Guild Wars 2

Guide in my signature. The build is harder to play than a normal shatter set but a lot of people play it.
It is specifically for the staff + gs shatter set but a massive part of it can also be transfered over to a staff or greatsword + sword/x shatter set. I also added a lot of links which will help you decide which weapon set you want to use in a shatter build and from which you will learn something no matter how good of a mesmer you are.
Another option would be PU condi, but I think of it more as a solo roaming set than a team roaming one. Though it can work in team roaming. Ask Fay (Pyro) to help you out with PU condi if you decide to go that direction.

I like all races, but my top 3 for mesmer would have to be (in order) Sylvari, Asura Charr.
Sylvari are really curious and calm, they can be made to look so mysterious but yet so good. They have some nice skills if you’re roaming (entangle) and if you’re zerging, the elite druid can help you do quite a bit of AOE damage. Male or female they look awesome!

Asura I love because.. Asura! They’re smaller so it’s kind of a bigger pain in the rear to see who the real mesmer is due to smaller animations. That will only matter if you play PvP and only if you player lower tier PvP because a lot of semi decent players don’t have the issue of seeing animations on Asura, but I don’t want you to play a race because it gives you an advantage, play what you like. It just happens to be so that the race I like also gives me an advantage in PvP. There aren’t too many nice looking armors and in some cases your Asura can look like a rat, but with the right armor and customization, you avoid it.

Charr because of giant clones. You can make them look so silly as well or so epic with a ton of fiery weapons and armor when all of the sudden, after you spawn a few clones, purple and butterflies come out. I saw a charr mesmer like that a few times, cracked me up! You can look at Bamf Joe to see how funny it is to have a massive charr mesmer, but how epic it becomes once you get good at playing the class.
I rolled a charr just to transmute his clothes into something silly and I’ve had a lot of fun in PvP. Sadly most armors suck..

Human have some nice racial skills, but I think they’re to average and too everywhere. They can be made to look sick. Only human mesmer I’d ever make would be a male. T3 armor looks kinda nice.. Also full arah minus headpiece, put gas mask or scarlet veil or the dragon horns and you will look kitten!

Norn are kind of too big, same like charr, but charr are a different type of race. I see norns as massive humans in a way. I love their starter zone, my favorite in the entire game! The racial skills are nice… A max size norn mesmer in full Arah armor dyed in celestial white with Vision of the Mists looks epic!

Don’t worry about what race is best. Play a race you like the look of! You are playing the game, you are supposed to enjoy it, if you go with ie asura because you got a lot of people that say asura is best, but you like sylvari better, you’re not going to enjoy the game!

I’m kind of talking from what I know from PU in WvW, I have never played PU in PvP but I kind of get the way you would rotate and how you would cause the imbalance, but barely, so please do correct me if I am wrong about something. EDIT: We’re straying from the thread topic though.. This was about a build that counters thieves and now we’re debating whether or not PU is viable in PvP, is it viable post newbie PvP and what a PU mesmers role is..

Yeah, generally as a good PvP player, but thats kind of the main job of the mesmer.
If you would have to describe a mesmers purpose in PvP it would be basically what you said, give your team a numbers advantage using xyz method and if possible, capture/hold some points. Try to put as much pressure on points and eliminate squishy members of the opposing team (this is more shatter job).

The watching whats happening on the map, rotating to cause imbalance is something you do as a mesmer. No matter if you’re in shatter, phantasm or PU. You go where you’re needed to give your team an advantage in xyz way.
And it does take a good chunk of time to figure out how to do in the most efficient way. I still haven’t fully figured it out. There’ve been situations where if I went to a different point to help my team, we would win the game.

The part about the misconceptions, I don’t understand what caused the 1v1 part? I didn’t get the point accross well. I was trying to say that it is what a PU mesmer can do (regarding either making a team loose a point or have 2-3+ of them on you, making the numbers go in your teams odds, I wanted to get that accross in the part where I wrote about the fact that PU is in a way a bunker against a bad team in sPvP.). However, that will work against bad players, the part about loosing the point against good teams will maybe be possible to pull off, but not going to be as effective as in some other matchups.

