Guild Wars 2

Pichichi.1975:

You first have to explain to Ross Biddle that you have to win while also having a tpvp viable build, then maybe he’d understand.

Or you could bother reading the OP and realize that it has nothing to do with tPvP.

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

loseridoit.2756:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/An-unusual-PU-build/first#post4197920

play this build and all thieves will hate you

curtsey of Lissair.4273

Perhaps, but you’ll also be capable of doing precisely nothing other than annoy thieves.

not really, stack a few pistol phastasm and most theives run away from you

The mesmer itself has close to 0 damage pressure, since you’re using sword and staff with a rabid amulet and lyssa runes. The iDuelist will have a quite long cooldown since it lacks either cd trait, and it’ll have very low hp because neither phantasm hp booster was taken. On top of that, the duelist won’t do much damage, since both phantasm damage traits aren’t taken, and it’s using a rabid amulet. This means the thief just needs to hit it once, maybe twice with sword auto and it’ll die. Good luck stacking ‘a few’ pistol phantasms.

sharper images? you bleed stack. pistol phantasm stack bleeds pretty well

Ok, so you’re ignoring what I said there.

1. The thief will kill any duelists in either 1 or 2 autoattacks. This means they won’t get hurt.

2. Bleeds do damage over time. The thief ca ignore the bleeds temporarily, then clear them once the duelists are dead.

tPvP

Mesmer is non-viable. Ele is pretty solid.

Dungeon Speed Clears

Ele is absolutely necessary for FGS and other utility. Mesmer is strong, but used less.

Farming

Why would you want to do this? Regardless, ele is great with long range aoe, mesmer is extremely weak.

WvW Roaming

Ele can roam ok, but mesmer is really fantastic at roaming.

WvW Commanding

You probably shouldn’t command on either, but mesmer is a slightly better choice.

Zerging

Ele is essential in large groups for high long range aoe and water fields. Mesmer is grudgingly brought in large groups so that they can use a single utility skill and then spam 1 a few times.

loseridoit.2756:

Fay.2357:

loseridoit.2756:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/An-unusual-PU-build/first#post4197920

play this build and all thieves will hate you

curtsey of Lissair.4273

Perhaps, but you’ll also be capable of doing precisely nothing other than annoy thieves.

not really, stack a few pistol phastasm and most theives run away from you

The mesmer itself has close to 0 damage pressure, since you’re using sword and staff with a rabid amulet and lyssa runes. The iDuelist will have a quite long cooldown since it lacks either cd trait, and it’ll have very low hp because neither phantasm hp booster was taken. On top of that, the duelist won’t do much damage, since both phantasm damage traits aren’t taken, and it’s using a rabid amulet. This means the thief just needs to hit it once, maybe twice with sword auto and it’ll die. Good luck stacking ‘a few’ pistol phantasms.

loseridoit.2756:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/An-unusual-PU-build/first#post4197920

play this build and all thieves will hate you

curtsey of Lissair.4273

Perhaps, but you’ll also be capable of doing precisely nothing other than annoy thieves.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Fay.2357:

Carighan.6758:

I really like the idea of me leaping. I’d do it the way that I leap, later I can swap. If I hold down the button, instead the clone appears and leaps, and then I swap when releasing the button.

I don’t believe the ‘if activating the skill in a different way, do something different’ functionality exists in the game in any form. If you want ideas to even be considered, they shouldn’t require large development of new systems.

But sword 4 and scepter 2 work in more or less similar manner. One effect on click and hold, another effect on click and click.

It’s not click and hold though. It’s 1 click, activate, a 2nd click optional activate. There’s no holding involved.

medohgeuh.4650:

So do you people have anything to say other than “ur bad lol” just because I disagree since I’ve played everything but sPvP without ever noticing you could do this?

It’s not that you’re disagreeing, it’s that you never noticed this was possible and/or never noticed that you need it sometimes. That’s how we know that you’re either not very experienced or not very good.

medohgeuh.4650:

I have over 500 hours on my Mesmer and never have I once noticed that you could teleport without the clone. Doesn’t seem like a “nerf” at all to me.

That doesn’t say anything except that you aren’t particularly skilled with mesmer.

Amityel.5324:

its hard with shatter mesmer to kill a thief s/d especially…..I mean deal with it even if theif is newbie he can kill you with that build same goes for s/p thief dazing you all the time.

