Guild Wars 2

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Ross Biddle.2367:

In these situations it’s potentially irrelevant if you can burst someone down or not. On point defense serves as a battle of attrition, and so long as you can outlast/outdamage over time the opponent, you’re doing your job. In that instance “condi” is as viable as anything.

To elaborate on this, condition builds are generally much more suited for maintaining outnumbered fights. If you’re fighting more than one person, it doesn’t actually matter whether or not you even lose the point. As long as you’re able to put yourself into a position where if they fight you with less than 2 people, their point will be lost, you’re forcing an outnumbered fight on the rest of the map for your team.

Sometimes teams will even send 3 people to deal with you, and you can really just run around in circles devoting all your mobility and skills to simply playing hide and seek. It doesn’t matter if you never kill a single person, or if you never take that point. What matters is that on the rest of the map, your team is playing 4v2.

MSFone.3026:

Fay.2357:

MSFone.3026:

Damage stats scale linearly

-snip-

Unfortunately, this is a case of abusing math to obtain an improper result.

The equations you list are linear in x, just so everyone is clear. So what is my improper result?

You took the statement that all damage calculations are linear and used that to imply that they’re all linear to the same magnitude. Some have a higher linear scaling, others lower. The difference is in the skill coefficients that you dismissed at the start of your post.

MSFone.3026:

I said: “From a stats perspective” hybrid is fine. Everything you wrote supports that claim. In fact, your analysis using “Math Based Diminishing Return” implies that it is always more efficient to increase your lowest dmg stat, if you are concerned with % efficiency gain per stat point. If you want to make it, it is an argument for choosing hybrid stats.

You’re absolutely right that an analysis based purely on MBDR tends to favor essentially an equalization of stats. An analysis based on that alone, however, is faulty for the other reasons I mentioned. There’s a good reason I used Power vs Precision as my example for MBDR, and that’s because MBDR doesn’t apply as directly when you’re comparing conditions and power.

MBDR is, as you noted, as % based approach. % based approaches can be highly misleading if you don’t also consider the absolute values that they produce. In the case of prec vs power, the % are both based off of the same starting value, meaning that they’re a good basis for comparison. If you try to apply MBDR with power/prec vs condition damage, you’ll find the exact opposite.

Another bit of a complication is that conditions are really easy to pull dps values out of. Something like phantasms are much harder. A pSwordsman has roughly a .5 power scaling coefficient (per second)…but that’s contingent upon it being alive and attacking, and that scaling can be potentially boosted by critical hits.

Ultimately, if you actually go through and crunch the numbers, power scaling blows condition damage scaling clear out of the water (see —> pve meta). Trying to claim that point per point, condition damage is equal in strength to power is simply brutally false. There are absolutely ways to justify running conditions (I prefer roaming as a condie build), but making a linear scaling-based argument is not one of those ways.

The reason I noted that having a small amount of condition damage is not worth it is tied to the application techniques that I mentioned. If you’re equally good at dealing both condition and power damage, then you should attempt to gain semi-even amounts of both (MBDR is more applicable in this case). However, if you’re more focused on power damage, every point of condition damage is now basically far less effective than it could be. MBDR does not apply, because due to build constraints you’re simply not getting mileage out of those condition damage points.

That is the case here—the build is primarily focused on power damage, and the condition damage application is pretty much limited to debilitating dissipation and scepter 2. That’s going to be maybe 7 stacks of torment (absolute maximum) and 3-5 stacks of bleed (again, maximum). That’s really just awful condition application, and that makes condition damage from his build, as I stated, tickle at worst. I didn’t go into a full explanation of why it would only tickle at worst, but that’s still the case of what would occur.

Edit: Response to your edit

MSFone.3026:

It’s kind of weird that in your last paragraph you actually start giving examples of tools we have that are in fact good at both types of dmg. So are you saying one can’t effectively build for hybrid trait wise or weapon wise? One could go scepter/torch + sword/pistol for example. Even great sword can be a good hybrid weapon, as the clones from it are the best ones at applying bleeds due to the GS auto attack. Traits I don’t see any obvious issue, but correct me if there is.

If you look through my posts carefully, you’ll notice that I never actually said that mesmer can’t do hybrid. I just pointed out a lot of reasons why hybrid builds often aren’t very good, and then finished with recommendations as to a direction to go for a more effective hybrid build.

I didn’t provide those recommendations in the original post because the smallest modification to the shown build was a slight stat change, compared with drastically changing weapon choices.

MailMail.6534:

This is a little off topic, but not really? I had no idea that phantasms didn’t proc CC!! :O Can someone confirm this? There’s no room for confusion here: phantasms are definitely illusions as proved via Illusionist Celerity. If this bug is true, it would deserve a “hot fix”, but I we only get hot fixes when they’re nerfing things like Power Block. el oh el.

Last I checked, phantasms proc confusing combatants. This was fixed well over a year ago I believe.

MailMail.6534:

In reference to Dazzling Glamours, I always took “…blind foes at target location” to mean that the blind is applied only at activation of the glamour. i.e. if you walked into a Null Field after it was cast, you wouldn’t be blinded. idk if this is how it works, but it’s how I always imagined it. So this wouldn’t take into account the pulses of Null Field. No other glamour “pulses”.

What you have here is exactly how it works. The wording isn’t crystal clear, but it’s pretty evident what it’s trying to say.

Honestly, until someone actually gets a video of this occurring, I’m quite fine considering any and all complaints of this nature as one of a couple things:

1. Lag
2. Clones not shattering immediately
3. Disable applying just after distortion ends or just before the distortion gets applied

I’ve played this game just a little bit extensively, and I’ve never ever seen a single problem even remotely like any of the things stated here, so I have a very hard time believing them without video proof.

