Guild Wars 2

I see what you did there…

For me would be Prestige, Mirror Blade and Blink, preferable in that order right into someone’s face.

Yeah, don’t know how i came to write that ^^

Also, @Wyrden: It doesn’t matter if the shatter reveals you (and, actually, F3 and F4 usually don’t reveal since they deal no damage). Most of the time Prestige is used to set up a shatter burst to make it harder to avoid and add some more damage to it. If you see the mesmer stealth, it’s almost as easy as counting to ~2 – 2.5 and dodge to avoid the burst.

Shatter usually doesn’t use Veil, but the other 3 are very common.

A Shatter causes all illusions (the supertype of clones and phantasms) to run towards their target and die for their effect. The exception is F4, Deception, which makes the mesmer invulnerable for 1s for every illusion shattered.

A shatter mesmer will usually try to either get you surrounded by illusions or spawn them directly on top of you to make dodging the shatter as hard as possible. Also, shatter builds are usually either 20/20/0/0/30 or 10/30/0/0/30. 20 in Dueling is a must because of Deceptive Evasion and the amount of clones it gives.

Remember that while mesmers have multiple kinds of damage mitigation (stealth, invulnerability, evades, teleports), shatter builds are very squishy and need to kite a lot between bursts. If you play a build with lots of gap closers or soft cc (meditation guard, sword thief, gs/lb warrior, …), you have a good chance of catching him after he is out of options.

I don’t really like condi builds (in general ^^), but mesmers rely heavily on sharper images which needs a lot of precision to work.

To you, yes, not to other people.

1) step out of the zerg.
2) less loot.
3) you die more often → more chances to sell loot.
4) …
5) problem solved.

GS + Sword/Torch here, too.

Utilities are Blink, Decoy and either Arcane Thievery (for roaming or fighting warriors/rangers), Mantra of Resolve (fighting condi builds) or Mirror Images (fighting glass thieves/mesmers/guards).

Blurred Frenzy, for me, is mainly a defensive skill. I feel like the damage on it is too low and it’s too easy to avoid to just blow one of our best defensive cds for damage.

Shatter rotas are basically (with an optional Torch 4 added before):

1) Sword 3 while passing by/through the opponent → dodge somewhere near him → Sword 3 → F1.

2) Sword 3 twice (most of the time he will be immobilized, even when dodging) → GS 2 → F1

3) GS 2 → Blink either while still in throwing animation or while the blade is flying → optional dodge → F1.

F2 can serve as a substitute for F1 but does way less damage and is more useful for luring out defensive cds, stacking might or getting some damage through Endure Pain.

These are the basics. Of course a fight seldom plays out like you want so it’s crucial keep an eye for burst possibilities and range him/stay safe until it comes.

Remember that you can spawn your Sword 3 clone and kite the opponent away while the clone will still remain in place for a short time. This comes in very handy when you need some time to regain cds or to avoid moves like Earthshaker.

PvP, for me, should be skill based no matter what kind of game. In PvE, i don’t care (well, this topic IS about PvE, but just to make a point).

And even a fight like shatter vs shatter (one of the most glassy builds in the game) can take a while if both players time their invuls/evades right). Might be just me, but i like these fights much more than having someone circling around a bunker guard/war grinding him down forever.

Just in general getting tired of the berzerker + dodge meta in PvE.

I don’t know aboutm PvE, only PvP, but fighting glass vs glass is much more fun than fighting vs a bunker because your errors have much bigger consequences and the whole fight is a lot faster.

If anything, bunker builds across the board should be toned down defensively so players are forced to use their dodges and active defenses.

Prysin.8542:

Iavra.8510:

Actually, i expect every enemy to be lame condi bunker, not power glass

Thats cuz you are from a EU server. Rangers are more common in EU. In NA you find the total number of rangers on a whole server to be less then what you’d see in 2 hours on a EU server (pre megaserver comparison)

Being condi has nothing to do with being ranger. I’ve seen condi bunkers of every class except maybe guards (yes, even eles).

P&P wise, heavier armor should come with hit and parry penalties and hinder the use of magic ^^

That said, light and medium armor classes need those damage mitigations (at least builds like glass thief or mesmer) since a still tanky warrior 2 shots them with basically every semi-spammable skill he has.

