Guild Wars 2

How crowded is your server’s WvW and will you be with friends or solo? As a roamer you will spend a lot of time harassing camps, reinforcements to large battles, evading angry mobs that try to hunt you down and if you are very lucky fighting similarly sized roaming groups from opposing servers. If you are on a crowded server and have to evade guild groups of 5+ that are hunting you for sport you will probably need to sacrifice some damage to pick up some combination of staff (for Phase Retreat), traited Blink, Prismatic Understanding, and Focus/Centaur Runes/Traveler’s runes. It would be silly to bring all of those, but you can figure out how much mobility you need.

There is not really a meta build right now but most of the popular roaming builds revolve around some variant of 4-4-0-0-6 (Shatter), 4-4-6-0-0 (Condition PU with Torch), 0-6-6-2-0 (Power/Hybrid PU). Each of these will have a unique play style and advantages and disadvantages and you should experiment and figure out what works for you. There are also a few other trait combos that work quite well. You should also read Chaos’s and Osicat’s threads in the stickies at the top of the forum to get an idea of why certain trait lay outs work and what they do.

No one can actually know how the patch will impact the meta, but there is theory crafting around a non PU scepter/staff condition build. 4-4-6 PU Condi will get stronger and with the GS buff and Illusory Elasticity change Shatter Mesmers will get a nice buff. Mantra and interrupt builds may also start to become more popular on the roaming scene due to AOE changes on offensive mantras. All in all the patch will probably benefit condition/hybrid builds more than straight power builds due to the scepter change and the extra conditions from the staff auto attack if you take the new IE.

I’m agnostic on the proposed Torment addition, but pro scepter buff in general. @Fay, I find your proposal to be very interesting as cripple is a condition that Mesmers have little access to and can use very effectively. I’m glad to see someone is offering good constructive criticism.

@Cyyrix Thank you so much for actually publishing some real math on this subject. The great irony of this whole debate is that despite the incoming scepter buff the theoretical Ubermensch condition Mesmer of the future which will march across the face of Tyria will not want to spawn scepter clones as it will be a net DPS loss. Instead you will want to spawn IE staff clones then switch to scepter to apply torment through the block and auto 1&2 + confusion through CI then switch back to staff to spawn more clones. I guess you could spawn a few scepter clones to proc on death traits, but the real condition DPS will be the IE staff clones.

EDIT: I’m not sure where I stand on this whole issue, but I feel like it is extremely hypocritical to be anti scepter buff but pro IE changes.

Helseth’s Twitch post is shameful and self-serving. He does not even attempt to present any hard evidence to back his opinion and instead resorts to sensationalism and wild conjecture. That many in the Mesmer community have thoughtlessly bought in to this with little to no free thought leaves me more disappointed in the Mesmer community than ever. He glosses over the buffs to his own build while wildly blowing out of proportion the effects that the scepter buffs will have.

If the community was actually worried about conditions on clone auto attacks being too strong, I would imagine that folks would have dug up some numbers on the effects that the IE change will have on staff clone autos, which btw also give might and fury to Allies. But somehow this little tidbit has fallen by the wayside in the great condi Mesmer debate and was nearly glossed over in Helseth’s video with only a quick mention at the very end.

The fact remains that as is, scepter could use some TLC. The planned buff is unimaginative and won’t fix many traditional Mesmer shortcomings, such as ability to focus clone/phantasm damage in group fights; however, as is there is almost no reason to use the scepter auto attack except as filler. I remember a Mesmer community that used to be filled with intelligent individuals who thought for themselves, and that community might have disagreed with this change but then offered fresh and innovative ideas for improving this weapon. Instead we get “OMG skilless passive 4-4-6 uses this QQ no buffs,” the whole point of this patch is to open scepter as a viable weapon for other builds, but as a community we seem to have become too elitist to see the forest from the trees.

Sandrox.9524:

And I dont think i need to change my build or utilites for fighting a kitten PU mesmer.

Why should anyone care about your opinion on Blackwater variants then? If you are running a build that is weak vs a certain spec and refuse to reconsider your build/tactics and then repeatedly have trouble with said spec… well you deserve what you get. If I’m roaming and I know that I’m going to run into a build that is a soft counter for my current spec, I swap weapons and utilities or try to avoid that group/individual, I don’t come to the forums and complain about their builds because I refuse to adapt my tactics and thus loose. It took me forever to figure out how to fight a P/D condition thief with reliable success, but I figured it out by changing my build and utilities until something clicked. It does not matter if you have respect for a build or not, if its on the scene you either adapt to it or accept your fate but don’t refuse to adapt then QQ.

