Guild Wars 2

adelaide.6213:

Fay.2357:

The fastest way to level up right now is crown pavilion gold runs.

Get yourself geared out for your level with a greatsword and sword/focus and full power stats. Get into a gold run instance, and run it. You’ll receive large amounts of exp every time, as well as being able to buy level up tomes with the large amounts of festival tickets you get.

Don’t open the gold reward chests. What you can do is put the gold reward chests on a level 80 character, and that way you’ll actually get level 80 loot for leveling up a low level character.

You should open the chests/bags on a lvl 57(ish) character. Salvaging items at that level will get you linen/platinum/hard wood that are worth more than silk/mithril/elder wood. Occasional rares only TP for 15-20 silver each; but on average, you should make a bit more on opening a non-80 because of the mats salvaged from blues/greens. You obtain the same non-salvageable mats regardless of character level with the exception of bloodstone dust.

Hm, that’s interesting. Opening on a 57ish also eliminates the potential for high value exotic weapons/armor, and the potentially very valuable superior sigils/runes that come with them.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Fay.2357:

The fastest way to level up right now is crown pavilion gold runs.

Get yourself geared out for your level with a greatsword and sword/focus and full power stats. Get into a gold run instance, and run it. You’ll receive large amounts of exp every time, as well as being able to buy level up tomes with the large amounts of festival tickets you get.

Don’t open the gold reward chests. What you can do is put the gold reward chests on a level 80 character, and that way you’ll actually get level 80 loot for leveling up a low level character.

And to keep yourself awake while grinding the PvE events, I recomend stabbing yourself in the leg with a fork every 15 minutes, or taking a hit of speed every 8 hours.

Haha, yes. That being said, k-training in eotm is pretty much as boring, if not more.

The fastest way to level up right now is crown pavilion gold runs.

Get yourself geared out for your level with a greatsword and sword/focus and full power stats. Get into a gold run instance, and run it. You’ll receive large amounts of exp every time, as well as being able to buy level up tomes with the large amounts of festival tickets you get.

Don’t open the gold reward chests. What you can do is put the gold reward chests on a level 80 character, and that way you’ll actually get level 80 loot for leveling up a low level character.

Embolism.8106:

then a CondiShatter which runs without PU but with most of its other toys wouldn’t be that worse-off, but can dish out significantly more pressure.

If that were actually possible to do, then it might work. Unfortunately, it’s not. You are required to do x/20/x/x/30 in condition shatter. This does not leave you with the options to take ‘most of its other toys’.

The defense of PU condie comes from multiple sources. Crippling dissipation for movement control. Debilitating dissipation for weakness. Chaotic dampening for higher uptime on chaos armor and more chaos storm defense. Cleansing conflagration combined with pDisenchanter for condition management. pDisenchanter for boon stripping. Scepter for a low cooldown block with a nasty kick. All of these together combine to give the build its incredibly potent defense.

You do not have the ability to take even ‘most’ of these toys in a condition shatter build. You are unable to utilize the pDisenchanter effectively, and that means you will be required to use shattered concentration for boon management. Sword clones are not in any way an effective boon stripping source in PvP. If you take shattered concentration, you are unable to take cleansing conflagration. Combined with the lack of effective pDisenchanters, you are now incredibly vulnerable to conditions. Any conditions that go on you don’t come off, and you will be melted by any condiemancer, engineer, or condie warrior that happens to sneeze on you.

If you want to take the scepter and staff for the defense and condition pressure, you now can’t take sword. This means no leap/swap, and it means that already difficult to land shatters are now even more difficult to land. You have absolutely no access to immobilize, meaning your shatters have to be absolutely perfectly set up or they’ll be dodged.

Simply put, a condition shatter is easy condition pressure to avoid. PU condition pressure is by definition impossible to avoid if you want to fight on point.

Additionally, stealth is only a detriment if you’re in a 1v1 fight on a point, which I’ve already noted can be handled without stealth. The need for stealth is in managing a 2 or 3 vs 1. This is the strength of the PU condition build, and the single reason it is possible to use effectively. When there is more than 1 enemy on a point fighting you, your team has a numbers advantage in the rest of the fight, regardless of your contesting the point. This allows you to win. A condition shatter build is not capable of this.

Embolism.8106:

A good offense can be a pretty good defense too.

While potentially true, this assumes that you have a good offense. Condition shatter does not have a good offense. It has telegraphed attacks that can be easily dodged or blocked. The damage comes with the added vulnerability of cleansing or even simply standing still to nullify the pressure. When playing against a competent opponent, condition shatter has less pressure than PU conditions. Your shatters will be dodged and blocked. Clone deaths are undodgeable and unblockable. In an on-point fight, every single clone explosion will hit your opponent, there is no way to mitigate that pressure.

Again, condition shatter is simply not good at any role in a team.

Embolism.8106:

6400 with Mind Wrack is assuming four criticals, Compounding Power, and at least one stack of Might for Runes of Strength. You can achieve higher damage through Vulnerability and Might stacking, plus things like Sigil of Air. On the other hand you can achieve higher damage with conditions too. Remember this is tPvP, not WvW, so numbers will naturally be lower.

