The first Diviner: has two modes of attack. Active: when he runs around chasing headless chickens, leaps and smashes them to a mushy feather blobs. Passive: When he pauses thinking how to cook his chickens, spawning several dirty aoes of conditions. The casual way to counter his active mode: immobilize, chill and cripple on him, rotate a tanky minion (Rocky, Golem, Drake or Bear pet) and melee behind him. Range allowed if you can’t dodge reliably. During his passive mode, just burst the guy and don’t forget to cleanse the ‘weakness’ condition.
At the first and second staircase (with vets and the knock down gales), you can blink up to the above platform so let ele and mesmer handle the hammer transportation.
All the seals can be hit without targeted. You can hit both of the first seals by standing in between them and smash #4. Only the first hit works.
(Sandy’s Advanced Class) Mesmer can be abused to hit the second seal reliably without drawing aggro using a combo of portal, blink and decoy.
At the left chest seal, you can go as far as the tip of rocky platform next to the seal, hit 4 and it still works. No need to go further.
And no, I’m not going to explain how to do the chest seal :P
At the last boss, if someone stands next to the boss when the seal is hit, the boss will get stunned as well. It prevents him to attack the stunned members.
Always pull all the chanters to the center to quickly get rid of them. They can stack vulnerability very fast and their attacks hurt a lot.
Ele’s Burning speed for a casual 2 sec jail breakout.
Glyph of elemental power is great to abuse chill, weakness and cripple on the Arch Diviner. He becomes more or less docile.
Underground Facility Fractal
The mini guide for a painless console experience (sub 7 minutes, promise!!!)
Prerequisite: a thief, a mesmer and an ele
Optional 2 last slots: war, guard, necro, ranger, engi
Clear all the patrol mobs up to the first gate.
Thief put a shadow trap at the first gate. Mesmer drops portal (at the trap). Thief stealths to turn on the switch, gate opens, group in, mesmer opens portal. Thief in.
Clear the way to cage door. Thief and mesmer repeat the sequence as in #2.
Mesmer uses Mass Invisible as group enters the left side of the cage, focus-pulling dredge to the wall. Ele uses swirling wind and drop ice bow. Mesmer and thief chain reflection and smoke screen, group burst down the group of dredge.
#Legendary Vet dredge spawn.
Thief scorpion wire vet dredge to the wall. Ele drops FGS and cheeses him.
Group stays at the left button, thief chains stealth at the right button and Ele chains invuln and blocking at console. Mesmer and others pull the spawning dredge off ele.
Gate opens, group withdraws.
The mini guide for a cheesy bomb path DnT already demonstrated it!
Aetherblade Fractal
You can troll prevent allies dying on the lightning step puzzle by pulling the vet asura engineer to the ground with a bow. This guy has a chilling projectile attack that makes you miss the skip.
You can blink up to the consoles to turn off spinning lightning traps. An ele can solo this part if he fancies.
In the last room, the low spinning lightning bolt can be jumped over. I often giggle seeing people trying to run away from them.
Only stack at the safe spot if you have enough DPS or a good guard.
Thaumanova Reactor Fractal
The dorm: the asura technicians apply a debuff onto the Anomaly boss (which receives more damage). Save them first before they are getting fried.
The laser trap room: pick up the shield, applying speed boost, running straight to the very end. Double dodge when shield is down, then fight the golem off at a relatively safe spot.
The melting room: is solo-able by a Norn warrior. Applying speed boost, after the second curtain, Bear form, Charge, then escape bear form, Defiance Stance, etc (blah blah blah – I don’t play war). When you’re down, heal your self, Vengeance and congratulations, you’ve made it to the end!
The ooze: work in progress. All I can say is my group is looking for a fool-proof way to FGS the boss. The fight is usually 4 sec or wipe. So, no tips.
Anomaly boss: Minions and pets increase the amount of destroyed platforms as well as platforms surrounding the boss -> can’t melee, not cool! I’d rather have someone range the boss and holds aggro away from the melee group, which works faster and way better (usually a staff ele).
Volcanic Fractal
No general tips. A lot of ele tips can be found in the Elementalist sub-forum.
Oh boys, I give in. Here are some casual Fractal tips:
Aquatic Ruins Fractal
Anyone who still fancy doing this fractal should know there are a couple of stacking spots to LOS the Kraits. For the love of the six gods, use them. Eles love you!
Swampland Fractal
(Sandy’s advanced class) Thief and mesmer can solo two wisps: place the portal/shadow trap at the closer cleft (1), walk to the further cleft (2), bring the wisp (2) home, open the portal at another home cleft, spam ‘F’ to retrieve the wisp (1) home.
“The trees are your friends, the ground is not”, if you often get caught by trap a lot.
