Guild Wars 2

Oh, I also forgot Phantasm (PU or just regular).

Hello everyone!
I’ve recently picked up a shatter build. Been playing around with all the possible (10+) weapon combinations, enjoying staff + sw/f the most, followed by staff + greatsword. The only reason I don’t enjoy staff + greatsword as much as I’m clueless about it to a certain point.

I’m in a full zerker set(thinking about some soldiers knights trinkets), energy + air on both staff and greatsword, hoelbrak runes.

This is EXACTLY what I have on me. Yes, no backpiece yet and I have an ascended knights ring as I got it as a drop in eotm. Followed by Zojjas armor chest (VERY lucky day. Made around 60g aside from those two drops as well in around an hour)

http://tinyurl.com/shattergsst

I’d like a few tips on playing this build from people who are experienced with it. How to make sure my shatters hit and maybe some combos I can use.
This could be a thread for people who play this set and want to share their experiences and theorycraft about it.
I saw Helseths video from which I’ve learned a few things, very skilled player, though from an interview I’ve seen it seems like he’s a bit too egocentric and up his own kitten (no offense) or is he just acting to be like that?
Have a wonderful rest of the day, happy shattering!

~Monns

I’ve posted in the thread before, I guess a little followup is in order.

I got the build, Hoelbrak runes, full zerker(though I’m thinking of getting some knights or soldiers trinkets). I have a lot of weapon sets.
Basically all the possible weapons you can use to play shatter. Two swords, staff, GS, torch, pistol, focus (giving me around 10 possible weapon combinations)
Energy + Air on Staff and Gs, Energy on sword and Air on focus, torch and pistol. I’m rarely using pistol and torch. Second sword has night as it’s mostly used for dungeons.
My favorite two sets at the moment are Staff + Sw/F followed by Staff + Gs.
I’m more comfortable with Staff + Sw/F atm, the ileap is very handy, playing without it is hard, though once I do master Staff + Gs, that will take over #1 for sure, it has crazy in combat mobility. I’ve been playing a lot of PvP lately(which I almost never do) and am often getting top player. I think WvW will be a lot easier considering I actually have some stats + food (can’t imagine the burst then) and area to move around/kite, in PvP there is very little area to kite.
Extremely fun compared to PU condi. Though I can’t beat PU condi yet (only fought my friend which is extremely good with it, confuses you extremely on his positioning, I’ve beaten him in shatter spec).
Thank you a lot for sparking an interest in shatter builds in me. You’ve made the game SO MUCH more fun for me, I was on the verge of quitting because I didn’t enjoy it anymore! I’d love some videos showing how to play Staff/Gs, it’s a challenging play style.
Have a wonderful rest of the day, massive thank you once again! Happy shattering!

~Monns

My suggestion is to get a full zerker set with hoelbrak runes. You have many options from there.
You can be:
Shatter mesmer for WvW which has many different weapon sets you can use:
Staff/Gs, Staff + Sw/f, Staff + Sw/p, Staff + Sw/t, Gs + Sw/T, Gs + Sw/F, Gs + Sw/p this is for solo roaming. I have all those sets on me and my favorite is Staff + Sw/F closely followed by Staff + Gs.
For all those you basically need: Staff, greatsword, focus, pistol, 2x sword and torch.
Sigil wise I have energy + air on both staff and greatsword. Energy on one sword, Air on focus, pistol and torch, on the second sword I have night (since it’s exclusively for dungeons and most dungeons are at night)

If you want to zerg, just simply use GS + Sw/x.
You can do dungeons if you equip Sw/Sw + Sw/F
To all these you will need a few trait and utility changes, that’s it.

I came from condi PU which is very easy to play and super powerful, but shatter is way more fun!

If you want, you can PM me in game and I can help you further (Which traits to use ect.) and answer some things in more detail. My IG name is Monns.

Have a wonderful rest of the day, happy gaming!

Seems okay. The second thief is a heartseeker spamming idiot. I enjoy bursting those down.. I myself am somewhat new to shatter, and I too got inspired to start playing shatter by Joes video alongside battling Osicat while he was in a shatter set. The thing I do now is I run with 4 different weapon sets, I like each for something.
I have the following:

Staff/Gs
Gs / Sw/T
Staff /Sw/F
Staff /Sw/P

Some of your trait choices I can understand, the big mistake you did is took Menders Purity. I understand why you did so, I’d love it if I could justify doing that but boon strip on shatter is just too good to give up. If the enemy has protection, instead of 10k, a 3 clone shatter will hit 6,6k which is A LOT less. You should really go for mantra of healing if you’re using menders purity.

I usually run dual energy + dual air along with hoelbrak runes. I can use phase retreat for mobility, so I don’t really need traveler. Plus hoelbrak are cheaper and put out a lot more damage. I’ll be using hoelbrak and when I make some gold get a traveler and strength set. I’m full zerker but I’m thinking of going with some knights or soldiers pieces in order to have more survivability (as someone mentioned)

Shatter is tons of fun and there are dozens of weapon combinations one can use with it, you’re never, ever bored playing it. I love it. Very hard to play but when you win a 1v3 it feels so good. Very rewarding!

