Guild Wars 2

Wyrden.4713:

what happens if 2-4 ppl put reflects? do all of em get pulled?

It functions exactly like every other reflect in the game. Can 3 people reflect one projectile?

Hamfast.8719:

Vieux P.1238:

The trick is have ur illusions hit the monter first then attack.

I’m level 80. I figured that out long ago, thanks. Never had this problem until tonight. Seriously? Nobody else has this issue? Maybe I’ll give her another try after restarting the game. Maybe I had a temporary glitch. But I tell you not ONE of my duplicates so much as made a single monster turn it’s head. Very disturbing.

Not sure…I’ve never NOT had that problem, or feature depending on how you see it. I would rather monsters attack me…I dodge, I evade, I have hp. I’d rather my phantasms get ignored so that they can happily do damage, and that’s the way it normally is.

BlackDevil.9268:

Lol, don’t even know what to say. How can you bug something you didn’t even touch.

Good question…

maha.7902:

FGS made mesmer dumpster tier but now that it’s a non-issue, mesmers are in a nice place.

Also the fact that iWarden is reasonably reliable now helps a lot.

Clones and phantasms all have unique health values. These values are drastically increased in PvE compared to WvW and PvP.

Clones have the lowest health. Normal phantasms have somewhat higher, and then pDefender has drastically higher. I can’t remember the numbers off the top of my head right now, but Kylia and myself tested every one out a bit before they made the changes that increased the values.

The health values are dependent only on level, no stats can affect them. Clone health can only be changed by the signet, while phantasm health can be changed both by the signet and the inspiration trait.

@Shadowkiller: Have you really never had your clones 1shot by….any mob ever?

Zefrost.3425:

This may not have a target cap. Any chance it works in EotM?

The target cap is one. Only one person reflects a projectile.

Swish.2463:

Anyone tested blink or swap on sword yet

Yes, and both work fine.

Best part is we sorta got trolled with this. We asked for a range indicator before the first feature patch. We were told that a range indicator was being added. They added a range tooltip instead.

GG anet.

frifox.5283:

Brilliant. A way for mesmers to teleport ENEMIES against their will. Thank you ANet <3

Now, does enemy 1,200 range teleport follow the standard LoS/Terrain logic as Blink?

Yeah, it follows standard blink pathing.

How broken is phase retreat?

It now acts as if the mesmer itself is a projectile. This leads to problems. You can see the problems in that video, and I’ve made an in-depth description of them that can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Phase-Retreat-Bug/first#post4436785

Video Up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZYi9k6Nls&list=UUxbSKcFKNHuxPy39xJXNMfA

Bug thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mesmer-Phase-Retreat-Horridly-Broken/first#post4436924

I’ll be uploading a video soon, but I’ll clarify as a lot of this is not quite accurate.

Phase retreat now treats the mesmer itself as a projectile. Now, apply all projectile interactions assuming that basic start.

If a projectile hits a block, it procs the block/aegis and any counters associated with that, and the skill fails to function.

If a projectile hits a projectile destroy, it gets destroyed and the skill fails to function.

If a projectile hits an invuln, it gets destroyed and the skill fails to function.

If a projectile hits a reflect, the projectile is cast by the reflecting party, and the skill fails to function.

Now, all of these are normally straightforward, but with phase retreat it’s a bit more complex. In all these cases, the ‘projectile path’ is the actual path the mesmer takes when teleporting from point a to point b.

In all of these situations, you fail to move at all. However, in all of these situations, you can still produce a clone. That part of the skill is not reflected or blocked. Now, you obviously can’t phase retreat towards someone you have targeted, so you’d need to have someone else targeted in order to produce that clone in some of these situations.

The oddest interaction is reflect. Phase retreat has a 1200 ‘range’, where range only means the range at which a clone will be summoned. When reflected though, the game gets a bit confused, and it interprets that 1200 range as being the actual distance traveled.