By switching the traits, mesmer can blink through the tree gap before it closes (range from 900 to 1200). I don’t have much success with ele Lightning Flash (range 900)
Bloomie: only the shockwave is reflectable; the others are not. It has a tell, so please don’t spam reflection like your life depends on it. Why? Area of retaliation and Chaos Armor are not cool. Stay at Bloomie butt to avoid most of the frontal attacks.
Mossie: When Mossie is in stealth, you can observe his position in the mini map. You can interrupt his stealth by going invuln and attacking him in melee. At 75% or below, you can become his ‘primary target’ by ‘tanking’ any of his attacks, which last until his next stealth. You can bait him focus on either Earth elemental or Flesh Golem that way. When he’s in any of his animal forms, immobilize him and cheese your way to the victory at max melee range.
Uncategorized Fractal
(Sandy’s advanced class) Stealth through Harpy and drop portal. Nullify the knock down lightning ball attack by using distortion at the center of its aoe.
Ettin shockwave attack and Flame Legion’s fire ball attack are reflectable.
You can blink up about 80% of the lightning trap staircase (from the side). Double dodge. Cheers! Or use the side walls as your resting stations.
Earth elemental, Flesh golem, Untraited warden and Asura Defensive golem can tank all of the poison hits from Old Tom. Stay behind them. Watch out for his first pull though.
Baron von Scrufflebutt’s rocket attack is unblockable. CC-CC-CC-CC-CC him as often as you can and the rest of the fight is just a cake walk. Ele tip: use Tornado if your group have enough reflection but not enough CC and DPS. You don’t get rally from Baron, but other kitties.
Urban Battlegrounds Fractal
Use ‘pathing’ or pull to dispatch several groups of vets from the center to the side. Clear the only one group of monks and warriors (sometimes archers or mages in the mix) and proceed to the center to clear the siege weapons.
Optional: pull each group of mobs to the center for lewts.
Captain Ashym: the cheesy way of killing him is to stop meleeing him and put kitten his 75% HP to let the NPC take care of the rest. Bait his Meteor Shower at range so not to kill the NPC.
Molten Furnace Fractal
The Earth elemental group is the nastiest enemy of this fractals. Make sure your group can blind and burst them faaaassssstt, or wipe.
Ice bow is extremely useful in this fractal.
Fear will make the Protector stuck into the Power Core. Other ways of knocking back will work better, e.g. LH skill #3, Guardian hammer or mesmer gsword.
Ice bow should be used for the third and last phase of the Power Core.
FGS the boss.
Snowblind Fractal
(Sandy’s Advanced Class) Mesmer can solo the first camp fire by carefully pulling the vet mobs away from the fire using a combo of focus pullandblink. After that all you need is some hot choc and marshmallow.
The elemental boss is drawn to attack any lit camp fires. Light two of them and you won’t be left in the cold.
The aoe-to-remove-the-ice-top trick do not work any more.
If your group doesn’t have enough reflection to handle the vet elemental, pull back to the first svanir camp fire right after the blizzard starts. You can also LOS the vet if they follow you there.
The first camp fire does not need to be lit to give you the warmth buff. You’ll get it by approaching its fringe.
176g + tokens + champ bags + chests in one week of touring.
Then if you want more money – run any Arah path in an hour, sell for 6g, make 24g per path you run. Sell four paths a day + dungeon tour each day and you’l have 848g + tokens + champ bags + chests in a week.
As I do not log in until this challenge ends, as my PC isn’t usable at the moment, I’ll just submit my entry out of old screens I found.
Dub the Rainbow and Iris the spring fairy of exhibitionism.
Arah Path 2
As Dub was dubbling the rainbow auras around him, Iris the spring fairy already started work, creating shiny lights and lovely music all around the fabulous arena of Giganticus Lupicus. As Dub was totally surprised by the quick beginning, he totally forgot making some screen quality pose. Luckily enough, with Iris showing off, the eyesight of the viewer is covered elsewhere than on the kitten y UI parts.
Some mesmer builds perform better/worse depending on how it’s played. It’s the nature of the mesmer class. Current “meta” builds will perform the best is most cases by most mesmers, that’s why they’re accepted as meta. Personally, I find 0/30/0/25/15 to work very well in majority of dungeons and encourage most to run that build. The other build I mentioned, the 10/20/0/25/15, in fact CAN outperform other meta builds when played correctly. I have tested it both in controlled environment and inside dungeons extensively and there were enough times where I have managed to both burst and sustain harder than any of other mantra builds to consider 10/20/0/25/15 meta worthy. Don’t blame me if you can’t utilize a certain build to it’s fullest.
I could never imagine an instance where someone would say this sentence to Sandy. I mean I understand your desire to protect your opinion, but your last statement just throws everything out of the windows.
Yet, I fail to see why you think your build is good. Mind clarifying? Since I’m interested in learning the way of Mesmer as well.