MSFone.3026:

Damage stats scale linearly

-snip-

Unfortunately, this is a case of abusing math to obtain an improper result. You mention something in passing and then blow by it, lets look at it again:

MSFone.3026:

Yes it is a little different because of coefficients on skills etc.

This is a BIG DEAL. You can’t just ignore this. Coefficients determine the scaling for ultimate damage output. Here’s a really quick example to illustrate it:

Lets look at the difference between 1000 and 1500 condition damage for 10 stacks of bleed and burning.

Bleed

(.05*x + 42.5)*10 = dps

x = 1000 : dps = 925
x = 1500 : dps = 1175

1175/925 = 1.27
1175-925 = 250

You can see that going from 1000 to 1500 condition damage is a 27% increase in total damage, not 50% like a direct linearly scaling stat would imply. You can also see that the 500 condition damage translated into a flat 250 dps increase.

Burning

.25*x + 328 = dps

x = 1000 : dps = 578
x = 1500 : dps = 703

703/578 = 1.216
703-578 = 125

You can see that the same increase in condition damage produces only at 21.6% increase in overall damage for burning compared to the 27% increase for 10 stacks of bleeding. You can also see that the 500 condition damage translated into a flat 125 dps increase.

So this is a really clear example showing that not all stats are created equal. Condition damage alone is worth different amounts depending on what conditions you use and how you use them. On top of that all, it’s worth noting that conditions have a flat amount added after scaling is applied. This is what causes the difference in % increase, and this difference will actually get smaller as your condition damage increases.

Suffice to say, this is not as simple of an interaction as you think. Also remember that all of this analysis is before even taking into account the effects of other stats such as condition duration, critical chance, and critical damage. Adding those in makes an already complicated analysis vastly more complex.

Additionally, you need to take into account what I like to call ‘Math-Based Diminishing Returns’ (MBDR). There’s no actual diminishing returns on stats in this game, but MBDR will strike regardless of hardcoded DR or not. Here’s how this works:

Starting with a stat of 1000, adding 500 to get you to 1500 is a 50% increase.

Starting with a stat of 2000, adding 500 to get you to 2500 is a 25% increase.

So as you get more of a stat, adding additional amounts of it is less efficient from a % standpoint. This is most effectively viewed with power and crit. Once you’ve already got 2000 power, adding more power is relatively less effective, because you could be getting a significantly higher crit chance. Tripling your chance to crit (from say 10 to 30, costing 420 precison), assuming 200% critical damage, produces a 23.8% increase in damage. Compare that to adding 420 power if you already have 2500 power — 2920/2500 = 1.168, or only a 16.8% increase in damage

On top of all of this, you have to take into account other less mathable variables such as enemy condition cleanse, the average armor of enemies you face, the effectiveness of your condition application, how effective confusion you apply will be (so how skilled are your enemies). All of these things combine to make an incredibly complex picture for determining the effectiveness of stat scaling.

Generally speaking, the effectiveness of your condition application is really the kicker for hybrid builds. What happens very often when trying to make a hybrid build is that you end up with relatively poor ways to do both power and condition damage, because you don’t specialize into either. This ends up making both of your damage stats less effective than they could be. Compare this to specializing for either condition damage or power damage, where you’re making the absolute best possible use out of your chosen stat.

To get around this, you’ll often try to pick weapons that do a good job at both. The iDuelist is pretty decent here — it does a lot of bleeds, and it does strong power damage. Scepter is pretty decent too — it has good power scaling and also does a lot of conditions. Greatsword and staff are both decent in different ways. This aspect of making a hybrid is really the most important part, far more important than the actual stats you end up with.

Iavra.8510:

Watch this video:
https://youtu.be/uudHN4IwsXc

At about 1:20 i use distortion and you can see the invulnerable icon (+ the master of reflection icon) popping up, going away, and popping up again. I didn’t get hit in between but it seems like i was vulnerable for like a second during F4 at that moment.

Note that this was with IP traited.

What happened there was that the immediate distortion was from IP, you can note that it was 1 second long. The 2 clones you had up were targeted on someone that had gone into stealth, and this causes the shatter activation to be delayed by a second or so. You can see this by watching the clones — they stand there for a second or so before popping. After those 2 clones finally pop, you get another 2 seconds of distortion.

MightyMicah.7451:

If I’m not mistaken, there are a few unblockable interrupt skills which I believe supersede distortion. But a more experienced Mesmer might be able to correct me.

Nothing supersedes distortion. Not even something as absurdly powerful as a trebuchet shot. If you position yourself at the precise point of impact and pop distortion, the trebuchet shot will fizzle.

Botlike.6478:

Nice to see everyone ignores my post completly, and just keeps going QQ, cause thats what is all about to you. I see.

The reason most people are ignoring your post and the one you replied to is that the shield skills have almost definitely been coded and finished for probably months already. No amount of forum speculation or discussion will change them at all.

This is a fairly standard hybrid PU build. I’ll say that the hybrid part of it is not doing you any favors though. With only 515 condition damage, your conditions are going to do nothing more than tickle, at the very most. You’re really just sacrificing more damage from other sources with that bit of rabid armor and weapons. I’d recommend replacing that armor with cavaliers/knights to still give you that defense, but keeping in line with the power damage.

MailMail.6534:

If I totally made this up in my head, please tell me now and delete this thread

You totally made this up in your head. MoR has never removed conditions with mender’s purity when you charge it. It’s always been a bit of an odd case that way.

