I’m glad people found some use from it
Wow, every post argueing in favor of portals in this thread is being posted by mesmers. Those mesmers are immediately and vociferously attacking anyone who posts in support of my OP. I think this is very telling. I think that you know that portals are breaking the game and trivializing content. I think you know that you are wrong. I think that is why you are so aggressive. I think you just want to have your liscence to steal at any cost.
Lawl.
Can someone say first world problems?
Edit: http://imgur.com/t6O7WbD
(edited by Kanto.1659)
Of course there is. It’s an attack. It should attack. Incidentally it buffs, and this is nice because, hey, it’s a bouncing attack, so we can crit for 2k, give 3% more damage party wide, then whomever is closest gets 3 stacks of Might, which is good, more damage, then another 2k (if it crits), 3% damage party wide, etc.
Someone cares to do the math on whether 100 power/condition for 10 seconds does more or less than 2k damage + hipothetical 3% party wide damage increase?
I’m going to have to disagree on brushing off the bouncing fix as just a ‘not counting’. It’s obvious they were messing with something behind the scenes to cause the initial issue – they just let it slip in unfinished, much to our annoyance.
If you notice, bouncing isn’t the same as it was before the ‘bug’ appeared. Illusions are now viable targets for bounces where they were not before, and bouncing now sets them low on the priority. This is quite a good quality of life change for the Mesmer.
Unfortunately the bounces still prefer to disperse themselves between allies instead of bouncing to our target. While 3 Might is nice, I still prefer 2k crits and 3 Vuln.
I’ve been leveling solely with axe/focus and it has been a breeze. Focus 4, axe 2, DS 1 until dead. Repeat. Mostly I just pulled three or four mobs, put down both wells, DS 4 (with a frigging lot of knockbacks interrupting it, but DS soaks the damage and the wells are ticking).
Just remember to tell them to grab signet of locust, a sigil of bloodlust and buying Mighty (then Strong and lastly Berserker) gear.
To me it is ranged damage which I care about. Warriors get an automatic +30% damage due to being meleers so it will be hard to beat. I do not care about melee for myself. I like ranged play.
Bringing back that hybrid build of Nemesis that I posted on the front page it seems like Necros do well on the ranged damage.
Mesmers (my favorite) need to deal with illusions being easily shattered and badly coded skills (bouncing attack from the greatsword dispersing itself between allies instead of going enemy – ally – enemy – etc).
Rangers have a large chunk of their damage coming from pets, which are exquisitely squishy and in melee range (and dumb as bricks).
Elementalists either go melee or go middle range with… slow… animations… who.. miss… more… than… they.. hit.
Engineers go almost melee or go grenades. Grenades are lovely and stack a lot of useful conditions, but their damage goes to hell if a boss moves since each and every one is a skill shot (P.S. This is GW2, not LoL).
So I dunno, for ranged damage the necro seems quite okay (ignoring all ranged classes picking their respective melee weapons to get the 30% melee bonus and clap their hands in delight at the big numbers).
Sounds like Confusion, but movement based.
Does anyone remember the ‘rangers will be happy’ patch a while back? With a bunch of tooltip and underwater fixes and a shortbow nerf?
Or don’t run a necro for DPS? Because it is completely illogical in PVE to play a class as DPS that has only his “1” skill for actually doing dps…
It’s interesting you should say that because I was interested in a necro after seeing www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OCcT7iJUrA
The bleeds ticking for 100, the 5-6k hits from the axe, the 3k crits in DS. It’s not a 34k 100b, sure, but we cannot keep on using warriors as a measuring stick (not to mention 100b is a 4 second melee channeling skill. There is too much touting of DPA and less of DPS, actual honest used-in-real-situations DPS).
I’m currently playing a grenades engineer and enjoying the damage and vuln stacking, but I just need to have a moving boss for my damage to plummet.
(edited by Kanto.1659)
I have to say that the hybrid build looks really interesting. I also find it interesting that few seem to mention it.
I played a mesmer exclusively until the last bounce bug, then swapped to an engineer to give it a go, loved the perma-swiftness, loved the grenades, find my damage to be through the roof while adding party useful conditions such as chills and stacking vulnerability.
Thing is, grenades are what grenades are, both messy to use and my wrist already began to twinge a little bit after doing a grawl shaman fractal.
Your hybrid really interests me. 100 tick bleeds, 3k crits in DS, 5-6k crits from the axe, it seems pretty nice and much less daunting on my wrist, even though I will mourn the loss 1500 range. No vigor, though?
