Guild Wars 2

Mystic Angelique.4021:

here is no question only ranting.

Ah ok, good to know.

Well, the most ‘universal’ set would be berserker. I’m not sure that’s what you should be getting though, since it sounds like you’re primarily using this in wvw. I’d recommend perhaps a mix of zerk, knights, and cavs to get the power damage but retain some more toughness.

There are 2 main options for swiftness. Centaur runes are the fastest and cheapest option. They allow you to maintain permanent swiftness through the use of a permanent tonic…or the mantra heal. The lazy option is traveler runes. Those will provide a permanent 25% movement speed boost without any other action on your part. They’re also extremely expensive.

Mesmer is always welcomed in a group if you’re playing properly. If you bring a condition build into a dungeon, you’re liable to be kicked on sight. If you bring a phantasm build, even if it isn’t perfectly meta (which you should do regardless) you should be fine.

The level up rewards don’t require compensation for 80s, they’re…so different. Basically, Anet stripped out and otherwise locked off an enormous amount of stuff that previously was just available to people as they leveled, and are now giving it slowly back to them as they level in the form of “rewards”. It’s pretty slimy.

I think I missed the question here.

Dondagora.9645:

Dhampyr.2104:

Dondagora.9645:

On that same note, I’ve never heard of a Maim 0/0/2/6/6, but I can imagine it. Very interesting idea, might try it out.

I’d be interested in seeing this build actually posted, although I have my reservations on whether I’d like it for my playstyle. A shatter build without DE probably wouldn’t be my cup o’ tea.

Maybe. I’d guess the build relies more on stealth than clones for survivability. It might not even be a straight-up shatter build since it seems to be more slow-paced, surviving while your condi slowly gnaws at the opponent. Probably a whole different play style.

I honestly can’t see it working even remotely well at all. Maim builds already have enough difficulty maintaining good damage even with DE. You have to be continuously aggressive; maintaining constant pressure through nonstop shatters and attacks. Without that constant pressure people can easily cleanse off the torment and negate almost all of your damage. Without DE you simply can’t apply that pressure, so this build would be pretty much worthless.

Flufferz.8907:

The one trait that really separates some phantasms is Phantasmal Fury since iDuelist and iZerker hit multiple times

That only has an effect due to sharper images though, fury affects all attacks equally.

Steinpilz.5078:

I mean with and without Phantasmal Strength (Inspiration, Grandmaster minor).
Empowered Illusions (Domination III) does [B]not[/B] affect phantasms, or does it?

One more question about condition removal (difficult for Mesmers): In your experience, is Sigill of Purity sufficient to achieve this?

Well, as I said before, any traits that affect phantasms affect them all equally. 15% is 15% on all of them. Additionally, empowered illusions does actually work on phantasms. Illusions includes both phantasms and clones, it’s just useless for clones since they don’t actually do damage.

Carighan.6758:

In total, it should be our strongest weapon, but also completely and utterly unreliable. If all you need to bring is raw power and it doesn’t matter what specifically, Staff would be the weapon of choice and Chaos the line of choice. If you need any form of control, it’s the wrong tool.

This sounds like a mindblowingly awful weapon. It would be so incredibly unfun and aggravating both to use and and to have it used on you. When you get hit, you don’t know if it’s going to just fizzle or it’s going to incapacitate you, it’s pure RNG. When you’re using it, you’re just praying to RNGesus the whole time hoping that you’ll get good effects instead of useless ones.

I hope nothing even remotely like your vision makes its way into this game or any other game I play ever.

Steinpilz.5078:

Is there anywhere an overview which phantasm does what damage untraited vs traited?

Not sure what you mean by untraited vs traited, any traits that affect phantasm damage affect them all equally.

Swish.2463:

These two skills count as a leap only at the first action. Aka the beginning of the skill. It’s always been this way however swap is a bit more picky now about what and where fields need to be

No, leap no longer counts as a leap finisher at all. This was changed when they changed the leap functionality.

This is how the functionality always has been, no changes here.

Dondagora.9645:

Swish.2463:

I’m amazed any of you bothered to write on this topic with earnest answers..

This is clearly an ill-informed and grumpy child.

Or its a painfully obvious troll.

To save face for the Mesmer community as a whole, in the future I would suggest you all just skip over these type of topics and put attention and energy elsewhere.

We’re a community that’s sensitive to flaws. If we see anything ill-informed, we destroy it right away. If we see anything that’s mechanically broken, we test and report right away. If anyone asks earnestly about something he/she[gender equality] doesn’t know, we generously help them. Something about our collective mindset, I believe, makes us want to defend our profession against any flawed logic that might, through some random and extremely improbable cause, generate a flawed nerf.

That’s my psychoanalysis

I personally can’t stand people attempting to wield the bludgeon of mathematical accuracy in an incorrect manner. That was my primary reason for making a response, and I figured I’d mention something about winds of chaos since I was already typing.

New trait, replaces bountiful dissilusionment: Master of Chaos: All skills that produce a clone now produce 2 clones instead.