Whether or not it should is a discussion worth having, but it never has.

Coulter.2315:

Colin did say “those getting only a new 1 handed weapon will still get something just as good (as 2 hander)” (im paraphrasing) so there is a chance one of our CURRENT weapons will be usable in a different slot (Pistol becoming available for mainhand).

This keeps the “1 new weapon per class” and satisfies the “just as good as 2 hander.”

Just a guess thats going around.

That’s less than a guess, it’s more of an extreme twisting of his words to suit the fantasies that people refuse to let go of. We’re not getting a mainhand pistol with HoT, it’s simply not happening. It’s been stated in no uncertain terms that it will only be 1 new weapon unlocked per class.

rchu.8945:

cyyrix.6105:

Go in with two and bring lots of interrupts. Turreteers are weak to CC. Spamming cc lets the other person land everything, which takes them down pretty quick.

IMO the “play the other two points” thing only works if the engi is bunkered on his own home point. If you have to hold far, the opponents’ short respawn walk does a lot to balance that outnumbered fight.

The build definitely needs a nerf though.

maybe it’s more like Mersmer needs some major buffs?

It’s not like Mesmer is the only class that has difficulties with turret engies. Complaint threads about turret engies are more or less a constant fixture in the pvp forums. Turret engies are simply too strong bunkering.

Honestly, as a content creator you really shouldn’t need to dodge the random restrictions that random foreign countries impose on fair use. In the states, fair use covers copyrighted music as long as you don’t have the video monetized.

It’s very possible to dodge blocks using proxies or other methods, and it’s not worth you lowering the production value of your vids by using a crappy and limited selection of music.

Mr Colin.1863:

And yes, I hope that the Mesmer will get a new MH weapon set if equipped with the shield.

Speculate away, just know that they have explicitly said this is not happening.

Three options. The first option is to simply let them have fun humping turrets on that point and go do things elsewhere. This is usually the best option. The second option is to bring a friend. If you really need to debunk that engie, you should bring a friend. The third option is to nuke the turrets/engie down from 1200 range with greatsword. The engie can’t really retaliate against you doing that…but it’ll take quite a while.

Mr Colin.1863:

And I’m intensely curious how you interpret speculative. On top of that, this quote was pulled off of reddit, fair enough. And has as little basis as anything posted on this forum in relation to HoT. This is why this is speculative. I am sorry for holding on to the belief that we will be compensated equally by Anet for getting an offhand. I am so terribly sorry.

I think you’re completely misinterpreting what Jon Peters said in a rather amusing way. When JP said ‘something just as good’…he doesn’t mean literally the same thing. He means that the other stuff the class will be getting, in any form, will make up for the lack of 3 weapon skills. He’s not saying ‘yeah, since you guys don’t get 3 mainhand weapon skills, we’ll just give you 3 more, call it even’. That would be absurd.

Mr Colin.1863:

#This is not false. Every class will get 5 new skills on top of the new elite/healing/utility. “Jon Peters teased that classes getting an offhand would get something “just as good” as the extra three skills"
The classes that receive an offhand will receive 3 new skills to compensate for the fact that it is an offhand. This has been confirmed by GW2 themselves. So, through that, every class will get 5 skills for their new weapon. Correct? I am merely speculating what it could be.

I’m intensely curious as to how you turn ‘something just as good’ into ‘classes that receive an offhand will receive 3 new skills to compensate for the fact that it is an offhand’. I’m really honestly curious. There’s absolutely no way within any possible reasonable leap of logic that you can pull your statement out of Jon Peters’ statement. I haven’t seen such an obvious and direct misleading leap of logic since…well, since the blackdevil thread yesterday, but that’s sorta besides the point.

So uh, lets clear this up a little.

Mr Colin.1863:

Consider what we know up until now:

Problem is, almost everything that follows this statement is false.

Mr Colin.1863:

*All classes get 5 skills with their new weapon (Ele even more).

This is false. Anet has stated that each class will get 1 new weapon. They have stated that some classes will only get an offhand, and those classes will get ‘something just as good as 3 extra mainhand skills’.

Mr Colin.1863:

*Specializations lock you into one role.

This is not something they’ve ever even hinted at.

Mr Colin.1863:

*Things that are considered core to professions, e.g. shatters, ranger pets, etc. will change while locked in this specialization.

I’m gonna go ahead and call this one false based on your terminology used. They’ve stated that class mechanics will be modified by the specializations, but they’ve never said any odd terminology like ‘being locked into’ a specialization.

Mr Colin.1863:

*Every class will already get extra utilities/elites/heals when locked into the specialization.

They never said this. They simply said that along with specializations, classes will get new heal(s), utility(s), and elite(s).

Mr Colin.1863:

Thereby excluding Mesmer (and presumably Warrior) will not receive extra utilities, but rather extra MH skills when in their specialization role.

I can’t understand what you’re trying to say here.

So basically…no. You’re wrong. I’m not discounting the possibility that the ‘something just as good’ will actually be just as good, I simply think that statement should be taken with a grain of salt.

jenzie.4083:

I can’t even see it with Hola. Fay, which country did you choose in Hola? I’ve tried UK, US and Germany.

Honestly, I have no idea what might work, I just know that when I’ve come across videos that are blocked, Hola (I usually used UK) let me access them. Personally, I can see it fine without Hola (I’m US).

Wile.5024:

gj putting copyrighted content on the vid, can’t even view it

Works fine for me. You should look into the chrome extension called ‘Hola better internet’.