I understand about the watching people kill themselves, that never gets old, but don’t you feel like few people know how to fight you and that you, because of that, can’t really be touched in PU condi?
About loosing isn’t fun → Using shatter doesn’t mean you will keep loosing.
You will loose, you will win, with PU you win 95% of the time and loose 5% of the time, in shatter I’d say it’s more like 70% vs. 30% depending on your skill level, as well as your opponents. I find it much more fun to struggle to win and then come out on top vs. going into a fight basically being wrapped in a blanket, served cocoa and coming on top because the opposing team/player don’t know how to counter you. But its personal preference. Don’t get me wrong, you all know I have nothing against PU, that I love it.

Nice video and mesmer. Would you mind posting a screenshot of the front of your asura?
I’m working on Vision of the Mists and Strength runes, but I’ve been thinking about getting T3 armor(just need the legs) and using it on mine..
Have a wonderful rest of the day mate!

~Monns

You wrote the response before I managed to post, so sorry if a part of my post is argumented by you in your earlier one.

I usually side with you, Pyro, but I think Ben is mostly right here.
55HP Monks and TCG both had mesmers in their class composition (Misha and Helseth if I’m not mistaken), so mesmer is perfectly viable for top team play, infact all classes are!

While PU condi does work in PvP, it only works against bad players (meaning like really newbies) as a halfway decent PvP player will just instantly know you’re PU and that it would take too much time to kill you and leave you alone, worry about other points. This can pretty much give your team a permacap on a certain point in some cases, while most sPvP players are so bad that they would let something like that happen, a lot of tPvP teams aren’t (you said you don’t play tPvP much, so I can understand why you think a lot of players are that bad – I think we even spoke about how bad people in sPvP are in game a few times)
I can not beat you, I’m sure as you are 10 times more skilled than I am, but most other mesmers that run PU condi I killed quite easily in PvP -> only due to the fact that shatter mesmers eat boons, while other classes don’t really have that ability + a lot of players don’t really know how to fight PU while I, as you know, used to play PU condi a massive amount so I know the “pressure points” on them.
PU condi in sPvP is sort of a bunker that puts out a lot of conditions along the way in my eyes. Its a bunker to people that don’t really understand the importance of keeping points, just want to kill and don’t realize they can not do that at their skill level or because of their build.

A thing that kind of surprised me -> You said you play to win.
That means using a build that will ensure you the easiest, lowest risk win, but it takes the fun out of it in most cases.
I remember you saying so many times to enjoy the game and not worry about winning, getting ascended gear ect.
This kind of goes against that..

Much love,

~Monns

What you have to do is use the stealth when the person starts jumping (basically when he is finishing the stomps) in the stomp animation. Any sooner and you will pop out of stealth just as the stomp finishes and you will get stomped! If you are in stealth, you can not get stomped.
Most of the time, when you get downed, you die.
A few of your options are to if there is a mob nearby with low HP, use the assassin on it to kill it and thus rally you or to put the assassin on the player if he is at low HP and hope that he gets into downed state and then you have to win the downed state fight.

Elitist.8701:

What mesmer spec is there that isn’t hard countered by thieves, isn’t incredibly boring to play and is viable in PvP. I don’t care, even if it was viable, I would never play a stealth spam class.

Removed a part of your post because I won’t be answering it.
Regarding a spec that thieves can’t counter well → PU condi. No other spec does well against thieves. Learn to kite them properly in order to minimize the amount of damage they can do to you. That is all you can do if you want to be good against thieves but refuse to play PU. You need to accept that fact. Thieves are the perfect class to kill Mesmers and there is not much we can do about that except play PU or learn to kite to minimize the damage a thief can do to you in a glass build.

The boring part is not for us to judge. You know what is boring to you and what isn’t.
PU is fun to some people.

