Guild Wars 2

Engi for the sustained support or Warrior for the aggro magnet.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Projectile_Finisher
This says “Projectile finishers are unique among finishers insofar that some projectiles, particularly those from skills with no cooldown and that fire multiple projectiles, will only combo 20% of the time.”
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Duelist

This says “If the trait Duelist’s Discipline is used, there is a 100% chance of a projectile finisher.” and that it’s a bug.

Start from here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prismatic_Understanding
to craft your build and you will win.

Need moar damage use this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol
Need moar defense use this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Staff
Need moar crowd control use this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Focus

Want pvp skins? Use this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glory_vendor
to get this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gold_Rabbit_Chest
salvage what you already have in your locker to get mats for the mystic forge which allows you to attempt to get specific gear pieces for your tier.

Xavi.6591:

I believe it was already shown that GS and Staff have similar DPS provided you use them properly (GS at range, staff in close). iWarlock is more power-based than condition keeping in mind that it will also do more damage if your target has more conditions on it.

Under perfect conditions maybe. I think Staff damage is easier to manage than GS. GS is very immediate, hard to avoid, and isn’t anchored. Staff is slow, is more dependent on projectiles, and Chaos Storm and Armor are quite avoidable. That all said, Staff is superior in a 1v1 whereas I feel GS is far better in group combat. That, and if you’re holding a GS and a stun warrior sees you then you may as well fall on your sword…

The Aetherblade JP was like a “house of Portal horrors” for so many because mesmer we using their portal as a retry portal. It was purely unintentional, yet many thought that all the mesmer were trolling when probably only a few were. Regardless, I laughed every time.

I can’t deny how effective Mender’s Purity is. I also didn’t know Rampager had more Precision than Rabid. Good to know. I may have to give that gear a whirl at some point.

Somewhat related to this, I saw this video last night of a pretty sweet demonstration of using Scepter/Pistol + Feedback + Bleed build.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KCUcMC8UCM

I was thinking about adding more Scepter goodness to my condition build so I may have to give this a try in pvp. That said, I do prefere GS in WvW.

I occassionaly mess with the 0/20/30/20/0 build to trait focus or mantra but ultimately i feel the Inspiration tree is too weak currently. It used to be a must for glamour builds but those builds are dead.

I’m also curious as to why you choose Rampage over Rabid.

Without consistent stability isn’t it a moot point as far as being able to stay inside the circle?

Regardless, why not go for the mantra heal and toughness traits combined with mimic and traited focus? You could also take the stability mantra as well. Also ret shield trait could work too.

Interesting post, even if it lacks paragraph breaks. I think it’s representational of my frustation as well over the last few major patches where the mesmer’s weakness is hard to verbalize concisely.

I’ve been playing a lot of spvp and fractals lately with the occasional tpvp match when I get some guildies together. I’ve also done some sporadic dueling on dueling arenas as well. I’ve specifically watched, like you have, for winning mesmer builds. One thing I’ve noticed is that of the few mesmer left some still run the old standard glkittenter build of 20/0/0/20/30. They struggle quite a bit and pure phantasm builds seem non-existant. Another thing I’ve noticed is that most of the successful builds are usually based on the 20/20/30/0/0 starting point.

20/20/30 became very viable after the PU buff and IC nerf. Pure phantasm or pure shatter builds simply didn’t maximize our potential as much as they once had. I was running the 20/20/30 for a while mainly so I could trait Torch, DE, and PU. It seemed the obvious combination. I then saw Keenlam’s post and build here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/condition-build-The-Clone-Spammer/first
that was a build based on our “clone kill” mechanic. Not too long after I dueled a mesmer who had a “clone kill” build that outperformed my power stealth 20/20/30 build. I didn’t see his build, but, I focused on making a build based both on clone kill and our core 20/20/30.

I came up with this eventually
http://intothemists.com/guides/426-prismatic_clone_factory
One variation of this that has more notes is this build:
http://intothemists.com/guides/421-omni_mesmer
For that omni build I’d swap Master of Manipulation to Debilitating Dissapation. Debilitating Dissapation is very powerful for a clone-kill build and seems to be the most effective clone-kill trait we have.

I am looking at possibly adjusting my weapons on that clone factory build to scepter/sword + sword/torch for a bit more damage and conditions. That or I’ll dump sword altogether and run Staff + Scepter/Torch… and not have any weapons traited…

screenshots? Also, link to books?

stealth nerf? If so… * pours another drink *

I agree that we’ve little left in terms of “go to” builds and mechanics. Many old builds that once were reliable are now junk. I still run my mesmer constantly in pvp and I really like clone kill builds as of late. I just bounce around dropping people without even attacking them. tPvP is a bit more challenging. Last night I ran into a mesmer on home treb with the same build and we just stalemated for 5 minutes until he finally left…

trooper.2650:

@Helios
For some reasons the link is not showing anything.