Omnio.3652:

Well we don’t know if shield is all we get, or do we? Maybe there is a main weapon we are getting as well. If not, well… another thing Anet would failed at.

Anet has stated explicitly that only one weapon will be getting released per class.

@Blackdevil

I find it educational that when presented with a simple and logical series of facts, you choose to ignore them and descend into juvenile critiques of character and playing skill. I’ll just assume that to mean that you don’t actually have a response.

BlackDevil.9268:

You were the exact same 1/2 year ago, when I actually took the effort to watch your video’s. Your knowledge about mesmer is very good, but in practice you seem very poorly skilled.

Real solid jab there, especially considering that I haven’t actually posted a gameplay video in 2 years, 1 month. I’d like to think I’ve gotten better in the past 2 years, I’m sure you have.

BlackDevil.9268:

This however, says much more about the player than the build. And I’m pretty sure any skilled mesmer will laugh at you once you say condi shatter, CS lockdown or power phantasm is as good as power shatter in sPvP or well… pretty much anywhere where there is PvP.

No see, here’s the difference. You just ‘say’ things are that good. I provide evidence, logic, and facts showing that what I say is true.

Having looked at your channel, I could go ahead and call you out on all sorts of mistakes and such in your play. However, I recognize that those are 9 months old and are not necessarily representative of your current skill. I also stopped by GW2Score for a quick peek at how you performed in PvP previously. It turns out that you actually did perform quite fine in PvP, so your opinion on what does work should carry some weight.

Unfortunately, it still means that your opinion on what doesn’t work is close to meaningless.

BlackDevil.9268:

The ranking system, especially at the time you played tpvp, was more based on the amount of games you played (with a few exceptions of 11-1 scores) rather than on the amount of wins you had. The current leaderboards are just a little better, but still give you points based on the amount of times you played.

You’re so hilariously wrong here it’s almost comical. The old leaderboards worked just fine, aside from a bit of odd roller-coastering with the decay functionality. The MMR, particularly at the highest ranks, worked quite nicely to match up people in that region. The broken boards now are entirely different and based on pure quantity of play, but the leaderboards were previously based purely on MMR with a side quantity of decay. The only way to gain ranking from a loss (as Wile put it several times) was to have decayed and then reset the decay with a loss. You’d still end up dropping ranking though, compared to where you were before decay set in.

BlackDevil.9268:

TCG and 55 hp monks still run a mesmer and do just fine in the ESL. If I remember correctly, the matches of TCG vs oRNG for the WTS qualifiers were pretty close (1-2 actually). Seeing oRNG being the best in the world since the last WTS, it’s pretty safe to say mesmer is still viable. The fact that there were no teams with mesmer on WTS is based on a whole different subject. 4 teams, whereas 1 team is being brought up with the cele meta, is just too few to base conclusions from. Especially when all teams are not in the same bracket but spread of 3 different brackets.

Didn’t TCG recently ditch helseth for another cele build or something? I thought I heard something along those lines. Regardless, the teams with mesmers lost. As I recall, the EU meta is slightly less cele-heavy, and you can see the results of those non-cele comps vs cele comps…the non-cele loses. Hard to argue with the facts of that.

BlackDevil.9268:

Seems like someone hasn’t learned how to position himself correctly yet… There are many spots where a thief just can’t come that easily across all maps. That is also if there’s a thief around, which is not always the case.

If you’re playing at a skilled level (like you keep making noise about) there will be a thief. There are incredibly few spots where a thief can’t shadowstep to you, and those spots are usually more of a pain for you to get to in the first place than it is for the thief to chase you up there.

BlackDevil.9268:

I already said why power shatter is better than condi shatter.

No you didn’t. You keep stating that it’s better, saying a couple reasons that don’t actually pertain to it (like taking portal and boon strip) and hoping that we don’t call you on your impressive leaps of logic.

BlackDevil.9268:

Assuming there aren’t many builds left besides these it’s pretty safe to say power shatter is the most viable build for mesmer in tpvp. If it wasn’t then there would surely be enough reason for the remaining mesmers to respec to that specific build to be more effective, rather than not playing the meta build.

You keep using this word ‘viable’. You appear to think that ‘viable’ means ‘whatever I say is viable, regardless of supporting details or evidence’. This is false.

Viable is a reflection of functionality. Different things are viable at different levels of play, because different things work better and worse at different levels of play. Ultimately, the viability of a build is simply an extension of whether or not it works, that’s all. Following that logic is quite simple, and leads to a single question to determine viability:

Does the build work at a certain level of play?
If yes, it is viable. If no, it is not.

Lets ask this question for some builds, shall we?

Does any mesmer build work at WTS level of play?
Answer: No.
Conclusion: No mesmer build is viable at WTS level of play.

What mesmer builds work at any level other than WTS level of play?
Answer: Many.
Conclusion: Many mesmer builds are viable at any level other than WTS level of play.

This many includes, but is not limited to

• CI lockdown
• CS lockdown
• Power shatter
• PU Conditions
• Power phantasm

I haven’t actually seen builds other than these played successfully at a high level of play, but absence of evidence is not evidence of the opposite case. Given the newly broken leaderboards it’s more difficult than it used to be to actually determine whether someone is at a high level of play, but I’m sure it could be done if you put your mind to it.

Yeah, the idea that offhand shield won’t include a phantasm/specializations are completely removing clones and such is patently absurd. Anet didn’t say ‘rebuild classes from the ground up’. They said ‘make changes to class mechanics’. We’ve already seen that there’s a keybind option for f5. Adding another shatter counts as a ‘change to class mechanics’ in my book.