Sandrox.9524:

Yes,you can dodge it…ofc…but you will not be able to dodge it all the time since it got low cooldowns,and by the time the PU mesmer would use it again you will be dead.
Point is,you can’t kill a average pu condi mesmer.GS #1 would not tickle them,izerker would not hit them(stealth,protection,aegis).So it all come to this,unless you are using mirror build like the pu cond mesmer,you will not be able to beat it.And if you do,please share a video that I could learn from.Or at least give me some good tips and not GS #1 like you fighting a moa.

For a power phantasm build (In my experience GS Sw/Pistol):
1. Mind your range, clone death traits have limited radius (240) so you can safely clear out some clones if you don’t get too close.
2. When the Mesmer is glowing purple and holding his scepter over his face, don’t attack him.
3. Bring Mantra of Renewal with Mender’s Purity and maybe another condition clear.
4. When he uses the Prestige, count to 3 and either blink away, dodge, or use Blurred Frenzy to avoid the condition burst from the reveal.
5. If you feel like your defenses are getting overwhelmed, kite the fight to a new area and force him to regenerate all his clones.
6. When he shoots a giant purple beam at you, dodge or have a condition clear ready for the confusion.

IDK I feel like “Blackwater” variants are a dime a dozen in WvW roaming, but you quickly learn that they have a very limited bag of tricks. You almost never see these Mesmers in rated sPvP matches, but if you do don’t be afraid to kite off point while they are invisible since they won’t be de-capping it either. Just move off point, AoE the clones, move back on point.

@ukuni It’s not about 4-4-6 condi PU needing or not needing a buff (it doesn’t need one) its about opening a viable main hand weapon for other condition based Mesmer builds to be developed. I understand that many players think that the role of conditions is already too great in PvP settings; however, since Anet seems to be doing nothing to mitigate this in general, I see no reason to lock Mesmer out. Mesmer has 1 build that is run in serious sPvP (4-4-0-0-6) Staff/GS, why shouldn’t Anet do something to put other builds and weapon sets on the table?

Judging from the feed back here, there are going to be a lot of disappointed Mesmers when this patch hits. This build is no more OP than any other build based around Perplexity runes. It lacks the ability to chase, will have limited bleed stacking due to lack of precision and lacks the control to easily land shatters. There is also 0 team support in this build.

So I’m looking at Mesmer Trait layouts, if you wanted all on clone death traits, plus for fun IE to create synergy with the staff clones your build would look like 2-6-2-0-4, there is no way that that is going to be tanky enough to bunker a point vs 2 roamers or a good sw/d theif. I guess you could go 2-6-3-3-0 for regen and toughness or 2-6-2-4 for some regen from phantasms and to trait for scepter. Maybe 2-6-6-0-0 with traits for interrupts and the buffed MoD. I’m not sure how crazy any of these builds will be, but they certainly wont have bunker sustain. As for screen clutter, all mesmer builds spawn clones and phantasms so I don’t see this being any more of a factor with the new patch.

Will the upcoming patch buff 4-4-6 Scepter/Torch PU Mesmer (Blackwater)?
Yes
Will this have an upsetting effect on the meta?
No

Here is why:
sPvP: Blackwater Mesmer is not part of the sPvP meta because of its reliance on stealth, not because of its lack of DPS. Because Blackwater Mesmers use boons gained from PU to outlast their foes while conditions tick, they will still be bad at capturing and holding points. Because they lack team utility and the ability to focus a target in group fights, there will be better choices for sPvP team comps. I only see this really being a source of QQ in hot join matches.

PvE: Its a condition build, enough said.

WvW: Again this build will still be useless in large scale battles due to its lack of ability to focus its main source of DPS and low group utility. Solo roaming is the only area where this build was a problem and even then it is largely seen as a troll build. The proscription for fighting Blackwater 1v1 has always been to simply walk away, this will still be the case. If Blackwater Mesmer also got a buff to its ability to chase, I might be worried but it will still suffer from the exact same limitations it has always had.

TLDR: 4-4-6 PU condition Mesmers did not need a buff, but this buff really won’t change too much. Whether or not these scepter changes open up other viable builds for Mesmers remains to be seen, but it could be interesting.

Usagi.4835:

I remember when it was first introduced as a condition for necros, yet despite this (and overlooking the fact that Tainted Shackles applies AOE torment, on a longer cool down, rather than single target), mesmers will now have much better access to Torment than necros, through weapon skills and traits.

We Mesmers are holding your Torment hostage contingent upon the return of our Confusion which was stolen by every other profession in the game… I do find it funny how the signature conditions of certain professions seem to get diluted to the point where they are done better by almost everyone else.