It makes perfect sense that direct damage does more than condition. Direct damage pools from three stats (power/critical chance/critical damage) whereas condition damage pools from one only (condition damage) with indirect pooling from precision by traits that add bleeds on crit.
A Rampager build is also perfectly viable when fights last for more than five seconds. But, bleed cap? Condition not working on objects (and some bosses)? Light fields mass cleansing conditions (why don’t we have light fields applying mass Protection too? It is very much the same thing)?
Even then, if the bleed caps were removed, I think more people would go back to condition, but as it is doing an event in the open world immediately nullifies a condition user and in a dungeon two condition users are one too many.
Purely PvE, mesmer has spoiled me too. I’ve leveled a guardian, and yes, guardians are great, but I loathe melee with a passion. Knockbacks, chained no less, (why hello there Risen Brute!) dazes and what have yous were a constant pain to contend with. Leveled it, geared it, but not feeling much urge to play it.
Now I’m leveling an engineer after the latest batch of bugs robbing my mesmer of any interest in playing. I like it. I’m leveling with a SD build, good burst, no need to skill shot like grenades do.
But I tend to die because I can’t create those beautiful distractions that are illusions. I still like the burst of SD and the perma swiftness, so if I’ll ever play a second character more seriously it will most probably be the engineer.
Rangers get their pets and all the problems that come with it (I’d play one if they were anything like a WoW hunter pet) and elementalists seem forced into a gimmicky, long cast animation, medium/melee range role that does nothing for me.
So yeah, mesmer did spoil me. The whole thing of dodging, creating clones, seeing an army of me, purple laz0r beams every where, shattering, seeing a boss waste time going to kill my clones while my team mates are safe. Kill the bugs and no other class does it for me.
P.S. GG on pulling the whole ‘mesmer is no brainer lolclass’. Back on WoW we also had ‘lolhunters max DPS by sending pet and auto-attack’.
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3. IMage bounce logic: Currently it is the only bouncing attack that goes enemy/ally/ally. Making traiting for Illusionary elasticity borderline useless for this weapon if it bounced enemy/ally/enemy it would make it useful for stacking extra confusion possibly making it more appealing.
Say what? This has been the biggest culprit in lowering a Mesmer’s GS DPS ever since the game came out. Funny enough few people seem to notice it all just like yourself.
With full berserker we can get 2k crits from Mirror Blade. With traited extra bounce we should hope to do 6k each time we use the skill (assuming all stars align to get crits on each bounce which is not realistic) plus adding 9% more damage from the Vulnerability stacks.
What does happen when we are in a group? We get 2k damage. The other bounces? They dispersed amongst allies.
So instead of doing 6k damage and 9% more damage with Vulnerability while give 9 stacks of Might to whomever’s closest, we instead do 2k damage, 3% with Vulnerability and gave 3 stacks of Might for each team member. If there are two team members the Mirror Blade bounce will ricochet between them two and ignore the enemy.
Now, guys, Anet, etc, purely mathematically 2k damage and 3% more damage is a lot more than 3 Might.
Mind, the clone thing isn’t bad. There are a number of times where range is desired and the bouncing extra damage is wasted because there is nothing to bounce from, so having a clone taking to trigger another 2k and 3% damage? Yes please, good. Just fix it to the same Time Warp logic in which PCs have priority over NPCs, and please make bouncing attacks go enemy – ally- enemy.
Thank you.
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If you go 30 in Illusions?
*Inspiration.
Also, check out the support builds listed in the build post…You can set it up so that even without extra healing power, you can heal your party for 2.6k every time you channel mantra of pain. That’s some useful spammable party healing. It does kill your dps pretty quick, so I’d save it for when it is needed, and not just mindlessly spam it.
It doesn’t really kill it that badly. Each charge of MoP does around 700 damage (1500 crits) as I am right now. Considering it does not stop your auto-attack (or using any other skills) it means you’re using the charges at the same time. You then stop auto-attacking for three seconds to charge up MoP, but those three seconds not auto-attacking are compensated by those two charges we just used at the same time we were attacking.
Scepter/pistol was my original choice since I really wanted to use the kitten iDuelist, but the scepter does not have a lot to go for it. The confusion beam is a long channel with little dividends which the Confusion is supposed to pick the slack of, but if the enemy is being kited it never uses skills and thus it is wasted. For a hefty 15 seconds I can’t recommend it.