Ok, I’m with you so far…

Amityel.5324:

Dont listen to those who say play PU etc its bad build for pvp and shatter outshine everything else trust me ;-)

Hehe wat. You literally just said that thieves will rip you a new one on shatter, and in your next breath you’re advocating that everyone should play the build that thieves rip apart. Ok…

zaxon.6819:

if you wear rabid your iduelist will average about 4 stacks of bleed.. if you run rampagers your iduelest will average 7 stacks of bleed.. + you will have alittle hybrid from the power and your clones will have more crit chance.. just saying.

And if you wear rampagers, you’ll have base armor and thieves will 2-shot you…in an attrition build.

Fixing Thread.

/15char

WhiteRose.6934:

Bo Van Swill.7619:

Oh why do all mesmer’s want to go PU as a long time mesmer i hate PU builds its one reason i find it hard to get a fight one on one in WvW and if i do and win i get messages like oh a PU mesmer how original well i never have or will run PU far better builds out there.

Everyone runs PU because they can’t play mesmer without using a build that carries them.

I’m sorry, I meant it’s because “PU is what’s viable and because it’s the only way a mesmer can roam effectively”.

Something along those lines I’ve been told.

Show me a video of you surviving a 1v4 with at least 1 competent thief in a shatter/phantasm build.

Ah right, that’s not a thing that can happen, because phantasm builds are pidgeon-holed into 1v1 due to mechanics, and shatter builds are far more effective with support.

The PU buildset is the only spec mesmer has that is efficient at handling outnumbered fights, and solo roaming in WvW is just one outnumbered fight after another.

I’m not debating with you. I provided a short response to your question. You questioned that, so I provided a more complete response. Both myself and Supcutie have thoroughly tested all of the builds and concepts you mentioned. The reason neither us nor anyone else in this game actually does them is because they don’t work well. Believe what you want though, I can’t force you to listen.

Dracatis.1908:

So you wouldn’t burn the Signet of Ether for defense?

Well, let me give you a list of reasons why you signet of ether is bad in a shatter build. You can’t make good use of the phantasm refresh. It has a quite long cooldown, and doesn’t have a strong active heal. The passive heal is weaker than ether feast even if you can keep out 3 illusions 100% of the time….and you won’t. It’s just a worse heal in every way.

So, if you take it in a shatter build just for blurred inscriptions, you’re already handicapping yourself heavily.

Dracatis.1908:

Or Signet of Illusions to get your shatters back so you can use IP more and maybe a Distortion for 2 sets of invuln frames?

Yes…once every 90 seconds. There’s a good reason that not even signet builds take signet of illusions. It’s simply not worth it.

Dracatis.1908:

Or Signet of Inspirations to share your buffs?

This would be reasonable, except that you don’t have any particularly strong buffs to share. Maybe if you were running a PU boon stacking build…but then you’d be totally useless and obviously not in a shatter build.

Dracatis.1908:

Or Signet of Domination for that clutch heavy stun of a Guardian or Thief?

This too would be theoretically useful if you didn’t have a large toolset of aoe interrupts at your disposal. Now you’re taking a utility with a useless passive and isn’t a stunbreak just for a single target interrupt every 30 seconds or so. Again, not worth it.

Dracatis.1908:

but I’m starting to think you have an overwhelming fear of anything with a cast time/long CD Fay

Nothing wrong with having a cast time, but stunbreakers are an added utility that no signet other than midnight has, and if you run without stunbreakers, you die.

A long cd is absolutely something to avoid at all costs unless the skill is worth it. See: veil in wvw is worth the long cd because you can stealth an entire zerg. Illusion of Life is worth it in tPvP because temporarily ressing all of your downed players from 1200 range is incredibly strong. Signet of illusions is not worth it, because refreshing your shatter skills once every 90 seconds simply isn’t strong.

Dracatis.1908:

I mean especially with the Sword nerf we got, Deceptive Evasion can screw up your swap so maybe it’s time to branch out and try something new if you still like Sword… (Not that I think Supcutie would make the mistake of wasting a clone, but not everyone is as experienced at shatter builds…).

I mean, go ahead and try playing without DE. You’ll fight someone with any cleave at all, and you’ll never be able to shatter.

Dracatis.1908:

But I’m not talking to you Fay, I’m asking if Supcutie has tried it out of late especially since they fixed it for Master of Reflections(which they put as a potiential good trait to run).