On a serious note, I do wonder how this is going to pan out, I don’t want a Dhuumfire debacle for Mesmer. That didn’t work out so well for Necros in the long run.

It really depends what Professions you are fighting, and you may get more feedback on the Mesmer sub forum. Having full exotics is not enough, the stats you are using matter greatly and many PvE builds will not fair well in a PvP setting for a number of reasons.

1. Endurance regeneration and thus dodge roll frequency can be augmented with the boon “Vigor” and Superior Sigils of Energy on your weapons. Some professions also have evades on weapon skills.

2. The ability to heal is very profession specific, most warriors run the healing signet so they have very little burst heal while elementalists will have their health bars bouncing all over the place. What profession were you fighting?

3. To be successful in small scale WvW encounters you must have great area awareness and knowledge of the abilities and animations of other professions, don’t fret these skills come with time!

4. Off hand torch is great for running away, but the phantasm is terrible so you will not pack much of a punch. If you are fighting a profession with a lot of AE they will laterally kill most of your DPS before you can harm them if you can only get 1 damaging phantasm out (assuming you are running a phantasm build).

If you are in T1 pm me some time as I usually roam on Mesmer and would be happy to help, even if you are not TC (in game name Antoine Mesmer, guild OBEY)

cuge.5398:

I do not agree, it would just require a bit more attention to the number of illusions you have up in order to spawn a new one, but i dont see it so catastrophic as you say.

DPS and utility from shatter builds is directly tied to the rate of clone generation, unless you can generate 3 clones/shatter faster than the shatter CD’s are up this will be a nerf to the shatter play style. This is possible against some foes but not when engaged against heavy AE classes or multiple players. Unless I completely missed a meta change, shatter builds are rare in WvW and barely hanging on in top sPvP. In addition clone death builds are not popular in sPvP tournaments and it is generally agreed that you can walk away from most of them in WvW. So if shatter does not need a nerf and clone death is negligible, why would you want this?

Nefing a play style will not increase build diversity. If you are thinking of increasing clone generation in another area to compensate, I would be interested to hear your idea. That is the only way I can imagine a DE nerf being good for Mesmer builds and diversity.

DE is an overrated trait for Phantasm Mesmers, but very strong for shatter and clone death builds. I have not run DE as part of my WvW roaming build in about a month and do alright. I see nothing wrong with a trait being very good for some builds and an ok option for others, that’s pretty much the definition of a well designed trait. Plus any uncompensated changes to DE would erase shatter as a play style.

Thief is not OP, but the profession was poorly designed. I don’t know it there is any way to fix it now. Both a thief’ s damage and surviveability are tied to being able to fluidly enter and exit stealth. If access to stealth for thieves were to be more limited, almost every skill a thief has would have to be balanced to compensate. In sPvP Anet “fixed” this with the typical band-aid approach of making points immune to capture by players in stealth and increasing “revealed” by 1 second instead of fixing core game play issues with stealth spam. Now that the good old days of 2 week balance patches are but a memory, I doubt WvW players will see any meaningful rework.

P.S. Shadow Refuge is a terribly implemented skill, it is very UP when fighting a large group and slightly OP when fighting solo roamers or small groups, but we see this a lot with balance in GW2.

Can some RP guild please make a theatrical adaptation of this thread a la West Side Story? A wealthy Mesmer from Divinity’s Reach meets a Ranger from Bloodtide Coast…

While the effect of decoy is almost identical to stealth, it is not stealth. The stealth buff gives you an icon of a hooded figure on your buff bar that reads “stealth” while decoy gives you a pink icon that reads “decoy.” In addition invisibility from Decoy can not be stacked in duration with invisibility from stealth skills. Therefore, I’m going to venture that this is not a bug and is working as intended. But hey, maybe the devs will hear your plea as it is a great excuse for another Mesmer nerf.

A selfish Mesmer build is not Thief food; however, a selfish Mesmer build is next to useless in competitive PvP. Any class with stealth and the ability to teleport will hard counter a shatter Mesmer, this includes other stealth heavy Mesmers. The problem is not with the Thief class, at least in this instance, but with Mesmer design. We need a viable AE group utility option that does not rely on AI pathing and long delays to deliver damage and support our teams. These builds have existed in the past, but have been nerfed to the ground with no compensation in other areas.