The game gets confused in another way too. Normally projectiles go to a specific target, so it sorta takes that assumption and applies it to phase retreat. The game says ‘well, this mesmer-projectile was traveling and hit this guy’s reflect. This means that the mesmer must have been a projectile targeted at this guy, so now I’m going to turn the guy into a projectile targeted at the mesmer’. Aaaaaand then you teleport the person who reflected phase retreat 1200 range directly towards you. If the person happens to be farther away than 1200 range, they will be teleported 1200 range in your direction.

Basically….wow.

shimmerless.4560:

Fay.2357:

shimmerless.4560:

Ironically Hide in Shadows does remove poison before the heal, even though Thief fares much better against being poisoned than Mes does.

I…don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Additionally, Hide in Shadows has poison removal built into the skill. This necessarily means that it removes the condition first…as we explained previously.

Not getting into an Alanis Morissette socratic argument about the meaning of irony, it was pretty obvious what I meant

Right, but what you meant was incredibly ill-informed and/or intentionally misleading.

Thief has actually incredibly limited access to condition removal. The only ‘burst’ removals thief has are shadowstep and (sorta) the one signet that’s dependent on nearby allies, and (sorta) hide in shadows/withdraw. They can remove conditions while in stealth with heavy traiting into shadow arts, and they can also remove conditions 1 at a time by spamming sword 2.

Lets compare that to mesmer. We have Mender’s Purity, which is obtainable with easy trait investment and synergizes incredibly well with the mantra heal. We have strong burst condition removal through the condition removal mantra, and incredible sustained (and sorta burst) removal (that also boon strips) with pDisenchanter. Lastly, we have null field, which is a fantastic aoe removal/boon strip that’s also an ethereal field. For more sustained removal with heavy traiting we can take the torch trait, and then we’ve also got potentially high removals by utilizing the whirl combo of the iWarden with the light field of temporal curtain.

Mesmer is in every way better equipped to handle conditions than thieves are. Thieves have an easier time avoiding the application of those conditions, but only very specific builds can remove a lot of conditions, and even those can get overloaded quickly.

1. Antinea’s Secret: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRYjTP48hJ4

2. Awesome song, can’t find it

3. Fighting With Unchegila: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK04J_kE228
Not 100% sure on this one, but it seems right.

4. Who Will Save You Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI0FETSHAv4

5. Also epic, also failed to find it

6. Bloody hell Vash, where do you get all this epic music that’s completely unfindable?

7.

8. Titans of War (Trailer Music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLlMNfJgFZU

9. At least this one I don’t have to look up…
Infected Mushrooms (Army of Mushrooms) – The Rat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWoQ9SZBhWs

Yeah, this is known (by the players anyway). There’s been some discussion about it. It triggers when entering downleveled areas, when moving between downleveled areas, when changing maps, probably when entering/exiting water though I haven’t tested it, and some indications say that it just randomly will bug out if you’re just standing still.

shimmerless.4560:

Ironically Hide in Shadows does remove poison before the heal, even though Thief fares much better against being poisoned than Mes does.

I…don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Additionally, Hide in Shadows has poison removal built into the skill. This necessarily means that it removes the condition first…as we explained previously.

Makalaure.9283:

I haven’t tested it, but I’m reasonably confident that the 3 mystery boons are simply Endure Pain, Berserker’s Stance and Quickness. I’m sure someone will soon tell me if I’m mistaken.

They’re not. I haven’t tested it either, but they’re not. You can’t do anything to stances that affects boons such as stripping, stealing, or corrupting.

Vieux P.1238:

Well for example i know theres some skills that make your invisibility impossible to activate. Not sure if it’s a Necro ability. I would have to look it up. but in this case that was not it.
Maybe timing is all wrong or something

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revealed

I highly recommend you read that wiki page. It should prove to be informative for you.

Anet has not and will not change effect animations drastically due to their necessity in identifying skills/classes/etc. Having thematic colors and animations make things simple and straightforward to determine, as opposed to having to decipher the various particles and colors that could be.