I can guarantee you that he’s never used signet of the ether seriously in a shatter build, and I can likewise guarantee you that he’s never used signet of illusions seriously in a shatter build, and I can also guarantee you that he’s never used blurred inscriptions seriously in a shatter build, for the reasons I stated above. You don’t have to believe me, but that’s the truth.

Dracatis.1908:

Hey Supcutie, this is beyond awesome. I was looking at the part with the discussion on Ether Feast over Signet of the Ether and thinking on your build. I know clone on dodge is a great source, but maybe I’m a little too shatter happy since mine seem always on cooldown and these clones seem excessive(But I also only solo que and WvW so I know it’s quite different in tPvP).

Have you ever tried Blurred Inscriptions? With Signet of Ether, I found this heal followed by a distortion pretty clutch in several panic GTFO situations or wanting to get an uninterrupted phantasm off and if you also do Master of Reflections and maybe even Signet of Illusions you can have some good on command fight reset/delay(for when a teammate is rolling to you, want to get a Mass Invis off or whatnot) with potentially a starting advantage. Now I’m curious if those cancels would work with setting this trait off, I might have to test that.

Also voted for you and your teammate(and Hel). Do awesome and show them despite how much anet breaks us with their ‘fixes’, our mesmer players are great enough to make a name and place for ourselves.

As in taking blurred inscriptions over deceptive evasion? No, that’s a horrid idea. For a shatter build functional at all, deceptive evasion is absolutely required. You need that guaranteed rapid source of clones for shatters. That’s not even going into other more objective reasons that it’s a bad trait. Signets for mesmer either have poor actives or aren’t something you want to burn for defense, so the trait just fails miserably in all sorts of ways.

Hmz, I forgot this thread existed. Bit of a different situation, as nobody was clamoring for ileap nerfs, but same result. Leveling a Mesmer is certainly like pulling your teeth out.

I can understand wanting shelter to heal at the start of the cast, but renewed focus makes you invulnerable. If you interrupt that cast in any way, it’s because you’re a bad player.

Martial.4916:

But I have a few more questions if that is alright. Can a shatter or Prismatic Understanding build work for PvE? Also is there a fantastic way of getting protection and sharing it with my teammates? Should I use Illusionary Membrane?

No, not really.

Shatter does far less dps than a phantasm build, and it can’t spec well for support.

PU is 30 points into a traitline that offers no support and no damage. It’s a trait that provides significant defensive bonuses while in stealth. Pretty much every single thing about it makes it bad for PvE.

blitzkrieg.2451:

There’s a reason why supcutie and helseth , 2 of the best mesmers in the game and also chosen for nomination at gamescon never talk about kitten like this on the forums, because they’re good, and there’s many other top tier mesmers like them that literally never talk on the forums because it’s pointless – why would they? It’s filled with garbage. They’ll release a guide in hopes that the masses get better at the class but no, they all just ignore it and then move on to the next forum to complain about the next thing wrong with the game. It’s just dumb, and it’s a horrible trend in this game , not just with mesmer but with almost every class.

Can’t speak for helseth, but supcutie just plays thief now. I don’t think I’ve seen him actually playing on his mesmer in months and months.

Also, ‘many other top tier mesmers’? Heh, I’d love to see you back that statement up with some names and evidence. As far as I know, helseth is the only person that still plays mesmer in organized tournament play (and actually gets it to work, there were a few mesmers in TOL1, and they all got wrecked).

Rhavoreth.1350:

I absolutely agree. This thread has gotten way off topic with people just complaining about lack of changes in every release notes.

If we are to get anything done, I think we need to just start again with a clean slate that clearly identifies all the known bugs and perhaps runs a poll (straw-poll will do) to establish a community driven priority list. This would go a long way to helping the devs identify which bugs are the most game breaking to us.

Not really. This thread contains within the first 3 posts all of the information necessary for the devs. The rest of it is just people trying to keep it visible.

Carighan.6758:

I really like the idea of me leaping. I’d do it the way that I leap, later I can swap. If I hold down the button, instead the clone appears and leaps, and then I swap when releasing the button.

I don’t believe the ‘if activating the skill in a different way, do something different’ functionality exists in the game in any form. If you want ideas to even be considered, they shouldn’t require large development of new systems.

@maxinion:

Slopes may be a contributing factor, but they aren’t the whole story. The queen’s gauntlet arena was perfectly flat. I killed deadeye dunwell hundreds of times, 0 bugs. You fight subject 7 or the crew of the pirate ship Ravenous, nonstop warden failures.

