Guild Wars 2

Short add to what ArmageddonAsh said: Clones that are shattered and running towards their target don’t count to the 3 illusion limit. So you can have 3 illusions doing their thing and any amount of shattered illusions at the same time (depending on how fast you can produce/shatter them).

Wow…this must have been the most elitist bs i’ve ever read in these forums…

Who says you won’t just be fighting against some random minions while seeing a scene of a bigger fight every now and then?

I’m sure they are able to make both fractals enjoyable (it’s PvE, the game mode they actually care about, after all)

@SDA from Arborstone: You got a speedhacking mesmer. I reported him, but i think you should know about it. Couldn’t take a screenshot, though :/

Can’t mesmer be traited to stun on daze and chain it too.?

Only 50% chance. It should be 100% and preserve the duration of the daze (now it even converts 2s daze → 1s stun). For a grandmaster trait it’s quite mediocre and i don’t think anyone has ever taken it.

Talking about ranger, they are actually quite powerful in the current meta:
PvE – 1 ranger in CoF speed run record.
PvP – Spirit rangers seem to be very viable.
WvW – Shout support rangers can maintain permanent regeneration, swiftness /edit: and fury on their group while LB rangers deal a lot of damage and also got a quick disengage in LB #3.

RoF running away from ~ 10v7 odds (in their favor) isn’t much better…

Note that it wasn’t TaG. I like those guys :>

The last time i’ve seen elitism was shortly before Miller’s Sound breaking apart (they recovered). RoS got a lot of bandwaggon guilds some time ago and since they didn’t skyrocket in ratings like they might have expected to do, they are now unsatisfied.

I’m currently using a more agressive shatter build with traited torch and arcane thievery. At first, i try to keep my distance, get staff clones, iWarlocks and iMages (important!) and start grinding on his hp. Decoy, Massinvis and Torch #4 is used for repositioning.

After he pops out of deathshroud, is try to burst him, but it’s important to have Blink, F4 or Weaponswap off CD to quickly gain your distance afterwards. Arcane Thievery/Null Field is saved as a panic button against condition bursts.

I usually play the same way against power builds. Arcane Thievery can be nice to steal might from Blood is Power. Also, when he turns Lich or starts spamming DS #1, run and break LoS.

Don’t worry, RoF does a lot of blobbing, too

Better not…in WvW, some warriors could just stand somewhere safe (say, in a tower lord room) sniping everyone passing by or trying to attack said tower without any chance to get hit back.

Last week i met a TCHUU warrior from gandara using this exact build. Granted, as i mesmer i could do with some more condition removal but he absolutely destroyed me every time we met.

/edit: He also used bulls rush (maybe even stomp? can’t remember) and the “confusion on interrupt”-trait. 4 stacks confusion for 8 seconds is actually quite powerful.

Retaliation currently punishes every class for using multi-hitting AoEs in a zerg. Mesmer Blurred Frenzy/Feedback (reflected projectiles count as yours), engi granades, even guardian Whirling Wrath can easily kill the user.

There needs to be some kind of internal CD to retal (like, you can’t get more than 5 ticks/sec from it) at least in WvW only. Won’t change anything for 1v1/smallscale but nerfs retal for zerg fights.

Must be trolling… eng has by far the worst downed state in the game.

He/she probably meant a living engineer protecting a downed comrade by smoke bomb + blast finisher or knockback/stun on the stomper. That said, thieves and mesmers also prevent any kind of stomp by stealthing the downed guy (thief being the most reliable. MI can be easily interrupted and engi combo still takes longer than Shadow Refuge/Blinding Powder).

/edit:

Could another class have pulled that off, doubtful. But was it a game changer/ big deal at all…no.

Sure can. As a mesmer i can distortion-stomp and portal out afterwards. Warriors can be virtually invulnerable while stomping and ecape with GS/Sword mobility afterwards (takes multiple skills to pull off, though, and i wouldn’t really recommend doing it). Engi Elixir S + Rocket Boots/Acid Bomb afterwards or Ele Mistform + LTR is another one.