Fact is Diversion does damage in CondiShatter and doesn’t in PowerShatter. Every bit helps. An extra 2500 damage plus Confusion when you interrupt isn’t to be sneezed at.

I don’t see why you’re “forced” to run 20 in Domination for utility when a PU Condi build doesn’t have that utility. If you want to play as close to PU Condi as possible then there’s no reason you can’t sink 20 in Chaos for Debilitating Dissipation and Chaotic Dampening.

So, most of your argument is based on a strawman that CondiShatter is forced to run itself in a way that suits your arguments.

The reason for 20 domination in a shatter build is boon stripping on shatter. In a PU condie build, you can accomplish this with the pDisenchanter, but that doesn’t work nearly as well in a shatter build…due to the whole shattering thing. Additionally, aoe boon stripping is one of the main reasons you’d ever bring a shatter mesmer on a team.

Sure, you can drop shattered concentration and go 20 into chaos, but what exactly have you got for that? If you’re shattering, then you’re not getting clone deaths, and if you’re getting clone deaths you’re not shattering. A 0/20/20/0/30 build is basically just a clone-death condie build with a little extra pressure from torment shattering.

Try and remember what role you’re filling on a team. A power shatter build fills the role of aoe heavy damage and boon stripping, allowing for rapid conversions from low hp to downed for multiple enemies. It also generally takes portal for team mobility. 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 to shift significant resources to push you out of the point.

What does a condie shatter do? You don’t have the heavy damage of a power shatter. Aoe torment is all well and good, but it doesn’t burst people down. You can decap just like a PU condie build, but what happens next? The other team can just send their S/D thief to take you out, or a hambow, or a decap engie, or a condition engie, or a condition necromancer. A condie shatter build is incredibly vulnerable to all of these builds, and only one is necessary to remove you from a point in short order, whereas a well played PU condie can maintain a fight against 2 or more people indefinitely with good play.

So again, what does condie shatter do? The answer is that it does nothing effectively. It’s not as good at dueling/outnumbered fights as PU condie, it’s not as good at team support and heavy damage as glassy shatter, so why on earth would I want it on my team?

Embolism.8106:

In tPvP PU is a detriment because attrition is useless when you 1. cannot kill in a reasonable amount of time and 2. cannot contest points. IMO the defense you sacrifice by not taking PU is minor compared to the damage you gain by taking MtD: you’re still much tougher than a PowerShatter while being able to dish out much more pressure and contest points more effectively than a PU Condi.

Condi also has the advantage of not being mitigated by armour, and your opponent’s build may be less capable of dealing with condis than direct damage. For example, other Mesmers tend to be very lacking in the condi-removal front.

Again, remember that CondiShatter can use Sharper Images, Winds of Chaos, Mind Wrack, Cry of Frustration and Diversion as sources of damage, while PowerShatter is mainly just Mind Wrack and the odd Phantasm.

EDIT: To crunch some numbers, here’s how the damage of the two builds, looking at Shatter skills only, compare. Note that these are controlled tests, you can obviously achieve higher damage.

PowerShatter

Mind Wrack: 6400 + 320/cast
Cry of Frustration: 2500 + 640/cast
Diversion: 0 + 320/cast

CondiShatter

Mind Wrack: 4300 + 510/cast
Cry of Frustration: 3400 + 1020/cast
Diversion: 2500 + 510/cast

Your numbers are way off.

A mind wrack in a power shatter can easily hit 8k-10k if you get a couple crits. Additionally, you’ll only reach that maximum value for your condition hits if your target doesn’t have the presence of mind to stand still for a second or two.

Diversion is on a very long cooldown and is too useful as an interrupt to be used in this analysis. If you use diversion for torment damage, you’ve made a massive mistake.

You also seem to believe that a condie shatter build has strong defense on the level of a standard PU condie build. This is woefully false. If you want to have any utility, you’ll be forced to run 20/20/0/0/30, and so you’re losing out on a significant amount of toughness. You’re also losing out on staff cooldowns and debilitating dissipation. The aoe weakness from debilitating dissipation is vastly overlooked as a defensive factor for a clone-death build.

Overall, an S/D thief will chew you up and spit you out just like any other shatter build. Your slightly higher defense won’t matter, and your lack of pressure that can hit through evades will keep them nice and safe when fighting you. This being the case, you’re in the exact same situation as a zerker shatter build, the only difference being that the thief will take a little longer to kill you, and you don’t have the capacity for strong aoe burst that is the primary combat utility you offer.

A standard clone-death PU condie build has extremely strong defense in the form of low staff cooldowns, high toughness, and constant aoe cripple and weakness, along with the scepter block of course. Note that all of these defenses are available without stealth. This allows you to effectively skirmish on a point against something like a hambow or S/D thief without losing the point, although a hambow is a very difficult on-point fight. Noting that the hambow is a very difficult on-point fight for the highly defensive build, the condie shatter build would be decimated in seconds when trying to skirmish on point against a hambow.