The final fight in the grawl fractal is uneven ground, but generally flat. Nonstop bugs.

The asura path in CM has a room filled with snipers up on a nice and flat boardwalk. Wardens bug out at an over 90% rate on those mobs, but 0% on the boss below.

Iris Ng.9845:

Hmmm… torch… Does it deal damage?

No. It gets you past the harpies without dying.

Jurica.1742:

The thing is PU condi works only for sPvP where people mostly suck and that is the reason why you didn’t get killed much (or did you?). Try doing a bit of tPvP and you will get wrecked by a half-way decent player. PU means heavy stealth, stealth is not good for PvP as it prevents captures. If you have someone that is going with you then it’s fine or if you manage to cut the stealth down to an absolute minimum (in 1v1 you basically don’t even need it) you can make it work, but trust me, in anything other than sPvP, it won’t work too well.

This isn’t quite accurate. PU condition builds work extremely well in tPvP as long as they’re played correctly. Granted, this video wasn’t necessarily a demonstration of that, but they still can be quite strong. I’ll just quote something I said a while back.

A PU condie build fills the role of light team-fight disruption and support with the aoe support conditions, but primarily is a point disruptor, taking advantage of an unguarded point to rapidly secure a decap, then force the enemy team toshift significant resources to push you out of the point.

Edit: Watched the videos. They showed decent play against opponents that really didn’t know how to fight a phantasm build at all. Not a single person in either video attempted to kill your phantasms, which could be done with an autoattack or two, eliminating your offense.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Yeah, I bet nerfing one skill was a super high priority for them when they were trying to push out a major content release and when they didn’t even so much as touch any of the other classes.

Obviously it was, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the dev time to do it. Additionally, the balance devs have absolutely nothing to do with living world content updates. The two teams do not interlap in any way, even when they should.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I can think of quite a few other recent buffs/fixes.

dis gon b gud

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- Empowering Mantras was previously bugged to be 2% per active instead of 4%. Now it’s properly 4%, i.e. twice the buff.

You’re wrong, this was never a thing.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- Mantra of Concentration and Resolve are now AOE applications..

1. This is recent?
2. The aoe radius is so small that you’ll get a molestation lawsuit if you try to use these reliably.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- Phantasmal Haste now works for Swordsmen.

Yes, phantasmal haste now works, 2 years into the game. This was a true fix though, so I’ll give it to you.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

-Phantasmal Wardens now follow the target properly.

Haha. Ha. Hmm. Not sure if serious or…

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- Illusionist’s Celerity is now a master trait rather than a grandmaster.

And you’re happily ignoring that it used to be a minor before they hit a home run with the nerf bat.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- The Prestige is now an actual stealth application rather than a crappy channel.

And this change is recent compared to…the 90’s?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- Mind Spike now deals extra damage against boon-less targets.

Yes, and this was bugged for months and months, and they even lowered the damage on it to compensate for the buff.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

- Signet of the Ether is one of the best heal skills in the game.

allmywat.jpg

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I’m sure there’s a bunch more but that’s what I’ve got off the top of my head. So yeah, nothing but nerfs, bad class.

I’d love to hear these ‘bunch more’ you have hidden away somewhere.

Sanderinoa.8065:

Hmm… Considering all of their attacks are done physically without anything leaving the main body I find it unlikely that there would be a projectile attack among its kitten nal… I usually go for sword/sword/pistol with daze mantra x3, halting strike, signet of midnight and maybe even signet of domination.

You can completely lock them down if done properly and halting strike makes it so damage in the process

So much effort. Just go sword/sword and strafe around them. The strafing makes their one attack miss, and you use the block to counter the spin. I save blurred frenzy to avoid the death laser if I don’t have a crystal handy.

Weez.6315:

please dont advise a fair and square shatter mesmers to play Pu or phantasm builds :S
you can beat s/d thieves with shatter too, kite him a bit wait for his first heal then wait for the sword 3 kombination after the evade interrupt the burst strike and use mindwreck combined with mirror blade for example. That maybe wont kill the thief but he will retreat and maybe u can get a luckshot and bring it to an end.
In my opinion the best weaponset against a s/d thief is greatword sword/sword.
You can let the thief run into ur blurred frenzy got a block and still nice ranged damage with gs when the thief retreats. Id personally run with mirror images decoy and blink against a thief. Try to use mirror images right after his 3 evade like mirror blade or combined and wreck him :p

You haven’t been fighting any decent thieves. If Supcutie can’t do it, neither can you.