BlackDevil.9268:

Power shatter can easily stand on 1200 units and deal a fair amount of damage. Show me a video of how condi mesmer can be effective at 1200 units and I’ll take back that statement.

If the enemy team is aware enough to instakill you if you get close, they’re certainly aware enough to send a thief to chase you down after you run away to 1200 range. Essentially, against an aware enough team…you’re not doing anything on any shatter build.

BlackDevil.9268:

Ranking says nothing

This is wonderfully false.

BlackDevil.9268:

Viable =/= Better

This…is wonderfully meaningless.

BlackDevil.9268:

Power shatter > any other build in tpvp.

This is a statement wonderfully lacking in any substantial evidence.

BlackDevil.9268:

Mesmer is viable, it’s just not as strong as the cele setup with a dps guard.

If mesmer is viable, why did zero teams run it in the WTS? Saying it’s ‘viable, just not as strong as other things’ is incredibly disingenuous. It’s flat out worse than other options, that’s literally what non-viable means. If it fights these other options, it loses.

BlackDevil.9268:

In this case both setups are viable, though only accomplished when the mesmer is actually power shatter. If the mesmer runs anything than that or uses it on a bad way your setup is not viable. This is due the particular reasons that a mesmer has a good burst, boon removal and portal.

I’ll just reiterate what I just said. The mesmer setup is obviously not viable, because running that makes you lose. This can easily be seen in how no teams ran it ever. Despite the good burst, boon removal, and portal…it’s still flat out worse than the meta celery comps.

BlackDevil.9268:

Go anything else than that and you’re just wasting a spot, because all other working mesmer builds can be accomplished by other classes on a better scale.

No, all working mesmer builds can be accomplished by other classes on a better scale. This is why no mesmers were used in the WTS. You’re deluding yourself if you think that mesmers are even remotely viable at the top level of play currently. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re playing power shatter, condie shatter, PU, or glamour…none of them are viable.

BlackDevil.9268:

So I don’t see why you would play something that’s not meta. Especially when we’re talking about condi builds because necro, engi and ranger can do a much better job on that subject. You’re just giving yourself a handicap.

I play what I play because I enjoy playing it. I’m able to be successful with what I play through a combination of experience and skill. Because I’m able to be successful with it at any level outside of top tournaments…that makes it equally as viable as power shatter. These are the hard facts of the matter.

BlackDevil.9268:

Use this in a match where people are smart enough to insta target you and you’re dead in seconds or you’re dealing 0 damage due that you’re standing on range spamming 1 staff all by yourself.

How is this any different for power shatter? You’ve got even less resilience in a power build than you do in a build using rabid.

Ultimately, since mesmer is not viable at the top level, ‘viable’ is simply a reflection of what works. If you’re able to play a build successfully at an appropriate level, then that build is viable.

I personally used to play tPvP quite a bit, and I played PU conditions almost exclusively. You’ll hear lots of moaning about how that isn’t viable. I maintained my place in the top 100 of solo queue and the top 150 soloing in team queue with relative ease, not really pushing hard for those spots. Therefor, PU conditions is viable at that level.

Any mesmer build (that actually works) is viable at any level except the very top if you’re competent and skilled enough to use it in an appropriate manner.

Abe Kleine.3568:

I’m not letting this post die, I run a condi-guardian all the time in WvW in my attempt to make it work and if the ENTIRE premise of my build is going to be completely nullified because some kitten berserker groups come in and cap a few points and literally DESTROY my one condition.

So then take your build with its entire premise and go be useful and take out the shrine that you’re complaining about so much. The shrine bonus isn’t active at the shrine itself, so if you just throw your hands up in the air and declare yourself completely useless because their havoks got the shrine bonus, you’re completely ignoring the facts of how this mechanic works.

Abe Kleine.3568:

Then I won’t be playing on these BL’s very often

Your team will probably appreciate this, usually I like to have people that at least try to play well on my team.

hackks.3687:

Clone production needs nerf
Greatsword too easy

/thread

/s

FTFY

Miku Lawrence.6329:

I can’t see you on leaderboards, what is your IG?

Leaderboards are hilariously broken, I wouldn’t put any stock in them now.

StickerHappy.8052:

@pyro

About the creative steps on using the lazor, any advice? Tek told me to ask you about this so…

I mean advice like if you are fighting him too… You know.. At that level..

Depends on what you’re fighting.

If you’re fighting somebody that does a lot of interrupts (thief/mesmer), then you use the laser to pull a bait and switch; laser it up then rapidly replace the laser with your torment block to catch the incoming interrupt.

If you’re fighting a mesmer or warrior that uses blocks with a counter attached to them, the laser is a fantastic way to bait those out. Use it expecting the block to come out….and the interrupt your laser with your own block to block the block-counter from them.

The laser (this is difficult, but possible) adds on one stack of confusion every second or so. If you tag an ele with this skill just as they begin casting ether renewal (channeled heal-cleanse) it can work out that it’ll remove the confusion just after you place it on them…for 5 ticks in a row. Ether renewal removes far too many conditions to be countered just by that, but that gives 5 extra seconds of ticking for whatever they’ve got on them.

In general, it’s just a great thing to bait defensive cooldowns with. Cast confusing images, they dodge. Now you know they’re down a dodge, maybe two. This is an opportunity for a shatter without too much setup. Confusing images will pop the focus shield of a guardian, it’s great for that. It’s also a fantastic way to apply poison from the doom sigil as it’s non-reflectable and has reasonably long range.