The auto-attack of the two seem pretty similar while the GS stays at medium range, but going to pieces at close to melee range. It leaves the rest of the weapon skills to decide. The confusion beam relies on Confusion. If the mobs hit twice during the five second span it is a decent 15 second CD, if it does not, no. Mirror Blades is the deal breaker for the GS with a hard hitting attack that grants Might and impinges Vulnerablity. iBerserker and iDuelist have their moments. The iBerserker shines for AoE and does good single damage while spawning in melee makes it liable to get killed fast. The iDuelist hits decently. The fact it spawns at range makes it sometimes possible to have three of them up and running.
The sword is a great choice. Between hard hitting phantasms, boon cleaning clones and AoE auto-attack it is hard to find fault in it, bugged leap or not. But, it’s melee. Melee is a play-style of choice and not mine.
My summary might be: Phantasms are good, but fragile. Building around them has some pretty nice numbers furthermore in those occasions we can have three of them up. But once outside maths that is rare. There is a lot of AoE going on. If they hit once that is perfect already and any more a bonus we should be thankful for but not plan for.
I prefer to keep them as useful attacks while being the real bulk of the damage since I can dodge out of the way.
Of course that going 10 points in Illusions is a waste stats wise. We don’t shatter, so no need to add Shatter recharge. We have zero conditions, so no need for extra conditions, but that extra 3 Might, 3 Vulnerability and 1-1.5k crits every 5 seconds is hard to move away from. It could go to Duelist and grab Sharper Images on the way. If we happen to be so lucky as to not have other Condition heavy specs with us we can have 6-7 bleeds easy. If we do, they become useless (hello dragon events, hello enginer/necro in the party). If we’re hitting objects they become useless, etc.
Or put them in Domination. Another 100 Power and since I lie and we do Shatter (if three illusions are up might as well Shatter them instead of waiting for random AoE to do so for us) we can grab the +20% to Mind Wrack.
To me it all boils down to that middle road: What am I going to do more? Keep my phantasms alive? Shatter? Throw Mirror Blade on CD? And I find that of those throwing Mirror Blade on Cd is what I can be counted to do each time, while Shattering will happen once in a while, or my phantasms will not be alive all that much.
Still a work in progress though, I’m curious about what is the best option.
(edited by Kanto.1659)
No, no mention made of Healing Mantra, the only mantra used is of Pain. I just mistook the fact I got healed by recharging mantras but it not being considered a heal.
The extra bounce is for the GS. One extra 1k-1.5k (I remember hitting 2k on my other mesmer with full exotics berserker) and 3 Might every 5 seconds is worth it for me and if I want to use the Staff then I’m ready for it (last boss of path one in HotW for example).
As for the focus I keep it in my inventory. For dungeons I don’t really need swiftness, but when I do I press H, double click (I keep it as my very first item), use swiftness, double click my weapon back. I got plenty of practice in sPvP with this.
P.S. The mantra of healing would fit really well with the Altruism runes and the Condition removal, I’m really interested in the party wide buffing aspect of it, but wasting my heal just for it is a turn off. GW2 is not a game where we can waste heals.
(edited by Kanto.1659)
There is only one Mantra in the build and it has no CD, so minus CD will not do much.
As for the Staff we cannot take it in a vacuum. I agree that both weapons are pretty close due to the fact the phantasm hitting like a truck compared to the bugged iBerserker, but that extra damage is compensated by the Mirror Blades. Once we reach a party where bleeds are capped the Staff’s extra damage goes further down.
I would still stay to carry both weapons and change according to need.
How do we play it?
- Pop out the iBerserker, throw Mirror Blade (traited it is up ever 4.8 seconds, with the extra bounce it is an extra 3 Might for the closest team mate and around 1k crits to the enemy. This is your bread and butter attack), immediately spam Mantra of Pain for crits of 1.5k.
- After the Mantra’s two charges are exhausted (they do not hinder your auto-attack so you’re still hitting the mob with it) you charge the Mantra, heal everyone for 2.6k HP (and thus we get to the ‘heal’ in the name),
give everyone 3 stacks of Might and 5 seconds of Fury due to the Rune of Altruism. Due to how the CDs coincide as soon as you’ve done this Mirror Blade has recharged letting you use it and once more spam your Mantra. - Since you are always churning clones your +3% damage trait will be always active for the +9% bonus.
- Since you create clones in melee when ever the enemy kills them they become Crippled, waddling after your team members and providing breathing room for escapes.
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Summary:
- Throw out the most damage you can without relying on easily killed Phantasms (though by all means, do not neglect to use your phantasms on CD) while blanketing your party with 2.6k heals every five seconds and giving Might and Fury every ten.