But against halfway competent opponents it’s usually not worth the effort as any class capable of AoE stealth can counter it.

Warriors got like over 9000 weapons, i think it’s okay for one of them to be situational ^^

Warrior downstate is terrible, single target knockback that half the time shoots the opposite direction.

At least you can blindly throw your rock somewhere you expect the thief to be. Try to use mesmer downed #2 against someone stealthed without anything else to target around (That said, mesmer downed #2 in general is better than warriors. #3s are totally different and not so easy to compare, though).

Generally, when i am downed without any mob to kill or friendly player to ress me around i usually lost and it doesn’t matter if my opponent stomps me in stealth or not. When there are friendly player around, it’s mainly their task to safe me (AoE stealth via Shadow Refuge/Massinvis works best).

/edit: What i would change about downed state is to disallow hardressing while in combat. This mechanic makes it too easy for superior numbers to win against smaller groups.

b) Make it tick once every 2 seconds instead of 1 second

Would be quite awful for mesmer staff autoattack which applies 1s burning ^^

/edit: Also most guardian burns are 1s afaik.

Well, to be fair, a countered SR goes on full CD since you already casted it while MI goes on the usual 5s(?) interrupted CD. Won’t help you much when those seconds are all that is needed for you/your team to get bursted but it’s something ^^

Dunno why you call Kiels fractal a “gamble” and instantly assume that Abaddon would be amazing. You, as every other one of us, know nothing about how the respecting fractal will turn out.

I’m afraid i can’t. Actually, i’m quite sure it will be nerfed in WvW as well but they needed a hotfix for the upcoming tournament so they decided to make it only affect sPvP.

Yes, Thief Shadow Refuge can be traited to heal.

It always heals. You mean the “regeneration in when gaining stealth” and “heal hp in stealth” traits which are applied on top of SR inherent healing. A thief popping SR usually heals to full in a matter of seconds without using his healing skill.

Sorry, my build is… Kinda.. based on CC

I’m assuming you play Phantasm-Condi, then? The problem is, again, that Signet of Domination is a utility skill (as is Mantra of Distraction if you REALLY want to overdo it <.<) and takes precious space which could have been filled with cleanses or stunbreaks.

What i’m seeing is that the class relies too much on it’s utilities to acomplish something and since mesmers in tPvP are only taken because of Portal or IoL, all these nice utility skills are basically worthless there or you could as well take another class that doesn’t need to be babysitted in the current condi-meta.

Viel is visible for enemies. Maybe they were 10 people max and used MassInvis (probably multiple times as it stacks) but MassInvis has quite an obvious animation itself (char lifting his arm for ~2s and a white circle quickly expanding afterwards).

Kind of a refreshing start after getting steamrolled day after day by Gandara and Millers ^^ Seeing forward to fight TaG again this week.

After seeing Warriors doing 180s in mid-air to still land eviscerate and GS #5 moving in zig-zag, i agree that there is something wrong with the system.

It’s actually not that hard to survive inside of Shadow Refuge as long as you aren’t heavily outnumbered in which case Mass Invis wouldn’t help you that much, either. The long cast time of MI also works in a similar way to a thief having to stay inside his house, with the exception of not already being in stealth and very easy to interrupt.

That said, i am using Mass Invis as i think it’s our most versatile elite skill in open world roaming (Moa is just cheap, uninspired and should be replaced, timewarp basically says “for the next 10 secs, you can’t leave this area or you wasted your elite”. It absolutely has it’s uses for golem rushes, and speedresses/stomps, though).

I’d say, MI could do with a CD decrease (75s is reasonable, i think). Moa should be replaced by something that works with illusions and/or helps against conditions and time warp should definitely be a glamour.

You would have to split the skill between PvP and WvW/PvE, then. In PvP, a shorter cast time MIGHT be needed (i actually doubt it, but i leave this to the people actually playing PvP). In WvW, where the terrain is much more open and a single warrior crouching there can be overlooked more easily, Kill Shot is already in quite a good shape.