Fosio.8217:

Carighan.6758:

(II)
Best we as a community can tell, Staff procs its effects evenly. Sorry. Your limited testing can ofc return highly biased results, since well, it was limited in scope.

(I)
11 ticks 1 second apart fit exactly into 10 seconds. At 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 seconds from the cast. 11 ticks.
The first tick also always affects the Mesmer. I don’t want to commit to saying anything about later ticks without re-testing but I believe they don’t have to target you yourself, yes. Why would they?

II. “We” ? Either you represent an organization or you speak for yourself. Furthermore you have no information to decide upon, how far or extensively i’ve tested it.

I. Counting starts with one, i thought you knew that. It’s shocking to see i have to tell you what the first number is.
Also no, as i previously stated, using Time Warp doesn’t always affect the caster. Go to a largely populated area, a zerg event or world boss event and try it. When you’re done, come with valid arguments and post here in an intelligent manner. Thank you.

Wow, if you’re going to try to be wildly condescending, you should at least do it on topics that you’re knowledgeable about to avoid looking like a fool.

Winds of Chaos

Due to this being our best condition autoattack, it has been tested extensively and can be demonstrated to have a roughly equal chance for all three conditions. The fact that you didn’t come to that conclusion simply indicates the presence of flaws in your testing methodology.

How to Count

When you’re about to time a race, what does your stopwatch say before you press ‘Start’? I’ll tell you: it says 00:00:00. You begin the first pulse at time 0, the very start. After one second has passed, the stopwatch now says 00:01:00. This is the point of the second pulse. I’ll let you keep working this out for yourself if you so choose, but the last 11th pulse will occur at time 00:10:00.

From your traits this is a shatter build. So basically a standard shatter with a slightly non-traditional weaponset. You call it a hybrid though…so are you intending for it to be using Maim? Lastly, celestial gear is a bad choice regardless of what weapons, traits, or build you are using on mesmer. It’s never a good choice.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

Michael Henninger.7451:

so you must use the in-game reporting tool. .

Great! So I’ll just click on the invisible unclickable Unknown player and report them using the in-game reporting tool under the options for hacking……..oh wait.

Are you referring to players under the terrain?

A commonly seen hack in WvW makes the player/golem/what have you invisible and untargetable. Damage taken from them shows up in the combat log as belonging to ‘unknown’. You recognize them existing by noting the golem rockets coming out of thin air.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Q-A-Mesmer-FAQs-Thread/first#post4566890

As far as builds go, you’ll need to be more specific as to what you want to use it for and where.

Zadarh.1932:

Mogar.9216:

Zadarh.1932:

Here’s a 4 minute “How to” video of a mesmer fighting 2 thieves!

http://youtu.be/4ECjt_eiq-g

Feel free to ask/pm me any questions, I am happy to help !

lol that’s the world’s 2 worst thief ever. both of them just shot you with short bow the whole time . The best playing out of them was 1 guy who tried 22222 you . I have often beat bad thieves like that 2-3 at a time it means nothing at all.

Problem is vs good thieves they will run before they lose. I had a bunch of videos vs thieves but they end in the thief running.

Good thieves can be challenging to kill, but that’s sort of the point isn’kitten There’s nothig special about steamrolling a bunch of bad players and this topic isn’t asking about how to kill thieves that appear to only have 1 skill on their bar.

fluxit.8247:

Surely taking away all those warrior might stacks, stability protection, etc isnt bad for holding a point. And whats an eli without its boon. Or a turret engi for that matter. I understand what youre saying though, butvi dont think its on the bottom of the so called list. Your ability to strip boons, be it with power or condi shatter can be vital at the right moment. This is of course in a team fight

Even not in a team fight. An ele fully booned up is an unstoppable beast. With boon strip on shatter they just go out with a whimper. If you don’t take shattered concentration, you have essentially 0 access to boon strip, and that means you die against anything that stacks boons if they’re not bad.

Arikyali.5804:

Mango said it before me. The game isn’t designed for 1v1 , and consume plasma isn’t as helpful in team fights. (Edit: because gaining boons isn’t reliable. Thieves focus more on mobility conditions, than relying on boons. Usually you consume plasma because there’s one particular boon you need badly.)

Fay, 6/8 of your points require traits. Yes, those are the popular ones, but they are glued into the build. Whatever advantage you pick up in a trait, you have to sacrifice for not taking another. If steal doesn’t land, you don’t get any benefits.

Is 10 seconds of boons really that OP? Elementalists can gain boons like nobody’s business. Guardians can stack might without fields or finishers. And the boons can still be stolen, ripped, or copied. Heck, Shattered Concentration and arcane thievery remove boons. And the only stability a thief has comes from an elite skill with a 90 second cooldown. Any other source of stability has to come from somewhere else.

Thieves aren’t OP. Mesmers aren’t OP. Every class is OP.