- Vague tooltips and ‘your answer is correct but not the way I like it’ coding makes it that, despite healing ourselves and our party each time that we recharge a mantra, it is not considered a heal, thus not activating the Runes of Altruism or the trait to remove conditions on heal.
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Notes:
- The GS still gives the best bang for our buck if we are going Berserker gear even with a messed up Phantasm. The Staff Phantasm hits very hard, but our auto-attack is anemic (around 500 crits compared to a Greatsword’s’ 1.2k plus the greatsword’s Mirror Blade every 4.8 seconds) and Chaos Storm has too much of a large CD to tilt the balance.
- Having said that the Staff Phantasms hits as much as 8k in a party so it is a very viable option for those who like the Staff, just be prepared for a slow ramp up.
- Good things are told about the Sword. I urge those who can handle melee to give it a try.
- All the numbers provided are in green gear. In exotics they will only grow.
(edited by Kanto.1659)
I made reference to this build a few days ago but only received a very tepid reaction but since it is working so well I’ve decided to polish it some more and present it a bit better.
I find this to be a very good fresh-level-80-what-do-I-do-now? build. We are in green gear, our output is nothing fancy, our gold is low, we need dungeons but don’t want to be a burden.
Well then, let us see how to prepare to output the most we can while being an asset to the team
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The bulk of the build:
- 20 in Domination: Clones cripple on death, -20% CD on Greatsword.
- 10 in Dueling: Phantasms have Fury.
- 0 in Chaos.
- 20 in Inspiration: Healing removes a condition, Mantra heals when recharging.
- 20 in Illusion: +3% damage per clone alive, Extra bounce.
Possible changes:
- Picking the 15% more damage to illusions in Domination but keep in mind the iBerserker is missing and anything trait related to phantasms is going to be a wash until (if) it is fixed. Despite that reasoning removing the 10 points in Dueling is a bad idea. We want 5 points there for Critical Infusion (Vigor on Crit) and with only 5 points to spare that seemed the most bang for our buck.
- No clone on dodge? To be honest I can hear that already, and I was of the same mind. Clone on dodge rocks, we get a very acrobatic play-style, very fun. But we are not shattering since our clones are acting as decoys for the enemies, and this is more for dungeons and less for open world roaming, thus churning out clones is not a necessity.
- Having said that, taking 10 points from Illusion and putting them in Dueling works for that purpose if you intend to Shatter. Switch clones cripple on death to +20% Mind Wrack damage in Domination.
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Skills:
- Subject to change according to the fight. Decoy tends to be a good panic button and thus I keep it. Null Field can be good to save team members,
though our traits remove a condition every five secondsonly works for our class heal. Feedback is always useful. What must always be present is the Mantra of Pain.
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Gear:
- Full Berserker (hence the ‘zerker’ part of the name), but feel free to switch to Knight, Rampager, Rabid. Some of these choices make the Greatsword less useful though. In my testing Knight gear lowered the damage of the Staff Phantasm by 1k (from 3.3k to 2.3k consistently) but staying alive matters, so if you, dear reader, are a fresh level 80? Then I suggest grabbing Knight gear while you get acquainted to the dungeon mechanics. Once satisfied with your survival switch to Berserker.
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Runes:
Altruism seem the better choice. Currently somewhat cheap at 80s. Every 10 seconds you can give 3 Might for 10 seconds and 5 seconds of Fury, party wide, each time you heal.- Ruby Orbs if a fresh 80 with not much gold and in greens.
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Sigil:
- Sigil of Fire is how to roll with Berserker gear, but Sigil of Air is much cheaper to begin with.
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Consumables:
- Personal preference for food is the Blackberry Pie with a 40% chance to steal HP on crit and 50 precision. Cheap, hurts the mob, heals us at the same time. I give it a gold star.
- Sharpening Stones as ‘potions’. You can have both at the same time.
(edited by Kanto.1659)
I find it interesting how the only reactions were negative. My guild is like WTF! Full berserker gear, wearing greens and doing 5-8k crits with phantasms and you’re AoE healing 2.6k every five seconds?!
The more I play the more I like it. As it turns out any weapon is viable. I go with the GS for trash and use the Staff for the boss and neither stops me from it working as meant to.
Where it shines is not being conservative. Not ‘Oh, my health is getting low, I need to use my Mantra of Pain to get my HP up.’ but just start spamming right away.
2.6k will not save someone from a direct hit, but it makes a mockery out of those bosses with Retaliation or Conditions which eat our HP. And our Phantasm’s HP. If they are not killed straight away I can force them back up.
All the more than the Mantra is not a useless waste of time. I have it doing crits of 2k with some Vulnerability and Might stacks.