You will not be able to kill quickly enough in Invader’s (PVT). Mesmer also has a medium base health pool so Valk armor is not necessarily ideal, you will have 20k very squishy HP. If you want some added surviveability, consider Knights or going hybrid with Rabid.
When considering Valk, Cav or PVT remember that precision is a very important stat for Mesmers. You get both Vigor and bleed procs from critical hits if you are 4 points into Dueling. If you want to take on more than 1 person and have a chance of killing them before all your cd’s are up you are going to need to go mostly Zerker or Assassin’s. If you go PVT, you are going to have a hard time pressuring even 1 moderately tanky warrior.
I also vote firmly for sw/pistol for a power build with either GS or scepter/sword as the off set. GS will give you more utility with the (marginal) boon strip, knock back and might stacking. Scepter/sword gives great block up time and and is much better in 1v1 situations. Like other’s have said, dropping torch is a personal choice, but if you do you can take 2 points out of Domination and pick up Mender’s Purity in Illusions. That will give you very good condi clear and 100 extra Vit if you feel your HP needs a bit of buffing.

Alright thanks, just started messing around with it the day before the patch then came back to it today and was wondering.

With the massive amounts of condi that you encounter while roaming in WvW I have been testing a build using Haling Mantra in conjunction with Mender’s Purity. Before the last patch MP always removed 2 condis with each mantra charge in addition to 2 while casting the mantra. Post patch, I have noticed that I still get 2 condi clears on each mantra charge, but no longer get a MP proc when casting the mantra. Can anyone else either confirm this or tell me I’m crazy?

Thanks

The difference between a nerf and a bugfix is mostly a matter semantics in this case. If I-Leap had recently been changed then fixed because of unintended behavior, I would call that a bugfix. In this case, a skill which had performed in the same manner for over a year and been widely used was altered in a way which made it less effective. There were other options such as rewriting the tool tip (and there is precedent for this), but instead the skill was changed for the worse… that’s a nerf.

If you want to look at if from a professional PoV, one can only assume that there is some sort of team lead who assigns projects to his or her team instead of randomly altering code. This means that while there is a massive list of bugs for Mesmer, someone made a conscious decision to prioritize this “bug fix” instead of devoting time to fixing the other myriad issues… so if anything that should make Mesmers doubly mad.

Kitten really? That wasn’t even a bad word…

Pyro, I have the utmost respect for you, but when have you actually killed 2 good players with a condi build? Best case scenario they fail to kill you and walk away. I will readily admit that power has a much better chance of getting killed in a 1vX vs condi which is tougher and has more escape options… but a better chance of wining a 1vX, I don’t buy it. The main issue with power is that you can’t take off hand torch or you will be seriously kitten when it comes to generating DPS.

To the OP, I would say that if you want to have very good escape options, the ability to kite par excellence and an armor set that allows you to tank some hits, go condi with Staff Scepter/Torch. If you want to be a force that can change the tide of a battle go power, but you will die more often. When my roaming group (usually 2-3 of us) encounter an outnumbered fight and one of them is a condi PU Mesmer, that is usually our last target because it has limited burst damage and group utility.

In general, when running power builds, I will eschew torch in favor of pistol or sword and rely on utilities for stealth. This means that you have to accept that if a zerg is chasing you its probably gg, but the added punch from a useful phantasm really helps bring down foes. In small groups I usually run a 10-20-30-10 build with GS Sw/Pistol and Mender’s to deal with condi. If I’m solo I have been experimenting with a Sword Pistol / Scepter Sword power build that is pretty neat. In a power build, I would not underestimate the usefulness of scepter which has some very good power attacks and also Debilitating Dissipation and Crippling Dissipation which actually apply only 1 damaging condition.

LOL, I always feel bad when I have to /dance in the middle of combat so that I can move again… I know my opponents are thinking “What an kitten ” when really I’m just desperately trying to get unstuck.

p.s. Why does /dance of all things fix the movement bug?

Kaineng is a poster child for the damage that large scale transfers have done to this game mode. At launch Kain was part of what was probably the best match up in WvW Kain/FC/DR. The match up system at the time was flawed so that these servers were stuck in T8, but the battles were good and intense. Then a few T1 guilds decided to try to make a project out of Kain after DR broke out of T8. Kain steamrolled to T2 then hit Black Gate and TC. Most of the “elite” guilds were pretty salty about being stuck in T2 and transferred to T1. Those who were left on Kain tried to rebuild the community, but as guilds got noticed by opponents they were bought off or transferred on their own accord. Then the borderlands became infested with troll commanders and the few who were still trying gave up.

