Guild Wars 2

Vieux P.1238:

& again, All good points. But Fay2357 brings up exactly what was proven to me today. Are confusion is worthless compared to all other classes that can dish it out. & i got an education from a player who should me how much more efficient an Eng is lashing out confusion compared to a mesmer who specialized in it. & i did argue that the mesmer was the best in dishing out confusion. How Wrong WAs i. HELL WAS i wrong!

It’s sad. So yeah, i’m not even asking arena net to fix it.

I think theres never anoth torment. so why not switch our F2 for it. Come to think of it, with the traits that gives confussion to all our F-buttons. Why not switch them all to torment instead of confusion along the line.

Woah, hold up a sec though. My post there was not supposed to be taken as meaning that we should throw our hands up in the air and disregard confusion as a mesmer condition. My point is that currently our confusion applications are awful. They could, however, be extremely solid with just a heavy-handed bit of number tweaking for the most part. We already have the best torment application in the game, hands down. We have solid condition application in general, we just need to have a realistic pass done on all of our confusion applications to make them decent.

As an aside, the sig holds the name, not the one on the left.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Fay.2357:

Yes, you can do 5-15 confusion stacks —for 4 seconds. That makes it useless.

I think you’re really underestimating the power of four seconds. Do you know how many skills players can normally use in that time? With 15 stacks of confusion, they either will kill themselves, or stand around looking like a putz, for fear of the retaliatory damage, allowing you free hits.

Anyone who has ever used Backfire or Empathy in GW1 knows how useful this is. (Yes, those lasted longer – but combat was slower back then.)

Sure, if you’re fighting someone that happily spams skills into 4 seconds of confusion, they’ll die. But that would be an awful player, I’m talking someone that actually knows how to PvP…

In those 4 seconds, the person has a few options depending on what sort of build applied the confusion. If it was a Maim build, then the best option is to literally sit tight and not move or do skills for 4 seconds. A maim build can’t really punish that much, since applying 15 stacks of confusion means that they just unloaded a full bar of cooldowns for burst. After 4 seconds, they’re free to do whatever they feel like, particularly cleansing the torment and then moving.

Alternatively, they could just cleanse the confusion straight away and not worry about it. Cleanses have a definite priority towards stack count, and confusion stacked that high will be top of the list. One cleanse and out it goes.

Due to the whole cleanse priority deal, 15 stacks for 4 seconds is far far less effective than 5 stacks for 15 seconds. There’s simply no comparison.

Your playing looks fairly decent, though as Rylock mentioned…all of your opponents were patently awful. A couple things that I noticed:

You seemed to eat every single stun and every single rush from that skullcracker warrior. Facetanking a bunch of stuff like that is generally not the greatest idea, so you should probably work on watching animations and either dodging or interrupting them.

You should try and protect your heals more often when you’re fighting a class with a lot of interrupts (thief in particular). The thief you fought was awful at this, but a good thief would have interrupted quite a few of your heals with a daze steal or basi venom from stealth. Try and make sure that they’re either animation locked or otherwise occupied before healing.

What you say here is extraordinarily disingenuous. Lets go through it, shall we?

messiah.1908:

i think you bit worng
engi can stack maybe 10 stack of confusion without perplexity and 20 with it . so yes it might be huge burst of confusion stacks but easy to avoid and cleanse and also got 15 sec cd

Engineer has 3 different skills with 15-18s cooldowns that apply significant amounts of confusion. The key here is also that the confusion has a long duration. On top of this, engineers have fantastic access to poison, bleed, burn, blind, and chill. It’s not like the engineer is tossing a massive confusion stack on you and then twiddling their thumbs, waiting for you to suicide.

messiah.1908:

while mesmer has the most way to put confusion :

Do we really? Lets see…

messiah.1908:

when blind

4 seconds base duration, 1 stack, 5 second icd, requires a master major trait. There’s a good reason that nobody uses this anymore, and it’s because it’s awful.

messiah.1908:

when killed clone

3 seconds base duration, 1 stack, requires grandmaster minor trait. There’s a reason that this is incredibly rarely included in builds (other than because you’re going to grandmaster of dueling for another reason) and that’s because it’s awful. The duration is just so low, it’s simply not useful.

messiah.1908:

when shatter (1-4)

3s base duration, 1 stack per clone, requires adept minor trait. This is okish application, but the incredibly low base duration means that it’s still quite bad. Remember that duration on confusion is more important than any other condition, so a low base means a bad skill.

messiah.1908:

when exit or enter glamour field

4s base duration, 1 stack, requires a trait and use of glamours. This used to be amazing in WvW due to the lack of target limit, but the meta shifted to include lots of removal and confusion was hit with a 50% nerf. Now it’s no longer good.

messiah.1908:

when use phantasm

I’ll assume that you’re talking about the iMage here…so I’ll just chuckle and move on.

messiah.1908:

when use skill#3 scepter

7s base duration, 5 stacks. This is actually by far our best confusion application skill. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly slow and obvious. I actually like those aspects of it for the types of games it allows you to play with people, but they don’t make it particularly suited for reliable confusion application.