Some quick testing with green gear to provide numbers.
Scepter:
- Confusion beam from the scepter does an average of 270 per tick. It does between 1500 to 2000 damage per activation every 15 seconds CD, not counting Confusion ticks which may or may not hit if the mob is being kited.
- Auto attack hit for about 300, and crits of 600-700.
- Pistol Phantasm: about 3.5k damage + 4-6 bleeds.
Staff:
- Autoattack of 200 – crits of 500. Each hit does have a chance for a bleed or a burn which naturally adds to the damage. Plus it gives a boon. We can remove 15 points from Dueling, keep sharper images, lose Clone on Dodge, and put it in Illusions, get the Extra Bounce trait, double the auto attack damage (roughly 400 damage and about 800 damage if both bounces crit, double the incidental Condition damage, double the boons).
- Phantasm: About 3.6k crit. Much more with conditions which will happen in a group. We could add 1k more and not think too hard about it in a group just for the extra conditions.
- Problem: not enough points to go get the -20% Staff CD reduction even if we kill the extra bounce trait. One of the +15% phantasm damage traits would have to go or give up Sharper Images which is an option since we won’t be putting out clones and one Phantasm hit every 7 seconds will not be generating bleeds enough to matter.
Greatsword:
- Autoattack: about 700-900 damage.
- Phantasm: borked as we know. One of the times it was summoned it hit for 500 damage. ’nuff said.
- Mirror Blade: Bounces twice. Average of 500 per hit and 1k crits so if both hits hit it is 2k. Untraited recharge of 6 seconds.
Sword:
- Did not test. Being in full berserker gear and attacking in melee range is not an option for many and that includes me. I have a guardian for melee, and I prefer to play range on my mesmer.
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After testing I agree that you are right. The Staff seems the better choice. No destroying the phantasms with auto-spawn clones, harder hitting phantasms (though the bleeds of the iDuelist narrow the distance assuming the cap has not already been reached), Chaos Storm is both defense or offense. While the GS is still a strong contender despite being borked the iBerserker will spawn in melee range and move where ever it wills, killing the Regen usefulness.
It is not the build for pure damage (despite full Berserker) but the party wide heal from the Mantra of Pain works pretty well, plus doing good damage (700 hits, 1500 crits. Keeping in mind it is all green gear) to add to the auto-attacking.
I would thus change the build to:
- 10 in Domination: 15% more damage for Illusions.
- 10 in Duelist: Fury for Phantasms.
- 20 in Chaos: 3% less damage (nothing really useful here, pick what you’d like), -20% CD on Staff.
- 25 in Inspiration: Remove a Condition when we heal (considering we heal every 5 seconds. It frees Null Field, possibly, giving room for the Signet of Illusions), Heal when recharging Mantras.
- 5 in Illusions.
(edited by Kanto.1659)
With the GS borked and no sign of being fixed it is a problematic weapon to use.
I love the Staff and condition damage but condition damage is the red head stepchild of GW2 currently. Low bleed caps (Why do even have them? Why have they not been upped since it was discovered they were too low?), low damage compared to direct damage, useless versus objects, etc, etc. Red head step-child indeed.
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So, I puzzled around with traits and have assembled something like this:
- 10 in Domination: 15% more damage to illusions.
- 30 in Duelist: Phantasms have Fury, Dodge create Clones, 20% less CD on pistols.
- 0 in Chaos.
- 25 in Inspiration:* 20% more HP for Phantasms, Mantra heals when recharging.
- 5 in Illusion.
Of this spread the Clone on Dodge seems the weakest since the idea is not to shatter but to leave the phantasms up. We do not need extra clones, they serve little use, this has 10/20 points free to be applied where it will do best subject to personal desire. For example picking the 20% faster recharge on Phantasmal skills.
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Utility skills: Subject to personal preference with the exception of Mantra of Pain. I have Decoy and Null Field. Switch according to the fight you will face next.
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Gear: All Berserker. Or Knight, or.. whatever the one playing wants it to be. I went Berserker, all Masterwork since that is what I have available right now and my Duelists were hitting, without Might of Vulnerability, for around 4-5k. All in greens, mind.
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Runes: The sixth bonus from Runes of Water or Flock will add another 700 HP every ten seconds when you heal with the Mantra. *Altruism*’s will do 5 seconds of Fury every ten seconds as well. Otherwise the usual Runes for a Berserker build or, my personal choice, Ruby Orbs.