On the other hand, if you really think that you can beat a good s/d thief with a shatter build, I invite you to record it and let us all experience your breakthrough.

Yeah, it’s pretty much as standard shatter as it gets. Utilities are slightly non-standard, normally you’d have decoy somewhere in there, but that’s about it. You’ve tossed in a bit of toughness gear to boost your defense, nothing particularly ground-breaking about that. It’ll work just about how it seems that it will; lower damage than a full zerker shatter, but able to take a few more hits.

maha.7902:

what makes you think a dueling class is meant to work in massive group settings

What makes you think one class should be excluded entirely from a large portion of the game?

Both the cleave spam and the evades contribute to the thief being an incredibly hard counter to shatter Mesmer.

The evades mean that it’s very difficult for Mesmer to actually land burst on the thief. Since weapon evades can even be used while immobilized, you can’t rely on that to land burst. It means that more careful setup is necessary to successfully land damage.

The cleave means that the Mesmer isn’t able to do that more careful setup. The thief cleaves and evades while on the offensive. This means that not only are they avoiding incoming damage, they’re actively destroying the resource that Mesmers need to do damage at the same time.

This is also why clone-death condition builds are highly effective against thieves. Clone-deaths ignore evades, and so that cleave spam just means the thief will be loaded up with condies after a couple seconds.

Iris Ng.9845:

Question: can we reflect/lock down the tentacles in the Jade Maw fractal with traited warden?

?

Ansau.7326:

pyro, know when it’ll be upload?? Couldn’t saw it, cause that 1am EU xd

It should be up by Wednesday.

Benjamin.8237:

Dirven.3021:

It is actually very easy to fight a thief. Always use staff, it will drive them crazy with your number 2 skill, if you play it right they can never land a burst on you. Put atleast 4 in chaos magic and 3 in shatter so you got lowest cooldown possible for skill 2 and 4 on staff, then the next set of traits depend on what you run as second weapon set.

You have literally never fought a decent thief have you, staff is literally THE worst weapon to fight thieves with, they always have one teleport more than you and your phase retreat is merely an inconvenience into their rotation. If you truly want to beat a thief play a really good PU, plain and simple.

I definitely wouldn’t go so far to say this. While I agree that staff alone isn’t sufficient to make a fight against a thief easy, it does contribute significantly.

Ignoring for a moment the sheer volume of teleports that either class has, staff provides more mobility and can be used to reduce pressure. Regardless of if the thief can catch up quickly, it can still be used to kite the thief. Overall, the staff increases your mobility, and this is never a bad thing.

The staff also gives some potent defense in 2 forms. First, it gives aegis and dazes through chaos storm. Fighting in chaos storm will provide a lot of damage protection as well as a strong, albeit temporary, area denial.

Lastly, staff provides multiple methods to obtain chaos armor. Chaos armor will alleviate about 30% of incoming damage due to blind, more if you combo it for aoe armor on the clones. That’s a very significant damage reduction. On top of that, you can proc to receive protection and regeneration, which of course both reduce and mitigate the damage you take further.

StickerHappy.8052:

hmm. okay. so If i were to build A phantasm based build, what number in power do i stop so I could invest it on other stats? I mean like what range does the diminishing returns start?

It’s not a point at which it starts, it’s simply a smooth progression.

Adding 100 power when you have 1000 power increases your total power by 10%. Adding 100 power when you have 2000 power increases it by 5%. This is a % diminishing return simply caused by having a larger pool that you’re adding to.

There’s no certain point where it ‘kicks in’. It’s just that it if you have a ton of power, adding more power provides a smaller benefit than if you have a small amount of power.

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Certainly as someone who only plays PvE and primarily pugs dungeons, I’d say mesmer is extremely strong and needs nerfs if anything. As someone who does sPvP or WvW or whatever you might have different opinions but Anet needs to balance the class across all modes, with the current design they can’t buff the mesmer for PvP without making it broken in PvE and vice versa.

I’m honestly becoming convinced we’re not playing the same game here. Mesmer is a good pug carry classy certainly, but extremely strong and needs nerfs? What on earth are you talking about?

Since you discussed about the diminishing returns on the other thread, Is there any diminishing returns for our phantasms too? Is it the same formula? I mean the diminishing returns for yourself?