So you are using knight for power. I have it too and used it before switching to PU. I now feel much safer with this build and this allowed me to swap back to berserker and downing people much faster. Of course, when facing multiple enemies in wvw I have to say that more armor wouldn’t hurt.. but it’s a trade off. For now I am more than happy.
Please, check the link. I would like to see what you came up with. Ty

Sorry about that. It wasn’t published. It should show now. I put that build through its paces last night in tpvp and it faired very well.

Yes, I use Knight for Power. Personally, I find Toughness > Crit Dmg in most cases. Toughness scales your HP much better than Crit Dmg scales your total damage. Higher survivability (aside from CoF p1 or low level Fotm) allows you more damage.

sweet. I may have to jump from Staff back to Scepter/Sword and change Chaotic Dampening for Bountiful Interruption…
I want Retaliatory Shield, but I think Dazzling would be more useful

how high is your power?

Are we talking WvW only or something that also works in pve? If so, what wvw playstyle (zerg or roam)?

Here’s one build I’ve been messing with lately in spvp. It works great verse large numbers and still fairs well 1v1.
http://intothemists.com/guides/426-prismatic_clone_factory
I’ll prolly give it a whirl in WvW eventually. It does lack some serious cleansing though…

As for gear, I like being able to cheaply swap gear. Therefore, I went celestial amulet and accessories. My rings are zerk and backpiece is knight. I swap my armor and weapons back and forth between Knight and Rabid depending on whether it’s a power or condition build.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Duh, you get to be a mesmer and enjoy the unique mesmer gameplay. All other classes look like dull, withered potatoes compared to mesmer.

lols.

… Bring back the glamour mesmer! All will fear us and our purple bubbles once more!

Godmoney.2048:

What we basically have now is our “quality scenario” is WvW and the spvp scenario were sacrificed over good gameplay for “visiblity” and wanting to make the action “viewable”.

Ugh… those WvW maps have run their course. They are so stale and colorless.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion#Mechanics

However, they are not effected by
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil#Damage_bonus

Signets seem to exist mainly to help support a classes main mechanics. My guess is that, due to our high versatility, the 25% speed buff didn’t make the cut because there were too many mechanics to support. One quick, and prefarably temporary, fix would be to have a trait that adds the 25% speed buff to Signet of Inspiration. Perhaps just add it to Signet Mastery. A mesmer buff of such magnitude though… I’m sure would never happen.

A good question. Not all debuffs are equal in value. Weakness is very valuable, but is harder to pull off. Our vuln stacking is dependent on us interrupting with Daze typically, which is tough to do verse a boss and often inconsistent in pvp/wvw. They are still fun and sometimes very effective builds to run because we stack vuln and might well. Both help allies when we use Signet of Inspiration.

You could run a purely interrupt build with perhaps… GS + Sword/Sword? Perhaps go 20/10/20/20/0 to pick your daze traits, Sword and GS traits, Bountiful Interruption, and mantra heal trait. You could even go 15/15/20/20/0 to pickup Sharper Images and roll with Staff instead of GS and no Bountiful Interruption.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil#Sigils_with_cooldowns

I knew about the shared CDs, but used to think they were grouped by duration. A possible alternative you could use that should effect your phantasms would be http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Bloodlust

Centaur runes rock… except on JPs with people around you. I’ve swiftnessed countless to their doom.

Osicat.4139:

OK.

I Tweeked my condition build some now for wvwvw. Ressult is silly good. Dmg is exact where I want it to be and toughness is over 2k.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2wMSJhC8EE

Enjoy.

/Osicat

PS @The KidHenry, The dmg gaind from the clones is absolutley worth the condi dmg. You also get dmg form otehr sources aswell. A side effect aswell is that alot of ppl cats things that due to stealth and autotargeting lan on your clones. Its a nightmare for necros for example.

Its not a extremly good capper idd for sPvP, but the fun factor make it worth it. Tbh I not a big fan of he current sPvP setup with capping points as only game mode. The best class in game would be a freking tree with protetcion and retaliation who cant and wont move. I would like to se game modes who give mobile classes a jobb, capture the flag etc.

I clicked the link assuming it went to an actual build site. Haha, silly me!

reflection and CC seems to work well.