Regarding stealth spam class, you don’t understand the pun there, if it can be called a pun.
Thieves are a class that have a lot of stealth, so why are you playing a thief?
You could tell me that you can play a thief without stealth, well guess what, a mesmer can be played with no stealth as well!
Just because there is a build or two that uses stealth on mesmer doesn’t make the entire class a stealth spamming one. We don’t even have so much stealth to begin with. If we would chain all the stealth skills we had, we could stay in stealth for like 15-20 seconds with PU, less without.
Compared to thieves who can stay in stealth for hours with CnD..

Osicat plays WvW mainly with a little bit of PvP, Pyro plays PvP mainly with a little bit of WvW. EDIT: Pyro I think is the same, I thought he played PvP mainly, I guess I’m wrong.
It is irrelevant anyway! No matter if you are in PvP or WvW, you will encounter enemy players.
The message I was trying to get across is that the build you play doesn’t determine your skill level, that it’s in a way immature (mostly dumb) to judge people by the build they play, or speak badly about a build if it is easy to pick up and even if it does not matter after you get past a certain tier of opponent skill level, so unless you are a newbie in PvP, you shouldn’t be too concerned about PU or have too many issues with it. If you don’t like it, just shut up about it, leave it be..
Stop wasting our, as well as your own time bashing the build because we, as members of the community who care about the class reputation and what new players think about certain builds, won’t allow a good build to be trashed by someone for stupid reasons and thus have to constantly correct ignorant, in a way, elitist people like you.
No offense intended.

~Monns

Oh, also to the guy that talked bad about PU right now → PU is great, you have no right to tell people its a ‘bad’ build or too easy to play or that the people that play it are not skilled. Pyroatheist plays friggin PU condi, so does Osicat → that doesn’t make them bad mesmers!
It is easy to pick it up and win a few 1v1s, though once you get past the newbie level of opponents, it really doesn’t matter that much what you’re running. If you aren’t a decent player, you will get wrecked badly by people!

~Monns

Take a look at this
It won’t completely negate the damage always (eg. the place in Quarry where he says that a location cripples SD thief) as they can begin their attack and steal to you to execute it, but that’s only some damage every so often which you should be able to take. Otherwise you need to keep moving along the kiting locations while doing your job (putting pressure on point) but that takes more cooldowns/endurance and is harder to pull off.
If you get like really kitten good with a shatter set (Specifically the staff + greatsword one) you will be able to beat all classes without too many issues, while a s/d thief, you will hardly be able to kill (S/D only, other thieves aren’t as hard). If you’re in a PU condi set, then we turned the tables. You are going to counter thieves so good. The best I managed to pull off was kill 3 thieves in 10 seconds (first one dropped from scepter block, other two from confusion(perplexity runes) and other random conditions from killing clones and sharper images). Those thieves did suck, it was still a 1v3, and even 3 guys that never played a class should be able to kill you if they’re outnumbering you.
Thieves are generally the perfect class to counter mesmers in general (minus PU).

Have a great day!

~Monns

You can step away from staff and greatsword, for sure!
I just never did and so forgot to list the other possibilities..
Only set I have experience with is
Sword/Torch + Scepter/Pistol
It’s kinda fun, but I prefer to have either staff or greatsword.
Keyword: prefer.

EDIT: To OP → Do make ascended zerker if you can, you can not make a mistake with that. No matter what you are doing, zerker armor is always great!

Have a wonderful rest of the day, happy shattering!

~Monns

Take a look at the guide in my signature, more specifically the tPvP videos and kiting guides linked.
You’re not supposed to be on point as a mesmer, you’re supposed to go into team fights and put in pressure from range and burst down the squishy classes. I’m willing to meet you in game and give you an intro into what a mesmer does in (t)PvP.

Have a wonderful rest of the day mate!
Much love,

~Monns

He did not quit. He got banned for asking us to PM a dev to undo a stealth nerf on distortion which in a way killed mesmer..

I agree, however, to save cook, do keep consumables that increase magic find, gold from monsters ect.