Additionally, you suffer from the same vulnerabilities as a PU condie build does when facing a strong bunker such as a cleansing guardian, and so you’d be no more able to kill them than PU condie. One last thing is that a condie shatter build is absolutely un-fit for maintaining an outnumbered fight. Maintaining an outnumbered fight is one of the things that PU condie does best, and forcing enemy teams to provide you with these outnumbered fights is the primary method by which you win matches.

TL;DR: Condie shatter isn’t actually any better off in a survivability standpoint than standard glassy shatter builds. It lacks the ability to survive in an outnumbered fight, it lacks the ability to skirmish on point against a heavy aoe class such as engineer or hambow, and it completely fails in outnumbered situations that PU conditions excels at. It’s objectively worse in almost every way.

The trait is fun and enjoyable to use, and I truly wish it were viable. Unfortunately, it’s not viable, and choosing to use it is making a choice to play a significantly worse build than otherwise possible.

rob banzai.2704:

Using GS and SW/FOC I’m doing sort of OK. I get downed alot more than on other characters but I’m trying to follow the guide. Now that I have Decoy and the one that creates two clones I might get a little better at it.

GS and sw/f in a phantasm build is pretty much the way to go.

That being said, the leveling will be absolutely brutal almost the entire way. My personal recommendation is to do crown pavilion gold runs. You’ll get very rapid levels as well as the ability to buy level up tomes with the festival tokens.

Once you hit 80, you’ll have plenty of time to learn how to play the class, but if you really try to slog through leveling it the standard way, you may very well end up hating it.

BlackDevil.9268:

3. Well you can’t run this squishy if you not gonna have XIII dueling. If you choose for boon removal you can better start speccing yourself full tank with 100% condition duration for 4 seconds immobilizes on sword aswell.

Not sure I agree with you. Just from watching this video, I have no doubt that distortion on kill is helping, but it’s not the factor that allows you to run this squishy. Now and then you get distortion from it, but it’s primarily the support of the rest of your team that’s letting you run squishy.

Now, if the icd were removed, maybe that would be a different story. As is though, it’s a little bit of extra distortion. Nice, but not a deciding factor.

maha.7902:

the thing with the warden projectile absorption is they still do it like a second after they stop spinning – so you can take advantage of that.

Yeah, you can test this yourself with a friendly shortbow ranger to get a good feel for how long the block/reflect window lasts.

Hyble.4271:

Any ideas on how to update that build for current day? It’s set on WvW mode so it’s not exactly clear what to pick for PvP.

He also uses a Sigil of Corruption for condi stacks and only has one sigil on the 2 handed staff. Finally, there are no Perplexity runes to choose from for PvP.

I have the specific PU condition build variant that I recommend in PvP listed in my solo queue guide here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-A-Mesmer-Guide-to-Solo-Queue/first#post4060868

Quick link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArfWlknpMtFqxRNcrNSpxY6cO6GSGQFlckyB-TJRHwAw2fIZZAAnCABPBAA

Dracatis.1908:

maxinion.8396:

Fay.2357:

Dracatis.1908:

Mantra/Interrupt Build

Knights/Cavalier’s with Runes of Vampirism

6/4/0/4/0 (Empowering/Protective/Restorative Mantras, Rending Shatter, Shattered Concentration, Retaliatory Shield, Mendor’s Purity)

Scepter/Sword and Staff(Yes, power build with mostly condition weapons lol, think outside the box)

Mantra of Recovery/Pain/Distraction, Phantasmal Defender and Summon D-Series Golem

You shouldn’t do this. That’s a horrid build to run in PvE. Shatter builds are just bad, they do far lower dps than phantasm builds. Retaliatory shield is 100% useless in PvE as well, and so is protected mantras.

but pyro, you’re not thinking outside the box!!11!!!

Sure, I’m not doing as much DPS… but since I rarely run solo(even when I do with Megaserver I end up with people a lot), overall DPS isn’t as big of a concern for me.

So I inflict a lot of vulnerabilty, I keep people up with cycling Mantra of Pain when I need to and help buff/protect with Chaos Storm and Defender and dazing…

The main thing is… I almost never go down. I keep my Bloodlust stacks and can wear out most champions to death by myself if I need to. I’ve probably used Waypoints quite a lot less then most anyone with my type of time in the game(always stuff to harvest and nothing scares me).

I like you Pyro, you think and focus well on what you are accomplishing(unlike this maxinion echo-clown, or should I say clone here?), but maybe you didn’t consider how I play PvE?

It really doesn’t matter much. PvE is simply a matter of dps. If you can’t dps, you aren’t worth a spot on a team.

This is not PvE like PvE in every other mmo where you have a tank, dps, and healer. In GW2, support is accomplished while dpsing. Since classes such as mesmer and guardian have the capacity to do quite good dps while accomplishing support, there’s simply no excuse to not dps.