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How do we play this? Very simply. We pop our iDuelist, we use our Confusion beam, and then instead of auto attacking we spam Mantra of Pain. The damage is about the same as the scepter’s auto-attack but, every five seconds (one discharge per second, two charges, 2.75 recharge time) we heal everyone around us for 2.5k.
That is it. iDuelist out, Confusion beam. Spam that Mantra of Pain, recharge it, heal everyone around you for 2.5k while your Phantasms also provide Regeneration. Keep on spamming until either the iDuelist or Confusing Images has recharged. Repeat.
Doing this fast enough also prevents the Scepter’s third attack from generating a clone and killing one of our Duelists.
Doing that will simply make one Mesmer able to upkeep 20 bleeds on a target. FINALLY decent Condition damage on par with direct damage. But useless if they do so without upping the bleed cap.
I love the staff. I love the playstyle of the staff. I love conditions. I love how we dodge to generate clones and clones are what we use to deal damage which makes for a constant acrobatic fighting.
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I dislike how condition damage is in such a sad state of affairs months and months after the game has been released. The easy fix of upping the cap to 50 has been ignored, so we languish.
My last group had a necro, an engineer and a condition ranger. Any mob went to 25 bleeds/Vulnerability and stayed glued there within the first seconds. I excused myself and went to get my guardian instead.
Can I tempt you into using a different calculator? That one refuses to load no matter what I try or which browser I use.
Why empowering might? I tried using it and the cooldown meant that you could only get a couple of might stacks at a time whereas you can spec yourself so that virtue of justice gives 3 might stacks and just use staff for empower to give yourself 12 stacks right on the spot.
A couple, in this case (with a hammer at least, and knight gear) goes between 4 and 5 stacks, pretty much perma as long as the hammer can swing. Though it is the first thing I take out when I want to put in something else, like symbols healing when running a CoE where everyone stacks up to the boss.
P.S. Wait, I have 50% boon duration, that explains our different numbers.
(edited by Kanto.1659)
My trinkets are still mis-match from leveling, questing, loot drops, etc!
Zero reason for that. Hit the TP and buy masterwork gear that matches your needs. In this case full Knight gear was what I did and dungeons were not a problem when coupled with a standard Altrustic Healing build and a hammer.
Simply implying I didn’t made it for WvW or high level fractals or what else, and more as a social project. The low HP nature of open world mobs mitigated the whole knockback/down woes since they die fast and we don’t need more than Stand Your Ground. It was dungeons who got my hackles up.
Oh yes, the Molten dungeon thing. Egads, the number of knockbacks I was getting in that pace! But even just wandering over Orr while completing it. I died a couple of times from being chain knocked down, but even without such lethal results the number of times by attacks are interrupted while I gaze at the sky is grrrr.
I miss City of Heroes. I could never get back into melee as back then.
What you are saying is that you dislike this particular build and playstyle. Grats, you have an opinion.
This type of build is what I use in sPvP (hardly touch WvW since it is such a large clusterkitten of zergs throwing themselves back and forth plus the whole ‘eternal’ in Eternal Battle is fitting since it never finds closure such as a match ending). Rabid gear, mainly Staff, mostly getting clones out with the occasional shattering.
Conditions are my weak point, but even in Rabid gear things die very fast once I have three clones out. Bonus? No more dying versus bursty thieves. Most things aren’t able to survive for very long with the exception of Guardians who cleanse, cleanse, cleanse, heal, cleanse, and then everything is on CD and they die.
Things I can’t kill: bunker eles (though they can’t kill me either), (some) bunker engineers.
… who thinks meleers are complete masochists? I am on a RP server and made a Guardian. Partly because I enjoy the leveling and partly because I wanted to try (again) a meleer.
Gawd, the number of knock downs, knock backs, dazes. The number of AoEs forcing us to flee and swing at empty air.
I do enjoy the extra durability and heals (Altrustic Healing base build) but it is the knockbacks in particular do my head in. I say this after one more Path 1 from COE and having he trio of robots pulling me in, pushing me back, dazing me, etc, etc, my SY not breaking the stuns, etc, etc.
With stuff like Stability on 7 second duration and 28 CD I escape a couple knocks with it and then spend my time on my back.
Embarrassingly annoying I must say.
I wanted to see the difference between my usual 10% duration condition build and a 100% one.
Ignoring the build and etc and just down to the gritty numbers:
My usual build with 10% duration does 123 bleed ticks per second with a 720 burn damage for one second.
Changing the runes to 2 Mad King + 2 Lyssa + 2 Coral (simply for testing, something better is findable I’m sure), changing to a Giver staff, eating 40% duration food, and 30 points in Domination = 100% duration.