They problem I have here is that this universal portal will start out restricted but eventually will make it more powerful. Doing so will reduce the uniqueness and value of the mesmer class. That and portal is one of the last remaining, viable mesmer traits. Homogenizing it is unfair. If they do that they should at least make confusion worth while again or make our portal (and timewarp for that matter) better.

Use Sword + ? + Spam 1 = Profit!

I was running an odd 0/20/20/20/10 ret/mantra build last night and got beat in a duel against a condi mesmer. He was running Staff + Scepter/Focus I think and I’m fairly certain he ran DE. I did not check his build unfortunately, but I don’t recall seeing any glamours. That makes me think he had something like a 0/20/20/0/30 build with condition runes.

I currently run celestial ascended amulet (Syzygy ) and accessories with knight backpiece and zerker rings. Then I just swap my weapons and armor based on the build or place I’m going. Knights gear seems to work well all around currently. Rabid is fairly weak and is only somewhat viable in pvp and Zerker is alright for CoF, some WvW roaming, and pvp.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The portal is a one-time use consumable that effectively allows you to use a skill that is similar to the mesmer’s portal. We recognize that it’s a very powerful item, so the recipe is quite rare and takes considerable resources to manufacture.

NERF all da mesmers!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Interruption
Unfortunately, people don’t typically like stuff being pushed and pulled constantly in dungeons which corners you into only dazing and stunning with Diversion, Pistol, off-hand Sword, and Staff. Not too big of a deal I guess. The Signet of Inspiration ability is only okay with this. Yes you can stack 15-25 Might fairly quickly, but even with boon duration buffs you only get about 7.5s of might. By the time you recognize you interrupted and cast your signet you’re only transfering about 4s of those might stacks. Nice, but kinda weak for a kitten CD. Also, bosses are immune to a certain amount of interrupts.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prismatic_Understanding
+
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deceptive_Evasion

I use 20/20/30 on both pvp and wvw. Most weapons work for it except Focus and Scepter. You can drop to a 0/20/30/20 build to trait those, but your damage dips as well. I personally use GS + Sword/Torch with Torch traited in wvw and Sword/Torch + Scepter/Sword in pvp. I’m looking to change my pvp weapons up though, but I’m not sure how yet.

I’ve always found my mesmer to be the most fun and I always come back to it regardless of how handicapped we’ve become. That said, I suggest going with whatever you find fun. Currently, mesmer is one of the weakest classes in pvp. If you are looking to faceroll then play your necro.

Hmm… max damage in pve eh. How about all zerk gear, then 30 in domination and 30 in dueling, and use GS + Sword/Pistol?

what is T4 trial?

A fairly straightforward build for roaming would be:
Staff + Sword/Focus
0/20(IV,X)/30(IV,X,XII)/20(II,VIII)/0
Feedback, Decoy, Veil (or swap for Null Field or Portal)

Runes: cheap power runes or Runes of Melandru.
Sigils: Sigil of Energy on the Focus, Sigil of Bloodlust on whatever (use the Major one if you don’t want to drop 7g right away)
Food: Leek Soup or Raspberry Cream

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Winds.3087:

This survey is surely monitored by anet! What we like will be nerfed, so my favorite is retaliatory demise.

Surely this. Anet must be watching this the WHOLE time to find what they can nerf, break or bug on the next update…

Soon we’ll be nerfed to the point where our only weapons and abilities will be from SaB… and we’ll still win and be called OP.

You almost can’t go wrong when you take
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deceptive_Evasion
and
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prismatic_Understanding
currently.

For moar ret you might take Mimic and Confusing Cry (rather than 10 in Inspiration).

My recent experience verse a purely Phantasm mesmer with no DE in sPvP is straight forward. I simply shatter once or twice to kill of his phantasms and then faceroll him. The toughest mesmer opponent I recently had was a hybrid GS + Sw/Pistol mesmer who used Decoy and MI. I only won by a hair due to a couple lucky Mirror casts.

I think, due to the lower phantasm HP in pvp and wvw, phantasm builds are simply less dependable. I think this is intended by ANet to discourage the autopilot mesmer who just spawns a few phantasms, hides, and go gets a drink. It’s doubley bad since Vengeful Images was nerfed into nothingness.

As for DE, even if you prefer phantasms, think of your clones as moving shields. Even if you are targeted, your clones are still able to pop marks, block projectiles, and on death can keep you opponents crippled when traited. The mesmer is already the most mobile class in combat. Keeping your opponents crippled just makes you even quicker.

Staff might work alright for ZvZ these days. I’ve not used it much in WvW since the confusion nerf. Its auto-attack is simply too slow and Chaos Armor is weaker now. Regarding other weapons, Scepter is very weak and you probably want to stay away from off-hand sword and pistol unless you roam a lot.