I’d suggest you try out some different setups, my personal favorite is staff + sw/f. Focus can be used for swiftness, reflection and there is a nice combo that is somewhat hard to avoid. You lay down your curtain, begin spawning the phantasm and pull the guy so he can’t dodge anything. While he is knocked down illi leap to him and blurred frenzy. Watch his conditions, when the immobility runs out, shatter. Very good opening damage.
Staff + Gs is fun but harder to play.
Have a wonderful day, happy gaming!

Skoteinos.4213:

I see many thoughful, contemplative, genius, ruminative.. names, like there is only One man behind all that names, to conclude on ONE and same dead end MAX DPS cold blood killer Warrior-Mesmer meta Math build..
That’s not fun..

As we ALL told you. It’s not fun to you you can not define what is fun to other people as you =/= other people

Skoteinos.4213:

To be the only one, (with many names) saying THE truth about builds, when any other good attempt gets a /facepalm.

Are you so ignorant you can not see that it is a very good facepalm. A guy that never played GW2 would react that way. Traveler runes are USELESS for PvE, and you don’t need to be a genius to figure that out..

Skoteinos.4213:

You got to let your mind flow in the game…. and use the Fun like is meant to be. May be it’s all about technocracy and fantasy after all.
Your Warrior-Mesmer works numbers.

Again, not everyone will find fun what you find fun. Again, as you =/= other people

Skoteinos.4213:

I also have a great Healer Guard but, oh I forgot! All classes here are Zerker DPS ..or BAD.

Again, you’re such an ignorant.. I think every poster in this thread told you your build isn’t bad it just isn’t the most effective one.

Stop ignoring everyones posts and accept the fact that you are wrong about this build doing more damage than zerker build. It may be more fun, but that doesn’t make it a good build. For example, I enjoy the torment on shatter trait a lot, I find it fun, but other builds are more effective. fun =/= effectiveness
God people like you frustrate me so much sometimes!

You’ve been proven wrong by Pyro. The numbers never lie. This, as some people said, does work but there are far better things to use out there. Don’t be so hardheaded and accept that fact. Now I’m not saying that your build isn’t more fun to play than the meta phantasm s/s+s/f build (which I, personally, coming from condition builds enjoy a lot more), it is maybe, to you. That doesn’t have to be the case for other people.

RIBTL: It’s all subjective, use what you find fun.

SaintSnow.6593:

Skoteinos, your build would suit better in just wvw, leave the pve dungeon related content out.
As for arguing with pyro, don’t bother he’s just a egotistical toxic part of this community who is going to make you feel stupid regardless. You want to play what you want? Go right ahead, no one here is stopping you.

Toxic? Dude, he made some of the best and most popular mesmer builds, he’s a genius when it comes to mesmer in GW2. He’s helped the community out A LOT. That is the opposite from toxic..

Egotistical? He asked for an opinion, he got a very, very objective, honest one. Pyro has great logic and does the math on every problem. The math never lies!

I’m tired of honest people who are debating properly (argument to argument) being attached to bad traits. Honesty is a very important trait which a lot of people in this world lack, sadly. I think people who are like that should be respected immensely.
I’d rather have someone let me know know when I’m being annoying or stupid than for him to talk behind my back. I immensely respect people who tell me things they don’t like to my face instead of being kitty cats and keeping quiet ‘not to hurt my feelings’.

If anyone here is egotistical it’s the OP (no offense). He got a clear answer with a bullet proof argument and he keeps ignoring it and saying that everyone is wrong but him.

Have a wonderful day, happy gaming!

~Monns

Pirate are okay.. Though I already bought hoelbrak. They stack a lot of might as well. I just scored in game gold wise so I will get it all. I won’t be getting pistol as I feel it’s too meh all around. I will be running st + sw/f and gs + sw/t for a while and in the end see what I prefer. In PvP I’m enjoying staff a lot more.

@Faith, I’d love traveler, not sure if they’re worth it. I’m getting hoelbrak for might stacks atm, the swiftness is great, but they’re double the price of hoelbrak and the damage isn’t the same. Hoelbrak gives me more damage and I can also use it in dungeons. I’ve been thinking about ogre runes as well but since I already bought hoelbrak..

I’ve recently gotten my shatter set (yay!) and I have a lot of trouble deciding on which weapons to use. I have a three combos in mind so far:

GS + sw/t
St + sw/f
St + sw/p

GS seems very offensive and I have a lot more DPS going that way. I’d really like to use a focus for mobility, but I really need something defensive so I take torch. I feel like I’m very vulnerable that way. It has nice ranged damage which I like, very good for chasing people down that are at 1,2k range +

I enjoy staff a lot, it’s such a great all around weapon. I’ve used it in sPvP and it saved my kitten so many times from getting killed. Chaos storm and chaos armor both are amazing..

Focus I love because of the pull. I have a very nice combo with it that I think is hard to avoid, almost impossible unless you have stability on yourself. I can use it for mobility and the warden for reflection. Really nice setup, been using it a lot, though especially since I have staff I feel like I will loose a lot on DPS. Since focus seems kind of meh damage wise. Warden is melee and a target can easily just run from it, unless when I do my combo.

I like pistol for the interrupt. I can use duelist, interrupt, ileap dodge swap and burst a lot which is nice. Though I feel sorta forced into that exact combo. Pistol can be very nice for ranged attacks and to keep pressure on targets running or to waste their dodge. Though I don’t think it’s so great for outnumbered tbh.