Sorel.4870:

jportell.2197:

Wow. Someone calling mesmers OP cuz they cant find the real one. Are we in beta weekend 1 again? O.o

That’s a good sign actually! It means we have some fresh blood in pvp.

That’s actually an interesting way to look at it.

@OP….nm, not even gonna.

This is a fairly reasonable assessment. However, there are a couple things here that need to be addressed.

Wile.5024:

- Good players dodge scepter 2 EVERY time when they see “block” appear

Good players use scepter 2 intelligently to force other players to eat the torment. Possibilities include…

• Blocking a channeled/multihit skill, causing the other player to choose between losing damage and eating torment
• Blocking from stealth
• Blocking an animation-locked skill
• Blocking on an aoe to lower the required dodge reaction time
• Blocking after baiting dodges with various skills

Wile.5024:

- Horrible chase potential due to slow projectiles (in case of disengage: torment stacks caused before fleeing don’t count… if you used the same logic to dps the enemy would already be dead before fleeing)

Why are you chasing? If you’re chasing someone around from point to point, you’re doing it wrong. If someone attacking your point ran away, then you just did your job well. If someone guarding a point you’re attacking just ran away, mission accomplished.

Wile.5024:

- Horrible max range fighting due to slow projectiles
- Need to be in close proximity to setup clones for good shatter

While power shatter has better long range pressure, the close range clone setup is common to both.

Wile.5024:

- LAZOR is terrible

Similar to the torment block, confusing images is a fantastic skill if you apply just a tiny bit of brainpower to figuring out intelligent ways of using it.

Wile.5024:

- Bad for stomping

There’s nothing wrong with this build for stomping. You don’t have IP distortion, but you’ve got quite a few other ways to protect your stomps.

Wile.5024:

- Bad for on-demand interrupt

So is power shatter, unless the interrupted person happens to be directly on top of you.

Wile.5024:

- No boon remove shatter OR no clone death (1 of these)

Debilitating dissipation is 100% unnecessary. You shouldn’t be letting all your clones pop right and left, you should be putting them to efficient use in shatters. 4/4/0/0/6 is a vastly superior build compared to 0/4/4/0/6 when you’re playing in sPvP.

Wile.5024:

- Enemy having AoE condicleanse in team fights is a huge problem

This is more or less equivalent to saying ‘Enemy having aoe blocks is a huge problem’. Yes, condie cleanse can be used to remove the torment…so put more on or bait out that cleanse.

Nobody is claiming that this build is going to be the new meta for mesmers at a high level. The fact is that mesmers are not in the meta at all at a high level. Maim builds perform at a very similar level compared to power shatter and interrupt builds that are more commonly used. Their higher inherent defense and active defense with a nasty bite makes them more suited to dueling with thieves, and the higher sustained damage but lower burst gives them a slightly different team-fight role.

Sadrien.3470:

@ Fay, mathematically it is not as good as it was before, look at your protection uptime… but it does still work, you’re are right about that.

• edit fixed small grammatical error

Prot uptime is a bit lower but you get swiftness (and might, but meh) as a trade. I actually prefer the new version of PU vs the old one. I very very much like having swiftness all the time during fights.

Dire gear was never optimal for PU condie, rabid has always been far better. PU condie 4/4/6/0/0 is still just as good as it was before, it’s still (in my opinion) the best solo roaming build mesmer has. Maim shatter/other shatter/lockdown is stronger in small groups.

Schattenlied.4873:

What do you think about solo roaming with mantra lockdown + Defender runes?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8dl0npMtNqxGNcrNyqxY6WO5lTtUpHJ7AA-TlCEABE8AASU9ntUCykyLDuAASpEh89HaT3AAHBgHOIABAQAu5NzmtZwQH6QH6QHa38m38m38mlCIitWA-w

I only got one set yet for my ranger, but it looks interesting for mesmer as well.

Seems to me like you’re lacking any source of damage whatsoever. You don’t have halting strike, you don’t have standard shatter boosting traits, you don’t have phantasm boosting traits, you don’t have…anything really. All of your damage will be at the meh-baseline level that mesmer starts at without traiting for it.

The main issue with runesets like this is that they’re inherently a bit unreliable and/or redundant. Additionally, any runes like these need to be compared to melandru runes, which are the go-to best in slot for maximum defense in all ways.

The 2 bonus is completely redundant for a mesmer. You’ll have massive uptime on regeneration almost completely independent of what build you run. If you’re running a defensive build, this means one of a couple things. You’ll either have PU (high regen uptime), lots of points in chaos (high regen uptime from chaos armor and passives), points in inspiration (phantasms fart regen), using a staff in general (high regen uptime without anything modifying it from chaos armor combos).

The 4 bonus is nice, don’t get me wrong. That being said…it’s not that good. Aegis every 10s is solid but it doesn’t justify the rune choice in and of itself.

The 6 bonus is…interesting. It’s also highly unreliable. The amount it heals (taking scalings into account) is roughly half of what ether feast provides. The cooldown is 30 seconds, which is fairly large. Now, the big problem here is that you can’t necessarily control when you proc this heal. Sometimes it’ll be great, and sometimes it’ll do nothing. Ultimately, I’d estimate that you’ll get full effectiveness from this maybe once every 2 procs, putting you around 5kish hp every 60 seconds from it.

The very last consideration is (similar to a build that Keenlam posted recently) where are you going to use this? The obvious choice is a point bunker in PvP, but these runes don’t exist in PvP. This would be pointless to use for roaming (since you can’t do damage as a full bunker build post-immortal). These would also be pretty pointless to use in a group. You’d be taking the already abysmal mesmer damage and making it even worse without any significant gain in utility for your party.