Staff lover here as well! It’s def. my favorite because of a few certain skills, though I do love all weapons. Some of my less favorite would be offhand sword, pistol and scepter (only due to scepter only having a use for condition builds and it’s still a very boring weapon to use, unless if you troll thieves with torment block!)
Have a great rest of the day!

~Monns

I’m using the one in my signature. It’s a very popular shatter build at the moment. Though, it is much harder to play than a regular shatter build. I go in depth on a lot of things in my guide, so no matter if you’re going to play the specific variant that I made a guide for or any of the gazillion other weapon sets, do check it out! I also included videos and literature for other shatter sets.
Basically you can run anything you want.
Staff + Sw/F
Staff + Sw/T
Staff + Sw/P
Greatsword + Staff
Greatsword + Sw/F
Greatsword + Sw/T (I recommend this for a first time shatter roamer)
Greatsword + Sw/P <- not really a fan of this.

I’m currently using the Gs + Sw/T one for roaming, Gs + St for PvP. I sometimes use Staff + Sw/F for PvP as it’s also a good playstlye.
You have crazy capabilities with shatters. You can get a lot of different weapon sets and just swap them out everytime you get bored of one.
Only difference between the traits in my guild and the traits in all of the other shatter sets (that do not include staff and greatsword together) is you do not take Halting Strike, rather Mental Torment which I mentioned in the guide.
Have a wonderful rest of the day, if you catch me in game, I can answer any questions you may have, or at least do my best to answer them!
Much love,

~Monns

I’ll def. get some video in that case. Do you guys want (s/t)PvP or WvW(solo/team?) I’ll either add in writing what I did and why or I will actually talk about what I’m doing while the video is playing. It all depends on the quality of my microphone. I have a lot of things to do for school, so I’ll only be able to start with gathering footage next weekend, so idk when I’ll get the video.

Named(Seer) mask, any shoulders, aurora chest, primitive gloves, arah legs, any boots looks great

Named(Seer) mask, any shoulders, inquest chest, primitive gloves, aurora legs, any boots looks great

My advice:
Take the 4 points out of Inspiration, put it in Domination and take cripple on clone death (works wonders against melee classes) as well as torch cooldown, will give you more condi removal as well.
I use the phantasmal disenchanter instead of mantra as it removes boons and conditions + does it more. I swap this out for portal when I know the disenchanter will die quickly (meaning 1v3+)
Runes wise, Krait will work, but give Perplexity and Undead a shot, I believe they will be better.
Sigils, dual energy is a must because you are somewhat relying on dodges to apply conditions, it will also give you a lot more surviveability because you can dodge attacks more often.
I then prefer Doom to negate healing as much as I can and also gives me one more condition to apply to the enemy making it harder for him to cleanse all my conditions.
I also use full dire gear, you don’t really need that much HP due to a lot of toughness, regeneration and protection, lets not forget all that stealth.
This is quite close to the standard blackwater build and it is such a nice build. Easy to get the grips of but once mastered will do wonders. Trust me!
Have a wonderful rest of the day,
much love,

~Monns

Which server are you on Snoxx?

Wyrden
A good example, but I believe it’s a troll, some people really act like that and are serious.

Snoxx
Traveler -> Stealth is a very good way to escape fights. You have a lot of stealth at your disposal, and you can stay in stealth for a good period of time. more than enough to go somewhere LOS or just reverse directions, if I go into a 1vX or XvX, I always swap my condi removal for portal as an escape measure. The 25% shouldn’t matter that much. A warrior can catch up with you, stealth and go the opposite direction or line of sight. A zerg is attacking you -> Quick stealth into mass invis -> Run out of their path/LOS or simply to use as little cooldowns as possible use blink somewhere where they cant follow you in a direct path and so on.
I solo roam as well in a PU set (shatter for team, sometimes solo) and I tried both traveler and perplexity runes. I never really use them. I don’t have any trouble with mobility or escaping.
It does take a bit longer to get to places but there are ways to reduce the time difference as much as possible. Learning some shortcuts, using staff (PR + CS) ect.