If you really think it’s not that strong, then why are you arguing so vehemently against nerfing it? Judging by your posts alone, one would draw the conclusion that it’s an inconsequential skill that doesn’t really matter.

mango.9267:

Consume plasma is incredibly strong in 1v1 scenarios against mesmers, but the game isn’t balanced around 1v1’s. That particular stolen ability doesn’t offer much in the way of team play and is usually used as a defensive maneuver.

Are you kidding me? Please try and explain how gaining every boon in the game for 10s doesn’t contribute fantastically to the thief role in a team? It allows the thief to hit harder, move faster, and have more defense while performing their main role of chasing down and eliminating a target.

Arikyali.5804:

Imho, I don’t think consume plasma is OP. I get a bit defensive when I hear any consideration of a nerf on the thief.

Yes, getting a free every boon in the game for 10 seconds stim when fighting a mesmer is definitely balanced and fair. This makes sense. Lots of sense. Definitely. For sure. It is definitely necessary and important for thieves when fighting mesmers. There is no way this could be even slightly unbalanced at all.

Hm, lets see. Just for kicks, lets look at what steal does when fighting a mesmer in a normal thief build.

Steal (Instant cast, 20s cd, 900 range)

1. Shadowstep to target
2. Gain 2 initiative
3. 10s poison
4. AOE 10s Fury, Might, Swiftness
5. AOE 10s Vigor
6. Steal 2 boons prioritizing stability, share boons to allies
7. 1s Daze
8. 10 additional seconds of every boon in the game.

Yes, this is obviously balanced and far.

I’m gonna go with broken as kitten

Martial.4916:

SlimChance.6593:

IMHO, until Consume Plasma gets changed, Mesmer’s will always struggle with theives.

Any decent thief, who is patient and knows his stuff, will counter a mesmer. The only thieves I’ve beaten were bad ones.

Mimic!

But even though, I still think Consume Plasma is a little too strong. And you’ll have to carry mimic around all the time.

And consume plasma is on a 30% lower cd than mimic.

So if you’re going to be veil+null field muleing that limits your options considerably. You’ll want at least glamour cooldowns traited along with taking blink as your last utility to keep up with the group.

Just go full Pvt or a mix of Pvt and cavs/knights. Mesmer can perform decently on a pick team, but that’s not what they’re asking you to do.

I’d advise a trait distribution of something like 4/6/0/4/0 or 0/6/4/4/0. The first allows you to reliably get iZerker attacks off while having those glamours and focus traited. The second allows for more defense in a staff/gs build with the inspiration points again for glamours.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Basically, the title. The build is going to be used for WvW roaming but the catch is it has to use a focus.

Preferrably nothing glassy, or relies too heavily on clones.

Let me know what you got, forums!

I’ll be honest. If you’re looking for a roaming build that uses focus and doesn’t rely on clones…you’re probably on the wrong class.

Lettuce.2945:

Fay.2357:

Lettuce.2945:

Dhampyr.2104:

Lettuce.2945:

Yes there is a point. It’s a tutorial video. But the creator does not do what he is “teaching us to do”. So that is quite funny itself. Get it? Ok. Cool. Glad I helped you understand that simple notion.

You’re still adding nothing to the discussion, not that I’m particularly surprised. Yawn. Trolls are so boring and predictable.

Regarding the OP – what sigils are folks finding best? I’ve tried tormenting, but the single torment stack is a bit lackluster at best. Bursting seems nice, and obviously energy is always a plus for any shatter build. Any others working nicely for folks?

And what exactly is there to contribute? This is such an aids/crutch build for players who need the assist in pvp. It’s self explanatory and it’s as simple as just breathing. It’s really amusing to watch you guys discuss the build when the build itself, is what carries the player. Almost as bad as turret engis. Even more funnier to beat them when they try to get carried by the build.

Alternatively…what? Try to brute force your way through matches using a worse build so you can feel better about yourself? I can kill people with no offhand and half my traits, does that mean that using a full build is skill less and noob?

No, of course not. Using anything but the most effective build in any situation is a mistake or a conscientious choice for some reason that isn’t maximum effectiveness. The more a build works for you the larger the head-start is before you start comparing skill to skill. A highly effective build amplifies the effect of a skilled player, allowing them to play tremendously strong where an ineffective build has the opposite effect of dampening the way skill shows through.

This build is effective. Play it with skill and it becomes even more so. PU condie is a similar case. Just because the op appears to be semi-incompetent with the build has absolutely no bearing on how well it can be played.

Can kill with half your traits and main hand weapon with no offhand Claims it’s not a skill-less build or a crutch type build. Uh. Ok. Funny guy. You answered yourself here. Thanks for reinforcing my point. Have a nice day.

Well, you significantly misinterpreted that, along with missing the point entirely though. Not a big deal, you just have a drastically different view of how to play the game than I do.

You play the game judging other people based on the builds they play, and then forcing yourself into certain playstyles in order to feel superior.

I play the game to have fun. Having fun has 2 major components for me: Winning and causing people to rage at me, my class, and my build. Therefor, I play the builds that win the most and produce the most raging PMs so that I can sit back and bask in the schadenfreude of a job well done.

