still won’t even do 10% of what an ele does effortlessly) you have to bend your build over backwards to be specifically designed to do any damage, whereas a guardian can just spam 1 on a staff and do just fine.

Doing this means you don’t have a build that survives.

If you want to command, you need to focus on surviving. Surviving and being able to lead a group are your first priorities, with everything else coming far behind. You say that you have the skill to stay alive and survive because you’re experienced? Sorry, but that’s simply not true. A commander wades into the fights first. They break through the hammer train. They get hit with everything. The only way you’re going to survive that on a mesmer (that doesn’t have good access to prot or aegis) is by going absolute full and total tank.

tl;dr: You must go full tank or you will fail miserably.

ASP.8093:

Shintei.9061:

We do use The Prestige for stomping but mainly because of the stealth and not due to the blind.

The blind popping when you exit stealth is pretty perfect. It tends to soak the last-chance Hammer Toss, Grappling Line, Thunderclap, or Fear.

Except that it blinds when you enter stealth, not when you exit it…

Invites are up to date.

Clones have always replaced the oldest phantasm if you already have 3 phantasms up. This is how it has been since launch, and this is by design and makes perfect sense.

Electro.4173:

I believe entering stealth auto-cancels any and all actions you’re currently taking. A measure to prevent you from auto-attacking and instantly revealing yourself or something.

It doesn’t, but most skills that provide stealth do have that effect. The notable exception to this is the thief trait ‘last refuge’, and it’s a fantastic example of why stealth skills all interrupt actions.

I find that PU mesmer and burst thief combo together really wonderfully. You can sorta make a nice mess of things as a PU mesmer, and people will focus on you. Every now and then, your burst thief will just delete someone. It works quite nicely.

StormHawk.9862:

Um so… in other words sword does outright more damage than gs at max range?

Sword is significantly higher dps at close range than gs does at max range.

Photoloss.4817:

Fay.2357:

You’re comparing apples and oranges. Are you at 1200 range? The gs does more damage…since the sword is a melee weapon. Are you at melee range? The sword does far more damage.

Actually, how does pure MoP spam fare vs. pure GS auto at non-melee ranges?

The tagging/AoE burst capability of GS will probably earn it a slot in the end, especially since iZerker can hit several people without inflicting any retal damage on ourselves.

3-tap MoP will outdamage the gs auto even at max range, iirc. That being said…MoP requires a clunky recharging time that does not play nice with mobility in a WvW group.

StormHawk.9862:

Ah ok, but I mean in like general terms, not just auto attacks, like the weapon overall, which has the greater DPS? I know one is ranged and one is not, but which does more damage overall

You’re comparing apples and oranges. Are you at 1200 range? The gs does more damage…since the sword is a melee weapon. Are you at melee range? The sword does far more damage.

You’ll be using staff as your main damage weapon. To get maximum damage, you’ll want something that looks like…

04604 or 04505 taking DE, chaotic dampening, and IE. You’ll want to use full rabid gear for this; sinister is technically higher dps, but then you’re as squishy as zerker, and that’s sorta the reason why you’d use condie instead of power in the first place.

Zenith.7301:

and making them not work out of LOS

Let’s be honest though, being able to destroy any seige placed within 1200 range of anywhere a mesmer could reach was sorta broken.

Fun….but really broken.

eozturk.7205:

@Fay. When clones started to getting benefit from toughness of the character? I remember it was vitality instead toughness.

MtD shatter works. What makes people doesn’t want to play it, lack of mobility that Power-Shatter offers and quite squishy compared to other condition builds in the game.

Vitality has never affected illusions, only toughness.

Sebrent.3625:

I’m not sure it’d be balanced to have a weapon give both stealth and revealed on its own.

I’m not sure what you think would be unbalanced about that.

That being said, I’m not convinced that having revealed on a phantasm at all would be balanced, but that has nothing to do with being on a weapon that gives stealth.

skcamow.3527:

Fay.2357:

Guess what else isn’t being used at the top tournaments? Oh, it’s mesmer as a whole..

Not true.

At the ESL weekly cup last Thursday there was at least one team using standard power shatter. I know helseth would have but he couldn’t play for some reason.

At the EU Go4 cup Sunday there were three, two of which were on the same team.

At the NA Go4 cup there were two.