Nah, they just did that to ensure that it would always copy every boon, reducing the need for additional coding if they happen to add more boons in the future.

Trait-applied effects proc after the main action, whereas effects built in proc before. This is how it’s always been.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

It could also be ranger’s Sic ‘Em or engineer’s analyze. Both apply 6s reveal, which is long enough for players to make few stealth mistakes without noticing debuff. Analyze is less common though due to how competitive their utility slots are. adelaide does raise an interesting point, from my view they’re using the attacks when you reflect, but this may depends on people’s perspective.

Mechanically/coding-wise, reflects function as you using those skills with them targeted, using their power and your crit damage/modifiers/crit chance.

If you attempt to use a stealth skill with the revealed debuff on you, you will be unable to stealth.

Before you say that you’re sure you didn’t have revealed, I just spent several hours playing PU conditions and what you describe didn’t happen once, so this is definitely a personal problem.

None of the above.

The PvE builds are all focused on personal damage through mantras combined with high sustained damage from phantasms. Take a look at the dungeon guide that’s stickied for more specifics.

Shattered concentration has absolutely no noticable boon stripping priority. Sometimes it’ll strip stability first, sometimes it’ll strip it last.

Other than that though, an interrupt mesmer will generally have more than one source of condition removal, so if they truly want to strip that stability, they’ll be able to.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. The single biggest action that Anet can implement to reduce trolling is putting a fast trigger on the ban hammer.

There have been several situations where massive numbers of people were banned due to exploiting market/crafting bugs. Due to these situations, the entire playerbase is now (rightfully so) extremely wary of exploiting things that smell like bugs, for fear of getting banned.

On the other hand, I literally have not heard of a single instance of a troller/hacker in WvW getting banned, from the beginning of the game until now. What this means is that Anet is sending a clear message to people: “We will not ban you for any reason, please troll/hack/grief as you like.”

In order to change that message, there needs to be an incredibly strict banning policy with regards to trolling/griefing/hacking. Once people start getting permabans for this behavior, the number of people doing it will drop off precipitously.

Kimbo.7431:

Darnacus.5961:

Rabid armor is usually the #1 choice for pvp condition mesmer as you are a slow killer and need to survive while your opponent is bleeding. Check the build sticky post and look for Blackwater and PU/Condition. With time you’ll realize your sword is more defensive than offensive and your staff will do most of the damage, so power isn’t that useful.

i want to focus more on raw damage from the sword and wanted to ask if the bleed from the sharper images is enough to invest condition damage on my armor or not

The bleed is something you can build around IFF you’re doing a condition damage build. Otherwise, it’s totally worthless.

Sebrent.3625:

Honestly, I just went with Travelers in the end for the movespeed. It has some +all-stats as well as a little boon and cond duration as well. Doesn’t specialize, but I move faster and it fits everything at least somewhat.

I often take compounding celerity as my 3rd trait in inspiration, so travelers become somewhat redundant.

I’ve been playing around with runes, and I really haven’t found any one set that just stands out above the rest. I’ve worked with strength, melandru, divinity, air, eagle, and a couple others. Really, just play around and pick what you like best.

I made a list of all the new ones. It’s either on the first page or the second.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Isn’t the phantasm suppose to also reflect with masterful distortion?

Yes, it is supposed to do that. So is the mesmer, when triumphant distortion procs.

Do either work? No, of course not. When will they start working? I’d say late 2015 as a guess.

Yes it’s a bug, no it probably won’t be fixed before the next feature path at the earliest.

Serhend.6382:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

oh btw I mean 3 condi removals in total for torch, because iMage bolt that hits you also cleanse one condition. So one on cast and one on hit.

Description reads as 1 condition removed. I am not sure if it applies to the bounce-back. But if it does, that is even better. I will try it to see if it removes.

It does work, but given the nature of the iMage, it’s highly unreliable.

There’s been quite a few threads on this forum discussing this exact topic that you’d find if you looked around at all. To save you the trouble though, I’ll summarize them all.