Runes I bought hoelbrak, but I’m not 100% sure I want them. They’re exactly the same as Strength, though you get -20% condi duration on yourself (Which for me is good as I have extremely low condi removal) instead of +7% damage while under effects of might I will have a force to compensate for that.

Sigils, a must is dual energy, the rest I’m thinking force/accuracy or even doom (to lower healing capabilities). What should I get from this all and why?

Both are great. I wouldn’t go human if I were to go female, too overused. Human males are okay, but it’s a human.. Kind of boring.

Norn females are great. You can make a norn male but it will be hell to move around. Norn seems sluggish as it is and mesmer is just so slow out of combat.

Norn = best starter area possible. The most enjoyable map completion session I ever did.
A max sized male norn with some weird armor with a ton of colors (look at Bamf Joe) would be very interesting to see and fun to play. You can always get full arah set and dye it celestial white, it looks kitten on norn males.

Try Sylvari.. They’re really, really nice! If I could race change to Sylvari without having to gear my character up again, I’d do it! I will when I get a lot of gold, but that will take a while. Still gearing my Asura up for the 5th time.. Asura have ugly armor, a lot of things clip ect. Not happy with that, I have a lot invested into mine so I’m sticking with him until the point where I’d be capable of spending 100-150+ gold on 2 gear sets.

Couldn’t agree more. This gets a massive +1 from me. Sticky this for everyone to see!
Have a wonderful rest of the day, happy gaming!

~Monns

Thank you all for the replies.
I will not take a break from GW2 as I do not play it too much (around 2h/day weekdays and Friday-Sunday around 4h a day which is a lot to other people, but I feel it’s not a lot. I do have an active social life, don’t worry) and I don’t play to make gold or to not miss my daily. I play it because simply I kind of do enjoy it and have a little bit of fun. I was still a bit angry when I wrote the OP and it does hold some water still, the thing I said about WvW is true but I guess it’s just going to last a bit longer until the tournament thing is done and the part where I’m wasting time is true partially. I will shut my wallet and just let things flow in while I level a Sylvari up to 80 and do some dungeons on my Asura. I may make a Charr but I’m not 100% sure on that, yet. I should be done by next weekend and I should have enough gold to get myself a shatter set. I will keep the PU build, I won’t sell it because I think I will still want to play it after a while for sure. The thing that makes me not want to re-roll is that I have 55% map completion as well as personal story done, and both of those were a massive pain in the rear. I may actually end up keeping the Asura because of those two factors. I still have to think about that.

Thank you once again!

Have a wonderful day, happy gaming!

~Monns

I don’t really understand that. I do CoF 1,2 AC 123 daily and I still often struggle to go over 10 gold in some cases. I do sometimes just go crazy like now and delete a lot of gear but I am generally always low on gold.
I guess I don’t really save. You have like 700 gold I believe you told me and that is unimaginable to me. It’s sometimes hard for me to keep gold when I know I could get a new build for that or a nice skin. I don’t have the patience to flip stuff on TP, buying 10 tormented skins and then waiting for the price to go high up would be torture to me. I’d sell them by the time they went up 5-10 gold.
I think that if I was funded by anyone to get the Sylvari to 80 by crafting and for a shatter/PvE set and maybe a condi again (since I have 2 ascended trinkets on me that are going to be useless if I switch to power) which would be what? 250-300 gold, that I’d be able to calm down when it comes to managing gold, but that’ll never happen.
For leveling I’d like to get it done asap, I only leveled two characters to 80 so far and each time it took me a lot. Over 80 hours to get to 80 with 1-2 crafting disciplines done to 400.

I have a PU condi set on my mesmer and had a shatter, lockdown and PvE set. I basically wasn’t thinking well a few days ago and deleted 90g worth of gear since it was just taking up my inventory space, I wasn’t happy with it and there was 0 ways to make even two gold profit from it.
I am now sitting at 1 gold with only a condi PU set which I can take up to 5 players with. I feel like I’m not going out of my comfort zone with it, it’s basically boring.

I don’t really feel anything when I play the game, everything is just dull, like I’m just trying to make time pass quicker. I’ve not really played shatter or lockdown much to be honest, but I did enjoy the fast paced gameplay and I did get a few adrenaline rushes. Now I’m worried that power builds aren’t as viable without spending 84 gold for a set of strength runes.

I think I’m pretty much doing nothing but PvEing for gold only to loose it to some kittened mistake or just running around like an idiot in WvW getting very few fights (Gandarra has been in the lead in our Mist War since beginning, no one is really trying that hard, almost no roamers) and mostly getting zerged. So no matter what I do, I’m not really entertained.
PvP is okay but it’s not really the type of PvP I’d like. Capping points is kind of meh, I’d like it if it was more about actually killing players. I would like to do PvP but then all my effort in PvE is kind of gone down the drain, useless, I also don’t like the fact that maps are somewhat small. If you get in a 1v3 or 1v1, people will soon come to help either you or your enemy, which is a turn off for me.