messiah.1908:

and all with low cd

Uh…no. Technically blinding befuddlement only has kitten cd….but it’s limited by blind cooldowns which are far larger. Confusing images is next at 12 seconds, but that’s a little stretch to call ‘low’. Shatters are an absolute minimum of 11 seconds (if 6 in illusions and talking about mind wrack), but all other possible shatters are far higher. iMage is a hilariously high cooldown of 30 seconds. All glamours are either high cooldown or really high cooldown. The only actual ‘low cooldown’ application we have is on clone death, and I’ve already gone over why that’s a bad trait.

messiah.1908:

as mtd i usually can do 5-15 confusion stacks and with 5 stacks i can do 1k dmg

Yes, you can do 5-15 confusion stacks —for 4 seconds. That makes it useless.

Mesmer confusion application is awful in every sense of the word.

I think the main problem with this build is the zero offense. Of your two phantasms, only one is reliable, and it will die pretty quickly. You’ll rarely get strong shatters off, since you have no DE, no mainhand sword (immob), and no CI (other source of immob). Put all together, it doesn’t really matter if you manage to generate 25 might stacks or zero, you still have no source of actual damage.

As Ross said, you also have very little condition removal. If you get loaded up, you have 2 options, and one is more or less of a one-off (lyssa). If null field was already used (in a team fight or something), you’ll have no option but to pop MI to remove the conditions. This will lose whatever point you’re currently on, and is only doable once every 90 seconds. This means that you’re not going to be a decent tank/bunker.

The boon support you’ll be able to provide is going to be pretty weak too. Signet of inspiration is on a 45 second cooldown, but the longest boons you’ll be getting last 10-12 seconds, and most of them last 5-8. This basically means that in an absolute best case scenario, you’ll be able to apply boons to your party for less than 25% of the time, at the cost of a utility slot.

Overall…this is not a good build. It just doesn’t do anything. Sometimes there’s a lot of good reasons why a build hasn’t been done/isn’t done. Sometimes builds simply don’t work. Could you play with this build and probably win some fights? Sure, just like you could play with no traits and 1 weaponset and probably win some fights. It’s just not a reasonably effective way to do so.

MailMail.6534:

I made a few changes here that might make this unique little boy a bit more workable for what you’re trying to do here.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsfRl0npMtNqxENcrNCrxc6kK6ISOQAlMkrB-TJBFwAy3fgwhAoaZAAPBAA

So the main caveat with this build (and the reason that nobody ever does this) is that restorative illusions is an awful heal without IP. With IP… it’s quite strong. That produces the obvious problem of needing IP to make the RI trait even remotely useful, but that means you can’t take DE. This dilemma is why nobody ever takes RI.

Now, that same trait spread can be used to take shattered conditions, and that shatter build gets run from time to time. It’s still got pretty solid damage output, but has excellent condition removal.

This build doesn’t really have a coherent offense. Theoretically speaking, if you were able to get 3 illusions out, land the stun, mind wrack, and mantra hits…you have burst. Unfortunately, that will literally never happen. Without DE you’ll never get more than 1-2 illusions out at any given time. You have nothing buffing phantasm defense, so you those won’t survive long either. You’ve also got almost zero defense, just an oddly high amount of healing.

Ultimately, you’re still really squishy in this build. Heals don’t make you tankier, they only count if you can survive long enough to use them. Without the potent spikefrom shatters that requires DE, or the sustained damage from phantasms that requires significantly different traiting, you don’t have enough bite to keep thieves from chewing you apart.

Zyxith.9328:

Wow I am way off from that range. I’m guessing them 700-900 isn’t good?

Yeah, 700-900 is pretty awful. You should be cracking a least 1850 for any reasonable build focusing on conditions.

Shaimou.6182:

I’ve been playing with a new Mesmer character for a while now. I thought it’d be much fun at first but now I’ve gotten past level 20 and I’m starting to see a lot of issues and annoyances with the class that make playing quite frustrating from time to time.

N.B. Mesmer is pretty awful until 70-80, keep in mind that you’re basically playing half of the class until then.

Shaimou.6182:

1. I understand shattering is one of the main things a Mesmer should be focused on but in my opinion it doesn’t just work. Using any shatter skill will shatter all my illusions, even phantasms that I find useful from time to time. Clones are pretty much useless waste but I want to keep my phantasms.

2. Shattering takes way too long to execute. The illusions always have to catch up with the enemy to shatter. If I want to make any use of shattering in PVE for example, it takes too long for the illusions to catch up with the opponent and 80% of the time the opponent is already dead when they get there.

Shattering is a PvP mechanic, almost exclusively. Shatter simply is awful in PvE for the vast majority of situations. You’ll want to focus purely on phantasm damage, and just let them chew on your targets.

In PvP, landing shatters is largely a function of good clone placement. As was mentioned elsewhere, placing your clones so that they surround the target before shattering allows for reliable shatters. Randomly shattering with clones scattered all over will definitely make for difficulties.