Actually, i expect every enemy to be lame condi bunker, not power glass

The only thing i don’t like about BF is the damage. ~800 per tick is quite low considering that i take about half of that back as retal.

I’m mostly using the skill defensively since the standard #3→#3→#2 is easy to avoid anyway but even than i think it gets vastly outshined by Warrior’s whirlwind attack which does more damage realiably, moves and is on a shorter cd. The only thing speaking for BF is the longer evade which makes the skill quite defensive.

As good as it might sound, i think i would be more fighting against the camera than other servers…

Ok for me but considering that the other day we had ~20 people in OS arena, at least 15 of them warrior, should be a clear sign that something is wrong.

Still playing 20/20/0/0/30 (or 4/4/0/0/6) with quite some success. ArenaNet might throw as many obstacles in my way as they want, i won’t stop using this most iconic and (for me) fun to play mesmer build.

And yes, i’m using GS, as i did pre-patch. Currently using Energy + Accuracy on both sets, pushing me to 56% critchance without using precision food.

That’s why you play shatter. You won’t catch anyone except a necro, but you can burst down most people before they can start running away.

Against Power/Hybrid/Phantasm PU: No chance.

Against Clone-death PU: Play it safe, don’t rush in head first, grind them down and look for an opportunity to burst. A good way to make them panic is to get hit by Confusing Images, run into the scepter block on purpose or just blow up a lot of clones and give the stacks back via Arcane Thievery. You have to be sure to hit because otherwise you are screwed, but if it does, most are pretty helpless.

On 3k Armor 3-4k would be too high but on my 2k armor mesmer i always get hit for 3k+ by power lb rangers on full range.

Increase map size while retaining the player limit and number of waypoints (or even outright remove them). The zerg can only ever be at 1 place at the same time.

You are down, thus you lost. If there are team mates nearby, thy can still ress you before the stomp is done or just AoE the crap out of the general area around you.

If you happen to roam alone, there is basically nothing you could do to still win that fight, anyway, so just deal with it.

No, you can blink during, say, iWave (GS #5) without interrupting it.

To get a feeling for Portal range, place the entry near to something you can target, do that and run straight in a line. The moment you lose your target, place the exit portal.

Also, if you let portal run out, it goes on a shortened CD (30s untraited), so you don’t absolutely need to use it before the timer runs out.

Can’t speak for everyone, but if you merge my server with another one, a lot of people will quit. We are playing here, because it’s low-population.

Just don’t do anything else while healing? This is a problem with you, not with the game.

Osicat and Flimp got me into playing mesmer, but i think it’s best to work for being your own idol.

Phantasm PU most likely is quite lag friendly, since a lot of your game happens passively and all you have to do is stealthing and summoning phantasms.

Shatter, on the other hand, relies a lot on active defense and quick reflexes, so even short lags can kill you fast.

You probably want to wait for april 15th, since the announced some changes to runes and sigils that will benefit mesmers.

At the moment, you are good with using Traveler/Speed runes to make up for our lack of speed boosts.

Might and Precision Sigils are actually quite good since they both carry over to your clones and phantasms. Energy (endurance on weapon swap) is also used often because most mesmers pretty much rely on Deceptive Evasion (clone on dodge).

I usually take Cleansing Conflagration and run Arcane Thievery for additional Boonstrip/Cleanse. Always remember that you only need to face your target with the camera to land AT, so you can cast it while creating space at the same time.

As for Invigoration vs Elasticity, since i’m mostly roaming i take Invigoration for the added survivability (same can be said about Conflagration). Afaik, Vash usues Elasticity (and the GS trait for Master Domination), so you can do well with any one.

Btw a great way to deal damage with this setup is to torch stealth, wait for ~2s, precast Mirror Blade, Blink onto your target (optional dodge here) and shatter. Been oneshotting so many guys that way.

The problem hereby is that ArenaNet counts WvW as a PvE mode so while they would be balancing PvP, WvW would be a total disaster.

So they would also have to balance WvW seperately or put it together with PvP.