I play an Asura which I don’t really like that much, armor sucks, weapons are small, can’t really relate to it much either
I’d love to make a Sylvari, Charr or Human but I don’t have the funds to gear it up.
I lost will and am considering quitting the game.
I’ve been thinking about salvaging my entire condi set on my Asura as it’s gold just sitting around. I’d be able to climb up to like 50 gold if I salvaged the set. (though I paid well over 100 for it). I’d then delete the Asura and make a new mesmer, level it and buy a shatter set for it in hope of the change having a positive impact on how I feel while playing the game.
I’m not interested in any other class. What do you guys think I should do to put fun back into the game? Should I make a Sylvari, get rid of my Asura and get a shatter set?
Sorry for the long post.
Have a wonderful rest of the day, happy gaming!

Could I get a link to that build please? Isn’t it bad that you have no way to ensure your shatters hit? Since you don’t have iLeap? Is it even a shatter build?
Any tips you could give me on how to play shatter? I’m in OMFG on Gandarra. I’d love it if we could meet in sPvP or WvW sometime and duel.
Have a wonderful rest of the day, happy gaming,
Respect!

~Monns

That is some seriously nice gameplay!

I’m a PU condi player and I’d love to try a shatter build out. My concern was that it won’t be powerful enough anymore to burst people down due to ferocity nerf. I’ve found this build and it’s epic IMO, the only issue is I’m poor as … so I can not afford the runes and sigils. Any way around using them? I have like 45g on me, a zerker set + knights trinkets. Anything I can do with those funds to get a shatter build that will go shoulder to shoulder with this one? Thank you a lot in advance!
Have a wonderful day, happy gaming!

~Monns

I agree with Mogar and I do see his point, but very few people use Veil. I believe using Veil is dumb. No offense to anyone who does that. It’s on a massive cooldown, that spot is better used for something like Portal Entre or Phantasmal Disenchanter.

The edit gets a massive +1 from me. I don’t want this to sound like I’m an overconfident guy that brags but I do consider myself a skilled player. I almost never look for anything below a 1v2. 1v2 is also so easy I could do it with my eyes closed if I have some place to LOS or kite. I’ve lost plenty of 1v1s though, against skilled players that know how to counter me. One necro managed to kill me in 7 seconds using fear spamming + terror and corrupt boon + signet of spite. He did that multiple times. I battled against a ranger that I lost against, he was extremely tanky and put out a lot of burning and bleeds, did a good job of not killing my clones and avoiding my torment block. I also lost a few 1v1s against Osicat (not counting the ones where I was in a power build). I managed to kill him once while we were both playing PU, I have no clue how though. It was a very long fight though. So yes, it is possible to beat a PU mesmer, and it’s not that hard if you know what you’re doing. Even with a ranger which is known to be one of the worst 1v1 or generally PvP classes (that doesn’t include spamming arrow storm on points from a high ground, but as in actually killing players 1v1). I don’t think rangers are like that tbh, they’re a great class.
If you want to talk to me about anything, duel me or anything at all, feel free to PM me in-game!

Have fun y’all, happy gaming!

~Monns

We’re not in stealth 80% of the time, we have 12 seconds of stealth in total, including elite, that is not that much, it’s a lot of long CDs you need to waste in order to stay in stealth for that long.

What we do is called kiting and line of sighting and actually confusing you with our clones for you to loose track of our positioning. (Yes, it’s possible to do that, it’s not always that easy telling who the real mesmer is)

If you ignore us, we won’t do anything to you. You need to attack us, kill our clones for our damage to actually begin applying. We have terrible mobility and 0 CC skills.

You don’t know how to fight PU mesmers, that doesn’t mean it’s an OP build! You got that mixed up! What it really is is a L2P issue. I agree that PU is easy to pick up, but not everyone can play it well. Same like a warrior for an example. A well played warrior is hard to kill and it takes a lot of skill, but any newb can pick up a warrior and win fights.

Another thing:
You whine about PU being OP, but you didn’t whine about shatter which could get you downed in a second, about backstab thieves that can stay in stealth forever and have massive burst, enough to in some cases 1 hit kill you (some still ensure the kill using basilisk venom), you don’t whine as much about condition engineers or necros that chain 7 fears on you while doing damage from terror and put a ton of conditions on you. Why? Because you guys know how to fight these specs, and even though it is somewhat challenging, you know you can pull it off.

A kind of between the line thing: every class has a powerful build and builds that are easy to pick up and play, those builds aren’t OP and because they’re easy to play, that doesn’t make them a fail build as someone posted.

Last thought I’ll leave you with:

There is ALWAYS a way to beat every single build you can imagine, even PU.
“Nothing is impossible. The world itself says ’ I’m possible’ "

Have a great day everyone, happy gaming!

~Monns

Is this the build you were using when I dueled you? This build I’d say would be VERY hard to beat using any class. I had a ton of trouble doing something to him, every time I’d be able to stack some conditions on him he’d cleanse them and disappear. A lot of that is the skill but the build itself is really good. Burning is a huge pain in the kitten and even with, in my opinion, doing a great job of avoiding his torment/burst I dropped every time. I got him once though, so I’m happy!

All the fights were long but he got me eventually. I can’t imagine fighting him with some other class. All the stun breakers, teleports and stealth that mesmers have is extremely helpful during fighting this build, I think it can not be killed with any other class than a mesmer to be honest. Maybe a condition engineer or some power class that has a lot of condition cleansing and can kill with 1-2 hits but that’s it.. I’ll give it a try down the road, trying to setup a lockdown build now though(extremely low on gold, a few silver left and still need like 20 gold for sigils + 35 to pay a debt off). I may end up using it over my PU condition build.