It’s a little hard to tell, since ESL doesn’t think it’s worth their time to record the classes that people play, but from what I can deduce off of screenshots…not a single team with a mesmer on it even made it into the finals in any of those cups. Often the first round match was even a ridiculous blowout, and they got trounced once they faced a competent team. The fact that mesmers were used doesn’t make their use a good idea. I should have been more clear.

luxontime.1046:

Also, the scepter block is super powerful (if it lands), but as I do (and many decent people do against me) you simple dodge after you see the animation and ‘block’ appear. They do need to ‘fix’ that actually, needs a much faster counter blow, maybe make it near instant so you have to be really quick to react to dodge it. May need a damage reduction though in that case. Anyway I digress.

There are a lot of tricky ways to get the scepter block to land with high consistency. I’ve made several posts about them, they’re floating around in my post history somewhere.

luxontime.1046:

All I’m saying is: I’m yet to find a build 1v1 which can out-sustain this one from condi removal alone.

Well, this depends. Do you mean a build at all, or a build that I’d actually run.

Any build with heal mantra, removal mantra, restorative mantras, and mender’s purity would out-sustain your damage by just spamming all their mantras off of cooldown.

Any build with pDisenchanter would both remove your conditions faster than you applied them while removing your boons more or less instantly as well.

A shoutbow warrior would have far more than enough condition removal to never die to this.

A standard celery ele would also be incredibly difficult to kill with this.

Any competent SA specced thief would never die to this build.

There’s a lot of builds out there that would be able to completely disregard your damage pressure. It’s possible you haven’t run into them yet, but these builds I’ve mentioned would absolutely shut it down.

witcher.3197:

yet it’s not being used at tournaments

Guess what else isn’t being used at the top tournaments? Oh, it’s mesmer as a whole. I guess that puts power shatter on even footing with everything else that isn’t being used at tournaments.

luxontime.1046:

This is just a bit of fun to be honest. It’s the condition build I’ve had the best time with in terms of enjoyment for a long time (on any class). I’m just showing the fun I have/had and while I know and completely agree that it isn’t meta or optimised, the PU aspect makes it viable for roaming.

This I understand, that being said…

luxontime.1046:

I actually fought a MtD mesmer yesterday with scepter instead of sword and honestly he just coudn’t land any shatters on me because he didn’t have any way of keeping me still and my mobility was too much. The sword is necessary to pin them in place for just long enough.

This isn’t accurate. It’s more difficult to land shatters, certainly, but it’s not impossible. You simply need to be more skilled with clone placement and baiting. Additionally, scepter itself adds an immense amount of damage pressure from skilled use of the block.

luxontime.1046:

For the fights against people with good removal, I WILL out-sustain them PU is so powerful I will win in the end.

This really isn’t accurate. In order to ‘out-sustain’, you’re making the assumption that you’re actually killing them at all. This is a faulty assumption. I’m fairly certain that I could literally facetank 100% of your damage using nothing but my heal and a utility or two in several builds. Your condition application is simply too slow to kill someone with good removals.

Honestly, I think you play quite well. That being said, there’s pretty much nothing good I can say about this build. It has less survivability than PU condie (no crippling dissipation, no torch cooldowns for more torch 4, less condition removal from torch trait) and it has less pressure than either PU or a normal MtD build. Normal PU will have torch (scepter block is enormous pressure) and confusion beam (good application for doom sigil + decent confusion). Additionally, it’s able to produce a lot of clones to make those DD procs work for you. You just don’t have that at all. MtD obviously produces a lot more pressure from shatters. You shatter now and then, but you don’t really have the clones to pressure people with it.

This can be seen pretty easily in that fight against the ranger. The mesmer and guardian were hilariously bad and seemed to have close to zero condition removal, so even the small bit of condies you applied did manage to stick. The ranger, on the other hand, had good sustain and good removal. You were completely unable to kill them until help showed up after 3 minutes of fighting, and that would have gone on for far longer. This build simply has no pressure against even okish condition removal/sustain.

BlackDevil.9268:

It’s not instant because you don’t have IP. Clones need to have a target to shatter, no matter what shatter. If they don’t for about 2 seconds they will just shatter themselves.

I think the point is that this is bad/buggy design, particularly in the case of distortion.

I cringe every time you heal for the centaur rune proc. Other than that, decent play.

BlackDevil.9268:

In a 1v1 sure. But when speaking about teamfights it will come down to 2-3seconds kills. Highly doubt you can avoid team fights all the time as mesmer without being completely useless.

Remember, different roles. The role of MtD shatter is applying pressure to facilitate that burst kill, say from a thief or a LB ranger. Pressure opens vulnerabilities, and the burst builds exploit those vulnerabilities.

BlackDevil.9268:

Not only that but landing a combo shatter on mtd in a team fight is significantly much harder than on power shatter due that you lack your most reliable shatter: yourself/IP. Just the slightest aoe or CC should kill your burst. Not to mention it can be easily cleansed with the condi removal spam going on with the eles, warriors and guards.