Stealth -> I didn’t mean the PU as a way to get blocks to generate retaliation, retaliation sucks here.
You have to sacrifice toughness to be able to get power for your retaliation to do even a tiny bit of damage vs. having toughness and 1,2k range blink.
iDuelist-> In this build, since there is no PU, it is better, but otherwise, you have to take torch.. It’s just too good. Gives you condi cleansing (if you trait it), quite a bit of stealth, burn, blind, confusion, retaliation (just an extra boon, doesn’t really do that much).
Have a wonderful rest of the day!

~Monns

@Snoxx -> That’s a good point, but however, it’s much better to try to maximize condition damage in a condition build, rather than get the 25% speed boost. You can use staff to teleport forward, and I’d rather be a little bit slower in exchange for more damage, but that is personal preference, both will work, just my opinion.

I wanted to raise the question about the iswordsman, you beat me to it.
Retaliation thing we both mentioned, about the iDuelist, I’ll write it while responding to the OP

To the OP:
Regarding more block -> You get aegis from PU, you get protection from PU and you get regeneration from PU which will give you even more protection due to the minor trait. I think we would all prefer that to an extra block.
Regarding distortion -> No matter if you have stealth or not, you can still use it, but only to save your kitten, otherwise it’s best to leave your clones out there and spam them for condition application, so that’s kind of an invalid argument.
About the condi damage from iSwordsman -> This is a topic we could discuss a lot.
I’m guessing you’re referring to bleeds that it will stack (?). G
Generally phantasms can stack a lot of bleeds with sharper images, iSwordsman isn’t one of them. (The following part also answers to Snoxxes iDuelist part)
Another issue with sharper images is it is just one single condition.
25 stacks of bleeds will do a lot of damage, but a single condi cleanse will remove it.
If you have 5 stacks of torment, 10 stacks of bleeds, poison, weakness, vulnerability ect. An enemy can cleanse it as well, but he will have to use a lot more cooldowns to remove it than just a single one, you stack them again and he doesn’t have as much condi removal anymore.

To extend this to give my view on a bit more on what Snoxx mentioned -> While I agree pistol will put pressure on thieves, it’s only there for the bleeds as no matter if you are in rampager or rabid (rabid being a MUCH better choice for a condition build, this is sort of a bad hybrid with rampager) it will not do a lot of damage, as you said.
I’d rather have torch which will give me stealth (basically negating their ability to reposition themselves while in stealth).
Pistol will apply pressure, but all you really need to kill a thief is rabid gear and a scepter.
The scepter block, if you land it and the thief doesn’t manage to remove the torment (which he, in most cases, shouldn’t if you stacked up a lot of conditions) he will drop like a fly in seconds.
I respect the fact that you are properly debating, argument to argument and not just insulting/ignoring like a lot of people do.
Much love,

~Monns

I’ll edit this with a response in a few hours, kinda bumping the thread for myself here so I don’t forget to respond.

~Monns

A few other things..
Traveler in condition build?
For WvW it could barely slip through, but why be lazy and not take something like undead or perplexity
It will give you more condition damage
Condi spam build without dual energy?
Dual energy is just too good to miss out on in ANY build, especially a condi spam one..

~Monns

This build isn’t good.

It will work, but poorly compared to a blackwater/PU condition build. Basically what you did here is took a standard blackwater/PU build which works wonderfully and destroyed it by removing all the stealth and PU, putting in some random signets that really aren’t that good, taking out some really nice traits..

You don’t have cripple on clone death which is a bigger deal than you may think,
No staff toughness/CD
No PU,
No BLINK
Poor condi cleansing (4 signets will remove 4 conditions on a big CD, torch alone will remove 4, + either mantra, null or phantasmal disenchanter that you would get in a PU condi build)

Another thing that is a big issue – Retaliation scales with power, and you’re in a condition build.. You either have to:
sacrifice toughness to get that power, meaning you can’t get hit, retaliation is useless
sacrifice condition damage to get that power, meaning your condition damage sucks
sacrifice precision to get that power, meaning you don’t have crit chance for sharper images to proc, lowering your damage/pressure a lot.