Shaimou.6182:

3. All illusions only attack a single target. They vanish after your target is dead. You cannot cast any illusions without an enemy target. This is pretty frustrating especially in fast paced PVE where you kill lots of enemies and targets change constantly. Half the classes abilities are almost unusable in these scenarios.

The iZerker and iWarden both do significant amounts of aoe . That being said, you’re right that mesmer has a difficult time tagging lots of mobs that die quickly. Try using greatsword and Mantra of Pain in those situations.

Shaimou.6182:

4. Clones. Is there any other use for clones but to shatter them? They do not get aggro from the AI, they doubtfully fool players in PVP, they get instakilled by pretty much everything in the game and they do 0 damage. Can I even get any use out of them in a dungeon if any enemy happens to use an AOE attack?

Clones have 3 main uses. The first is for shatters, this one is obvious. You’re right that they don’t fool players in PvP at all (decent players anyway), so that’s not a use. The key to doing damage with clones is that despite doing 0 damage, they still use the autoattack of that weapon. This means scepter clones apply torment and staff clones apply bleeding, vulnerability, and burning. Additionally, those 0 damage hits can still crit, causing bleeds from the minor trait Sharper Images. Lastly, you can trait to cause clones to spread aoe conditions when they die; this is a very strong usage for them in PvP, but not PvE.

Shaimou.6182:

5. No passive speed boosts. Most classes have passive speed boosts. Mesmer is a light armored class and has to stay away from melee combat so it adds even more incentive to have a passive speed boost but there is none. Why is that?

Yeah, this sucks. Run with a focus and get either centaur or traveler runes to fix that issue.

Shaimou.6182:

6. Some skills feel pretty weak. I understand the Blink skill was pretty neat before but now its just a small step forward with a massive cooldown. Mirror Images? Create two clones that:

(1. Do 0 damage.)
(2. Get instakilled by any damage.)
(3. Do not take enemy aggro even for a small moment.)
(4. Spawn right next to you which make them take a long time to reach a target and shatter.)

As was mentioned, mirror images is a skill used for bursting shatters rapidly. If you’re in melee range, mirror images allows for a nearly instantaneous shatter.

Blink is an incredible skill. It has a quite low cooldown (look at the cooldowns for lightning flash and shadowstep) and quite a long range (if you trait for 1200 range anyway). It’s a stunbreak and significant mobility skill all in one, and enjoys an almost permanent spot on the bar of every PvP/WvW mesmer due to its strength.

Shaimou.6182:

How am I exactly supposed to play this class? I haven’t enjoyed it much thus far. Any help appreciated.

You get to level 80 ASAP, by any means necessary. At that point you can actually begin playing mesmer.

Swish.2463:

TL;DR

I came to the Forums to complain about the Mesmer and just summarized the 7 topics in the threads under mine.

Waste of a thread, move along people, nothing new or anything that hasn’t been discussed and beaten to death

Check his posting history. Considering the age of this player, this is an incredibly disrespectful response, especially to a well-written post.

kitten it chaos -_-.

Pyroath_ei_st

Yeah, I’m hoping for some more interesting clone generation traits with the expansion. For example:

There’s a warrior trait that causes them to not consume all 3 bars of adrenaline when using a burst skill. A mesmer version to help us not consume all our clones when shattering would be similarly in line.

If you want to do PvE, you should absolutely go power.

If you want to do large group fights in WvW, you should go power (or elementalist, but that’s besides the point).

If you want to do small groups or solo roaming, then you can either go power or conditions, with multiple variations of each being good for that sort of play.

Weird, I ran an arah path yesterday with 1 other mesmer. It was one of the smoothest runs I’ve ever run, even with 1 person that had never run arah before and another that had never run that path.

The key is that the mesmers have to be competent. If the mesmers are bad, then they’re worthless and will make the run awful.

2 things.

1. Mesmers can absolutely get into the top 25 players of a region if you play well enough. Top 10 is possible two, though would require exceptional play. Considering that top 10 players of a region necessarily means that you’re exceptional at playing…this is reasonable.

2. The fact that balance isn’t perfect right now is not a valid reason for them to not attempt to improve their matchmaking/rating algorithms through largescale tests such as this.

This is an interesting little change, I wouldn’t call it a huge buff, more of a nice adjustment. It does increase damage by a bit, but all things considered it’s not that massive.

If I had to guess, this is something they decided to change because of some sort of other back-end change with normalizing timers on mobs or something like that. It’s really such a minor thing that I kinda doubt they did this specifically to buff condition damage.

I’d definitely put Frifox into the dungeon category as well.

Personally, I’m rather experienced with playing PU in both PvP and WvW…also Pyroatheist.

Yaar.8527:

Oh, please show us how drastic this change would be before saying that. If the only thing you can say is that this change would make it so that mesmers can beat thieves all the time… well, it’s not just the mesmers that need to L2P then.