Condition shatter isn’t viable in any sense of the word other than as a curiosity or something different to play. It’s objectively worse at applying conditions than almost any other variant you can use.

kaikalii.4198:

hm, that’s too bad I really wish we had some zerg dps options. Pyros build doesn’t even work any more with the mimic change.

We do actually have some pretty solid zerg dps options now. What I’ve been running with just to experiment is gs+sw/focus, 20/30/0/20, traiting the focus, 3x mantras, and then taking mantra of pain and the heal mantra (and sometimes the stab mantra). Between the bigger mind stab and mantra of pain, along with well timed mirror blade/iZerkers, you actually do very solid damage. I traited the focus just because it’s extremly useful as a tool for area control, and every now and then the warden lives for long enough to spin a little.

It makes phantasms as viable as having them do 1 single spin of damage is viable.

…no. It really changes almost nothing. Even in big fights, the iZerker would usually get off at least part of its spin. Triumphant distortion changes almost nothing.

Serhend.6382:

You can count on minimum 3 stacks and you can easily up it to 8 with scepter block.

Yeah, you can absolutely add 5 with the scepter block. That is a good source of conditions, but the issue is that you have no cover. One condition removal and it’s all gone.

Serhend.6382:

You see a lot of pvt builds, it helps when you do damage on both vitality and toughness sides instead of one. If you are speaking about 1v1 against such a build, you can still take the kill rather conveniently with stun and bursting. I see no point in going to the extremes of either direct damage or condition damage just because you might run into someone with a too resilient build. That renders your overall gameplay less convenient and that just because you may run into builds like that.

You don’t see many Pvt builds roaming, you mainly see rabid/carrion/other tanky mix condition roamers.

Serhend.6382:

Tanky condition roamers die to this build. Because with all the condition removal their damage is none to you. But even if they have high toughness they lose to your conditions over time. I think you should really give it a try before saying “hybrid is hybrid”.

Yeah…I don’t believe this. Their damage is none to you? You can remove 2 conditions every 20 seconds. That means a single torment block from a PUC mesmer will almost kill you in one go. Your condition removal is nowhere near adequate to deal with condition roamers.

Serhend.6382:

- I think both sides are pretty strong. 1k condi damage and 60% duration is nothing to ignore when your duelist simply spams bleed and your scepter clones spam torment or when the duelist, confusing images or blurred frenzy lands 5k crits on a relatively short cooldown.

Scepter clones will stack maybe 2 or 3 torment under the best of circumstances, so that’s not anything to rely on. The duelist could stack bleeds, except that it’s easy to dodge the unload and then kill it in a couple hits. That’s the main issue with it. Confusing images can put a bit of confusion on I guess, but that tickles more than anything.

Serhend.6382:

- I don’t think damage spread is thin it is in fact burst. I usually open with a stun followed by leap and frenzy and duelist or combine it with prestige. Most of the time this means the fight is almost over.

The fight is almost over…unless they dodge the stun, or stunbreak the stun, or pop an invuln, or take really any defensive action whatsoever. While it would be nice if everyone just stood still waiting for the burst, that’s simply not the case.

Serhend.6382:

Furthermore:
This is I think more effective in most cases than a full condi or full power build because it provides you with both angles of damage. You can run into a high toughness build and you would be thankful for the extra condi dmg you got or vice versa.

That’s not really how it works in this game. In theory, yes I suppose. In practice though, you’re facing tanky builds or you’re facing damaging builds. The tanky builds will have both toughness and condition damage, and the damaging builds will have neither. Against this build, it’ll have the defenses to shrug off the power damage that can only be really applied by the iDuelist, and the condition removal to get rid of the incidental conditions you apply.

Serhend.6382:

I say you should give it a try before dismissing it. It is the build that I have enjoyed most so far. Power phant/shatter, pu condi builds all got boring for me.