Give me one thing this build does that a PU condi build doesn’t do better.
Survive? -> PU condi
Mobility? -> PU condi
Damage? -> PU condi
Condi Removal? -> PU condi

It may be more fun, even though I don’t see how it can be more fun than a PU condi build. They’re somewhat similar in the playstyle, only PU condi is night and day difference in terms of pretty much everything.

Oh, also, lets not forget that anywhere out of PvE, the healing signet kind of sucks, the reasons have been said over and over and over again on this forum by Pyro.

I know I’m kind of being Pyro here, but I’m just honest with you. It’s better that I flat out tell you the fact instead of lying to you telling you this is good when it is not.

Much love, hope I didn’t offend you mate!

~Monns

It’s not a lot, but it is some bug fixes..

Subject 7 – Blobs Schmobs + 5 Gambits

Build

Full zerker, strength runes (could be done with just zerker + x runes)

Kind of a weird way to get the achis, but it worked for me. Spawn as many SWORDSMAN on S7 as you can (spawn first one, wait for CD to finish, spawn again, heal, spawn again then slap time warp on the swordsmen)
Mimic you’re free to use, you won’t do that much reflect damage to kill an ooze, use stealth to keep yourself alive, you also get boons from PU and longer stealth duration. Blurred frenzy for invulnerability, DO NOT SHATTER anything. Not even for distortion.
If you don’t kill S7 quickly enough swap out veil for mantra of pain and spam it on him constantly.

Also, there is already a guide for mesmers on Dulfy . Supposed to be for all players but it is demonstrated on a mesmer.

-UPDATED- – Changed Precise Wrack for Compunding Power + explanation.

That could be done.
It could also be coded in such way that when you are using an outfit, that the outfit gives its skin to the armor, so you don’t have to make an override if an outfit is used.
Basically when you equip a outfit, it would change the skin of the armor, as if you transmuted it, if you unequipped it, it would go back to the original state (this would probably take up a lot of memory due to having to remember which armor you were wearing). Both ways are viable, devs will do what will take up the least amount of memory to execute and keep running, I think your way of doing it would be the best.

I have a lot of sets as well and so far my favorites are:
Staff + GS for tPvP (May sometimes go for Staff + Sw/f on Skyhammer)
Gs + Sw/t for WvW solo roaming
Staff + Sw/F for WvW team roaming

Staff + Gs is very hard to play compared to other sets but I enjoy it a lot.
Staff gives you crazy control of the fight and GS can give you so much burst if you take IE (MB into MS + dodge/MW). I never really stick to one set, I play it all, but I really do prefer Staff + Greatsword.

Staff + Sw/T for solo roaming because of the stealth. It helps a lot when you need to hide from a zerg and have your elite on cooldown, allows you to surprise your enemy with stealth and can help you reset/reposition yourself if you screw something up.

Staff + Sw/F for team roaming because staff by itself gives your team crazy support through chaos storm, sword can be used to help focus targets and focus is great for controlling people, stopping stomps from being interrupted or interrupting stomps on my teammates. I do sometimes swap staff out for greatsword..

Have a good one!

~Monns

This is Monns, my Asura mesmer.