This would be a titanic change in how the game functions at a very basic level. If you can maintain a target through stealth, that leads to a lot of very awkward questions. Can only mesmer vs thief maintain a target through stealth? Can thief do it on mesmer? Can mesmer do it on other classes that are stealthed? Can other classes do it to mesmer and thief too? What does that target show, does it show boons and conditions? Currently, having a target necessarily means that you can use attacks on that target. This would need to be completely changed so that you could apparently only cast phantasms on a target, but use no other attacks.

Basically, this change could literally remove the entire concept of stealth from the game. Whether or not that in and of itself is a bad thing is another discussion for another day, but that’s what this could do.

Other than the massive game-mechanic altering consequences of this change, it would specifically make thieves quite easy to deal with as any mesmer with damaging phantasms. Phantasms like to attack instantly upon their target becoming available. If you can still summon phantasms on a stealthed thief, you can easily get 3 phantasms up—instakilling the thief when they unstealth unless they dodge. This means that thieves would be unable to use any attack that doesn’t allow them to immediately dodge when they exit stealth. This is obviously an awful idea.

As I said earlier, only poor mesmers find thieves an impossible fight. As I also said earlier, the reason why thieves are considered a hardcounter to mesmers in PvP has nothing to do with that individual 1v1 matchup and everything to do with how the roles of the two classes interact.

AnniMira.2506:

I suggest to use the same weapon in both sets. I have not done so because I don’t switch the weapon – too long cooldown. Your sigils are good, and that is why I could try e.g. staff + staff. No cooldown problem but sigils works, right?

I’m curious, why on earth would you do that? You want the utility/options that both weaponsets can provide.

Shomaruki.7395:

Fay.2357:

ViciousVyne.2935:

Mesmer is fine, a l2p issue.

Mesmer isn’t fine…but I’m finding it hard to disagree with the rest of your post for this specific thread.

Mesmer is no where near fine, and I swear people with the L2P response can never bring up any real input. I’m pretty sure the people that even use that are the people who only play one class period =-=

I only play mesmer, period.

Thieves are not an insurmountable obstacle for pretty much any mesmer build. In a duel, it’s absolutely possible to kill a thief if you’re skilled enough. The reason thieves are said to hardcounter mesmers in PvP is because of the different roles that the classes play. The mesmer role is to provide teamfight utility and damage, while the thief role is to eliminate high-priority targets. You can fight a thief 1v1…you just can’t fight them while succeeding in your role, and that means the thief is succeeding in theirs.

You mention that nobody ever brings up any real input? Well, you never asked any real questions that input could be provided on. Your entire post is literally just aimless complaining about thief mechanics and wishing for drastic mechanic changes that will obviously never happen. If you want feedback and help, you need to provide specific questions or concerns that people can respond to. You will literally never see “l2p” as a response to a post that reads like ‘hey, I’m having trouble against thieves in these situations with these builds, anyone have advice or recommendations?’ You will always see “l2p” with posts that read like ‘omg thieves are so overpowered I can’t do anything about them, they always kill me nonstop, we should get big changes so that we can beat them all the time’. Your post is the latter case.

ViciousVyne.2935:

Mesmer is fine, a l2p issue.

Mesmer isn’t fine…but I’m finding it hard to disagree with the rest of your post for this specific thread.

Yeah, you’ve got PU conditions, Maim shatter, condition CI, and now and then you’ll see crit-phantasm builds that are built for conditions. Generally speaking, PU is more defensive, Maim is more offensive, CI is more utility based, and crit phantasm builds are sorta odd.

Any of these can work quite well in PvP, you just need to both be good at playing them and understand what role you play on them.

The key about mantras, that all of this discussion has been entirely missing, is what happens when you put multiple mantras together in a build. I always like to refer to mantras as the “spice” of mesmer builds; you don’t want to overwhelm a dish with spices, but appropriate application will enhance the flavor and overall enjoyment.

This is how mantras are normally used. You put MoD in a build for a strong extra interrupt. You put MoR in a build for strong condition removal. You put MoC on when you just need that high output stability. The problem is that you don’t ever put more than maybe 2 mantras into a build (excepting PvE nukers, that doesn’t count) because of how badly they function together.

Most utilities, when heavily traited for, synergize well together. Even signets, as faulty as they are, once traited will gain in power the more you have. Mantras work in the completely opposite way. Even after heavy traiting for mantras, as your build gains mantras it becomes slower and clunkier. You spend more time standing around chanting, more time being vulnerable, more time doing essentially nothing. At the maximum of 4 mantras in a build, when you’ve expended them all in a big fight you then have to stand around for 11 seconds to charge them all back up.

This is why mantras are a singularly awful design. A change or some sort of trait adjustment needs to be made so that adding more mantras into a build doesn’t cripple it. Potentially something like when expending the third cast of a mantra, gain quickness, allowing you to rapidly charge up another one.

Menaka.5092:

Doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s my playstyle, but I’d rather have one big heal with a short cast than MoR. Of your suggestions, that’s the only one I would consider, but it would work only with the triple mantra, and I’m not open to take that trait over TD.