Well, phantasms suffer from math-based diminishing returns just like everything else. You can’t avoid math. They don’t have any inherent diminishing returns though. I don’t know of any mechanic in the entire game that provides artificial diminishing returns.

Sandrox.9524:

Fay.2357:

Uhm. I think I’m missing the question here. Are you just asking if PU is good for roaming? If so then yes, it’s the best roaming build.

I can see why you missed the question,though,I had two questions one which you answered and the other one is what about shatter build? is it viable for roaming aswell?it is just me who cant manage to do well on 1v2 against competent opponets?

Shatter isn’t great for a 1v1, much less a 1v2. While it can be done, you’ll generally get ripped apart, particularly if you’re against several good roaming builds.

Uhm. I think I’m missing the question here. Are you just asking if PU is good for roaming? If so then yes, it’s the best roaming build.

Podcast going live in ~7 minutes or when Chaos fixes his mic, whichever comes first.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Certainly as someone who only plays PvE and primarily pugs dungeons, I’d say mesmer is extremely strong and needs nerfs if anything. As someone who does sPvP or WvW or whatever you might have different opinions but Anet needs to balance the class across all modes, with the current design they can’t buff the mesmer for PvP without making it broken in PvE and vice versa.

I’m honestly becoming convinced we’re not playing the same game here. Mesmer is a good pug carry classy certainly, but extremely strong and needs nerfs? What on earth are you talking about?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

in the content where they are already OP.

And by this, I’m assuming that you’re referring to the maybe 3 encounters in the game where you can reliably maintain 3 phantasms?

Dirven.3021:

Mesmers are actually way better than thieves in almost every aspect of the game.

[citation needed]

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

maha.7902:

that’s like saying “necro is good if you want to play inefficiently”

guang pls

Mesmer does well in pugs because they have high sustained DPS

What.

Mesmer is good in pugs, but not because they have high sustained dps. Mesmer is good in pugs because you bring (almost) all of the utility that a full party needs for any dungeon in 1 single player. This means you don’t have to be reliant on other people for things like stability, reflects, condition removal, boon stripping, and mob gathering. It allows you to carry a party with ease.

That being said, your damage still won’t be all that hot in most cases.

loseridoit.2756:

you are not really meant to activate it. its meant for phastasm builds basically.

But this statement shows how broken the signet really is.

It’s a signet. It’s supposed to have 2 functions, balanced between the passive and the active.

With the exception of the heal signet, all mesmer signets are absolutely horridly designed. You either take them totally for the active or totally for the passive. You basically never take them because you want both functions.

Signet of illusions is an example of the latter. The active is horrible and the passive is strong, so you take it for the active and never use it. It’s definitely a bit of an issue.

Reverence.6915:

warriorjrd.8695:

Prysin.8542:

Blix.8021:

JJBigs.8456:

Is Ice Bow new meta for ele? Or are the people noobs using it? Whats the skill rotation if so?’

Ice bow is nice for doing some good aoe damage to a clumped group of people, especially when a zerg is stuck on a wall or in a tunnel. You drop the bow, press 3, press 4, then switch back to your normal weapon.

Prysin.8542:

Its THE best tagging weapon ingame. Imagine a Meteor shower that is extremely small and fast. Allowing you to tag compact groups without any real effort invested, nor risk.

The risk is it’s only 900 range, has a 2.5 second channel time, will deal a ton of retal damage to the user, and takes up a slot that could be used for a survivability skill.

uhm dunno if this is a bug, but i do not take retal damage from it more then one hit… Dunno why.

I killed myself with retal today ( I don’t know how to ele) using ice bow, so I think it’s a bug. Unless, on the very off chance, your enemy didn’t have much retal.

It’s very hard to kill yourself with retal if you’re in water attunement. You can also cancel the skill to heal up.

Water attunement doesn’t have anything to do with killing yourself by retal. As was stated earlier in this thread, ice bow does 20 separate 5 target aoes.

Assuming every hit returns retaliation, that’s 100 hits of retaliation, presumably for about 200-250 damage each. That adds up to…20,000-25,000 damage from retaliation. Water attunement isn’t going to save you, canceling the skill rapidly might.

Dano.5298:

So you are telling me that arenanet can create a beautiful and detail rich game with really fun combat and really minimal bugs where miraculously I can play with people all around the world but they can’t make even slightly fair match ups?

