Guild Wars 2

How can you use the words “Fun” and “Karmatrain” in the same sentence…

Another thing, try increasing your FoW so it zooms farther out. It really helps with noticing what happens around you. In certain situations (finding the exact moment to blind a downstate skill, etc) you can still zoom in.

I WvW roam with Dom/Chaos/Inspiration Staff/GS CI Lockdown (or PU torch shatter, changing some traits) and doing just fine.

The only thing i really don’t like about MH sword is how clunky iLeap feels post-patch. It was much smoother before, but the added delay feels kinda weird.

Being unable to swap with a dead iLeap clone is a good thing for me, as it adds counterplay.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Iavra.8510:

Not really related to the topic, but that burst was kinda easy to avoid.

I suppose it was a sarcasm… I hope it was.

It wasn’t appropriate, that much for sure. The burst would be easier to avoid/anticipate if the mesmer’s presence was known beforehand, but in this case he could have prevented the last hit by pressing Signet of Stone fast enough and maybe disengage with LB stealth + swoop.

But it’s always easier to point out these things when watching a video than doing split second decisions ingame.

The meta shatter build was 4/4/0/0/6 and took Halting Strike, which is basically the damage part of Power Block.

What you mean is probably Confounding Suggestions, which was a GM pre-patch and wasn’t taken my many mesmers. Although in that short timespan i don’t know if stun <> daze made a big difference.

The burst is basically the same as pre-patch. The only things that changed are:
- 1 Bounce on Mirror Blade (~2k damage)
- Overall damage increase

Stealth wasn’t necessary in this case as he came from off the camera.

I’m not saying, that this level of damage is ok, but this is not a mesmer-specific issue.

On a positive side, they will remove guard stacks with the expansion, so that will lower the damage a bit.

The thing with mesmer power is: The pre-patch shatter build had to get 300 useless condi damage from going Illusions. With IP baseline and stats only coming from gear now, those 300 stats (+ extra because of power creep) now went into power.

That burst was not instant. After the first Mirror Blade bounce he could reacted if he paid attention. But yes, burst damage across the board is higher now.

Not really related to the topic, but that burst was kinda easy to avoid.

Who cares, really…WvW is unplayable this week, anyway.

Mesmers are used to people complaining and getting nerfed, so this is and will be nothing new.

The only time i start shaking is when playing at like 5am when a part of me already sleeps and the other part wants to focus on gameplay

Usually, i’m quite calm while playing. So calm that my gameplay sometimes goes on auto pilot against classes like cele D/D ele and i keep repeating basic rotations without thinking about it ^^

This is not WoW or SWToR.

Yeah, i’m actually hoping they nerf PU to death, so i can spec this way and don’t have to deal with it

Well, that depends on your definitions, as 15 man are very much a zerg to me (small scale being ~1 full group), but you get the general idea.

I’m not avoiding fights at all, but bigger maps make zerging less useful and promote small scale which is always preferable.

Current borderlands are too small, we need bigger maps with less waypoints to spread people.

You get 1 cleanse per shatter, not per clone.

It’s always been this way. Even if mesmers were absolutely useless (which was the case for a long time), people see clones, stealth, teleports and immediately ask for nerfs, because they can’t just spam Rampage auto attacks on it.

If you are an ele, pop Shock Aura and you’ll see the difference between invul and evading.

especially the passive stun when you finally find a way to fight back

Really? That trait is on a 60s cd, Tempest Defense is 25s and – in melee range – does exactly the same, AoE, while also providing an additional damage boost.

If anything, Mirror of Anguish needs a buff.

Also, your post is hugely exaggerating and smelling of l2p.

Being dependent on shatter is a good thing. It’s our main mechanic and things like clone death that work completely against it shouldn’t even have existed in the first place.

I ran that exact combo pre-patch, specced 4/4/6 and could even take the torch trait for condi cleanse. For that burst, the 100% stun on MoD doesn’t really do that much since it’s instant and comes from stealth.

The only thing that really changed for the burst is the higher overall damage.

What i can do now is ensuring my freshly summed iZerker hits by stunning someone. Since i’m not specced into Duelling i can’t take BD, but it’s obviously strong against melee opponents.

The main culprit, imho, is the generally high damage which scales very well with stealth and fast combos.