I’d definitely recommend taking another look at MoR, particularly if you’re using mender’s purity. It works really effectively with the ebb and flow of group fights in WvW. When you’re engaging, you’ve got instant heals and condition removals that you can hit as necessary. The engagement will usually cool off about 15-20 seconds later; allowing you to recharge it for the next engage. It’s a very efficient skill, and lets you put more time into actually dealing damage/other offense since it has no cast time until the recharge.

Well, I’ve done enormous amounts of blinking and enormous amounts of stacking today in WvW. Never lost my stacks until I got killed.

Daishi.6027:

Also did they ever say professions would only get “one” new weapon?

Yes. They explicitly said that.

Korusef.3714:

Fay.2357:

Bertrand.3057:

How do you deal with power rangers? Do you call in allies? Is it enough to LoS them? Go in aggressively? Do you try to get dueling experience?

You get up close and stay in their face. Long range is the ranger’s friend, and they will tear you apart. Stay close, dodge PBS, and apply constant pressure. They’re glassier than you, so make use of it.

Not really: You are both probably running zerker amulet and he is in medium armor

Mesmer has a comparatively massive amount of active defense though. The ranger basically has the one transfer skill…and that’s it.

There’s a pretty good reason why this theoretical style of play never actually ends up working. The reason is that it’s very easy to say ‘get out, and reload’. In practice, this is incredibly difficult to do.

Thieves don’t let you get out and reload. When you engage a fight with a thief, unless your team peels for you, you’re going to have to finish that fight. If the thief is still alive by the time your mantra charges are gone, you’re forced to recharge them mid-fight, you can’t back out and take a breather.

Thieves are the most extreme example here, but many classes have a similar effect. Power rangers are not possible to disengage from using range. If you start running away, they just kill you. You can LoS them of course, but that requires terrain amenable to LoSing. Eles are difficult to run from as well, as they have more mobility. Terrain can be used to juke, but that again requires amenable terrain.

Disengaging and reloading is a fantastic idea of how to work the mantras. If you could actually do it, it seems to me like that’s how the mantras were intended to be used. Unfortunately, the mechanics of combat in this game simply don’t let you do that, and that makes running a heavy mantra build incredibly difficult.

I’m just not sure where this build fits. The obvious placement would be as a point bunker/support in PvP…but no runes, and that sorta kills it.

In WvW, it’s going to be entirely ineffective in a large group, because shatters aren’t a thing, so shattered conditions/concentration won’t work. You also don’t really have any aoe other than chaos storm, so it’s just not a good choice. For a small group, it’s decent for sure. I’m just not sure why you’d run this over something like standard shatter or maim shatter in a small group. Solo roaming it’ll be ok. You’ve got good defense, good sustain, but fairly poor damage.

You could potentially replace most of your gear with zerker to let you really do damage and rely on the runes for defense. This would make you more of a reasonable choice in small groups. Also, you’ll want to drop empowered illusions for either mental torment or halting strike. When you don’t have anything keeping your phantasms alive, it’s really not worth it.

Bertrand.3057:

How do you deal with power rangers? Do you call in allies? Is it enough to LoS them? Go in aggressively? Do you try to get dueling experience?

You get up close and stay in their face. Long range is the ranger’s friend, and they will tear you apart. Stay close, dodge PBS, and apply constant pressure. They’re glassier than you, so make use of it.

If you want to be a commander, you’re going to have to amend your goals a little bit.

1. Stay alive
2. Be followable
3. Stay alive
4. Did I mention staying alive?
5. Provide utility

Basically, you absolutely need to stay alive. This is really important for obvious reasons. The 2nd point is really important too though. You have to be followable. If you go blinking back and forth around through a zerg, nobody in your hammer train is going to be able to keep up, and you’ll find yourself all alone and very dead very quickly. This means no blink.

Overall, your build is very solid. Runes are good, gear is good, weapons are good, and sigils are good. Just a couple small changes:

Firstly, no blink as I mentioned before. This gives you some options. Pre-nerf mimic would be the best choice there…but you obviously can’t take that. You could take null field for that utility, portal because it’s useful, feedback because why not, or even the condition clear mantra. I’d probably lean towards either the condie clear mantra or null field.

Now, I’d also actually recommend getting rid of restorative mantras in favor of warden’s feedback. The reason for this is that you really are not going to be charging up those mantras during a fight. You’ll be chugging through charges as you engage, and then charging up between engagements. You’ll get more mileage out of warden’s feedback with the reflects from dropping it in chokes or in the middle of the enemy zerg, not to mention the lower cooldowns.

If you do choose to go with torch (which is definitely an option) I’d actually probably drop 2 points out of inspiration and put them into dueling for sword cooldowns, since lower cd blurred frenzy is very nice.

I’ve tried a lot of stuff that’s very similar to some of your iterations. All of my experiments ultimately end in more or less the same way though: frustrated at the complete and total lack of any reliable aoe pressure that has less than a 30 second cooldown.

Yeah, you can drop chaos storm in a zerg and it’ll do some decent work…once every 35 seconds. Then you’re left with spamming iZerker and mind stab off cooldown. iZerker spins once then smushes, spins in a random direction, and requires a target to use. Mind stab really is still awful considering the cooldown and just doesn’t do much.