Lettuce.2945:

Dhampyr.2104:

Lettuce.2945:

Yes there is a point. It’s a tutorial video. But the creator does not do what he is “teaching us to do”. So that is quite funny itself. Get it? Ok. Cool. Glad I helped you understand that simple notion.

You’re still adding nothing to the discussion, not that I’m particularly surprised. Yawn. Trolls are so boring and predictable.

Regarding the OP – what sigils are folks finding best? I’ve tried tormenting, but the single torment stack is a bit lackluster at best. Bursting seems nice, and obviously energy is always a plus for any shatter build. Any others working nicely for folks?

And what exactly is there to contribute? This is such an aids/crutch build for players who need the assist in pvp. It’s self explanatory and it’s as simple as just breathing. It’s really amusing to watch you guys discuss the build when the build itself, is what carries the player. Almost as bad as turret engis. Even more funnier to beat them when they try to get carried by the build.

Alternatively…what? Try to brute force your way through matches using a worse build so you can feel better about yourself? I can kill people with no offhand and half my traits, does that mean that using a full build is skill less and noob?

No, of course not. Using anything but the most effective build in any situation is a mistake or a conscientious choice for some reason that isn’t maximum effectiveness. The more a build works for you the larger the head-start is before you start comparing skill to skill. A highly effective build amplifies the effect of a skilled player, allowing them to play tremendously strong where an ineffective build has the opposite effect of dampening the way skill shows through.

This build is effective. Play it with skill and it becomes even more so. PU condie is a similar case. Just because the op appears to be semi-incompetent with the build has absolutely no bearing on how well it can be played.

Conditioned.2467:

Lord Helseth: “Torment on Scepter is the death of Mesmer, the introduction of passive play, it’s going to be scepter AA spam in all PvP modes with Mesmer and nobody’s going to play anything else let alone touch their class mechanic jump jump jump jump jump around……..”

Yeah, this is not a good person to quote for traction. It’s good practice to remember that.

And he is right in regards to condi mesmer being considered the most cheesy class. I quit this game because of constant ileap failures guess Im going to soon again. Arenanet cant even do forums right I see 3 bugs just by posting this, and way way more when I play. It´ pathetic and the reason I don´t spend any real money on this game.

Idk, iLeap works for me with extremely high reliability. We’ve been over this before and I can guarantee that you’re just using it wrong. You won’t agree of course, but that’s inconsequential. The skill is reliable now, and this game and forum won’t be losing anything if you actually quit because you’re using a skill wrong.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

I frequently got my big stacks of torment randomly cleansed before they even tick 3 times . This is why I played it rather as a power spec, of fear of wasting my valuable condi burst and having everything on CD with the target without any torment stack.

As soon as I can log back, I will try out bursting faster and see if it does more good or harm.

It’s not so much of bursting faster as it is putting out sustained pressure. Get some clones up, mind wrack, some scepter autos, now they’ve got 4-7 stacks of torment. That’s enough for cleanses. Now you land the scepter block (which you just need more practice at, it’s very possible to outplay people with that) and get a couple clones out quickly to follow up with a cry. Now they’ve got 10+ torment and are dying quickly. At this point they heal/remove conditions. You’ve thought of that though, so you’re already in the process of doing a daze shatter/chaos storm to interrupt it, and so on.

The key is that continual pressure. Keep them always on the defensive, always with torment on them. It makes people panic, blow cooldowns, and ultimately die very quickly.

MailMail.6534:

The reason he didn’t specifically melt people is because 80% of his Scepter 2 blocks were wasted. You need to be sure to use it when you know you’re going to be hit.

Yeah, I was sorta doing a perpetual facepalm in that fight against the staff ele. Literally every other skill they do is a persistent aoe, I’m honestly not entirely sure how it’s possible to miss 100% of your torment blocks against a staff ele.

Other than that, the playstyle was far too passive. I wouldn’t even play a PU build like that. In shatter you need to be applying pressure constantly. If you have clones on target and a shatter is up…you need to be shattering to keep that pressure going. Maim isn’t like a power build where you can wait for the perfect moment to unload that spike. You need to maintain the pressure from torment stacks otherwise you’re completely useless.

It’s also good as additional stealth for skips in dungeons.

zaxon.6819:

there are so much better specs then pu.. as condi and power. pu just replaces actual player skill with alot of stealth. it is a good spec to learn mesmer on but a bad spec to progress past the basics of mesmer.

Noone is complaining that pu is OP.. people are complaining that pu is just bad.

the reason people think pu is “cheese” is because your damage abilitys do not reveal you from stealth. so its a long boring skillless fight of stealth dodgeroll/ phantasms summons.. hide behind a rock while you are revealed or just block.. then afk dodge roll in stealth again..

This may win vs very bad players. but it is slow and easily replaced by so many other professions in the game that there is no good reason to bring pu to a fight.

It is a spec that tries to turn a mesmer into a bad tank.. instead of just changing professions and picking a good tank.