100% duration does 90 bleed ticks per second and 564 Burn damage per second that does 1128 since it lasts two seconds.
Calculating accurately would be difficult since we do 7 second bleeds and our clones do 5 second bleeds, but overall I know I I can keep around 10 bleeds with 10%, which means 1230 per second on bleeds and 720 burns. With 100% we’d keep 20 stacks for 1800 per second and 1128 Burns.
No gimmicks, just ourselves and three clones autoattacking. Chaos Storm would have a field day with 100% durations and the Vulnerability stacking from ourselves and clones would increase the overall party damage.
1800 per second is… not bad actually. Not counting Burns or Vulnerability.
Of course with the 25 bleed cap this is all moot.
When I was testing this build, targets had nearly permanent burning on them, as well as a perpetual 10+ stacks of bleeding once the fight was in full swing. With pizza and the Sigil of Corruption, one ought to have enough condition damage to really make all those bleeds and burns hurt pretty quickly.
Not to rain on your parade but 10 stacks of bleeds is the usual with just me and three staff clones, and ‘near perma burning’ is a placebo, since nothing other than 100% duration will increase the burn duration past 1 second. I’m not sure why with 50% duration you get as many bleeds as a non condition-duration build though. No sigil of Earth?
I was looking into this new buff/fix to condition duration applying to our clones. With food and runes we would end at 90% and then a Giver’s weapon we would have a neat 100%.
Considering what we trade for it (condition damage from runes, 128/179 condition damage from a weapon, condition damage food) I’m left wondering if it still turns out to be a damage increase. Let us ignore that ill-conceived 25 bleed stack for now (Devs, please, up it to 50, minimum. This should have been done six months ago).
Two second burns from us and our clones. I currently keep around 10 bleeds so that would become 20 bleeds. Even with the loss of duration damage it smells like a brutal damage increase, moreso thanks to the burns, but confusion and vulnerability would also double.
Granted that that thanks to the devs floundering this is pretty theoretical. There is little point in stacking twenty bleeds when the cap is twenty-five and a berserker mesmer will sneeze and apply six or seven, the warrior will do the same, and let us not go if we actually go in with a condition specced necro.
But barring practical use, purely in the real of theory. 100% condition duration?
My signature has some pointers that new players should find useful, even if it was meant for mesmers. But basically the tips about gear and leveling areas should hold.
You can only beat a horse so many times, re-hashing and repeating the same argument before it gets old and all that had to be said was said.
So… hold on. The single one mode in the game which earns no revenue (PvE earns gold, WvW earns (some) gold. Heck, even Jumping Puzzle aficionados earn gold) is the one which has to pay to use it?
How come we do not need to rent CoF when we want to run that instance?
Main heal, I fear. In theory it has no ICD, but don’t quote me, so a mantra with three charges can do good things. Can’t say I’ve ever really done it. Condition damage is just our weakness… unless we trait condition removal on shatter and then it becomes a non entity.
Help. How do I realistically deal with conditions. I know I have the Null Field and Arcane Thievery but the cooldowns are long enough that I could get 100 more on me by the time the cooldown is up. Torch 4 removes if traited, but Torch 5 doesn’t seem to do this. So what is a good way to deal with conditions as a Mesmer?
A): don’t get hit.
B): Use only when needed, AKA not when you have 3 bleeds.
C) The trait to remove conditions when chattering is pretty OP….IF you can stomach going 30 points in Inspiration. I can safely say it solved all my condition woes, but that trait line is really uninspired, IMO.
I’ve only just started playing GW2 in the past couple of weeks and the mesmer’s the only toon I’ve tried… I’m up to level 25 now and am enjoying a scepter+pistol/sword+sword build with debilitating dissipation and illusionist’s celerity. I focus on condition damage gear. Only a few days ago, though, I was still fooling around with all the weapons and trying to find a goal. That’s what I’d recommend to you as well. Try everything out and see what you like. There are tons of guides to give you ideas.
The reason why it takes so long is that condition damage is not optimal at level 25. You will do tons better with Power until level 40. My signature has a link about these leveling woes.
I’m looking for some tips on this too. I have been using Sword + Torch/Focus/Sword in various combinations (although I have been recently favoring the Sword/Torch combo) along with staff. I am level 64 and I have 20 trait points in Domination, 20 points in Dueling (for the Deceptive Evasion), and 14 in Illusions atm.