You don’t have any utility in that build that a normal build doesn’t have, and you have far worse dps. You can throw on restorative mantras in any phantasm build if necessary (which it shouldn’t be, people should avoid damage, not need to be rapidly healed through it). Boon stripping can be accomplished through sword autoattacks, sword clones, or pDisenchanter. You can throw in the pDefender into a normal phantasm build, and have it be more effective since you’re boosting it in a phantasm build and you’re not required to shatter for other utility and damage. Chaos storm provides a couple of buffs, but the only important one is aegis, and guardians do that far better quite honestly. It’s on a very long cooldown and the aegis is random, it’s simply not worth it.

I run a full berserker phantasm build, and I almost never go down. Never going down is absolutely not a function of the build you run, but how you play. You can run a version of my immortal tank build with full sentinel’s gear in a high level fractal, and you’ll still get 1-shot by every nasty mob there, or you can run a 18k hp full glass phantasm build and never die because you avoid the hits. If people die, it’s because they made a mistake, not because of the build they use.

You can make the decision to play a build that is objectively worse, and that’s your choice. It is, however, factually worse. You provide very little damage and absolutely no utility that a normal phantasm build can’t provide. No matter how you choose to play, a standard meta build will do a better job.

Dracatis.1908:

Mantra/Interrupt Build

Knights/Cavalier’s with Runes of Vampirism

6/4/0/4/0 (Empowering/Protective/Restorative Mantras, Rending Shatter, Shattered Concentration, Retaliatory Shield, Mendor’s Purity)

Scepter/Sword and Staff(Yes, power build with mostly condition weapons lol, think outside the box)

Mantra of Recovery/Pain/Distraction, Phantasmal Defender and Summon D-Series Golem

You shouldn’t do this. That’s a horrid build to run in PvE. Shatter builds are just bad, they do far lower dps than phantasm builds. Retaliatory shield is 100% useless in PvE as well, and so is protected mantras.

Domzz.1260:

Shatter? Mantras? Phantasms? Something Else?

Weapon Sets?

Specific traits?

Berserker? Knights? Soldiers? Valkyrie?

Does anyone run say conditions or PU?

I’m just curious as to what mesmer mains run these days in dungeons and open world farming and map completion

In general, mesmer uses mantra/phantasm builds in PvE, with bersker or assassins gear. Pick one of these:

maha.7902:

30/20/0/0/20

30/20/0/20/0

30/30/0/0/10

10/20/0/20/20

full assassin, scholar runes
sword/sword + sword/focus

switch utilities dependent on situation, stack mantras on the first 3 builds if theres no utilities worth taking so you can get a 4% damage modifier per mantra

I removed the undead slaying sigils from this post since those are particular to arah. Scholar runes are also very expensive, you can use runes of the pack or runes of the ranger as low-cost replacements.

Never run conditions in PvE under any circumstances. They are not suited for PvE in any way.

You shouldn’t salvage your gear. Condition setups are very strong in a lot of situations, and I can absolutely guarantee that you will regret salvaging your gear and selling those runes if you do.

Just get new gear. Run some dungeons, and get it for free.

Mades.5706:

Hey guys thanks for your answers .

Today i know that in dungeon , zerk is king !

But , in high level of fractal , i need to know if ascended gear with zerk stat is good …

I play S/S and Staff or S/P with zerk , in fractal i get down every time i miss to dogde …

So i ask you , does celestial gear in high fractal isn’t good ?

Celestial gear in high fractals is even worse than in normal dungeons. In high level fractals, you’ll get downed in 1 hit even if you’re full PVT. The mobs do so much damage, it really exacerbates the issue of dodging/blocks being the only viable damage avoidance methods, because their incredibly high damage will just crush straight through any and all normal defensive stats.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Just out of curiosity, if you can change ileap range tooltip what range would you put down?

The range is correct, just include an additional note about how this skill is liable to not work if used on anything but a featureless plane.

Wyrden.4713:

what if u wanna see the actual number of dmg u r making ^ :p

Again, why’s it matter? If you’re trying to figure out whether or not celestial is bad, then the amount of damage doesn’t matter at all, it’s just the relative amount.

Wyrden.4713:

but then we will be downscaled no? in most dungoeons

That doesn’t really matter for testing.

Magnito.6187:

So I play shatter mesmer during tpvp’s quite a lot.
Alltho I feel I have to back of to warrior way too much.
I’ve been having a lot of troubles with sword/dagger thiefs,
if not thiefs in general. but let’s say sword/dagger thiefs in particular.

It’s a pain in the kitten when you see that all the shatters get avoided by dodges, if not by dodges, they’ll just run from them (as they have like almost perma swiftness with dodges) and then jump back on you.

I feel like if I meet up an experienced sword/dagger thief, there’s not much I can do.
I’m wondering if you guys feel the same pain as I do. Or got anything to counter it. Keep in mind that I’m a shatter mesmer, running tournaments, so I find switching out utility skills quite useless as I want to be usefull for the team.