The set here is my shatter and dungeon set (armor stays the same)
________________________________________________________________________
6/6 Strength
GS – Zerker(Sovereign Crusader, replacing with Vision of the Mists, donations welcome! lol.) – Energy + Air
Staff – Zerker(Toy Staff, replacing with Mistforged Hero’s Staff soon unless I find a way to get Kasmeer staff..) – Energy + Air
Sword1 – Zerker(Glyphic, replacing with Peacemaker soon) – Energy
Sword2 – Zerker(Glyphic, replacing with Peacemaker soon) – Night (Most dungeons are at night)
Focus – Zerker (Peacemaker) – Energy
Torch – Zerker (Blaze of Serpents) – Air
Pistol – Zerker (Peacemaker) – Air
________________________________________________________________________
Helm hidden
Masquerade mantle
Koda(HOTW) chest
Diviner gloves
Koda(HOTW) legs
Ascalonian(AC) boots
________________________________________________________________________

Celestial and Midnight Ice dyes
Full ascended trinkets (3x knights, 3x zerkers) and Zojja’s ascended chest (lucky WvW drop!)
After I get the skins set, I’ll begin working on another PU set (salvaged old one, big mistake)

Have a wonderful rest of the day guys!
Much love,
~Monns

Thinking about recording some videos of me playing this build, which screen recorder should I use? I don’t really want to pay for it and I’d like it if it had decent quality (720 or 1080p if possible).
Have a good one!

Monns

• Phantasm – Illusionary ?? – Rips up to 3 boons from the target, dealing damage and granting you one stack of might for each boon removed.
  CD – 35s
  Attacks every 7s
  Number of bounces – 3
  Damage per boon would scale with the amount of power you have
  Speed of the projectile would be similar to guardian scepter

^Got the idea from sal

• Manipulation – Illusionary Swap – Swap places with your enemy, creates a clone and immobilizes the enemy.
  Immobilize duration – 2 seconds
  CD-40s

• Heal- Illusionary Army – Create 10 clones at your position (5 on each side), unless you are hit in 3 seconds, the clones will shatter on your enemy dealing medium damage (All 10 clones should be around the same as a 2-3 clone mind wrack) and healing you for each clone that hit. If the target hits a clone he is immobilized
  CD:35s
  Heal: 1000/clone (max = 10k, though it’s probably going to be hard to pull off.)
  Immobilize duration: 0,5 sec

• Mantra – Mantra of Speed – Give yourself 10 seconds of swiftness
  Number of charges – 2
  CD between charges – 9s
  CD – 7s
  Charging time – 2s (so we can have perma swiftness here)

Some of the skills are completely not needed, but I still think it would be amusing to see them.

By fan you mean http://journeyzdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/red-fan.jpg ? If so, thieves can have that, give us cards!

Blink – I don’t think I need to say anything..

Portal- Helps a lot in PvP, place portal on a point when you leave it, as soon as you see someone is trying to cap it, you’re instantly there and stop the cap. Can help you do stomps, escape death ect.

Phase Retreat- Staff is by far my favorite weapon, and this is one of the biggest reasons. Helps a lot with mobility, can get you out of trouble in some cases and is a very cheap cooldown to use, whilst both blink and portal are massive cooldowns..

It was hard to pick my top 3 skills.. Other worth noting:
Mirror Blade, Chaos Storm, Time Warp, Moa (against MM necro), Blurred Frenzy, The Prestige..

Have a great rest of the day, happy mesmerizing!

~Monns

I like that, though I’d really like to see each class get a class unique weapon.
Perfect for mesmer would be cards or maybe a harp.
A skill, kind of similar to yours I’d say would be good for zerging/AOE is something like

[Cant think of a name]

CD: 45
Blast/Projectile finisher (random)
Number of pulses 7
Duration: 6 seconds
Damage: 700
Bleed (2s)
Cripple (2s)
Fury (2s)
Max target number -> 10

This all happens each pulse. Would it be OP?
This could make a really good condition weapon, like autoattack could throw a card that does low-medium damage, gives the enemy a single stack bleed, a bit of damage pierces enemies and returns back to you healing you. Would have the same rate as guardian autoattack and would follow the player to a certain range.

Harp could be a good CC/support weapon.
You could play tunes that give you enemies stacks of might, fury, regen or w/e, tunes that would do damage to your enemy and apply conditions like poison/bleed, ones that would stun all enemies ect.

I’ve been experimenting with sigils a bit and air seems to be the best choice followed by doom and then battle as far as healing negation and damage go.