Have a great day, happy gaming!

~Monns

Oh, also, I want to add that staff phase retreat is instant, while with the sword it takes you a second or two to pull it off and you will stay in the attackers melee range unless you targeted a mob that farther which isn’t an option always.

Your last pharagraph (spelling..) doesn’t make sense. People run staff + scepter torch so the torch is there no matter how you look at it, only thing you change is you loose staff and get sword and pistol. The duelist bleeds okay do a lot of damage but it’s just one condition. How hard is it to strip 1 condition off yourself? No problem. With staff you put on loads of conditions and they won’t all get removed as easily. Both staff and sword have a stun break okay, but staff stun break will teleport you out of the targets melee range and spawns a clone which dies from the damage => conditions. The sword blur can be helpful but you have a lot of stealth, you can kite (target has cripple on them) and you can line of sight which is basically a must tactic for a lot of builds. Osicat does it all the time, saves you HP and cooldowns. I used to run sword pistol + scepter torch and I only recall one incident where I actually needed to use the sword blur, in over 20 hours of play with it. And that could of been easily avoided if I had staff for chaos storm + phase retreat.The stun can be helpful I agree with that. You really don’t need the immobilize, it will stop your target from running for like 3 seconds, while yes, that can and is sometimes useful, all that you mentioned comes nowhere close the utility that Staff gives you.
Chaos storm really isn’t as you say in my experience, yes, they may avoid meleeing you but what if you’re against a ranged class? And to be honest most people I’ve fought didn’t care much about it, it prevented a ton of backstabs because of the aegis, it allowed me to block tons of attacks, basically is a little fort of mine where I’m invulnerable. the boons and the conditions are extremely helpful for ‘just a bonus’ and they all add to condition variety which is extremely important.

This is a condition build you’re running, so don’t go Berzerker. Go Rabid or Dire. To the people that say that it’s dumb going with s/p instead of staff, I kind of do agree. Sword pistol give you a lot more CC and some straight out damage which can help you finish people off quicker or catch them, but what you are sacrificing is A LOT of stuff.
Here are my reasons why it’s a really bad idea.

1. Staff clones actually do condition damage! 3 staff clones will apply a lot of conditions
2. With the pistol, you will get a bleed here and there from the phantasm IF you have phantasmal fury (for which you will have to sacrifice the 1,2k range blink which is a huge help) vs. constant burn, bleed and vulnerability to your foe while granting yourself might and fury from staff bounces
3. You will be a lot less mobile. Phase retreat forward helps you with mobility a lot.
4. Phase retreat is a stun breaker every 7 seconds. (Extremely helpful against mesmer sword immobilize, any kind of warrior CC, thief basilisk venom and sometimes can even tp you to higher ground giving you a massive advantage ect.)
5. You can get chaos armor which has a high blind output and will often grant you swiftness
6. Chaos Storm is such a great skill, you get aegis, retaliation, swiftness, while you daze your enemy, put chill, poison and weakness on him. It’s best used defensively. It’s also an ethereal field. You can phase retreat through it to get chaos armor => back to #5

Is all that worth sacrificing for a bit of CC? In my opinion, no.

mango.9267:

@OP, if you play condi, take a rabid sword. If you play power, take a zerker sword.

Swapping staff for sword is a good idea on PU builds. Sword clones apply vuln, strip boons, and always run to melee the target, making it much easier for them to apply conditions on clone death.

Moreover, giving up staff means you can take both pistol and torch offhand. In my experience, sword/torch offers just as much defensive play as staff. You have a stunbreak on iLeap, stealth on torch 4, and (if traited), condi removal on both torch 4 and 5. And as much as people would like to believe staff does good condi damage, it simply doesn’t compare to duelist bleeds + sword clone deaths.

For boon stripping, you normally take phantasmal disenchanter on fights up to 1v3, after that it’s better to get portal. Also, you really think going in melee range auto attacking is a good idea on a mesmer? The stun break isn’t reliable here as you need to have the clone actually go out and spawn which as we all know doesn’t happen every time.
I can see the point with clone death but then again, staff clone auto attack puts conditions on the target the entire time they’re alive which is a lot better than just when they die and it is A LOT more conditions that way. Plus, lets not forget the boons that you get.
Vulnerability is useless since we do not do straight out damage so that argument is invalid.

Regarding the phantasmal duelist go back up to my reason #2 why staff is better.

It seems to work for me. I haven’t counted the bounces but I get the feeling that I get a lot more conditions applied on my target than before the patch. It could be placebo effect as I heard that it’s fixed. Sorry for that if it really isn’t fixed, I’ll edit my post.
Have a wonderful rest of the day, happy gaming!

A few things:
Instead of Desperate Decoy take Far Reaching Manipulations (for Blink). The decoy won’t do much for you, the manipulations will allow you to maybe blink to higher ground out of sight or go somewhere where the enemy won’t be able to follow you in a direct line.
Instead of Illusionary Defense, I think it would be much better to get debilitating dissipation, if the clones get killed, they aren’t useless and you have a lot more condition variety.
The pistol is kind of meh to me personally in a condition build, I think it would be better to swap it for torch, more stealth, burn and confusion. You do get bleeds from pistol but if you’ll switch over to dire gear like I suggest, it won’t crit that often and torch generally has more utility IMHO. Pistol could be useful for interrupting heals though. Both are viable, I just prefer torch personally.