Suggestions, tricks and hints are welcome

There’s no good way to counter an S/D thief on a shatter mesmer. If you want to counter them, you’re going to have to run either a phantasm build or a defensive condie build, usually PU for the condie build. The inherent defense of the rabid amulet combined with the large amounts of active defense from staff+scepter allow you to duel an S/D thief and beat them without too much trouble.

Benjamin.8237:

Jurica.1742:

Your job is to put pressure on mid and thieves job is to eliminate that pressure.

What if I told you you should only be at mid to quickly down squishy classes. A Mesmers role in a team fight is boon stripping and spike damage, you shouldn’t be hanging around mid to add pressure. Mesmer and Thief to be honest both have the same role, pressure far and the enemy roamer, which unfortunately will be a thief.

A mesmer’s role in a team fight is aoe spike damage, and that’s why you’re mostly supporting mid. Mesmer is the only class in the game that can rapidly convert multiple lowish opponents into downed opponents in 1 single instant burst that comes preloaded with boon strip. Yes, you also have the responsibility to cover home a bit with portals, but your main role is finishing team fights. The thing is that a thief is far more mobile than mesmer, and can pressure far and the enemy roamer far more effectively than a mesmer can.

Benjamin.8237:

Fay.2357:

Benjamin.8237:

The sword 3 skill works 100% of the time if you are above them on a hill.

This isn’t true. Any sort of slope can and will make the leap fail spectacularly.

Are you sure? I’ve been led to believe when I am higher on a slope than my opponent that it connects, such as in the borderlands areas where the non home teams spawn.

It certainly can work, but it’s absolutely not a guarantee. Any sort of slope will cause the clone to get confused.

Silentshoes.1805:

I think the Mesmer’s there for the playstyle, not any special ability for team. I admit I do enjoy and am entertained by the “fool ’em” aspect of Mesmer.

Except that’s not how mesmer actually plays against a quality opponent. A good mesmer always assumes that they have a target marked on them, because any good opponent will mark them with a target.

Benjamin.8237:

The sword 3 skill works 100% of the time if you are above them on a hill.

This isn’t true. Any sort of slope can and will make the leap fail spectacularly.

Doesn’t matter really. It’ll proc on the first random stack of bleed/vuln/w/e that you get, and then you’re out of luck when you get dumped on. They’re simply too unreliable.

UnknownFreak.2805:

EDIT: I am not buying that “won’t be fixed argument”

It’s not an argument, it’s a statement. They didn’t explain why it won’t be fixed for a long time, they simply stated it.

yski.7642:

- How does Illusionary Persona interact with Mind Wrack?

The way IP works is that it takes the current damage that clones do with a shatter, and adds another instance of that damage. This has the result of massively boosting shatter damage. A 1 clone IP shatter is almost as high as a 3 clone non-IP shatter due to this interaction.

yski.7642:

- What is the highest possible weapon strength value Mind Wrack can get?

Mind wrack uses the mainhand weapon, so the highest weapon strength would be using a 2-hander.

pepe.6493:

Hi there

So i was rolling whit a friend when both of us realize that the mesmer´s clones wear the armor insted of the the outfit so its easy to indentify the orginal one.
we alredy send a ticket, but i want to know if any other mesmer have the same problem?

I alredy wrote a post about this but i´ll post here too

Known bug. Devs have said it won’t be fixed for a long time.

Dracatis.1908:

Don’t worry too much about ney sayers, especially if your sticking to PvE, have fun and think about how to best use that spread of stats.

It’s one thing to make a conscious decision to use a severely suboptimal set of gear or build, but it’s another entirely to stick you fingers in your ears and refuse to listen to criticism.

I provided that criticism because that’s simply the facts of the game. If the OP for some reason has their heart set on celestial mesmer, then they can obviously go and do what they want. I just provide them with the information that allows them to make an informed decision.

Mades.5706:

Hello , i want to play my mesmer with celestial gear ( PVE ) and i can’t choose between a shatter build that focus on Maim the desillusioned trait or play a fantasm build …

I can’t be the one that want to play celestial gear ?

Any tips ?

Celestial gear simply isn’t good on mesmer.

You can use it effectively on other classes because you can stack might well, and do a hybrid build with good defense and good hybrid damage. Mesmer doesn’t stack might well, and so instead of being pretty good at everything like other class celestial builds are, a mesmer celestial build just ends up being pretty meh at everything.

maha.7902:

highest damage is

pick up fiery greatsword

4

collect loot

You know, I’m not sure you’re right. The fgs trail pulses over the course of several seconds, and this burst is limited to just 1 second past the first hit of damage. Would be interesting to look into though.

Intweener.4867:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhUQNArcWlknpAtNoxUNUrNCrBh6xUmfSyCEgSGirB-TBDEABLcCAm4BAIiWg52DIS1fkdxBKUCOimggUu1hOAAM/xjSCA-e

Remade into this link @Fay

Thanks for that. With that link, you can go ahead and ignore my comments about the single sword offhand, but the rest of it still stands.