Your strongest weapon is GS for ZvZ and I’ve lately become a fan of Prismatic Understanding and Sword main hand. After you blow your GS CDs, stealth and run through the zerg while you spam Sword 1. Also, the GS knockback has a ton of value in WvW for knocking enemies off walkways and cliffs. You can help tip the balance of a battle just by doing that.

After using CoF you can continue stacking confusion with the Confusing Combatants trait, as Keenlam pointed out on a separate thread, by simply spawning more clones. This makes DE very useful and Confusing Combatants is 25 in Dueling so it works well after taking DE. This does block you from taking both PU and a traited torch though so I’m not sure where to take it from there for my 20/20/30 build… Personally, I’ve not tried it yet, but I am curious how many players Confusing Combatants hits. I assume it’s an aoe.

I’d be curious to see how viable this is in WvW. First, clones often die almost immediately before they can run anywhere. Is their burst radius enough to hit people? Do you need to blink into the crowd to make it effective? Also, the confusion stacks are fairly short lived. Can you get enough stacks to be any better than the Confusing Enchantments trait with glamour? If you do that though then you’re really painting yourself into a corner with already being at 20/25/0/0/0 with only 25 points remaining.

Necros are definitely to be respected now in pvp. I ran into a talented one last night in sPvP and noticed something specific about him. He was exceedingly strong in 1v1. However, in a 2v2 or anything more than 1v1 he became much weaker. In pure 1v1, the only way I could compete was to avoid him getting a lock on me. If he bursted me at all there’s simply too few ways to quickly recover. He’d just stack conditions, hit me a couple times and I’d be at half health. As a note, I wasn’t running Melandru runes, but I did have a traited torch and Null Field.

I’ve an 80 necro, but haven’t vested much time into pvp yet for the profession. I’ll have to look into it.

Hex, I run almost the exact same build except mine is power based instead of condition, I run DE, and I have an off-hand sword instead of pistol. In sPvP I run Soldier Amulet with the Berseker upgrade and Divinity Runes and do not feel I’ve trouble with damage.

I’d be interested to see if this works well with conditions, even though I’ve mostly written off condition damage due to the low output on confusion. The Sw/T prestige > blurred frenzy combo is an exceptional burst. If I’ve the CDs lined up I’ll time it with feedback to get the aoe chaos armor burst. After that I’ll swap, drop iSwordsman and issue two blocks with the scepter and sword.

http://gaming.logitech.com/en-us/product/g700s-rechargable-wireless-gaming-mouse

Is my mouse of choice. The additional, bindable index finger buttons are invaluable.

I’d just stick with Mass Invis for small groups. I would only go Veil as a permanent option if I was using other glamours and had the CD reduction traited. Otherwise, Veil is simply an on-demand skill for zerg commanders.

Tried Mimic out last night in spvp and… got stomped. Mind you, I turned off DE to trait it. Mimic just wasn’t consistent in what it blocked, the Retalitory Shield ret wasn’t damaging enough, and when you use Mimc you can’t cast anything else. Regardless of how tanky the build, mesmer is just too weak to not be constantly dodging, stealthing, or spawning clones. Mimic doesn’t work with any of those.

For now it’s just too situational to add to my bar. I may still try adding Illusion of Life and one other manip skill to my bar again in place of my glamours. The Illusion of Life did work nicely and Blink and AT are solid second options.

I tested this the other day. I spawned three phantasms and then started spawning clones. The first clone destroys the oldest phantasm. The second clone destroys the first clone. The third clone destroys the second clone and so on, so I don’t see anything wrong in taking DE for just about any build.

I had a thief yell at me last night in spvp that mesmers are OP…

As for “bunker” builds, I don’t really understand what those are. Does it require a staff? Is there a minimum amount of toughness? Regardless, I run with a similar build as Trooper and just faceroll in spvp and compete well in tpvp. You can have 1800 toughness and still do an excessive amount of damage.

I’m considering trying out the skill Illusion of Life in pvp and was also looking to trait the CD reduction and possibly the range increase. Due to the traits I figured I’d toss in another manip skill. For fun I figured I’d try out Mimic.

I very rarely see anyone use Mimc. Is the skill any good? The notes in the wiki seem to indicate it’s very good. One note says “After a projectile has been absorbed, the remaining duration will reflect all projectiles and block all other attacks.” That sounds almost too good.

These days, with all the current changes in mind, I’d go GS + Sword/Focus for leveling rather than GS + Staff. Definitely go 20 in dueling first like Osicat mentioned.