This is accurate. The clones do have more defense (due to rabid toughness transferring), but you’re still right on this account. It’s very possible to land them though, and as long as you are able to chain them, condition removal can be baited or out-applied. This particularly true if you happen to have someone else that applies conditions, even if they’re not a condie build.

BlackDevil.9268:

You can easily compare them to eachother since you’re talking about a game mode and a certain meta.

Not really true. You should compare builds playing particular roles with other builds playing those same roles. Power shatter fills a very different role than MtD shatter, so comparing them directly is a poor choice.

BlackDevil.9268:

You can’t just switch out all specs which are deciding the meta and try to build around your condi mesmer. That will just easily end up in a massive failure.

This is true, I agree. Remember though, nobody is disputing the fact that mesmer simply isn’t in the very top end of the meta, where cele reigns supreme. MtD, Power shatter, whichever role you choose to play, another class does it better.

BlackDevil.9268:

If condies were a counter to the current meta, I’m pretty sure people would have figured it out after 1/2 a year. And when looking at what’s the slightest counter to cele it’s by big bursts and trying to snowball out of that.

Condies do show up in teams from time to time. You’ll see them on engineers and necromancers generally. Also don’t forget that the cele builds themselves are often quite condie heavy. There’s no true counter to the cele meta, you simply play with it as it is.

Just one more time, none of what I’ve been saying is a counter the cele meta. None of this is truly going to work to counter that set of build and style of play. If you want to have maximum efficiency at playing a condition build, you’d do it on an engineer or necro (but probably engineer). If you wanted to have maximum efficiency playing a power build, you’d do it on a thief or mediguard.

However, maximum efficiency is not the name of the game in this subforum. Playing a mesmer in PvP precludes that by definition. The question is, what is viable at a level outside of that of WTS. If it can work, it can be viable. MtD shatter can work, therefor it can be viable. It’s not the best, it’s not the greatest, and it’s not the most efficient or effective way to play. It’s simply good enough.

BlackDevil.9268:

Since most kills are gained by quick bursts, I wouldnt count too much on condi bursts over 5 seconds though.

Power kills are gained by quick bursts, condie kills are gained through condie pressure over time.

I think a big issue is that a lot of people are treating this build like a power shatter build. You’re looking for that same sort of fight-ending burst potential, and it simply isn’t there.

On the other hand, power shatter doesn’t have particularly good sustained pressure. Yeah, you can autoattack with greatsword from range and toss out zerkers now and then, but that’s not honestly very significant. When you land a big shatter in a MtD build, you get that significant sustained pressure. Torment, confusion, some bleeds, some poison on multiple people. This nasty stuff, and it will kill people if not removed.

Both builds apply their pressure in the same way. Both builds have similar utility capabilities while applying that pressure. The difference is in what happens directly after the burst, and when you want to apply that pressure. Power shatter aims to kill people after the instant of that burst, and so you try to time it so that people are already vulnerable. MtD shatter puts an immense amount of pressure on everyone that it hits, over the next 10 or so seconds. Its aim isn’t to kill, but instead to force reactions, cause the other team to do something or wither.

They both have their place in a team, but it’s an entirely different place. You can’t equate or compare the two directly, it just doesn’t make sense.

messiah.1908:

it suppose to be an examples to the ppl who said conditions cant do high dmg output versus the power one in tpvp.

Then in that case, you should have just shown examples of being able to do strong damage, you shouldn’t have tried to compare it. Comparisons are not always necessary, or even reasonable. This is one of those cases, and attempting to compare to incomparable situations simply leads to critiques of that comparison, instead of noticing the actual point you were trying to make.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Fay.2357:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

One last thing, any reason for elasticity over invigoration? I saw you run the exact same build as vashury so I was wondering if you were inspired by him or not.

Invigoration is useful sometimes. Elasticity provides the potential to instantly delete a squishy class from a fight every time mirror blade is up. That’s a substantial benefit that can’t be ignored.

I am definitely aware of the power of elasticity and mirror blade pyro. I just find in wvw it is very risky to run without invigoration, as if any burst class interferes with your 1vx, you basically just die due to lack of distortion/diversion.

Eh, there are a ton of assumptions in that statement though. The primary one is that invigoration hasn’t already been procced. Sure, in a perfect world you won’t drop below 50% unless you get surprise ganked, but lets be honest—you’re playing a glassy shatter build; dropping below 50% happens, and it happens all the time. Invigoration will be procced prematurely the vast vast majority of the time, and that simply makes it unreliable.