Playing PU that way just makes you had, has nothing to do with the build itself.

Zyxith.9328:

Since I’m getting mixed answers from friends ingame and then here people mostly saying I’m hindering myself…

What -exactly- are my options sticking to those 3 weapons? What can they -do- for me and anyone have any build options, stats to focus on, can I still use my ascended celestial trinkets? Thank you MailMail for some info, although know sure what PU, DD or EI mean.

I’m trying to sort out who’s telling me info based on min/maxing (Which I don’t need to be some uber, perfect build, just useless and not broken) and those that can honestly, 100% tell me if my choices w-ill- do anything good and useful.

Well, lets take a look.

Ascended celestial trinkets are going to be horrid for mesmer. Don’t even think about using them in pretty much any imaginable build. Celestial just doesn’t work well on mesmer at all. Leave those for your ele.

Power
Sceper/torch is…pretty useless in a power build. You’re really going to get absolutely nothing out of them. Staff is mostly useless except that it has the iWarlock. That phantasm scales well with power and then additionally scales 10% per unique condition on the target, making staff the absolute best weapon for killing big world bosses that always have tons of conditions. That’s it though, the autoattack is weak and chaos storm is on a pretty long cooldown without the best power scaling.

Now, you could use a shatter build with power, since shatter builds don’t use your weapon skills for primary damage. Keep in mind that shatter builds are horrid in dungeons and quite awful against world bosses/anything that takes longer than 10s to kill. For stuff like world completion or random open world stuff shatter works fine though.

Conditions
Scepter/torch + Staff is the most common and the most generally effective condition set that mesmer has. Unfortunately (as has been beaten to death in this thread) conditions are really bad in dungeon parties. Conditions are also going to be even worse on world bosses because instead of having only 4 other people contributing to the condition cap…you have 40. You’ll very rarely get more than a tick or two of any condition before it’s forced out.

For open world stuff, conditions work fine as I said before. You’re not going to win any speed records, but it’ll work and it’ll be very safe to use.

That’s pretty much the sum total of your options there. I don’t think I left anything out.

S/D and P/D are drastically different builds, but both very difficult to fight.

P/D is conditions. It has high condition pressure, high survivability from shadow arts, good mobility from shadowsteps, and usually runs full dire. They are very difficult to kill. Quite honestly…it’s not possible to kill one solo if they know what they’re doing. They just have too much disengage potential. There are some things that help though.

You need enormous amounts of condition removal. The condition load from these thieves is very difficult to deal with, so you just need to try and hang on until you can burst them. Note that a lot of their condition application is in the form of projectiles. You can use this to your advantage with reflects.

You have a short burst window right after they unload from stealth. The normal reaction is to play defensive and recover from the conditions, but you actually need to burst right now. Cleanse a bit with a mantra or something then immediately try to unload burst. Lastly, make sure you shatter even if they might not hit. Shattering removes CnD targets, and leaves the thief visible and vulnerable.

That’s pretty much all you can do though. P/D thieves are nasty.

I’ll now try to analyze this build in a vacuum as best I can.

Seems to me that you’d get more mileage out doom sigils. The aoe bleed is nice, but adding a whole additional damage+utility condition is usually overall better.

Depending on how you tend to play illusionary invigoration could be more useful than illusionary elasticity. If you find yourself spending a lot of time just sitting in staff elasticity might be better. Otherwise, the shatter reset is incredibly strong.

I really have to question the choice of mirror images in a maim build. Don’t get me wrong, more clones is always good. The thing is that the primary purpose of mi is in allowing you to squeeze multiple shatters into a tiny time-frame for high burst. This usually means daze → mind wrack for power shatters. Maim doesn’t have any comparable damage amp combo though, it’s pretty linear in damage scaling and so mi isn’t useful in the same bursty way. It’s still useful for clones + stunbreak but it doesn’t have that unique ability to facilitate enormous instant burst. With that in mind you might want to look at other options there, particularly blink.

The problem that I have is that it’s nearly impossible to evaluate a build in a vacuum, and that’s more or less what you’re attempting to do when you evaluate a build based on and around its hotjoin performance.

With no basis for reference…it just means less. I can discuss how it has a good amount of defense while still retaining enough offensive capability to hurt – and it does – but it doesn’t mean anything without looking at it in the context of a real situation.

Hotjoin is simply so variable and unreliable that it provides almost zero usable context. In hotjoin you’ve got habitually unbalanced teams, people screwing around with no intent to win, people just testing new builds, you get the idea. There’s no solid frame of reference that’s possible to use. This is why I attempt to take any non-WvW/PvE build into the context of tPvP — because there’s no other valid frame of reference that I can use.

As it so happens, this build has a lot of issues that make it significantly less viable in tPvP. These issues don’t necessarily apply in hotjoin…because nothing necessarily applies in hotjoin. If I made the evaluation of ‘this build won’t work in hotjoin’ for literally any actual (non joke) build in this game I’d be lying because of the nature of hotjoin.