There is no question in my mind that it is in large part due to the player base and their desire to play without sportsmanship but you can’t tell me arenanet can’t do anything.

This matchup was due to the random variance that Anet introduced into WvW matchups.

Do you know why Anet introduced random variance into WvW matchups? They introduced it because people like you complained non-stop about having stale matchups.

Of course, now that random variance is in the game, people also like you complain non-stop about having the occasional week of unbalanced WvW. It’s a no-win situation for Anet.

eldenbri.1059:

Thanks so much for doing all the podcasts. I’ve learned a ton from them.

If this is the last one, here are a few things that I would find really fun and more interesting than talking about what’s wrong.

- Top two or three tips for fighting each of the other professions 1v1

- What strategies you think are viable for dealing with conditions in the different game modes

- Your favorite Mesmer builds for all the different modes (pve, wvw, pvp – is there one good shatter build for all of these, one good phantasm build, is there a lockdown build that applies to all). Maybe not necessarily looking for the very best build for each situation but something that’s fun and workable for all of them

- Some speculation What do you think is likely to happen with the class in time? What changes do you predict in game mechanics? (It’s interesting to see the latest living world update has some elements that seem like they’re trying to pull more of the pvp concepts into pve. Maybe it’s been going on for a while, but in the current living story, I’m seeing lots of stealthing opponents, opponents with strippable boons, opponents that dodge, demonstration of the portal (though it’s shown in a way that’s different than how it currently works). So some speculation on what you think will come at some point would be cool.

Thx again and have fun!

We can look to do some of this as well, thanks for the suggestions.

frifox.5283:

BillFreist.1527:

The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

Dev considered consumables that summon AI pets a “bug” because they put a lot of stress on the servers. Mesmers summon and destroy these “AI pets” every few seconds. Mesmers therefore cause the most stress on the servers. Devs keep ignoring our bugs and constantly keep nerfing the class. Players are so fed up that they give up and leave the class for something that is actually viable and works. Less mesmers = happy servers. Looks like this is dev’s hidden agenda and they are finally achieving it.

The end of this podcast is just one of examples.

PS: I know this is a bit anecdotal but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true, even if devs will surely deny it publicly.

I don’t believe it’s that intentionally malicious. They just don’t understand the class at all, and it results in what we see.

On Sunday, July 6th, at 3:30 PST/6:30 EST we’ll be streaming one last Mesmerized podcast where we’ll probably gripe a bit, reminisce a bit, and ultimately close out our mesmer podcast for the foreseeable future.

The stream will go live at twitch.tv/soacgaming

Celeras.4980:

Thus concludes today’s lesson. You’re welcome.

Mmm, but my class is still in session. Let’s look again, shall we?

First of all, there’s no such thing as a ‘soft-cap’ in GW2. What you do have is something called ‘math based diminishing returns’, where adding flat numbers to a larger number produces a smaller and smaller % change.

So let’s start with power. Power is pretty simple, as it’s not dependent on anything else. Damage goes up nice and linearly with power, but it is subject to math based diminishing returns. Starting with 2000 power, in order to get a 10% increase in damage, you need to add 200 power.

Precision and ferocity are less simple. Precision affects crit rate, and crit rate effectiveness is impacted by critical damage. This means that higher precision synergizes with higher ferocity, and then the total of that synergizes with higher power.

Now, the nice thing about all of this is that you can completely ignore things like damage coefficients, since this whole relationship is multiplicative. This means that your actual amount of damage increase on each skill will be different, but the % change will remain the same.

So the overall issue here is that relative effectiveness of precision and ferocity depends on how much precision and ferocity you already have, and it’s a positive correlation. This in particular means that a phantasm build with phantasmal fury gets a massive boost to critical chance, making crit power more effective. With power there’s also a relationship…but it’s negative. The more power you have, the less an equal amount more will increase your damage.

There’s a couple more things to consider as well. Critical hits are not purely extra damage. Crits can proc sigils, provide sharper images bleeds and proc critical infusion vigor, and your crit chance can be significantly boosted through fury, and that doesn’t obey the nice linear progressions of stats.

What’s the conclusion you can draw from this? Well, if you want to do damage, all 3 stats are important. Using berserker gear you essentially max out all of those stats in a way that provides theoretical maximum damage. However, when lowering those stats to add more defense to a build, prioritize lowering critical damage and power. Those two stats only lower damage itself, while lowering critical chance has other significant impacts on a build.