If a mesmer traits for reflect you can use this to your advantage:
- If he reflects on evade, this will not reflect killshot, since he needs to evade something else beforehand to get a 1.5s reflect.
- If he reflects on manipulation, start shooting at him when he starts channeling Massinvis. He will reflect for 2s after getting stealthed, so get hit by your reflected projectile to reveal him and waste a 72s cd.

Also, if a mesmer runs either Mantra of Resolve or Arcane Thievery, he can’t run either Decoy or Mantra of Distraction (or Blink, but umm…every mesmer runs Blink).

Mender’s Purity adds a ~0.5-1s aftercast to every heal (except mantra?), during which every non-instant skill and weaponswap will be ignored. For me this is worse than your nr 1, since it messes with my rotations.

When using a healskill while traited into Inspiration, there is an added ~1s aftercast during which it’s not possible to use any non-instant skills until Mender’s Purity procs.

/edit: After watching some of my clips, it seems that this even blocks weaponswap.

I don’t know if this has been mentioned before, but when using Ether Feast while traiting Inspiration, i can’t immediately follow-up with another skill. My input just won’t be recognized and i have to press it again.

This doesn’t occur when using the Heal mantra, so it seems to be tied to the cast time of the heal itself.

Heartseeker, Flanking Strike, Whirling Wrath, Rapid Fire, Massinvis, iZerker

Rangers have a lot of non-instant shouts (including a heal) and the guard elite also isn’t instant, so shouts don’t need to be instant.

I haven’t really played with staff for a while, so you are probably watching an old video from before the patch. Since the trait system has been revamped, those links won’t work anymore.

Also, the influx of PU mesmers and the increased damage make playing stealthless Staff/GS very dangerous and i wouldn’t advise it. As an alternative you could go for a more traditional Staff + Sword/X lockdown or PU + MoP shatter.

Since it hasn’t been mentioned, mesmer GS #1 isn’t a projectile. It’s a beam, similar to ele scepter air #1. The only projectile the weapon has is Mirror Blade, which happens to be unblockable (since release), which in turn also makes it unreflectable.

Blinking after the Mirror Blade got thrown is a bad move, as the flying blade telegraphs the burst. The better move is precasting Mirror Blade and blinking during the cast. The burst is pretty much:

- Precast Mirror Blade
- Blink, if needed
- MoD, trigger Stun
- optional Clone dodge
- Mind Wrack
- optional Mind Stab

Your best options are:

- Pop stability and dodge as soon as you get stunned.
- Endure Pain or Block/Whirlwind/Dodge (if not stunned) when you get damage and/or see Mirror Blade flying.
- When the mesmer uses Massinvis, kite away and wait for it to run out. Against Decoy/Prestige wait ~3-4s before dodging.
- Never get surrounded by llusions.
- If you can do so without losing pressure, cleave illusions to reduce possible damage.
- If you see a sword clone appearing near you, dodge or defend otherwise. You may get immobilized anyway, if the mesmer swapped instantly, but the dodge will execute anyway and put you out of Blurred Frenzy range. If the mesmer doesn’t swap, the clone was put there for juking, so either kill it or keep it in mind.

Sword/Torch is mainly a defensive set, so don’t waste your biggest hits on iLeap jukes, Blurred Frenzy and Torch blind. Wait for GS, which is vulnerable apart from a fairly long cd knockback. Count dodges, as always and hammer away.

If the mesmer is Dom/Duelling/Chaos, he has 0 condi cleanses, so hit him with cripples, immobilizes, weakness, … If you are a condi warrior, even better. If he is Dom/Chaos/Inspiration, he packs a lot of cleanses (2 on his heal, which might be instant in case of mantra and 1 on each shatter), but does less damage, because he lacks either DE or Harmonious Mantras and can’t get Fury. That build (my build) shouldn’t be able to oneshot a warrior, so you can still kite/reset with GS if needed.

Also, it’s underwater, which doesn’t matter for PvP and is thus kinda irrelevant for balancing.

That said, (condi) mesmers are kinda op underwater, anyway.

Doesn’t need to be a damage condition. Hitting a white mob with mesmer’s sword applies vulnerability and puts you in combat.

I still have a full WvW set with Traveler runes sitting around, refusing to throw it away…there’s still hope i might be able to get some out without having to pay way too much gems one day.