Overall, these runes fall into the same category with so many of the other niche runes that Anet has released: Interesting, but not actually useful.

Koltiron.6329:

ASP.8093:

To start off with:
Are you already using Blink and at least one Energy sigil?

Blink, null field, and veil is what I’m currently using as util skills. Currently, I am not using any Sigils of Energy

You should get double sigils of energy for sure. You’ll also want to get a good amount of knights/cavs/soldiers armor for that defense. No matter what you do, you won’t really be doing good damage as a mesmer in a group, so just build how you’d like for the utility. Glamours are a good choice for group utility if you want to go that route, so that’s fine.

Really, your survival is going to depend on some mix of two things. You can either build extremely tanky (if I’m going frontline, I build full knights/cavs and end up with 3100 armor) to stay alive. Alternatively, you can be a bit less tanky on the gear but far more conscientious of your positioning; staying out of the melee train and continuously moving to maintain that good positioning.

Wile.5024:

Ok first I wouldn’t call 5 stacks of confusion applied slowly in 3 seconds a burst, it’s horrible. Even better the skill gets easily canceled if you’re not facing the enemy properly + the LAZOR animation is clearly visible and therefore easy to counter.

You’re right, confusing images isn’t a burst skill. It’s a semi-unreliable application simply because of the very long casting animation. However, it’s simultaneously a fantastic tool for baiting defensive cooldowns. Because it’s so blindingly obvious that you’re using it, people love to dodge/block/avoid it, and you can exploit that fact. When people use cooldowns to avoid a couple stacks of confusion, that means they’re not using cooldowns to avoid the burst that you can produce immediately afterwards.

Wile.5024:

Let’s imagine a situation where you’ve successfully bursted someone with for example 6 stacks of torment and 9 confusion… what does a decent enemy do in this situation? Does he keep autoattacking and running? Answer: he knows you’ve just spent your main burst, you don’t have clones up, he would stop and condicleanse before doing anything else. If he doesn’t have condicleanse he would possibly wait for the 9 stacks of confusion to go away since the duration is really short.

The confusion is really just an incidental bit of bonus damage. Consider it an idiot tax. If someone happens to spam a bunch of skills, they’ll just keel over and die, but that damage isn’t by any means essential to the proper functioning of the build.

The torment, on the other hand, is not something that can be ignored. It has a base duration of 6 seconds, increasing to 7.2 seconds with just 20 points in domination or 9.6 seconds with included 40% food (WvW obviously). This is a very significant amount of time. If they choose to simply stand there and not move or use skills, several things will happen.

1. You get to set up clones however and wherever you want, preloading your next shatter
2. You get to freely apply any and all conditions you can in this time (burn/bleed from staff auto, poison from doom/chaos storm)
3. Your friendly neighborhood thief notices someone standing perfectly still and using no skills, and eats them

Saying that ‘standing still and using no skills for the duration of the conditions’ is a counter is incredibly disingenuous. If every time you burst, everyone that you hit (this is an aoe burst) stands still and takes no actions for 7-9 seconds…you just single-handedly deleted half of the enemy team from the game for the duration of those skills.

Wile.5024:

Idk how you play power but gs melee shatter has the potential to instantly kill a zerk player from full hp. Sure you can (and you should) shoot beams and drop izerkers from distance but the main burst is melee range => that’s why I said it’s more or less a melee weapon

The fact that a weapon is useful for a melee burst doesn’t make it a melee weapon. Using that logic, offhand sword is a 1200 range weapon because you can summon the swordsman at 1200 range and let it go chase people down. Due to bounce mechanics, mirror blade lends itself to a melee burst. Literally every other skill on the weapon either has no inherent bias towards a given range or has a significant bias towards maximum range. The auto amps up in damage as you go farther away, iZerker is a cripple, and iWave is a strong knockback.

Ansau.7326:

StickerHappy.8052:

How can you have 3 staff clones for 5 secs, if you play a shatter build? so might as well do a regular condi build without MtD if you say standing still will kill me?

The fact that mtd focuses on shatters doesn’t mean you are forced to shatter every time you have clones.

One of the beauties of mtd shatter is that you can switch you playstyle to a more relaxed and PU mechanic and still be able to put a lot of pressure.

As you say, it’s really the exact same dynamic as with a standard power shatter build. After your burst, it’s not like you stand around twiddling your thumbs for 12 seconds before you can burst again. You continue to apply pressure from various attacks and phantasms in particular.

When using maim shatter, you don’t shatter and then just thumb your nose at whoever you were fighting. Every autoattack you have applies some spread of conditions, clones will do it too, you’ve got multiple attacks that apply conditions; there’s tons of mechanics that you can leverage to continue fighting in-between bursts.

The very biggest burst would be just a little bigger, that’s mostly what would happen. I’d say that the damage increase from having 4 phantasms out instead of 3 in PvE would be quite substantial…but you can’t actually get 3 phantasms out in 90% of fights anyway, so it’s pointless to try and get out 4.

Ansau.7326:

Of course, PU will always be more tankier than any other build, but doing things with PU takes much more time, which end up hurting your performance as a roamer (not dueler).

The squishyness of MtD is not only designated by stats, but also by the mechanics of the build. Yes, I’m also comparing to PU condie, so everything is squishy by comparison.

Doing stuff with PU doesn’t take more time at all though, that’s extremely incorrect. You can flip camps/kill guards just as fast as MtD with PU condie. Guards might be slightly slower, but camps won’t have an appreciable change as long as you’re LoSing them into a corner for aoe (which you need to do with both builds for an efficient camp flip).