Instead of ether feast, take the mantra, the torment on heal will proc when you charge the mantra, when you use it the first time and when you use it the second time. Though, I’d go for more condition variety, too much focus on torment this way, get perplexity maybe, traveler are also great for extra mobility..

I’d recommend going for dire gear instead of rampager. You’re trying to do two things at once (be a power and a conditions build) which doesn’t exactly work that well in most cases. Hybrid builds can be made but they’re never as solid as builds that focus on one thing.
Two corruption sigils aren’t needed. One on staff is enough, it won’t remove the stacks after you weapon swap, I’d recommend taking Bursting as it will give you more condition damage.
Torment sigils are okay, they will add more torment but I think you should really go for more condition variety, making torment harder to strip. If you stack up tons of torment and it’s the only condition you stack, one condition clear will remove it, while if you have multiple conditions, the others may get removed, keeping the torment on your target. So something like Doom (either dual or keep 1 torment)

This build will work, but why not get the standard PU condition build? I’ve talked with Pyroatheist about a similar build to yours and he pointed out a lot of things I’d loose vs. what I would get from a build like this (loosing PU, cripple on clone death..) thus it making much more sense to go for standard PU condi.
Again, this build will work and played well will kick kitten , but there are better builds. The trait is placed really badly making it almost impossible(haven’t really sat down and brainstormed a bit about what we could do so I can not say for sure.) to get a build that doesn’t sacrifice a lot and gives you the ability to pick this trait up. I do however think that this is the lowest sacrifice setup compared to what you get.

Every profession that has a teleport (ele, thief, mesmer) can teleport on higher platforms IF you can get there by walking,. It needs to be completely walking, no jumping.

Should help you understand this.

Magic Bullet gives 2 seconds of stun, that is much better than cripple. You can do wonders in those 2 seconds. There are a lot of ways to catch thieves or warriors. If you will be able to do it or not depends if you have the skill you need to do it off cooldown and if you’re using a weapon that has that skill.

Depending on what you’re running, There is a lot of things that can help you catch a player, almost every weapon has something!

Greatsword iZerker (cripple), no way they will outrun you with cripple on them. Skill #5 can also be used for a quick KD. Autoattack for maintaining ranged pressure. You can use mirror blade + iZerker and as soon as the zerker passes through him, you can mind wrack, if he’s not at full HP there is a chance you’ll get him down.

Staff Phase Retreat can be used to go forwards (multiple ways, one is to use the about face key, use PR, about face again. Osicat has a great video on catching targets that are REALLY far away)

Scepter This may sound silly but the confusion(even though you’re in a power build), whenever they will use a running skill(which a lot of people spam a lot), they will get damage, if you’ve shattered on them, they will probably have low HP and no heal (otherwise they wouldn’t of ran) so they will have to use mobility skills wisely, and lastly torment from block. It’s easier said than done but if you manage to put torment on them, it will help you loads. If they move they get more damage from it, if they stay still you kill them. Lets say they’re on low HP with no heal, they’re going down for sure. They can remove it but even if they did, at least they stopped for a second to remove it, that’s one second that you were getting closer to them and they were standing still.

Sword Swap immobilize, it can be hard to pull off but if you run GS/S+X you Mirror Blade + the iZerker trick, they’ll have cripple on them, you should be able to swap to them and immobilize them, F2 shatter + Blurred Frenzy

Focus place it in front of them, they go across it = cripple, when they get a little bit of distance from it pull them back.

Pistol Magic Bullet stun + phantasm can be useful to put damage into players as they’re on the run

Sword OH can be used with the swordsman but I’m not 100% sure how effective it is at putting the final pressure into running targets
Torch will only give you stealth and retal + confusion, not really much..

You have a lot of utilities, I think all shatter builds have decoy + blink, blink is a 900-1200 (depending on if you took the trait) gap closer, I also run portal which can come in handy if you put it down before a fight and the target just happens to go in that direction.

That could be exploited, we could give it a range of like 900 and require a clear LOS. That could come in super useful to shatter builds

Pyroatheist’s build is really nice, I haven’t tried it out but my friend did and he says he loves it!

Oh lol, I forgot April 1st is today

My Asura, and Sylvari as well

Everyone else looks alike now..

Made a Charr ele to try it out.. This is what it looks like..

I myself use Oscicats CondiCat 3.0 build with a few variations that Pyroatheist recommended me. It is basically a blackwater build. Here it is:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAW7flknpRt1qxMNcrNiY6RwhcAHJFl2rVShtdhA-z0BBINCy0Cw0HBKHqIasl1FRjVXDTHjIqmUAwsGA-w

I’m using Ether Feast instead of the Signet, and I choose the Illusionary Disenchanter for condi clearing and boon stripping. Though, if I’m up against more than 2-3 people, I’ll take portal for some troll or escape mechanisms, the disenchanter will die too quick in that situation. You can also take Veil, but it’s better with the s/p variation and it has a LOONG cooldown

Staff is a great defensive weapon, saved my kitten so many times. You can run the pistol/sword combo (in oscicats sticky) which does a bit more power damage and has two CCs (Immo + stun/daze) which can really be helpful but you’re sacrificing a lot of survivability here. I did for a while and I got more kills but I got killed much more as well.