I’ve tried quite a few hybrid builds. They’re quite effective against glassy builds actually, because glassy builds have neither type of defense to really handle the various types of offense. However, you rarely see glassy builds while roaming, and tanky condition roamers (or something like an s/d thief) simply won’t die to this.

MSFone.3026:

Fay.2357:

This looks like a pretty standard hybrid build.

As with all hybrid builds, the issue is that you can’t actually do everything at once. In this case, both sides of your damage application are very weak.
…
Your damage is spread too thin, and no one aspect will really hurt, resulting in a build that doesn’t really hurt.
…

I’ve seen you say this various places and I’ve always wondered what you base it on. I respect a lot of what you have to say, but I think you are wrong about this, at least based on the numbers, and here is why: Both condi damage and direct damage scale linearly with their respective stat.

What this means is that the difference between 1000 and 1200 condition dmg is the same as 1800-2000 condition damage, the 200 additional condition damage gives you the same gain in both cases. Same for power.

When you say weak condition damage + weak direct damage = weak damage, you are implying there is a nonlinearity here, as in the total damage in a hybrid build is less than the sum of the individual parts.

If you have 1000 condition damage and 1000 power, you are saying that your conditions are weak because you only have 1000 condition damage, and players can ignore them. You say that your direct attacks are weak because you only have 1000 power, and so players can ignore them. So you say they can ignore them both, but this isn’t true based on how damage scales. The DPS from each adds linearly, so together they are not negligible.

If you are basing this on something else, it would be great if you could say what that is. If not I think you need to rethink this claim.

Basically, there’s a couple of aspects that you aren’t considering. The biggest aspect is the case of how that damage gets applied.

In a full condition build, you’re completely based around applying conditions. You have multiple ways to do it, reliable stacking, cover conditions, etc. In this build, you not only have less condition damage, but it has less effective ways to apply conditions (so less damage), less conditions applied (even more less damage), and very minimal access to cover conditions (the potential for complete damage nullification through condition removals).

On the other side, in a power build you’re completely built around applying that power damage. If phantasms, then you’ve got a lot of phantasm boosting traits. If shatter, you’ve got the various shatter traits, and you’ve got the ways to make sure those land. In this build, you’ve got no shatter support, so the only way damage can be applied is through phantasms. However, taking the torch means that you’ve sacrificed 1/2 phantasms for utility/condition damage, so only the duelist deals damage. Additionally, you’ve got no way to protect the phantasm, and nothing boosting its defense, so that it dies very quickly, eliminating the only source of power damage in the build.

So overall, going hybrid isn’t simply a matter of a stat difference. It also causes massive compromises with how that damage is actually applied. Even if you can get reasonable hybrid stats, you simply can’t have a build that is actually efficient and effective at dealing out both condition and power damage. You can be efficient and effective at one or the other, but when you try to put them together into a build you end up with something that’s actually very weak at applying both.

This looks like a pretty standard hybrid build.

As with all hybrid builds, the issue is that you can’t actually do everything at once. In this case, both sides of your damage application are very weak.

Your condition damage is very low, so the conditions you apply are going to be almost ignorable. You have no good access to sustained burning, and no access to poison. You have limited access to bleeding, and decent torment of course. Basically, this results in your condition pressure being pretty low, even if you land the torment block.

Your power/crit is actually pretty high. However, you have no good way to actually turn those stats into damage. You’re taking several phantasm damage traits, but you only have 1 phantasm capable of dealing damage. It’s on a decent cooldown, and will die in 1-2 hits from most builds, meaning that you can’t rely on it for pressure.

Ultimately, you’re just going to be unable to pressure people in this build. I’m assuming you’re using this for roaming, since it’s not even remotely suited to large-scale combat. This means you’re going to be running into a lot of builds designed for sustain and continued attrition damage (PU conditions, thieves, nike warriors, d/d eles). Since the patch, you’ll also be running into sniper rangers. You’ll have little to no capability to actually catch up to rangers that don’t want to be caught, and you’ll end up chasing them around as they take you down. As for against the attrition builds, you simply won’t put out enough damage to hurt them. Your damage is spread too thin, and no one aspect will really hurt, resulting in a build that doesn’t really hurt.