Ultimately if you didn’t intend this build for tPvP it’s not appropriate to analyze it in that context. The only alternative though is to analyze it in a near vacuum —possible, but less meaningful.

Windwalker.7421:

I don’t really waddle anywhere, you can swap in focus to move from point to point. This is a fundamental weakness of the Mesmer, we all know this. This weakness severely limits your build options, so you either learn to put up with swapping in Focus for OOC mobility, or you play the usual meta builds, none of which can face tank like this build can.

So…we’re talking about hotjoin then? You can’t swap weapons in tPvP. A build working in hotjoin has less than zero bearing on whether or not it’s even remotely viable for anything approaching competitive PvP with competent players. You can run anything in hotjoin and make it work simply because of the nature of hotjoin.

Honestly, I hate to say this but…everything you’ve said is now called into question because it seems that you’ve only used this build in hotjoin. Until you’ve actually used this in competitive tournament matches and had it work against competent opponents (not down in the 50% or whatever) accolades of how well it works in practice simply must be disregarded.

I suppose you could say that this build isn’t designed to be used in tPvP…but the universal response to that is ‘then why are we bothering with it?’. I guess there’s still value in a build for the sake of a build, but it certainly helps if you can point out concrete applications of where it can actually be used outside of a barely existing/supported game type.

messiah.1908:

Ross Biddle.2367:

So I decided to dive into WvW with maim. Here’s a “first fight” vid. Loving goign back to my old, first, condi shatter build/playstyle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCE19s_kQWE

sry to say that i only saw 5 stacks of torment in average which mainly comes from scepter#2
you should aim for 12 stacks so take MI instead of mantra daze

He was using perplex runes, hence the mantra daze. The lack of torment wasn’t due to anything except for…quite poor play. The number of times he interrupted his own casts made me cringe.

Windwalker.7421:

Well depends on your definition of Bunker I guess, but as far as Mesmers go it’s got high survivability through armor, prot, healing, and regen. I don’t need to rely on stealth all that much, just as a last ditch effort to get back into a fight…usually in 2v1s or worse odds.

In WvW, a bunker can be something that’s difficult to kill. This build is supposedly designed for PvP though, and the definition of a bunker in PvP is far more limited. A PvP bunker is a build able to effectively hold a point.

This build has multiple stealth skills and no access to stability. This makes it not a bunker. You also have extremely limited sustain and condition removal. Mantras are strong while they last…but the aforementioned lack of stability is going to make recharging them for continued sustain and more condition removal nearly impossible in a big fight.

There’s a key reason why this build ultimately isn’t effective at much of anything when facing competent opponents though. You have absolutely zero mobility. Lets think about the ramifications of that.

The build isn’t suited for bunkering on mid as already discussed. This means you’re looking to bunker a side point against a thief or something. Unfortunately, sitting on a side point all game is a fantastic way to leave your team in a 5v4 as the thief ignores far and just ganks people at mid. So, you waddle your way to mid to go help out. Once you get there, the thief uses shadowstep and a couple shortbow 5s to decap far…then come back to mid before you’ve even noticed that they’re gone.

Side point bunkers only work if you have the mobility to roam. You need to be able to be at multiple places rapidly, picking the best place to settle down momentarily and then moving on as the situation changes. This build has no mobility and so is absolutely hardcountered by even 1 person on the other team being capable of rotating.

insaneseagull.7063:

Fay.2357:

Omg wow. Necros plz, there’s a separate forum for you.

I main a mesmer too…

Necromancy

Zyxith.9328:

What I basically would be doing is map completion (As I made this Mesmer like, 3 weeks ago and stupidly deleted my 80 Ele with 100% map completion) I’d do dungeons here and there, most dungeons I’ve done were like CoF to get some gold here or there. I might want to do some fractals, but mostly I’d be doing like.. guild missions with the guild. Bounty, rush, puzzle, those sorts.

You’ve obviously heard the dungeon situation with this build.

Open world it’ll work fine, it’ll just be slower than a power phantasm build. It’ll be pretty easy with tanky gear and traits…just very slow.

Bounty…doesn’t really matter I suppose. Depending on how many people are there and which boss it is it could either be decent or abysmal. It varies a lot.

Puzzles and rush don’t involve a whole lot of killing, doesn’t matter really. For challenges it’ll be pretty bad though. You need to be able to put out quick burst damage while switching targets fairly rapidly for challenges. Condition builds are really bad at doing that.

Omg wow. Necros plz, there’s a separate forum for you.

EpicTurtle.8571:

A1: I’ve never had that problem.
A2: Reapplication, build mechanisms, rune choice.
A3: I’ve maxed bleed stacks in about 4 seconds.

Conditions being pushed is absolutely a problem. Whenever a guardian hits Virtue of Justice, every single person in the party instantly applies 4 seconds of burning. That will instantly push out all burning stacks currently on a target and replace them with mostly low damage burning. Eles also apply loads and loads of burning from so many attacks. Similarly, if an engineer uses poison grenades…that’s it for poison. Mesmer doesn’t really have any access to poison anyway though, so that’s less of an issue.