First problem i see in your build: you rely on blind confusion from traited glamour fields.

Umm…no?

I use Null Field and Chaos Storm (not a glamour, you know) to get confusion with traited iDuelists shooting thorugh the combo field.

0-25-0-20-25

I am using Xephs 0/20/25/0/25 with scepter/pistol + staff.

Since it’s part of a power line, it should probably apply vulnerability, cripple or chill. Also, move Terror to Grandmaster, disable spectral skills in DS (it’s supposed to do this, right?) and rework DS #5 to convert a certain amount of lifeforce to HP (channel?). Tadaa, here you have your sustain.

On a related note, i would change necro scepter autoattack and thief dagger autoattack (any other i missed?) to not be able to get permanent uptime on poison. The condition is too strong to be so easily accesible and instead should be timed to counter heals.

That’s only the beginning. People are QQ’ing and i can tell you that there will be nerfs. A lot. It’s what happened to eles and mesmers, now necro has its turn.

After that, Eles will demand instant Churning Earth and Mesmers instant Moa…both of it won’t be any way near to one-shotting 5 people from 1500 range every 10s, though.

Every class forum should have it’s own Daecello. There would be threads suggesting Dhuumfire to do 4s Fear on top of burning and Shadow Refuge giving instant 20s of Stealth (on 40s CD of course).

Mesmer stealths don’t give the revealed debuff if you come out early.

Sure they do…don’t say you never got screwed by having a staff autoattack still bouncing around when using Decoy?

1. Illusionary Persona
2. Illusionists Celerity
3. Deceptive Evasion
4. Prismatic Understanding
5. Cleansing Conflagration

/edit: I forgot:
0. Critical Infusion

I play with Nubu about every day, you know

He plays Condi and i sometimes do so, also. There are basically 2 ways for a mesmer to kill someone effectively with condi:
- get a bunch of iDuelists and let them stack bleeds (maybe even trait for it and let them stack confusion in Null Field/Chaos Storm). This actually is quite effective, but can only work in a certain area.
- get iCounter off and have some bleeds, burning and poison (Doom Sigil works good) at that time.

The problem is: Condimesmers are quite stationary as they solely rely on illusions. Most of our condis (basically everything except that torment) is too short to actually effect someone when running away. A proper build Condi-Warrior on the other hand does 15s of bleeding on his sword auto-chain (i did some brainstorming about the build today, so i happen to remember the number).

Also, as Nubu just told me today: There is absolutely no way for him to every beat a halfway competent necro even if he specced all for condi-removal.

Supcutie; a mesmer. Ranked #3.

I know your videos. If you are still running the same build you are a total gc without any condi-removal. You may win a fight if you get the jump but you die as soon as a necro sneezes at you.

That said i actually found abuild that’s currently working for me utilizing the traited torch. It most likely won’t be enough to win against a necro, condi engi or tanky condi ranger but against single-condition specs (thieves, warrior) it might be able to do the job.
/edit: Unless i get chain-CC’ed, of course.
It also shows the inherent problem of our traitlines. Since it’s a shatter build, 0/20/0/0/30 is pretty much mandatory to make it work. For condi-removal i now need these 20 points in Domination so there is no space to play around testing something different.

My question to you is: 1) What level is your mesmer? Mesmers are, from my experience, one of the roughest to level up in the early levels.

You’re kidding me, right?

@Requiem: You do hotjoin, i guess? I’m not doing PvP myself but i watched a LOT of videos of Teldo, Symbolic, Helseth, Defective and Co so, at least in theory, i know something about the meta “up there” in high level PvP and that’s the only thing that counts when ArenaNet tries to make this game an E-Sport.

@rager: We were used to flexible, yes. But after ArenaNet killed multiple of our builds and we are now forced to use certain runes, utilities and traits due to meta, that’s not the case anymore. Oh, and you know that MM necro is one of the strongest builds to play currently? ^^

Since my old thread got deleted (at least mods are reading this forum i guess), i’m opening a new one without ArenaNet in its title.