I feel like I have been doing pretty well for myself, and I am getting pretty good at clone bombing, ie.. timing max vulnerability stacks with a Mind Wrack. Problem is I feel pretty impotent when anyone wielding a 2h sword shows up. I can put in the effort, and do well by dodging/weapon switching and good timing, but these guys show up and just stand still, never dodging, pressing like 2-3 buttons and kill everything in 1/3 of the time. People tell me that Mesmers are really desirable for endgame content, but I am not sure how I could compete with classes that have that kind of durability and damage output. I have looked through all the most excellent ShatterCat videos and tried to learn from them but I feel like I must be doing something wrong for this type of enormous disparity to occur.
So are Mesmers really good in endgame content, or is that just the “party line” as it were? If so what niche would I be filling, ie, what makes them so desirable? I need reassurance, and guidance if I am doing something wrong.
TIA
EDIT: I suppose I should note this is just about PvE. I’m going to hit up WvW shortly as I find that kind of PvP fun. I couldn’t care less about tPvP.
Let me say that the ‘blame’ lays on your weapons. Though at 65 Berserker gear opens and you will notice a bound forward in your damage.
Since you have 20 in Domination try traiting the GS -20% reduction. If you have thought of it, put a major sigil of Bloodlust on on a GS. Now just try to open with a Mirror Blade, iBerzerker, dodge, Shatter and give us news.
As for PvE everything works so you won’t be shoved off. You provide good utility, sometimes as simple as having your clones up and the boss is going for them instead of your team mates. That’s pretty much an Aegis worth of protection. Adding the clones-cripple-when-killed and it is a second layer of utility.
My signature has a link you might find useful.
Honor of the Waves and TA both are dungeons with Rabid armor you can buy with tokens.
Ouch this was my elite of choice, people liked me in their party just for that, my build was based on using it and One Hand sword to stack Vuln and remove buffs… now it’s kinda pathetic.
Soooo….. Every 200 seconds you had 10 seconds of TW. What did you do in the meanwhile?
Our stealth gets nerfed more making Mass Invisibility worse(good for WvW), so both our best elites just got ruined pretty hard. Moa doesn’t help in a class that can hardly DPS anyhow, especially if they aren’t attacking. The only buff I got personally was Confusing Images(scepter) hitting things between me and my target, while decent, this hardly makes up for it.
Man… I might have to start using my Asura Golems again… this sucks.
Bwahahahaha!!
my build was based on using it
Well… As long as the GS phantasm still hits like a toddler throwing a marshmallow I don’t think they will see this update do much… I haven’t touched my GS since the last update because it crits for 900-1k and only lands one attack. This is with zerker amulets GS/Empowered Ill/Phantasmal Fury/Phantasmal Strength… The swordsmen still regularly hits for 6-7k and the duelist for 5k… So unless they actually fix the phantasm… A situational beam cleave is going to be useless on GS… Scepter is cool.. If the wind up wasn’t forever and a day.
Hyperbole kills the credibility of what ever you say. Think a bit more before throwing such wild numbers for the sake of your argument looking good. Anyone who plays a mesmer will just shake their head.
Retaliation on Phantasm is near useless. If you are Power based you will get 300-ish damage when someone hits your phantasm, but since it is so fragile it will only do so once. On the other hand 50 power will be there with every single hit you do, auto-attacks included.
Ouch, guys, please. Staff bounces only work on players. NPCs (clone included) are excluded from staff bounces.
Staff, and Mirror Blade should be more selfish. Even more, it is an attack and should behave as an attack. A staff bounce (though the bigger culprit in this case is Mirror Blade) will eat a mob once… then jump back to an ally.. okay, fine so far… then bounce to another ally and another ally.
Er…. It is an attack. Can you please, you know… attack!?
It should be:
- One enemy, one ally. Hit mob, bounce to ally, bounce to mob, bounce to ally. It’s how it currently works.
- One enemy, two allies. Hit mob, hit ally, hit mob once more!, bounce back to the closest ally, hit mob. Not how it works currently. As it works currently it hits the mob once and then bounces between the same two allies.
- Two enemies. Bounce between both until its over.
- Three enemies. Same.
Both Staff #1 and Greatsword #2 could be vastly improved with this. They are attacks which just so happen to give boons.
Good fights can be lost and remain good fights. Today I was killed in a literal two seconds by a thief. He appeared and killed me. I have 1750 toughness. I had no time to teleport, stealth or do anything other than die.
That was not a good fight. I want to be able to fight back. I’m cool with loosing and will return and fight the person for as long as they can stand me so I can learn to time myself better, but two/three second kills? No.
I thought sPvP was to test the builds since it has no queue time.