If you don’t mind, could you remake your build on gw2skills.net? Intothemists is just plain awful.

At any rate, you appear to be using 3 superior runes and 3 major runes. I’m going to assume this is a mistake?

Overall, this build seems incredibly confused and not effective at doing anything in particular. For a start, you’re using mostly carrion gear. This…is a poor choice. Your crit chance and crit damage are going to be horridly low, meaning that your power damage will be weak and you’ll have limited options for condition application since sharper images won’t work well.

Your traits and utilities seem very confused as well. You’ve got dazzling glamours, but only are taking null field, and that’s on a 40s cooldown, since you lack any glamour cooldown traits. Then you’ve got 2 signets. Signet of inspiration is never a good idea in a build unless you’re using it for boon share, and you’re obviously not, so I’m not entirely sure why you have it. You also have Signet of Domination. While this isn’t a horrid choice like signet of inspiration is…it also doesn’t really seem to have a purpose. On top of this, you’ve got the signet cooldown trait, and you seem to have taken that purely because you have 2 signets, without considering why you have those signets at all. With those utilities, you have no stunbreaker, and that’s a problem.

Your weapon choices are also very odd. You’ve got scepter/sword + sword/sword. This…makes no sense. You’re limiting yourself massively because you only have 1 offhand. On top of that, your build is primarily condition damage, and the swordsman does absolutely nothing in a condition damage setup, despite having phantasmal haste.

I also see that you’re taking Maim. This is a bad trait in any build. It’s simply not strong enough to perform in a way that’s viable. It’s a fun trait, and I wish it were good…but it simply isn’t. You mentioned in your post that you shatter for the massive damage, but your shatters are going to hardly tickle in this build.

One last note. I’ve been looking at this assuming PvP/WvW usage. In a PvP situation, this build isn’t good. There’s almost nothing about it that’s going to work well. You haven’t optimized for really anything, and it’s simply all over the place in all sorts of ways. My recommendation is to throw it out and start over. However, that’s better than if it’s for PvE.

Reading your post, it seems like you may have meant this for PvE use. In that case, I have some very bad news. Shatter is bad in PvE. Conditions are even worse, and condition shatter hybrid phantasm signet is probably coming close to the least effective build I can actually imagine using in PvE. If this is for PvE, you’re going in a very wrong direction.

Broken thread is broken, commence fixing operations.

eldenbri.1059:

Is this screen available outside of PvP? I’d love to see more detail on what I did wrong in a WvW fight.

Nope. It would be nice though.

Well, this build has quite a few issues.

Firstly, you’re taking Maim. This trait simply isn’t strong enough to be effective. It doesn’t give enough damage for what you’re sacrificing when you actually use a shatter. This makes the build inherently weak. Note that I actually love the trait, I think it’s really fun to play with and I wish it were good, but it’s not.

Next, you have no good boon stripping in this build. Yes, you have Arcane Thievery, no that’s not good boon stripping. 3 boons every 45 seconds assuming they don’t dodge/blind it isn’t good boon stripping. In this meta, the majority of people you fight are going to be maintaining upwards of 18 stacks of might, and being unable to effectively remove that consistently is very very painful.

Next, you’re taking HM…for just 1 skill, the heal mantra. That’s an awful lot of points into the dueling line for a single extra charge on that mantra. This might be worth it if you had decided to go for the daze mantra or stab mantra or w/e as well, but as is…not so much. You’d be much better off using those points differently.

Some other issues. You’re using balthazar runes…but you only have 2 sources of burning: The Prestige and the aoe burn from balthazar. This really isn’t a lot of burn, especially considering you’re spending both a full set of runes and a sigil to try and make use of it. Burn certainly is nice, but without staff for consistent burning procs, I question using balthazar runes.

You’re also using a sigil of agony (bleed duration)…despite having absolutely no good access to bleed. Your only bleed access is duelist, and since you don’t have phantasmal fury, the duelist bleeds won’t be particularly reliable. The duelist will also squish quite easily, since you have no phantasm boosting traits. Lack of debilitating dissipation and being a shatter build means you don’t have really any way of stacking bleeds well.

Overall, not a great build really. You’re not going to kill anyone that’s bunkery, you can’t even remotely approach the burst of a standard shatter, you can’t boon strip like standard shatter, and you actually end up with worse survivability because of lacking instant daze and invuln from IP.

You got hit with 2 eviscerates. This is a problem. You also got hit with rush.

Getting hit with rush can be avoided simply by moving. The skill is really janky, it runs to a target…pause…hit. If you’re moving, the hit will simply miss. That’s the easy one to avoid.

Eviscerate is also fairly simple to avoid, and very important as well. The animation is massive, the warrior jumps, spins around, and leaps at you. When you’re fighting a warrior, one of the first couple of things you should notice is if they’re using mainhand axe. If they have mainhand axe, you need to be aware of when you enter eviscerate range, and be ready to dodge/block it. Doing so will remove this problem rather nicely.

yski.7642:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhIQNAsf2ENttTNmoNSrxg6tuaKSGwBl8jqB-T1BBABYt/o8DgTAgHHBg80HMq6PQ8AAOTJYAAEArX9qX9qX9szduzduzdWKgRFWB-w

That’s what I did. 20 in Dueling.