So I was browsing LFG and saw a lvl 38 fractal group on the second fractal and say what the hell, I’ll join. Right when I hit join they are complaining about elitists and hwo the previous warrior left the group, and how they constantly get “yelled” at for being scepter guardians with 21K HP. I decided to have some fun and switch up my normal build for a PVT double rifle warrior with rampage and fear me.
We finally get to the boss and the mesmer wants to melee “burst” down Ashym with TW. I find this a perfect opportunity to play how I want and use fear me. The group flips out on the necro and is kicked right when the boss dies. Lawl
Cruel, unusual, and fabulous.
My favorite post of the day!
(Apart from the john smith quote a little bit ago where someone was like “I don’t die a lot” and he goes “you’ve died 800 times” lel.)
Ahahhahahahaha…. Almost made me spit out my pasta through the nose.
There are many tricks (and some mesploits) in Fractals that if I listed them, they might get ‘fixed’ horribly by Anet. So I don’t know, should I spill the bean? Decision, decision….
I’m curious as to how you manage to survive better as thief, though. Do you spam S/P 5? Or do you spam/time S/P 3?
Because thieves are just as squishy (in fact, squishier…).
Do you use D/D thief?
I find it harder to survive as D/D thief than LH Ele because LH at least secures me a blind.
I am playing a full glass Thief with D/D and S/P or SB depending on the sitiation. I do not find it hard to survive with this class because your dagger attacks so fast so your healing signet let you stay on maximum health all the time. Also its AA provides endurance regeneration so you can dodge a few times. But lets not go there and stick to the ele.
First, let me thank you again for your fast and nice answers. IrisTheCasual’s “short guide” had some interesting tips in it. Also the build choice looks quite good for me. I think I will try you this build with my D/F and also try to keep an eye on positioning and what you guys told me.
If I have some more questions later, I’ll let you guys know.
Thanks
Hmm… Sorry for writing it too ‘short’. Normally I wouldn’t even be bothered but you seem to be genuinely interested in playing the class (as a challenge), not asking for how to faceroll the content, nor just plainly complaining.
I use 3 against the mobs in Cliffside, range or melee. The Chill really helps slowing down their heart seeker spamming. Use 5 if your group removes the defiance stack for immobilization, or just use it to remove the stack for another to pull, e.g. Tar boss, Arah p1.
You just remind me of this one time when I see a mesmer, who had only 600 AP or so, wielded an eternity and a bifrost in one of my casual TA runs. The world is surely unfair, but I welcome this new change.
I’d take more Empyreal Fragments than Dragonite Ore, to be honest. I used to have the least Dragonite Ore, but it just pours in when you’re doing things like Karka Queen, Temples and EotM karma trains.
I have to digress, sadly. I currently have twice as many Empyreal Fragments as Bloodstone Dust, simply from all of my dungeon activities.
Hihi.. me too! xD I sort of like keeping the dragonite ore to open world content. It’s really the only time I see my guild mates. I don’t do dungeons nor fractals with them.. I guess because everyone is on mumble to coordinate dungeons runs and I prefer to be voiceless most of the time. Anyways, it’s nice to get to play with them in the open world.. and yeah I believe the temple events would die if they added dragonite ores to FoTM and Dungeons.
Yeeah I have far too much empyreal and like, 0 dragonite. I’m going to be using my wvw tickets this season for dragonite. For reals.
Ah yeah.. I am using mine to level up to 30 since the new requirement for a legendary which remains so far away..
I think I have like 159 dragonite ores and multiple stacks of Empyreal star in my bags that I just can’t destroy. I don’t mind the temple events. It’s a bit of mindless thing to do with my guildies. The lag however freezes my poor puter and my graphic card crashes.. it’s fun trying to keep my computer functioning more so than the event itself. I get so happy when I get dragonite ores from loot. I feel like I scored an exotic or something. lolololol
As dub informed me, doing temples with a small group is really fun and might not harm your computer too much. Maybe do them on a dead server with a party!
As for rank… You only need to be rank 14 for the gift of battle now, AND you can get those levels with laurels.
My server is already too dead to have fun with any wvw activities but I will try ;D
I’d take more Empyreal Fragments than Dragonite Ore, to be honest. I used to have the least Dragonite Ore, but it just pours in when you’re doing things like Karka Queen, Temples and EotM karma trains.
I have to digress, sadly. I currently have twice as many Empyreal Fragments as Bloodstone Dust, simply from all of my dungeon activities.
The absolute best fractal group I’ve ever been in was ele, thief, mesmer, guardian, warrior. I was kicked once from a fractal that wanted full zerk because I had knights armor with zerk everything else. It’s their loss, since I know I would be the highest dps player in the group by a long shot, but their choice to make.
errrrrrrrrrr
I mean, knight’s is fine I guess, but claiming that it’s highest DPS is srs lulz
I used to have the least Dragonite Ore, but it just pours in when you’re doing things like Karka Queen, Temples and EotM karma trains.