Against warriors, your friend is stealth, dodge (the double Sigil of Energy is a must in every build for me from now on. I love the dodges I can get, so much better to play that way) and aegis. Don’t use stealth until you need it, dodge most their CC attempts, and just keep all your clones up, you NEVER shatter unless you get too much CC on you and you need to bail (distortion).

I said most because blocking with scepter to apply torment is better than dodging if you can do that.
Confusion is great if you have perplexity runes (they’re only going to get better as they’re broken atm)

Another thing I do, is I have two torches, one with the corruption sigil and one with a sigil of bursting. What I’ll do is find some mobs in WvW (Wolves are the best for this) and just kill them slowly until I get 25 stacks then equip the torch with the Bursting sigil. It is expensive but it really ups your damage.

I used to just run around without charging my sigils or swapping for the Bursting torch but man.. After trying it once I’m never again going to fight without all that done. Sucks that you have to re-do it after you die (kitten zergs!!) but it helps a lot.

Basically, dodge, kite, block, stealth only when you need to, NEVER shatter unless you REALLY need distortion to save your kitten , have all your clones up at all times, camp inside chaos storm. That makes warriors super simple to beat. This all can also be applied to fighting thieves. If you tag a thief with torment, he’s history. I now don’t struggle with ANY class other than necro (I fail to evade the condition transfer which kills me, ALWAYS check if they have Signet of Spite on them and try to dodge it). As you said, if warriors choose to disengage, they will, try applying torment before they run. It is easier said than done but if you can pull that off, you have a better chance of getting the kill. If you need any more information, feel free to PM me. Have a wonderful day, happy gaming!

I have an Asura and somewhat regret it. Asura doesn’t really seem mesmerish. I’d say either go for Charr or Sylvari. Both are awesome. Asura and Charr have A LOT of clipping going on which is Annoying to me, but Charr still could pass as the clipping is only with the tail, and that can be avoided if you play around with armor a bit to see what doesn’t clip while on Asura everything clips. Armors, staves, greatswords, you name it! Sylvari seems like a great mesmer class. I have one named Shattered Melodies. Fits perfect with the name, I have ~150g and 150h into my Asura so I do not want to get rid of it.. I do def. wish I made a Sylvari though.

I know the developers said that there is an issue with storyline and that that’s why it won’t be added, but I have an idea on how to maybe avoid it. I don’t know how they programmed the game but this seems like it should be possible in almost all scenarios. I have very little programming or coding, whatever you prefer to call it, experience but I feel like it is somewhat sufficient to get the general idea.

Un-bind all the soulbound items and make them account bound – soulbound on use allowing the player to re-use them on the new character, give them an account bound level 80 scroll that can only level up a character of the same profession as the one race change was used on allowing them to instantly boost their new character to 80. This way only loss would be cultural armor, the character that race change was used on should be deleted after the scroll is used. Storyline would be just re-started and the player would have to re-play it, or you could put up a menu allowing the players to just choose which way the storyline would go without actually playing through it.

I think this has been suggested before (as it doesn’t take much to figure out), but I didn’t find such thread, didn’t look much to be honest. Is there still something, even if it is done this way, that makes it impossible to make race change?

Pyroatheist has a great zerg build which can also be a great commander build. Here’s what he posted on one of my threads, I was asking for a commander build (hince the talk about commanders) but it works very well when it comes to damage. My friend used it, massive AOE burning and very survivable.
“So here’s my Mesmer build that I think is most suited for commanding: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Build-The-Zergmower
The things that you mentioned in your post, such as mantra utilities, signet of inspiration, and other things, are all fantastic things that Mesmer can do. However, you’re talking about a commander build, and that’s a different story.
As a commander, your job description is very specific. You need to not die, be able to lead charges straight into and through an enemy group, and provide a strong point of reference for your group to follow.
The last bit basically means no blinks. A commander isn’t easy to follow if they’re blinking around the battlefield. Not dying and leading charges means that you need hefty defense and preferably some access to stability.
My Zergmower build uses full dire gear to gain strong inherent defense, and uses the stability mantra in conjunction with mimic to allow for breaking through enemy groups without using teleports.”

There are seriously so many ways to escape. Depending on the build, but pretty much every build has blink and decoy. You can a) blink to higher ground, he will have to find a way up to get you and by that time you’re gone. If you can’t do that, blink out of a stun or any kind of CC if you’re under it, you can also use decoy to get out of CC and start running a direction, use mass invis and switch your direction, mesmers are slow and you really need to fool him so he is going further from you instead of after you. If you have mirror images, you can spawn them and shatter for distortion to give you a bit of time to blink or to run away ect.

I think it would be nice to have even though it will most likely be OP. Reduce 1500 range to 1200, make the illusions last for 1 attack only, remove the might and I think it could be put in. Though other classes should get a new elite then as well.