-UPDATED- – Added a video to the video section (Lord Helseth kiting guide)

Men, which armor is that on the asura? Thank you mate!

Here’s how I feel about each race.

Human – Looks fine, but too dull and mainstream for me. If you don’t mind having a character like everyone else, make human.

Norn – Too big.. Otherwise, it’s fine, you’ll feel kinda slow, but massive clones and going against the flow can be fun.

Sylvari – A lot of really nice looks for it, seems to fit the mesmer theme. I would only make a female sylvari though. Named mask, x shoulders, aurora chest, primitive gloves, arah legs, x boots looks really, really nice.

Charr – You can make it look so funny, if that’s your thing, but some serious armors are lacking IMO. The one you get if you have a GW1 account looks nice and a few others.

Asura – It seriously lacks some nice, serious armor, a lot of clipping, but I love the race, the way they dodge, the lines they use ect. Plus, it’s harder to tell your animations, you can hide easier (if you’re a 2ft asura, you can hide behind a 3ft wall, but a 6-7 foot tall charr can’t hide behind that wall) if you PvP. I wouldn’t make an asura just because of that. It’s not as important, but it can help a bit. HOTW armor looks quite nice, as well as Acolyte and the one you get if you have GW1.

Oh, okay then. Well I find him somewhat charismatic. He seems like a fun guy if that’s just a character. The thing that confused me is that he didn’t make it obvious.
EDIT: Also, just watched the video again, nice music choice when he’s explaining the spots at waterfall!

Is that a character or does he usually think so highly of himself? Some good points and nice apartment, though a minus for the character..

Yes, you have the CC and invuln from sword, then depending on the offhand you have stealth, a bit of swiftness/projectile reflection. Another big pro to the st+gs shatter is that you get to run Blink range..

Pretty much sums it up^^. Mostly shatter vs. shatter fights are depending a lot on luck, you can plan very few things as it’s all just so fast paced and 1 little tiny mistake will most often get you killed. Even though, I think a x + sw/x vs. st+gs win if you’re both at the same skill level and it will probably be a very long fight. I’ll have to try to fight someone that uses that set sometime..

EDIT: I misunderstood your post, I’m kinda busy, just flew other the thread to check if there are any new posts, I’ll reply to you in a little bit.

I’ve been playing PU (condi version) since I got my Mesmer to 80. I was so good with it after a few months. I could take on 1v5 and come out victorious a healthy amount of times.
People don’t know how to fight PU so they talk bad about it which is really immature in my opinion. It’s really so easy to beat a PU mesmer and yet it seems like no one knows how to do that. There is a lot you can do with it if you really, really master it. It’s easy to get the grips of and do well with, but to really rule with it and be almost impossible to beat takes a lot of skill. Kind of the way warrior are. It’s also a bit dull to play after a while.
I got bored on my PU set and tried out shatter. I loved it so much that I salvaged my PU condi set for the gold I could get out of it (I made 10g profit in the end thanks to Perplexity almost doubling in price).
I kind of regret doing that.
Play shatter a bit, it’s very, very fun, but keep PU set. I think I actually prefer PU for roaming, while shatter is more fun for PvP.
I do sometimes run shatter in WvW, but I’ve almost completely dropped WvW now that I have no PU set. I’m working on getting another PU set again as I’m writing this. (New Slyvari mesmer will get the PU set and with time the power set as well, just need to get the gold for the runes/sigils..)
Try both out in WvW and see what you like. It’s not like it’s expensive to get a new build. It just takes a little bit of time.
If you want to try out the currently most popular shatter set, I made a guide for it since there was none. I went into detail about every single trait, utility and stat choice. I also added quite a few video links and a lot of literature for mesmers of all skill levels. Take a look at it!
If you’ll need any help with shatter in any game mode, feel free to PM me in game, I’d love to help you out!

Have a wonderful rest of the day mate
Much love,

Monns

-UPDATED- – A few corrections in the OP

EDIT: Also, anything you guys feel like I should put in the video section but I haven’t?