Having a significantly stronger burst, however, is only as unreliable as your bursting skills. Ultimately it’s a difference between sometimes possibly having an escape, and always being able to burst substantially harder.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

One last thing, any reason for elasticity over invigoration? I saw you run the exact same build as vashury so I was wondering if you were inspired by him or not.

Invigoration is useful sometimes. Elasticity provides the potential to instantly delete a squishy class from a fight every time mirror blade is up. That’s a substantial benefit that can’t be ignored.

Ok, so I’ve made my position on the viability of MtD shatter quite clear in the past: I feel that it is viable at any level outside of WTS play, along with every other reasonable mesmer build.

That being said, the “comparison” being shown this video is misleading at best, and a deliberate falsification at worst.

You’re comparing a 10 second clip of helseth being forced to autoattack from 1000 range due to heavy pressure on a point to a whole bunch of shatter bursts executed at close range under mostly light pressure. This is really no comparison at all, it just doesn’t make sense.

If you actually wanted to make a reasonable comparison of the best damage power shatter could offer, you’d have included snippets of Vashury deleting people, but that wouldn’t have made the point that you’re trying to make, would it have?

Ultimately, power shatter and MtD shatter fulfill substantially different roles, play substantially differently, apply substantially different types of pressure, and overall do damage in a substantially different way. Trying to directly compare the two for any reason is truly foolhardy.

Also.

BlackDevil.9268:

No wonder you don’t do good on any power spec.

Your ad hominems are getting real old BlackDevil. I’d recommend trying to come up with some real arguments in the future.

AnniMira.2506:

Can the extractor from the gem store be used to separate the sigil and the wvw weapon?

Yeah, but the extractor is far far far more expensive than any upgrade you can put into it.

As to the why, what if you eventually upgrade to ascended, or you’d like to simply use the sigil/rune on a different set? There’s any number of reasons you could want to get it back out. That being said, the majority of the upgrades I’ve put into gear have stayed, but I’m highly experienced and generally know what I want to do with a piece of gear. Newer players don’t quite have that luxury.

AnniMira.2506:

I have purchased full set of weapons from wvw vendor (1 gold + badges) as soon as characters are at level 80. EotM is good place to level because you get the badges of honor at the same time.

At level 60 the exo wvw weapons are only power/vitality. They are better than nothing to level 80. But if you’re low of badges of honor, save badges for level 80 weapons.

Massive Massive Caveat

Any gear purchased with badges cannot be salvaged. This means that any and all upgrades you put into that gear are gone forever. Badges are a great way to get a cheap set of exotics, but I strongly recommend against doing so, because you basically forfeit ever using the upgrades you put into them for anything else.

Eggshells.1748:

@nDroid..

Mind sharing what skins you used!? .. I love that look

That’s all the standard ascended gear.

skcamow.3527:

OP, unfortunately disruptor’s sustainment is an

BD, just to avoid confusion.

Bunda.2691:

Q: what are people’s thoughts on torch vs. pistol offhand for pvp condi?

Different weapons for different purposes. Torch provides defense in multiple forms; pistol provides offense in multiple forms.

Dondagora.9645:

phokus.8934:

Second – I never said the sigils/autoattacks do a lot of damage but rather are the damage. Big difference as the total damage done is mainly from those sources but the burst just isn’t there. You’re also overlooking the fact that condition builds are primarily linked to autoattacks and their sigils. Most power based builds in pvp do not as they rely on burst rather than sustained dps.

I beg to differ. PU, perhaps, relies on autos and the AA of clones more, however Condi Shatter relies on, as you may have guessed, shatters as their main source of damage and rely on autos as much as, per say, power shatter[using them every now and then for a little extra DPS]. We utilize our staff clones for conditions as well as we can, of course, but it is definitely not what our condi shatter builds are built around or rely on for damage.

Not even PU relies so much upon autoattacks as it does on clone deaths and things like the scepter block. It’s absurd to say that any build relies entirely upon autoattacks. All builds rely on sigils to some extent as well. Condie builds rely on sigils for poison generally, and power builds rely greatly on sigils for adding to the burst significantly with fire/air.

At any rate, as I said before…PU condie (I can’t personally speak for condie shatter) is absolutely viable at any level outside of WTS competition. Source: I have played it there, successfully.

witcher.3197:

Condi is noob friendly. If you can’t play power effectively and you play in the low/middle rating zone then yes, you’ll be more useful with condi. The moment you learn how to play mesmer or step out of elohell, power outclasses condi so hard I can’t even describe it.

Except that it doesn’t. Condie builds, played well, are absolutely effective all the way up to anything less than WTS level of play. Source: me.