Best of luck to those who are trying to rebuild Kain…

Elementalist is currently top tier for dps in PvE with a staff build. We are also still very strong in WvW zergs with staff and d/d has made a comeback in WvW roaming and small group play. You are also starting to see more eles in sPvP running d/d and doing quite well. The last balance patch was quite favorable for Elementalist and the profession has changed for the better. I just wish scepter would get some love now

Ulion.5476:

You can solo roam in the lower tiers and still play focus on objectives, killing the enemies you see in your path. In the upper tiers people do not like to 1v1. Most of the time you have to run with a group to be successful. When you try to 1v1 in t1 players tend to run until they outnumber you and that does not guarantee that they will win. Alot of the t1 roamers have no skills.

I recently moved to T1 because I was beginning to feel like I was spending more time running around the map than finding fights in the lower tiers and this was probably the biggest culture shock for me. I won’t comment on skill, because I have met some pretty bad groups and some highly skilled groups in all tiers and personally believe that the lower tier = better roamers equation is a myth. However, if you are solo in T1 you have to be prepared for a high frequency of players who will try to bait you into zergs or run mobility builds to keep you in combat while their 5 guild mates chase you down. I guess these tactics can be discouraging to solo players, but really half the fun of WvW roaming vs sitting in sPvP is becoming savvy to tricks like these and developing tactics and strategies to avoid or counter these situations.

I have always found power builds better for countering thieves of any variety, you need to be able to burst them hard when they come out of stealth. For dueling I like sw/pistol sw/sw, for general roaming I run gs sw/pistol. Once you get two duelists out the fight is pretty much over vs. most thieves.

I have been experimenting with a 0/0/2/6/6 staff bunker build running Celestial amulet and Melandru runes. I’m not sure how this would hold up in high level play, but in solo queue it has been pretty successful at holding a point outnumbered until help can arrive. I just wonder if the same build with S/F or D/D might be more effective.

The absolute best use for Moa Morph is when you are fighting a keep lord and his stacks of Defiant get taken down… then you can Moa him and watch him 1 shot your team mates as a giant bird. This is fairly entertaining, but otherwise Moa is the least powerful skill in the kitten nal of Mesmer elites.

P.S. Stability keeps you from getting knocked around and stunned, Moa is not a knock back or a stun… so why would you think that it should save you?

I agree every profession can beat a thief and a thief can beat every profession playing on an equal skill level. There are no real hard counters built into the class mechanics in this game but builds do matter, a glass staff ele back line build is not going to going to take on a b/s thief while a dd or sd ele has a chance.

I think that there are two main sources of frustration with thief:
1. They combine superior stealth ability with very good OOC and in combat mobility.
2. They combine stealth with very damaging burst.

The second of these two points can be countered by maintaining good situational awareness. But the first point really hits at the root of most of the current class balance debates in GW2, mobility. The most cried about professions in Guild Wars also happen to be the most mobile and mobility was also at the heart of the now legendary eleocalypse. So maybe the question should not be “Who can kill a thief” but rather “Who can catch a thief that does not want to be caught?” I think that thief does in fact need to be very mobile in order to fulfill some of its intended class roles such as scouting; however, the balance team might want to consider making entering combat more committing for the thief without ruining the essential flavor of the profession.

well… /dance will fix it but might be awkward in the middle of battle…

Reverence.6915:

I’ve tried sceptre/dagger ele for roaming. Just doesn’t work well. Not enough reliable damage compared to dagger/dagger. Sceptre flame skill 2 never hits and that’s one of your biggest sources of damage. The only reliable damage from sceptre as an ele is in air attunement

Scepter almost requires you to take 30 in air for Fresh Air, whenever I play S/D without FA the set just feels really clunky. Dragons tooth is in fact tough to land but with thief basi venom landing a DT -> Ring of Fire -> Phoenix -> Fire grab combo is devastating and will start to stack a ton of might. A thief running around with 10-20 stacks of might is a force to behold. Anyways, if you like ele game play, go ahead and roll one and experiment with which weapon set fits your play style. It will definitely not be the most OP choice out there but it wont be a waste of time either.

Ele takes a while to learn and is very gear and trait dependent, but a good S/D ele can easily go toe to toe with most thief burst builds and kite away from some of the trollier tank condi builds. The major down side of ele vs warrior, mesmer, and thief is that the ele is not very good at escaping and resetting if he gets dog piled in a fight.

Whatever you choose, make sure that you can disrupt/damage your opponents enough to demand attention. 1 killer / 1 tank is great for pug stomping but against experienced roaming groups the tank will just be ignored while the glass gets burnt down. If you go tank, you have to either bring a lot of support or be able to do something that makes it fatal to ignore you.

If you want something tankier than ele but like pushing a lot of buttons, have you considered condition engi with a mix of Rabid and Settler’s gear?