After reading this some threads over there in the sPvP forum (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/sPvP-Class-Tier-List-Updated-6-30) and playing my mesmer in WvW, i can safely say that mesmer is currently in a very bad spot.

The reasons are:
- our power bursts are very predictable, making them easy to mitigate.
- our condi dmg can’t compete with other classes (except guardian because they don’t really have condis).
- Our cleanses are on very high cds and always force us to abandon something else (runes, utilities, traits)
- Our mobility SUCKS. Sure, we can dance around an opponent, but when it comes to chasing or creating a gap, we are lost.
- Our CC is very limited and we got 1 whole immobilize to try to hold someone.

Just now i was fighting a ranger and an ele near to a friendly camp. There was basically nothing i could do because of the ranger filling me with conditions (me already running Mantra + Null Field) and the ele chain-CC’ing me. I managed to pressure the ele but there is absolutely no way i could ever down or even kill him because i got no mobility.
The really sad thing is: After some minutes, a condi warrior of the third server appeared and EASILY mopped the floor with those 2.

Before posting answers like “but you got portals”, “i never know who’s the real you”, “take centaur runes for swiftness”, think about it, maybe question your own level of play, and then post. So far, many high-skilled sPvP mesmers quit their class and most teams aren’t running mesmers anymore since we just aren’t competitive anymore in this meta.

/edit: As much as i like the feeling of the mesmer class, i will now be equipping my thief or engi and make myself comfortable with them.

You know there hasn’t been a dev post over in the mesmer forum for months. The reason we are in such a bad shape now is because virtually nobody is listening to us.

Sadly, i had to break off after ~50min since i don’t like playing in a storm…but maybe we will meet again (although i don’t really hope it, too much zergs ^^) in the future.

@Maskaganda: Tz, we wiped the GoN zerg 7vs20+ at the start of this week :P (I have to admit, we were near our spawn at the start so whoever was low could retreat safely…but that’s their fault for fighting there)

Kiel. Real-life politicians are already corrupt enough.

YaK, YaK, …aah there was this one YaK thief that fought Nubu and me together with a JDGE thief. We killed the YaK about 3-4 times and the JDGE evaded us long enough until they finally managed to kill us (in my defense: i was kinda bored after 15min+ of fighting thieves ^^)

That helm could very well make me start leveling a warrior (doesn’t fit that well for guardians)

A mesmer without illusions could as well reroll.

When playing shatter or PU i take it since i need the clones either for shattering or for triggering “on clone death”-traits. When playing phantasm i don’t take it since i don’t want to overwrite my phantasms and i need the pistol-trait in that slot.

Any chance for you coming to our duel event later today?

Be grateful that it’s only 30 of them. When i was playing on miller, [Army] regularly fielded 80+ blobs taking t3 hills without any siege at all.

The trait is irritating because it disregards the rule of good RNG: All effects must do something useful.

Well…that pretty much goes for all our RNG effects ^^

Oh, hai Idle /wave

I was that mesmer that duelled Osi and you at the start of this week. We never managed to end a duel without getting interrupted, though ^^

Unless you want achievement points they are useless.

Well, so far i’ve seen more Gandara fighting and more Miller hiding in towers.

And it’s still kinda frustrating having a good fight and getting jumped by 20 more people. That’s why i’ll do most of my playing in the morning for the rest of the week.

And cheers to the TCHUU warrior that roams at the same time and who i meet every day. Next time i’ll try to bring some condi-remove ^^

Signet of Domination now has a cast-time of 1/4 second, instead of 1 second. Oh my.

Wasn’t it this way for a while already?

Also, regarding Ranger stealth, we tested the new Hunter’s Shot and it indeed needs to hit for the stealth, kinda offsetting the high stealth uptime a bit. Sadly, there seem to be a lot of gc rangers out there atm, making outmanned fights a lot harder