Then you’ve got glamours that you can toss down…which do some stuff I guess. Null field is nice of course, for what it does, and feedback can be great…but more often is worthless as most zergs are not projectile-heavy.

Ultimately I just end up with the distinct impression that I’d be contributing far more by spamming random buttons on a staff ele.

Honestly, the amount of feedback anyone can give you based on your own rather spotty retelling of what happened is going to be pretty minimal. I’d recommend trying to hunt down some sort of recording software that you can run while playing so that you can get feedback in a more reasonable manner.

I think it’s great that you’re looking for comprehensive feedback on your playing. You just really can’t get anything useful like this.

Dracatis.1908:

I use Scepter/Off-Hand Sword all the time even in PvE. It’s fine, sure torment does min damage unless you actually move/dodge all the time like I do(unless they are range attackers) but with Retaliatory Shield, Illusion of Vulnerability and Dazzling you can get a good stack of vulnerability and Retal going to met out some good power damage. Despite some mild improvement in Mesmer conditions I still find using the ‘condition’ weapons (Scepter and Staff) with Power more effective(Torch is our only good condition weapon and it is still a bit wanting). Have you tried it with Power stats?

Also the Blocks make clones and a quick hop away with someone(thing) that attacks fast, this is the fastest way to produce clones without wasting util slots.

Well, a couple things.

First, retaliation is awful in PvE. The damage it returns is negligible, isn’t scaled by anything other than how much power you have, and requires you to eat hits in PvE. All bad stuff.

Secondly, yeah scepter does okish power damage. It does higher damage than greatsword if you’re at less than 600 range iirc (frifox has precise numbers on this I’m sure). However, if you’re less than 600 range…you may as well use sword instead. Confusing images does decent damage, but is really slow, the autoattack does okish damage…but is really slow, and the block does pretty poor power damage now that it does torment instead.

Overall…it’s just not worth it. Use sword instead.

hardloop von edgehoven.8512:

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

hardloop von edgehoven.8512:

Fay.2357:

Well, if you’re using scepter in PvE, you’ve made a massive mistake, so there’s that.

.

No wonder Devs dont even bother to think about changing stuff. Why should they, if evryone is playing with the same kitten anyway once they figured out/limiting themself in one meta playstyle.

You don’t make any sense. Using scepter in PvE is a massive mistake because scepter is an awful PvE weapon. It’s not the fault of the players that scepter is absolute trash, it’s the fault of the devs. Blaming people for playing with non-trash equipment is simply ludicrous.

As I always say, feel free to use whatever you want, just keep in mind that using scepter in pve means you are bad.

I agree with Pyro, Stepping out of the Meta is a good thing, But Using Scepter in PvE is utter garbage.

UNLESS you wanna finish hearts or map completion or LS for x5 more time.

Technically thats correct, but its not very clever to use it as an argument, when it is about making it better. it just disencourages many to not even think about testing the weapon under any cirumstances.

I’m not trying to be clever in my argument, I’m trying to be accurate. There’s no reason to use the scepter when literally every other option is better in 99% of cases. Why use a bad weapon when you could use a good one?

Burst damage isn’t particularly effective against cele builds. They have too much defense to be burst down (generally speaking) and enough sustain to heal it back up inbetween bursts. The way to kill them is continued boon strip and damage pressure. Not easy to do on shatter, but possible.

On this note, since I didn’t happen to buy myself a pair of raven wings….anyone got raven wings and want to show what it looks like on a bajillion phantasms? Preferably maximum size norn.

Curunen.8729:

Fay.2357:

Curunen.8729:

I dunno – critical infusion and sharper images, plus at least one adept duelling trait are still too good to pass up, even if DE was standard.

Those are good and strong traits.

They’re also (usually) not build-enabling.

That’s the difference. DE is 100% essential, whereas critical infusion and sharper images are merely strong traits that add to a build.

True.

I’d still be tempted to put up to 4 points in duelling in most builds, even without DE because of the number of little gems in there, as well as the precision/ferocity.

Certainly true. Just as you’re tempted to put 4 in dom for shattered concentration in any shatter build, 2 in inspiration for condie removal, etc, etc. Every line has some nice stuff, that’s how it should be. The nice stuff, however, is not required.

So yeah, testing things out.

Blink will absolutely fail and go on cooldown with the ‘cannot find valid path to target’ error. This is probably a bug, but who knows how long it will be until it gets fixed…

Additionally, many of the spots are extremely finnicky now. Where you could previously target just in the area, now you have to be targeted actually on top of a pathable surface. This combined with the going on cooldown bug makes blink nearly unusable in a lot of places.

That being said though, most of the blink spots still do function, just you can’t use them right now, because blink is heavily bugged.

Edit: Also, they broke guilds again.

Double Edit: Dolyaks make clip-clops now, did they used to do that?

Triple Edit: I’m actually having no difficulties blinking to the top of the walls outside camps so far.