Not sure what you meant by that.

Maxing bleed stacks in 4 seconds is theoretically possible I guess. You’d need uhm, lets see. Duelist 100% crits is 8 stacks, if you dropped 2 with signet you’d have 16 stacks. Then if you spawned a clone, dodge rolled twice and hit mirror images and every single one of those debilitating dissipations procced bleeds…you’d cap. That’s a singularly unlikely case though, I think you need to look at that claim with a bit more of a reasonable eye.

EpicTurtle.8571:

B1: I can understand that. I don’t agree with it, since I’ve had a singularly opposite experience to what you’re describing.

I’m really curious as to what you mean by this. Do you mean to say that mobs run around nonstop and attack rapidly for you? They just…don’t do that.

EpicTurtle.8571:

B2: Yes and when they hit allies, your allies hit harder or have 20% increased critical chance, not every class has easy access to fury, and I believe most builds don’t use Runes of Rage. While in my opinion said team should already have fury in mind in respective builds. I will admit, the vulnerability proc makes me wince a little since 1% increased party damage isn’t a massive contribution. (Suggestions need to be made to Devs)

2 seconds of fury, 5 seconds of might…alright. Yes, they technically add damage, but lets be realistic. Those are incredibly inconsequential boosts, especially when you average it out across a party, take into account that some people could already have fury, etc. I didn’t even note the vuln in my original post, but that is also a problem.

EpicTurtle.8571:

C1: While it is very uncomfortable as you say, it is doable. Personally, if I need a reflection heavy spec, I will put my staff down a bit, and switch to Sword/Focus and Sword/Pistol. In all of my builds, feedback is a recurring event, it’s too useful. Although I will assert that not every situation requires reflection, it does provide heaps of dps, but (and this may just be due to bad luck) mobs tend to move out of my reflections as fast as they can.

C2: I’ve also taken this into account, especially in the olden days, I liked to collect boss projectiles with mimic and fling them right back, mostly for kittens and giggles. Unfortunately not every boss has a projectile, lamentable, I know and then feedback sits there dusty in the corner, wanting to get used, but ends up being the last kid picked for the basketball game. As for minimizing that damage, precision is important in my builds, every time there isn’t a little bloodspatter decal behind those white numbers a little part of me dies inside.

The utility considerations are definitely less hard and fast. You can modify and bend builds to accept more utility even if they’re not designed for it. The key is that it’s awkward and/or difficult to force condition builds to obtain the normal utility of a power phantasm build, and that ends up being just the icing on the cake of all the other issues.

EpicTurtle.8571:

Additionally, I don’t run pure condition damage, I go hybrid with Sinister stats.
Also thank you for going through and stating the facts, it was very considerate.

While sinister isn’t good…it’s better I suppose. Carrion would be probably the worst damage, followed by dire, rabid, sinister, and then zerker and assassins far away at the top. If you’re in need of more specific numbers than that, Frifoxy has a habit of making wonderfully helpful posts with the use of his DPS parser to determine more specific dps numbers, though they’re always for solo situations. I’d actually love to see the dps of a condition build in a party just for that concrete difference.

Sizer.5632:

So…. they joined a pvp match in the pvp portion of this game, and then proceeded to carry out some pvp against you (who was also knowingly in a pvp match), and that is a bannable offense?

As far as I know server rules that are placed by players are not =/= the code of conduct that you can get banned for violating. But I could be wrong.

Yeah, server rules are absolutely inconsequential with regards to the code of conduct. This is a pretty straightforward situation. Normal PvP occurred in a normal PvP environment. Sending in that ticket will elicit nothing more than some anet guy calling out to his buddies to come take a look at the ridiculous ticket he just received.

I’m pretty sure it was fixed a bit ago, I can hop ingame and check. Also, the forum’s search feature is completely broken. If you want to search you need to use a google search limited by site.

Edit: Can confirm it as fixed.

EpicTurtle.8571:

Fay.2357:

EpicTurtle.8571:

Yeah, but he’s not correct.

Addendum: I don’t mean to cause a controversy and I’m certainly not going to argue the point with anyone. My only problem with anything Pyro has stated is that power DPS is the “only” viable option. If you would like to discuss it with me you may PM me, but that discussion does not belong on this particular thread.

All of the reasons as to why condition damage doesn’t work at all in dungeon parties have been noted multiple times in this thread. Of course you can ‘play how you want’, even if that playstyle happens to be useless. Nobody is going to stop you. Our job is simply to provide the information necessary to make an informed decision on how to play.

In this situation, the information is very non-ambiguous. Condition damage is objectively horrible in dungeon groups on any class, not just mesmer. Condition damage on mesmer is even worse than on most classes for a variety of reasons. Power phantasm builds are far more effective both in dealing damage and in providing utility to the party.

There is no information, there has only been assertions, not concrete facts, believe it or not your personal experiences do not set the line for the entire game.