Pyroatheist has a great zerg build which can also be a great commander build. Here’s what he posted on one of my threads:
“So here’s my Mesmer build that I think is most suited for commanding: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Build-The-Zergmower
The things that you mentioned in your post, such as mantra utilities, signet of inspiration, and other things, are all fantastic things that Mesmer can do. However, you’re talking about a commander build, and that’s a different story.
As a commander, your job description is very specific. You need to not die, be able to lead charges straight into and through an enemy group, and provide a strong point of reference for your group to follow.
The last bit basically means no blinks. A commander isn’t easy to follow if they’re blinking around the battlefield. Not dying and leading charges means that you need hefty defense and preferably some access to stability.
My Zergmower build uses full dire gear to gain strong inherent defense, and uses the stability mantra in conjunction with mimic to allow for breaking through enemy groups without using teleports.”

This is really a great build. My friend used it and it really did tons of damage and survived well.

WvW night with guildies

We might do that next time. We’ll see, me could bring a guardian or some other class that has party buffs with us instead of loosing our damage for mobility. Asuras really are so much fun. I dislike their starter area since it’s so industrial. They also have a lot of clipping going on with their swords ect otherwise I love everything about them. They’re just so humorous. It took me a while to find a good looking armor set that doesn’t clip too much with a greatsword or staff. (I don’t have full T3 set, that’s only the chest).

Just thought I’d share this with you guys. Me and a few guildies were bored, decided to put together a small WvW roaming team for fun. We started off North and worked our way South slowly capturing everything we could. There were no zergs which was perfect for us. After around two hours we looked at the map and there was NOTHING more to capture. We captured everything but the blue keep. Some we had to re-do as they were re-taken by the opposing teams but eventually we got it all.

The builds that we used were oscicat’s power PU build (Rat), a homemade zerker build (Drum) & Oscicat’s condi PU build (me). There were of course other players involved, it wasn’t just us on the map but almost all that you will see is our work.

The only issue we had was mobility, there was this warrior guy that was a huge PITA. He got to us, killed the zerker and when he started running away we couldn’t catch him. It was tons of fun seeing a group of 3 Asuras suddenly become 12 Asuras. Should of taken a screenshot of that but another time

PU stands for [P]rismatic [U]nderstanding.

It’s a grandmaster trait that makes our stealths last longer and gives us random boons while we’re in stealth.

Do you plan on updating any of the builds because of the upcoming patch? I hope you won’t change 3.0 gear wise as I just spent 80g to gear my Asura up and I’m pretty much broke..

This is how my mesmer will look once I’m done levelling him. Already bought everything I need for him.

Named mask
Mantle doesn’t matter
T3 chest (it costs as much as all the other armor + weapons, way overpriced but I don’t like anything else.)
Named gloves
T2 legs
Dry Bones shoes

I won’t be using these dyes as it looks as if the chest and legs are from different sets. I’ve got a dye combo that makes it look as if they were designed to go with each other.
I love Asura, I wanted to re-roll to a human because I couldn’t find any armor that doesn’t clip and doesn’t look like your average Joe clothing. I’m glad I didn’t give up.

This is how my mesmer will look once I’m done levelling him which will be tomorrow. Already bought everything I need for him.

Named mask
Mantle doesn’t matter
T3 chest (it costs as much as all the other armor + weapons, way overpriced but I don’t like anything else.)
Named gloves
T2 legs
Dry Bones shoes

I won’t be using these dyes as it looks as if the chest and legs are from different sets. I’ve got a dye combo that makes it look as if they were designed to go with each other.
I love Asura, I wanted to re-roll to a human because I couldn’t find any armor that doesn’t clip and doesn’t look like your average Joe clothing. I’m glad I didn’t give up.

I just read a post of a player that inspired me a bit. What if, INSTEAD of having a pre-set skill bar in DS, we could choose skills we want to be put there. The skills we would have at our disposal should be healing skills that restore our actual HP, blocks, evades, immune states and mobility skills which would enable us to get out of combat if really needed and give us other ways to maintain ourselves other than just soaking the damage in until the LF pool is eaten which happens quickly.. We should also get special deathshroud traits and so on. The skills should cost life force but to make up for the fact that we’re loosing LF as we take damage AND from using skills, LF should be easier to get and we should get a bigger pool. This is a thing that just came to my mind, but it seems like it would work to me. If this was to be fixed and condis were buffed again, I’d love to be back to necro. Would love to hear some feedback.

That looks quite nice Thank you.

Re-making this thread here from the mesmer forums in hope of more replies.

I have a mesmer up to level 35 now and I’m slowly thinking of re-rolling to human due to so much clipping everywhere. I’ve been sitting in the mists trying to get a combination that I liked. Full Koda set is nice but it still does clip. Haven’t really found anything else I liked. Even after matching armor.. I need to see an Asura that will make me go wow and make me want to get my little guy to 80. Thank you in advance.
Cheers!

I too am not really a fan of the Embroidered leggings. Staff I won’t get because there are a ton of staves out there that look mesmerish. I made short ears but a lot of staves still do clip.. Almost all clip with leggings as far as I’ve seen. Only a few leggings don’t clip with staves or a thicker greatsword.

Vigil leggings don’t clip with ANYTHING which is epic but then I have a hard time choosing a chest to go with them that I like.

On asura I really want to have as much clothes on because if I dress it like a lot of people dress their human females, I’d look like a gymnist troll which looks weird to me.
I like the CoE (Koda) set a lot but it clips a lot with staves and greatswords sadly.. No other asura mesmers? o.0

Cheers!