Edit: Oh, and taking battle sigils with strength runes isn’t might stacking. You walk up to most any build and they’ll strip that in an instant. Mesmers can’t really might stack effectively without continual interrupts, and even then it’s quite questionable.

The mesmer NPC in the mists will use moa on you every time it fights. Additionally, you can look at the skills on the GW2 Wiki.

So, here we go:

1. Clones no longer have offhand weapons
2. Harmonious mantras will just randomly cause your mantras to lose charges for no apparent reason. One reliable repro is to equip it, charge them, then get downleveled.
3. iWarden no longer works with phantasmal haste
4. iWarden still has a tendency to wander off and attack the wrong target
5. iWarden has a longer pause time before attacking, and results in often just chasing targets around and never attacking
6. Far reaching manipulations doesn’t increase the range of mimic
7. iLeap will still occasionally go on cooldown without working if used at maximum range

Anyone find more?

To make this crystal clear:

Retaliation scales with your power. Retaliation damage has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of incoming damage. It simply returns a flat amount of damage that is based on your power per hit taken. Many hits = many retaliation hits returned, but each retaliation hit is the same scaling off of your own power.

Oh boy, they broke it again -_-.

StickerHappy.8052:

@Fay

Might as well try the immortal mesmer, I promise I got killed so much by retal on guardians, and I have 900 power.

ohh does it scale a lot with crit damage? the reflects I mean,

The immortal mesmer doesn’t work due to the adept minor in inspiration being nerfed into the ground, not due to the retal nerf. Yeah, it scales with crit damage.

StickerHappy.8052:

1.) Retal scales with self power right?

Yep.

StickerHappy.8052:

2.) Reflect scales with the shooters pow stat? Any other stat self stat that uses? Can someone confirm this?

It uses the power of the shooter. It uses your crit damage, crit chance, and it uses any assorted damage modifiers you have.

StickerHappy.8052:

a.) If yes, so most likely they are running full glass, when i reflect RF it deals significant damage but when i get hit by it, i get heavy damage and considering i have 2.7k toughness.

I don’t think this is a question.

StickerHappy.8052:

3.) When you reflect something, does it reflect any condition associated with the attack, and does reflect proc the sigil (back to the shooter) the weaponused have equipped?

Reflects function as if you simply used the attack instead of they did, targeted at them. I’m…not actually sure if it’ll proc sigils though, that’s a good thing to check out.

StickerHappy.8052:

PS: I think retal has been buffed recently, I get killed by it so many times recently and I am running full condi too.

Buffed/bugged. It’s back to pre-nerf damage for whatever reason.

frifox.5283:

Absconditus.6804:

my average output went from 6764 damage per second to 9478. And that’s only from the condition side of the build.

I’m very interested in how you managed to pull off 9.5k dps, in a condition build. Care to elaborate?

He didn’t. You won’t reach 9500 without 25 bleed, burning, and 25 torment on a target that constantly moves.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

I refuse to use anything other than power shatter

Wowzers. That’s one strict playing style you’ve got there.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Yes, I know i’m doing this 100% fully out of anger, and out of the lack of will to adjust to the new meta. It’s just too hard for me. Its past my personal limits.

Good, I’m glad you recognize this. That being said, you have less than 0 room to complain about pretty much anything if you refuse to even entertain the idea of playing anything other than 4/4/0/0/6 zerker shatter.

frifox.5283:

!#$ you anet devs. Get your @#n kitten together…

So yeah, PH doesn’t apply to the warden anymore. Re-testing other phantasms as I type…

/signed

MLGKorno.5419:

-Fix torch potential permastealth exploit immediately

This is a bug that existed way back when they first changed the prestige to its current functionality. It was really broken and was hotfixed within a couple of days. I just spent a few minutes trying to replicate it and was 100% unable to do so. I’d love to see a video of you managing it.