Skill coef’s are almost all wrong by the way, don’t trust the wiki.

I should be able to calculate the weapon skill coefficients from the tooltips based on
Tooltip damage = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (level-based Armor value),
and I can also get a reasonable approximation on utilities and what not using similar methods, though a reliable list of skill coefficients would be better. I calculated Mug coefficient this way, and the values seemed to vary slightly after a few decimal places, so I suspect the “inherent” weapon strength I used for it was slightly off, or there was something wonky going on due to it being a trait. Does anyone have any handy links they’d like to share?

As for your build, you’re investing heavily in precision, which we don’t really need for our RNG free burst. It’s great for real world bursts, but that’s not what we’re looking for here.

You do bring up a good point with the trait point distribution though, but looking at the numbers, you’d give up +17% damage for +6% critical damage, so it does end up not being worth it after all.

Don’t trust tooltips ingame, they’re often wrong. However, the wiki skill coefficients are all correct down to a couple decimal places. I’ve tested everything personally, and they all line up (except phantasms, don’t trust phantasm coefficients).

Lanhelin.3480:

Fay.2357:

Lanhelin.3480:

• get Signet of Inspiration asap to profit from the boons in fight and especially swiftness out of combat.

Don’t do this. Signet of inspiration is completely worthless in all forms unless you intend on actually using the active to share boons.

Depending. A clone/phant dying from two hits instead of one is great, but a Mesmer completely avoiding a hit by aegis or getting additional healing or getting endurance filled up by vigor or being able to kite/run away with swiftness is greater. Especially for unexperienced players completely new to the world, its mechanics and encounters. Even in higher levels this signet often saved my life or gave me a few more seconds to compensate a failure. It’s absolutely worth it, imho.

It’s simply too random. It gives 1 of 7 or 8 boons randomly every 10 seconds. So sure, once every 15 minutes you might get aegis when you need it, and you’ll on average get swiftness for 20s once every minute or so. Worth taking up a utility slot for? No. Not even close.

Ultimately, if that random aegis proc is saving your life, you’ve made mistakes that let you get to that point in the first place, and you could have avoided that with better utility choices.

maxinion.8396:

Eucalyptus.9784:

Hmm… life without Blink sounds dreary and non-fantastic, but in PvP it hasn’t really helped me all that much lately in truth. I don’t know the maps well enough for Portaling, but always a time to learn I guess.

I’d probably sooner drop Decoy than Blink though. Maybe I can get away with dropping Decoy for HP Signet, and Null Field for Disenchanter. Never really used Disenchanter, but conditions have been destroying me lately so might be a good time to start.

My only worry is, if I’ve got a Swordsman and Zerker already out, and I use Disenchanter, and then throw a Mirror Blade… is there a priority system for which one it’s going to replace? I guess it doesn’t really matter, it would just be nice if Disenchanter was at the top of the list to not be overwritten. I guess it’s only got a 16s cooldown traited though..

Pretty sure it’s the first phantasm that goes in that case, but Pyro will surely know.

More precise to say it’s the oldest phantasm that goes.

That being said, I don’t use greatsword in the build for a couple reasons. Firstly, it has no good defense, it’s a highly offensive weapon. Secondly, the iZerker simply isn’t as strong as the iSwordsman or iDuelist, and in my build I want to maximize the damage output as much as possible, without relying on weapon attacks, so that I can use the blocks and blurred frenzy for defense.

My standard build is blink, signet, and decoy. I handle conditions through avoidance and mender’s purity. However, that’s just for dueling, and phantasm builds aren’t usually very good in most tPvP situations. When I do use this in tPvP, it’s on khylo, because the treb mechanic forces 1v1 fights. Being deep into inspiration allows me to trait glamour cooldowns, so I drop blink for portal, since I don’t need that blink mobility when I’m just trebbing.

Nowadays with might stacking, good boon strip is absolutely essential. Since you really can’t live without at least 1 stunbreaker (decoy), I’ll drop the signet to take pDisenchanter, despite that weakening the phantasms rather significantly. Better to have weak phantasms than to have a 25 might warrior/ele/thief chewing on you.

Eucalyptus.9784:

Hey Pyro~

Hmm hadn’t seen that build, must be a non-bumped post. I guess they’re pretty similar, minus the weapon choices, which affects the traits difference as well.

I hadn’t thought of taking the 50% HP Illusions Signet… that’s a really good idea. If I replace Null Field (To keep decoy/blink) with the Signet for super strong Phantasm HP, should I stick to Ether Feast as my heal/condi clear, or swap for Mantra so I have 2 condi clears?