And here I was actually enjoying roaming the other night. Guess I’ll just not play this game some more.

Curunen.8729:

I dunno – critical infusion and sharper images, plus at least one adept duelling trait are still too good to pass up, even if DE was standard.

Those are good and strong traits.

They’re also (usually) not build-enabling.

That’s the difference. DE is 100% essential, whereas critical infusion and sharper images are merely strong traits that add to a build.

frifox.5283:

Fay.2357:

Well, if you’re using scepter in PvE, you’ve made a massive mistake, so there’s that.

I’ve made a huge mistake…

http://youtu.be/RNepDf9hBHU
http://youtu.be/tty1b6xcD7s

psh, sploits don’t count!

(not that subject alpha is a sploit, he’s just special).

hardloop von edgehoven.8512:

Fay.2357:

Well, if you’re using scepter in PvE, you’ve made a massive mistake, so there’s that.

.

No wonder Devs dont even bother to think about changing stuff. Why should they, if evryone is playing with the same kitten anyway once they figured out/limiting themself in one meta playstyle.

You don’t make any sense. Using scepter in PvE is a massive mistake because scepter is an awful PvE weapon. It’s not the fault of the players that scepter is absolute trash, it’s the fault of the devs. Blaming people for playing with non-trash equipment is simply ludicrous.

As I always say, feel free to use whatever you want, just keep in mind that using scepter in pve means you are bad.

A good number of popular mesmer builds are quite weak in 1v1 against a lot of opponents, this is true. It means that if you’re running those builds you have to be aware of that weakness.

On the other hand, mesmer has access to some of the very strongest 1v1 builds in the game, and those can be used successfully in PvP scenarios.

Bad 1v1 builds: Pretty much anything shatter. Interrupt builds are extremely hit or miss. They either dominate or get totally ruined. Phantasm builds are also very weak in 1v1 against certain builds (d/d eles in particular).

Great 1v1 builds: Maim shatter is quite strong against a lot of opponents if you play it properly. Phantasm builds are extremely strong against builds that don’t have a lot of cleave. Interrupt builds are strong against classes/builds with a lot of easy things to pick on for interrupts (necros, some warriors, other mesmers, some guardians). PU condition builds are the end-all of 1v1 excellence in the game, with the caveat of stealthy hide-and-seek is not the best thing to be doing in a point control game.

Warshade.2984:

I noticed that while Masterful Reflection will indeed reflect projectiles, it would seem as though I can still take certain damage while it is up, (rather than becoming immune like normal when un-traited). Is this working as intended, or a known bug?

On the one hand, I certainly love reflecting a Ranger’s LB2 back in his face, but on the other hand, I most certainly do NOT like dying to damage when I should be immune to it while under the effects of Distortion. (T_T)

If you make a complaint about something not working, it helps if you actually tell us what you’ve seen not working.

Be specific, be precise, explain exactly what you noticed happening, when it happened, how it happened.

skcamow.3527:

Agreed, most builds are tried but I would argue if they’re tested. Trying it for a couple hours doesn’t count no matter how good one is. It can take a week or longer playing a build to really get it down and realize its true effectiveness in the hands of a good player. This is only the first step. Next you take that build and theorize how it could work in a team comp. I think that’s the part missing. Players try a build for a couple hours, deem it not viable and throw it in the pile.

I really think you’re drastically overestimating the amount of time it takes to determine the effectiveness of a build. If you don’t have knowledge of other builds, then sure. However, you can use pre-existing build knowledge to rapidly characterize how a new build will perform.

Start: What does the build do and how does it do it? If condition damage, if power damage, if bunker, if support. Depending on which of those 4 it falls into, you can already determine what overall role it will play in a party.

How does it accomplish the previously determined classification? If interrupt, if clone death, if shatter, if phantasm, if mantra, if signet, if glamour. Based on which of those, you already now know how it actually will respond and handle different situations, how it plays.

Those 2 sets of classifications and conclusions are really all you need to take a build that’s “new” and figure out how it will work. All of these things have been done before, all of these types of doing things and different things of doing have been explored and tested. “New” builds just combine different ones in different ways.

For example, Ross’ build is a variation on power damage -> phantasm -> interrupt that first popped up from stickerhappy’s build ages ago. It uses slightly different traits and whatnot to accomplish it, but it plays in a very similar fashion and is similarly effective. I didn’t need to play it for weeks and weeks to know in a general fashion how it would function and how it would hold up in PvP.

So overall…no, you don’t need to play builds for weeks to see how they’re actually going to work. No, there aren’t any hidden gems out there that people just haven’t discovered that ‘one weird trick’ to make them super effective in PvP. Things are how they seem, and any build can be easily and effectively analysed given enough knowledge and experience of pre-existing builds.

Edit: And major balance updates? Don’t make me laugh. Mesmer hasn’t gotten anything major in years. The only notable positive change in the past several years was maim getting buffed to the point that it can actually be used now, that’s it.