PvE’ers will disagree but personally i don’t think PvE should be a deciding factor in terms of balancing.

Balancing should always be done with PvP modes in mind because that’s where it really matters (especially when you want your game to be an e-sport…).

For me (shatter) it currently is:
Precision -> Power/Critdmg -> Vitality -> Toughness .> Condidmg/Healing.

For phantasm i’d say it is:
Power -> Critdmg -> Precision -> Toughness -> Vitality -> Condidmg/Healing.

Condi, i imagine something like:
Precision -> Condidmg -> Toughness -> Power/Vitality -> Critdmg/Healing.

Even after patch i will try to get to 60% critdmg on shatter. It won’t be as effective as it is now, but a crit still does more dmg.

Not to mention some of those + move speed traits only apply in combat (see engi…)

Granted, i never used Power Shoes so far, but it does not state to only work in combat. Speedy Kits works always, anyway.

It would also help a bit for ArenaNet to introduce more +movement speed runes aimed at more specific builds. Of course those would always be worse than non-movement speed ones and have the speed bonus as the 6-rune-bonus.

I added you, when i remember looking at my friendlist, i’ll whisper you, otherwise feel free to do so yourself.

To be fair, there is a difference between PU power builds using active attacks and Phantasm/Clone-Death builds.

I’m not a PvP player but for sure i would fight you, Pyro, if only for the fun and training. Sadly, i can’t use Traveler in PvP but i will find a substitute.

Blacktide might still make a comeback as soon as their achievement hunters make room for the WvW guilds.

Since you see 5 servers contesting for 1st play, might as well add a 6th to it ^^

As if guardians aren’t already applying enough blind…also, do you really want guardians to be able to stealth?

Cute, a PU clone-death spammer pretending to be skilled.

If you don’t want to be frustrated, because everyone just casually walks away from you, play shatter. It’s harder to play than most other builds but still can put off a good amount of burst and kill people before they run away.

Please leave WvW alone…some of us chose to play on a lower ranked server for a reason. Forcing everyone to play on a permanently full map will only lead to even more mindless (or mindful for al i care, zerg is zerg) zerging and effectively renders solo players useless.

Don’t know about PU but straight oldschool shatter is very hard to play these days and probably one of the weakest and most skill intensive (tied with pure lockdown probably) specs in the current (condition and warrior) meta.

Sadly, it will only worsen once the patch hits, but i’m sure many people, me included, won’t stop playing the mesmers former signature build.

Personally, i think they should treat condi and boon duration the same way they treat critical damage: Add new stats and reduce both accordingly.

Of course divinity runes would now give +(however these stats are called now) to offset the nerf they will receive with the ferocity change.

Kill them faster than they can kill you. And kite…a lot.

Aww, i feel flattered blush

Regarding guild zergs, Dzagonur lost at least 2 guilds prior to league start, and since we did not have free transfers unlike Blacktide, we gained nothing (or, nearly, i think i saw some new faces, but not much) in exchange.

Our current score is mainly because the server as a whole works day and night to crush Bandwagontide and for once every single roamer i’ve seen is not (mainly) after fights but plays his part for the greater good of the server.

The whole server does a fantastic job so far and i’m really looking forward to see Miller the next week.

/edit: Greeting to TaG and Meatycowlegs, if they are still there

A 1min bleed is incredibly strong vs mesmers and other classes/builds with limited to no condition remove. As a thief you are easily able to reset the fight multiple times while your opponent can’t because that stupid bleed is keeping him infight forever.

Moa #5 takes you far enough away to make it impossible for a mesmer to catch you unless he has Blink up and GS equipped.

/edit:

I’m not talking about 1v1s either. Moa = death in 1> vs 1.

You are not supposed to win 1vX. You can if your opponents are trash, which happens often, but usually you shouldn’t.

- Condi Remove on Torch
- Arcane Thievery

is what i’ve been running for months now and it’s doing good enough. Well…except vs Spite ofc.

Well, the new traits totally neglect power shatter. Adding the critdmg change and vigor nerf, it will be even harder for us than it already is.

But i guess that’s okay, since perplexity necros will be rolling everyone (except warriors, ofc), anyway.