Mirb.3749:

Also question, is the build effective for WvW roaming at all? Or is PU a better way to go you think.

From a roaming perspective, MtD shatter is just as squishy as standard full glkittenter. You can roam with it, you’ll just get eaten by thieves sometimes. I personally will always solo roam with PU, but if I’ve got a couple of people with me I’ll respec to MtD.

tetrodoxin.2134:

Random thought: What about Power Block vs. Revenant? Their utility & elite skills won’t have CD. Given how poorly anet handled this trait vs. thiefs, can we really except anything different?

That would make two classes basically immune to the trait.

/facepalm

Iirc, feature pack the third deleted them again. They haven’t cared enough to fix it since.

Removing the condition stack limit will have zero effect on PvP. If someone manages to get condition capped, it means a couple things:

1. They’re already dead
2. Like for real, they’ve been dead for like 5 seconds by now
3. They’re also afk

Apexevolutionx.1203:

I was hoping you wouldnt say that. Well there goes my hard earned money

Unless you’re doing super duper minmaxing, eagle/pack will work fine.

serenke.4806:

Oh man, i’ll test this when i get the chance but could we get an official statement about this?

chuckles

Official statement? If by ‘official’ you mean ‘Frifox-approved’ then yeah, give it a day or two. If by ‘official’ you mean ‘from anet’…good luck.

FWIW I also tested this a couple days ago (in PvP) with a minipet stowed and out, saw no change.

So this build won’t work at all. There’s a couple reasons for that, but the primary one is that you don’t have DE (clone on dodge). DE is 100% not optional for any build that relies on clones, be that clone-death or shatter.

Other wonky things are that you’re taking blinding befuddlement, which is an awful trait. It has a 5 second icd and only applies confusion for 4s base. You have 3 total blinds (not counting the RNG on chaos armor), 1 of which is the scepter block that’s incredibly more powerful if you use it for the torment, and the other being a 30s cd signet. So that trait isn’t even remotely worth it.

Speaking of that signet, it’s not even remotely worth it (either of them). Signet of midnight is a worthless passive and an uninspiring active. You should drop that for blink, to get a stunbreak on the same cooldown and an invaluable movement skill. Signet of domination is simply not worth it for that slot. You have so many other powerful utilities that you could choose from that are worth far more than the flat 180 condition damage it applies. Personal favorites include Mantra of Resolve, pDisenchanter, feedback, and mantra of distraction.

You also really want to be using a rabid amulet. Rabid provides precision (crit chance) and toughness (defense). Mesmer already has very good base health so the vit from carrion isn’t worth it. The toughness adds enormous defense though, and the precision allows your illusions to crit (bleeds from sharper images), and allows you to crit (vigor from critical infusion —> more dodges --> more clones —> more defense --> more offense). Considering that change, it doesn’t really make sense to use scavenging runes, so you’ll want to use probably either undead or travelers, depending on preference.

Your sigils should be double energy (this is my personal preference, but I don’t feel that anything else is worth passing on significantly more dodges). Aside from those, you’ve got some options. Frailty sigils are absolutely worthless, because condition damage doesn’t scale with vuln. My personal preference is doom, since that provides another condition that you don’t have good access too. You can also take something like geomancy, corruption, or even generosity for more condition removal.

For your heal, generally ether feast is preferred. It’s a bit stronger than the mantra is unless you can continually spam the mantra (you never can), and it doesn’t require that brutal charge time.

For your adept trait in domination, I generally prefer rending shatter. I know I just mentioned that your conditions don’t scale with vuln, and they don’t, but there’s really no great choice for the adept trait in domination. Crippling dissipation is a solid choice certainly, but rending shatter applies more cover conditions on your burst to try and protect your torment from being cleansed.

For your master trait in domination, you can either take cleansing conflagration or shattered concentration. Particularly in this very boon heavy meta, I generally prefer shattered concentration, but depending on what you’re facing cleansing conflagration can absolutely be appropriate.

Overall, there are going to be two general options for the build to run:

1. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArfGlknpMNOqhbtRsNIUPkjsSSSJDwwA-TpwHwAHLDA4UAAA
2. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArfGlknpMNOqhbtRsNoTeicg6hckVWyAMMA-TpwHwAHLDA4UAAA

The first build takes dom, dueling, and illusions. The second takes dueling, inspiration, and illusions.

You’ll notice that I left a number of things blank.

• The third utility slot is mostly your own personal preference. I highly highly recommend taking some form of condition removal there.
• The second sigil on each weapon is again personal preference. I recommend doom, but other sigils can work too.
• Your runes are somewhat personal preference. Generally you’ll want to pick between travelers and undead, but there are other runesets that can also work reasonably well with this build.
• Your domination traits in build 1 are somewhat personal preference. The adept can be chosen between crippling dissipation and rending shatter, and the master can be chosen between shattered concentration and cleansing conflagration.

So ultimately, under specific conditions that can be influenced by both defenders and attackers, defenders when inside their own area of the map will gain a significant advantage against a large number of builds.

This sounds like it’s balanced quite perfectly actually. If your team can’t be bothered to go take out the lava shrines, then you pay the price by allowing them a strong defensive advantage. Conversely, if they can’t be bothered to control their lava shrines, they don’t gain access to that defensive advantage.

I really don’t understand the complaints here. This just means you can’t blindfold yourself and roll your face across the keyboard hoping to accomplish things in wvw. You’ll actually have to use your head and figure out how to tactically assault various keeps.