GideonAI.5341:

Yes, these skills are effective in PvP and yet, could do with a few quality of life changes. However, I don’t want Mesmers to have any skills that are “just for PvP”. Even our new specialization is supposed to “shake up sPvP”, why can’t PvE Mesmers get a little bit of love?

Even if my suggestion in the OP isn’t the way to go, what is?

Well, if you’re using scepter in PvE, you’ve made a massive mistake, so there’s that.

If you’re using sword offhand in PvE, then you will generally use it to block a big attack so you you don’t have to dodge. Happily though, PvE enemies don’t dodge…so most of the complaints about the block don’t apply.

I fail to see why you think the block isn’t good in PvE. The design is obvious: block an attack, gain a large counterattack. If you choose not to block an attack, you sacrifice the counterattack damage for an additional effect. You don’t get to have everything all at once, that’s not how balance works.

Daishi.6027:

Been thinking about methods to balance match ups, and one I’ve wondered is how broken would it be to have Phantasms not get cancelled by blinds? I’m pretty sure there was a point when this was the case and I don’t recall it being too OP for people to cry out for it.

It didn’t always used to be the case, you’re right. It wasn’t OP by any stretch of the imagination. No LoS requirement was a bit much I’ll admit (particularly iZerkering any seige within 1200 range), but casting through blind was just fine. It got hit with a heavyhanded nerf like so many other things, and now it makes fighting thieves (and to a lesser extent guardians) an absolute nightmare on a phantasm build.

The reality is that the vast majority of possible builds on mesmer have been explored extensively at this point in the game. Contrary to what has been said so far, there’s not that much possible diversity. There’s a couple of reasons for this, and if these got a bit fixed up in one way or another, it could expand possible traitsets enormously.

DE is the number 1 limiting factor on mesmer build diversity. Try as you might, it’s simply not possible to make a viable build that doesn’t include DE if you want to rely on either shatter or clone deaths. DE is even a strong choice in a phantasm build, although is definitely not necessary there.

Now, think about what builds rely on shatters or clone deaths. Every condition build for mesmer relies on either shatters (maim), clone deaths (everything else), or a combination of sharper images from phantasms and one or more of the other two. Glamour builds don’t really exist anymore (and never did in PvP anyway). So, this means that if you run a condition build on mesmer, you must go 4 points into dueling.

Now what if you run a power build? Well, you could go with shatter or phantasm. Interrupt builds can be made out of either shatter or phantasm builds, so they don’t fit into this classification, since interrupts are never a primary source of damage. If you go shatter, you need DE. If you go phantasm…DE is nice, but not strictly necessary.

This is insanely limiting! It means that for the vast majority of builds in the game, you are required to go 4 points into dueling. This leaves 1 grandmaster and 1 master trait for you to play with (2 grandmasters and 1 adept if you choose to go 6 dueling). There’s a finite amount of things you can do with that.

For example, say you wanted to make a signet build that deals damage with shatters/interrupts. Well, you need 4 points in dueling. You also are going to need at least 2 points in domination for signet cooldowns…but that trait conflicts with mental torment/halting strike, so you’re forced to go 4 into domination instead. Lastly you want to take cleansing inscriptions and blurred inscriptions…and all of a sudden your traits are 100% locked in. 4/6/4 with the only trait you can change being adept in chaos.

Obviously using a signet build as an example here is exaggerating since signet traits are crazily all over the place. However, most mesmer builds will go through this process to a similar extent. You pick what you want to do and how you want to do it aaaand all of a sudden 80%+ of your trait selection and placement is completely locked in with no variation.

Now, the possibility exists that there’s some build out there that hasn’t been used and is somehow crazily effective for some odd reasons, but I highly doubt it.

Now, as far as viable builds go, no mesmer builds are truly viable at the top competitive level. This is seen pretty clearly in the WTS, and is not really a debateable point. Now, the top level obviously is an incredibly limited group of players that the vast majority of people won’t ever encounter. Because of that, mesmer can certainly be played viably if you’re good enough at it as long as you stay out of WTS-level play. As long as you avoid that level, almost anything (within reason, I’m talking actual functioning builds here, not the random splat on a build editor that happens now and then) can be played successfully with enough skill. I personally prefer PU condie, but I’ve played phantasm builds, interrupt builds, and standard shatter builds with success.

Now that being said, the situation of the meta at the top level is not something that should be ignored. It shows benchmarks for truly how effective classes are when you push them to the limit. It shows very clearly that mesmer is less effective than every other class in the game. It shows that as players get better, as you fight tankier and more optimized builds, mesmer simply can’t keep up the way it is right now, and that’s not good. Yes, that singularity of mesmer non-viability doesn’t actually hit until that very top level, but the compression of how well you can perform compared to other classes absolutely comes into play. If I were equally skilled on warrior or ele as I am on mesmer, it would be far easier to carry and control matches, and I personally think that’s an awful thing that really needs to be fixed, hopefully in this expansion.

Smirgel.9460:

I’m pretty sure the extra confusion damage will end up doing more damage than compounding power.

Only if you’re fighting someone that’s bad and spams skills during confusion. Otherwise, compounding power is far better.