As a former main guard i’m all for some way to gain +25% speed, but having a shadowstep for the active (a full fledged mesmer Blink, even) seems too strong to me.

you do no notice an increase in stealth

yes

you do not notice an increase in blinks

no, i have less blinks now because i don’t trait for 20% CD reduction (reflect on massinvis is really, really bad).

I used to blame PU, too, but i think that’s the wrong spot to apply fixes. I would take a look at:
- damage across the board
- Confounding Suggestions
- Blind on shatter

Otherwise, feel free to flame me, “bro”. I got a whole youtube channel to prove you wrong.

Since Chaos doesn’t provide 30% Boon duration anymore, an unbuffed PU would be worse than pre-patch, even more so since you can’t take it together with Bountiful Interruption (since that got merged with CI). In this regard, i don’t think PU is the problem here but rather the (overall, it’s not only mesmers) damage.

/edit: Also Confounding Suggestions (100% stun on Daze), but basically every mesmer knows, that this needs a nerf.

serenke.4806:

Come on guys. You complain about incoming nerfs when we didn’t do anything but ask for nerfs ever since the specialization patch. Of course the shining beacons of our community that asked for those nerfs haven’t commented here yet.

Mesmers have been nerfed every patch since release and complaining about it. This time we went the opposite route by asking for nerfs and did not receive any.

You should thank us for our masterful reverse psychology.

Fire/Air on GS for ranged pressure and since the channeled AA reliably procs them.

On S/T is use Energy and Cleansing, but the latter one could be swapped out for anything, i guess. I just like to have that on-demand cleanse.

/edit: The Vigor nerf obviously hurts, but since i’m not specced into Duelling i don’t have Vigor, anyway, and dodge much less than pre-patch (or rather, i should, i still need to get rid of that habit).

Charging mantras is annoying, but the heal has always been better number-wise and even more so since the cd change. Also it provides an instant cleanse when going into Inspiration.

Also, since IP is baseline, DE is not mandatory anymore and even if i were to go into Duelling, i would probably take Harmonious Mantras over it.

Pre-patch, i used that trait as my only cleanse (aside from sigil of cleansing) and i never needed anything else. Sadly, they moved it to the wrong traitline and condi application has been increased to a degree that demands for more cleanses.

I wouldn’t cry over Chaotic Dampening. As it is, it still provides better CD reduction than The Pledge, which is considered good enough and used to be more than 3 times than it. Combined with the guarenteed Protection, which is by far more important, i say it’s still a very good trait.

I’m running this build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhQQNAR8fl0nhy0YjawGNwtGLnGkZL22MOfSUuOZAWQQB-TlDFABVfQAkb/hlUiBwFAoQ1BuSJoAPAAkUO4kSCUUxJDNCppLIRVCW4IAQKgy1aB-w

It’s fairly tanky, has good healing and quite some cleanses. Charging mantras after every fight is kinda broing but you’ll get used to it.

Also, it takes a moment to get used to playing without DE, but you don’t need it.

For WvW roaming, you might also consider Dueling/Chaos/Illusions PU shatter with cleanse mantra, though i’m not a fan of condi.

Things i use F2 for:
- Stripping boons (traited)
- Cleansing conditions (traited)
- Removing Blinds
- Damage when i know i don’t need F1 (rarely)
- Getting rid of illusions after a duel
- Very, very rarely stack confusion on an ele (which does basically no damage with my only condi damage coming from Treveler runes)

I can see it being used for the cripple when traiting Master of Fragmentation, but aside from that it doesn’t have much use.

Because people who really like the class want to have it balanced and not being the next FotM class where all the bad players gather.

And honestly (in general, not directed at OP): If you were doing bad pre-patch and are doing great now, it’s not because the class was bad, but because you are a bad player and the class is a lot more noob-friendly and forgiving, now.

new page fix.

It’s not “a bit more” stealth and i dare say stealth is better on mesmer due to our illusions still doing damage while we are standing besides laughing.

I’m not gonna lie, if you see a mesmer using Mantra of Distraction and PU, run away. We now outstealth you, our bursts are at least as high as yours and we can stun you at anytime, from 1200 range, without warning.

If you want the fight, take your time, never engage without a stunbreak, expect Mirror of Anguish when stealing with Daze and wait for the perfect moment, if it ever comes.