There have been plenty of concrete facts laid out. I’ll go through and state them very clearly for you.

Assertion: Condition damage is drastically inferior to power damage in parties
Facts

• Conditions have stacking limits. In the case of bleed/torment/confusion this is 25. For burning and poison it’s different as it stacks duration. This means that the incidentally poison and burning applied in any party (from guardians, grenades, other various skills) will overwrite the conditions from anyone that actually specced for them, lowering their damage. A similar situation happens with bleeds where once the cap is hit, conditions start getting pushed out, lowering the damage further.
• Torment and confusion are highly ineffective on mobs due to their functionality. Mobs attack slowly, causing confusion to deal little to no damage. Mobs also tend not to move much, causing torment to deal only 50% of the potential damage.
• Lastly, conditions deal damage over time and have a significant amount of build-up time. This means that normal mobs and often even bosses will be dead before the peak condition output is reached. Power builds have little to no build-up and reach maximum damage potential rapidly.

Assertion: Condition damage on mesmer is inferior to that produced by other classes
Facts

• Mesmer focuses greatly on torment and confusion and has much less reliable access to bleed and burn. This reliance on torment and confusion makes the condition damage worse as those are the two worst damage conditions for PvE.
• The mesmer bleed and burn production relies greatly on bounces hitting the mobs multiple times. In a solo situation this works. In a party environment, the bounces bounce to friendly targets instead, lowering the damage further.
• Most mesmer condition damage applications are either non-aoe or bouncing, causing great difficulties with applying conditions to packs of mobs.

Assertion: Condition damage builds on mesmer force them to forgo a large amount of necessary utility
Facts

• Mesmer condition damage is extremely reliant on staff and staff clones or scepter and scepter clones. However, mesmer utility is heavily weighted towards the reflects that come from a traited focus. Not only is it awkward to trait focus in a condition damage build, it also causes a significant dps sacrifice to use the iWarden over a staff clone. Additionally, not taking focus removes the best source of mob control in the game: temporal curtain.
• Building for condition damage means that reflects won’t hit very hard. In encounters with reflects, those reflectable attacks will often dwarf the rest of your dps because of how they use the power value from the boss. Using a condition damage build completely minimizes this damage.

I think that’s most of it. Any questions?

Zyxith.9328:

I guess all I have left to ask about all this is, so my Ele was being played decently? Because maybe I should just remake as an Ele again

Well, that’s not honestly something I can just say from looking at the build. It depends greatly on how you actually played it.

Did you focus on blasting your fire fields as much as possible to maintain might stacks, dpsing, and then healing when necessary to keep people alive? If so, then yes you were playing decently.

Did you neglect to blast your fire fields and sacrifice dps in favor of keeping everyones hp topped off at all times? If so, then no you were not playing decently at all.

EpicTurtle.8571:

Yeah, but he’s not correct.

Addendum: I don’t mean to cause a controversy and I’m certainly not going to argue the point with anyone. My only problem with anything Pyro has stated is that power DPS is the “only” viable option. If you would like to discuss it with me you may PM me, but that discussion does not belong on this particular thread.

All of the reasons as to why condition damage doesn’t work at all in dungeon parties have been noted multiple times in this thread. Of course you can ‘play how you want’, even if that playstyle happens to be useless. Nobody is going to stop you. Our job is simply to provide the information necessary to make an informed decision on how to play.

In this situation, the information is very non-ambiguous. Condition damage is objectively horrible in dungeon groups on any class, not just mesmer. Condition damage on mesmer is even worse than on most classes for a variety of reasons. Power phantasm builds are far more effective both in dealing damage and in providing utility to the party.

Zyxith.9328:

That’s why I curiously posted about my Ele build on the Ele section https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/My-Ele-build-Pew-pew-and-healing/first#post4551850 Because that build seemed to work and teams/dungeon peoples had me so I thought I’d toss it up and see if the forum viewed it as a decent or bad build idea. To see if these Mesmer questions are true that I’ll be bad in PvE or if it’s just not been constructive replies

Your ele build sounds like it’s a non-optimal build that’s still very capable of blasting might and providing strong damage to a group. It’s not as good as a standard build would be, but it still fulfills the main functions of ele: damage and might stacking.

Contrast that with the scepter/torch + staff on a mesmer. You fulfill none of the roles that mesmer needs to fulfill. You won’t do good damage, you can’t provide reflects, and you don’t bring good mob control. Alternative builds are not equally viable on all classes.

eozturk.7205:

it seems wrong weapon set tested for sinister gear. I feel GS, Scepter or Sword/Pistol should be right weapon set for sinister gear where you depend on your phantasm crits for condition application and damage (phantasm damage only effected by your power and precision instead power, precision and ferocity). 0/4/5/5/0 build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQBYEcjxsT0wZjpmSGwvA-TVgPAAw+DAA-w) in my mind for it but I really don’t know even it would work or not.

The thing is that duelists or even the izerker scales so effectively with power that if you’re able to maintain them, a zerk build will do far more damage.