I really would love to take the Signet of Ether heal and just have perma good regen… but it’s so underwhelming…

I stick with ether feast. What I often do nowadays actually is I sacrifice blink for pDisenchanter. If I’m actually running it in PvP (only on khylo) then I drop blink for portal, the signet for disenchanter. With all the might stacking these days, it’s really important to have that high-output boon strip, and the pDisenchanter also provides massive condie removal.

This is really just a bit of a modification on my standard glassy phantasm build: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Overpowered-PvP-Phantasm-Build

pdavis.8031:

Thanks for all the input. However I would like to say that leveling isn’t really much of an issue. We got her to level 5 in just a few hours. I pointed out the sticky and this thread for some helpful tips, and there has been a lot of those.

I think right now, the weapon sets and getting more comfortable with basic combat will be the best way to go. Then we can start working on various combos and skills and utilities, etc. But I agree that learning the phantasms and clones will be important, and that might be the next step.

Honestly, I wouldn’t even worry about combos and such, she’ll sorta figure those out as you go. The paragraph I highlighted about how illusions replace each other is one unintuitive thing that you should mention. The other thing you should mention is that clones aren’t supposed to do damage, so don’t worry when they’re just doing 0 and 1 on their attacks.

Other than that, just let her figure it out.

Shadowkiller.6725:

Shadowkiller.6725:

this is like forming the jedi academy lol

In game name: Lighterthief
Server: (NA)
Playstyle: PvE, WvW
Role: Tester

bumped for invite

You have maximum guild memberships.

ASP.8093:

If you go over your 3-illusion limit, one of your old illusions will die. The game kills clones before Phantasms. So if I have two Illusionary Warlocks and a clone, and I use Phase Retreat (which makes a clone), it’ll pop the old clone and make the new one where I Phase Retreated. It always makes the new illusion, though: so if I had three Warlocks I’d lose one of the Warlocks to make room for my new clone.

Highlighting this paragraph, because it’s very important and not described anywhere but with experience.

Lanhelin.3480:

• get Signet of Inspiration asap to profit from the boons in fight and especially swiftness out of combat.

Don’t do this. Signet of inspiration is completely worthless in all forms unless you intend on actually using the active to share boons.

Instead of Signet of Inspiration, take Signet of Illusions. This allows your phantasms (and clones) to have significantly more health and survive longer.

Caelus.7139:

maha.7902:

I never use that combo and don’t see the point in her pulling her hair out trying to get the timing right. You can honestly just drop a warden, roll in with sword and just destroy whatever is in front of you.

Err did I order her to learn it? I only gave her a good tutorial at the top of my head. If she doesn’t get it right away no one’s gonna shout at her and tell her she’s bad. If she doesn’t wanna do it I won’t tell her she’s bad neither. I think I’ve contributed more than you saying “just drop curtain and spam 11111”.

It’s good to learn for PvE because it’s the best way for mesmers to clear mobs. The only good instant AoE’s we have for PvE are mind wrack, Illusionary Berserker (Greatsword), and these are limited since you can’t directly control the range. With the focus combo you can gather them in almost one cell and unleash these AoE’s effectively.

Yes, but that particularly timed focus combo is needlessly complex for PvE, particularly for a very new player. Mobs are stupid, why bother with that much effort? All you have to do is pull them into a wall then do some aoeing. You don’t need that split-second warden cast timing to make this work just fine.

Wyrden.4713:

pyro, u linked my build, u need to get a new link from down there by ‘get quick link’, dont just copy the adresse link:p

Oops. Fixed.

Wyrden.4713:

good players wll always use a dodge on ur leap, but most ppl wont expect the bit delayed focus 4 and will waste a dodge right away, then get pulled with iwarden on top, then u can leap when they r cced and pin them down

This whole thread is giving advice to a person that’s never played a single mmo before. Do you really think that PvP specific advice is going to help?

Answer: It won’t. It’s just going to be confusing. Keep it simple, keep it PvE, and keep it general.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdRl0npMtloxINUrNSqhc6nRXSyBBK5nOA

This is what I use, and it’s highly effective (use standard all zerker gear for it, I use double energy sigils).

The idea is that spamming mantra of pain allows you to keep your health up. Mender’s purity combined with the heal mantra and the condition removal mantra gives you tons of condie removal to clean up the cripple and weakness in phase 2. Warden’s feedback with focus allows you to use the warden and temporal curtain to block her attacks in phase 1. Temporal curtain also provides swiftness for better mobility.

Just spam mantra of pain and use temporal curtain to block her attacks in phase 1, while getting orbs down. In phase 2, run in circles with greatsword attacking her and spawning iZerkers right after a shadowfall. Use a condie clear to clean up any dangerous conditions you have on you, and make sure you watch for the orb that yanks you and kill it quickly with mantra of pain or a gs attack.

maha.7902:

I never use that combo and don’t see the point in her pulling her hair out trying to get the timing right. You can honestly just drop a warden, roll in with sword and just destroy whatever is in front of you.

It’s a combo that’s mainly used for PvP. As such…it’s way overkill to try and figure it out as a new player. Just yank them against a wall with curtain and unload your aoes. Straightforward and effective.