Guild Wars 2

SniffyCube.6107:

Good fight tonight guys. As always your overwhelming population got us in the end but we had fun. Kudos to all that came to your own borderlands for the fun.

Shadaran Hills…./sigh. What a blood bath it was there. Gotta say, I still can’t come up with a good strategy against the meat grinder Kaineng constructed inside the keep lord’s room. Ballista’s and arrow carts spamming the long hallway (the only way into the claiming room). We tried rushing zergs in, we tried setting up our own siege on the outside (btw, ballista’s are the only viable counter to the hallway, but we cannot even reach/hit Kaineng siege cause of LoS.

After a several attempts finally we overtook it. On the last attempt, the fighting in that hallway lasted at least 30 minutes. Like you said, I think we finally picked off enough Kaineng inside to give ourselves a fighting chance.

All in all, it was a blast. I think us at Fergusson’s Crossing has learned a lot this week fighting against Kaineng and Devona’s Rest. You definitely are very creative with your siege weapons.

I have been using iWarden for a while and have never used the Phantasmal Haste trait (I new it was bugged and did not want to become dependent on something that would be fixed in the future).

I find the iWarden very useful for both PvE and WvW. I run with the focus in both now (replaced my staff for the most part).

Focus definitely has a learning curve. The temporal curtain is amazing, especially in yanking a group of enemies onto your iWarden (this positioning takes a lot of practice). The iWarden is not a phantasm that can be thrown out like the others, but rather, it needs a little set up to maximize effectiveness. For example, if you open with the warden, you put it at risk of getting demolished before he can even begin his whirl. However, if immediately after you cast, you use Scepter 2×2 (for the blind shot) or any other blinding ability (I have my glamour skills traited to inflict blind at target area). This will give your warden an extra chance of executing the whirl.

Usually I tend to open with my greatsword. GS 2 + GS 4…mirror blade clone tends to take aggro first in PvE, berserker cripples, then swap and drop warden.

In WvW warden is nice, because most of the time, you can find a small cluster of enemies that are focussed on a gate or on attacking people on a wall (or on the ground from a wall). This usually means that when you drop a warden, there is no enemy AoE where he is set up that will kill him. This lets you wrack up some nice AoE damage and scatter small groups.

It is what you make out of it. Try the focus out for a while. I used to hate it, but after going back and trying it out again, I love it.

DBxWanderer.7825:

This is in response to Anet:
“Hey all we have some plans to fix some of this. It is currently being looked at so expect a fix in the next few weeks. Basically we like that Portal has this power, but it shouldn’t be able to bypass walls, etc. As for the problems with players not appearing this is a more difficult engine problem to solve. While we would like to solve it there are definitely counters to this strategy, because anyone doing it has just clumped up their entire team for AoE nuking. Ultimately if they outnumber you by a lot there are much more effective ways for them to kill you.”

This message in this quote from Anet is not clear enough. There are rumors of glitches where portal can put a mesmer through a wall he/she did not have access to. This would be very different than simply having a mesmer hiding in a keep and dropping a wall trojan horse style.

I feel the second option should be a legitimate strategy. This is why anytime we take over a tower/keep, I make sure to do a quick sweep to make sure no mesmers are hiding in the shadows. I have found quite a few mesmers hiding on rooftops, rooms, and behind rocks this way.

If it ever goes on the table, I vote to be able to confuse gates and make them bleed…

Technically it’s not zero, but a number really close to zero (due to rounding you see "0"’s showing up on your screen).

This number will increase as you level up, but yes clones never really dish out much damage. Usually that is just reserved for your phantasms. Some mesmers will trait into sharper images which will let all of your illusions (including clones) stack bleeds on your enemy, increasing their DPS.

Oh and to add to that, anyone who has seen Monty Python knows that you never underestimate a rabbit.

You are a clone. Your only orders are to kill. Most clones created know their target because their creator is focused on the target. But not you. You were created while your creator was somersaulting off somewhere. What do you do? You blast the closest thing that moves.

I would love this, although, not sure how it would work though. Some guilds with hundreds of members could fill up most of your map. Something to toggle it on and off would be nice.

Plus, I think something like this might use up a lot of server resources. Right now, the map dots only need to track people in your party, any commanders on the map, and players within a short distance from you. Adding a lot of guild members could slow things down a bit.

If ANet could put something together that would give guildmate dots without losing performance, I think it would be great.

Qelris.6901:

PadmaN.7820:

Half of the time, sword 3 skill does nothing and goes on CD even when you ARE in range…

Always worked for me in range. Make sure there’s no red line below the skill, that means you’re in range. Red line = too far. It must be cast when you’re in range as the clone get out as soon as you press the button.

After all this time, I actually did not know that about the red line. I’ll have to pay more attention to it now.

Thanks for this.

Kaineng, you guys are definitely a force to reckon with. I’m on Fergusson’s [OMNI] and I gotta say, you definitely know how to utilize your siege equipment. I can’t tell you how much of a bloodbath we had on our end trying to take over your Overlook in EB and Pangloss Rise. I’ll have nightmares about that place now. Nice placement of the ballistas and arrow carts for crossfire coverage.

Keep up the good fight, I’ll see you out on the battlefield.

First I wanted to mention that I love playing WvW. Even as a server that is being dominated at the moment (Fergusson’s Crossing) it’s still a lot of fun.

I was reading though many of these threads about a lot of the issues with the current WvW scoring structure (expecially how “nightcapping” causes a gap in competition).

I was trying to think of a way that a developer could mitigate this gap without limiting gameplay.

An idea I had was maybe there could be formula that will reduce the rate points are accumulated when a server has a low population. For example, if all servers’ population cap in an area is full, then the points tally at the normal rate. However, if one server has a population close to zero (nights for some servers), then the rate these points are tallied are reduced for all 3 worlds.

The servers with a higher population during those times would still be able to progress and cap areas, but the immediate impact of them holding areas without contest overnight when other servers are sleeping, would be reduced (just a lower rate, not stopped). That server would still have an advantage when other servers begin logging in, but the gap in score would be less extreme.

This was just an idea I had, not sure if it would work/fit in WvW. Just trying to bring some suggestions to the table.

Post seems bug on my end…this post is to try to push the thread out another post to see if the thread shows up again.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” – Muhammed Ali
Our illusions do just that…they even die after they “sting” :-P

Edit: Wrong post

@SkipSpence

Actually Illusions refers to both phantasms and clones.

Phantasms = Phantasms Only
Clones = Clones Only
Illusions = Both Phantasms and Clones

That is why you’re seeing the bleed on crit with your phantasms.

juno.1840:

I need to practice more with GS — my issues with GS have to do with fighting multiple foes. The only option I seem to have there is mirror blade for damage and GS #5 for the push-back. The mirror blade doesn’t hinder the foes at all, just hits hard. So after the initial push back I’m back in touble with a pile of mobs on me.

I’m sure it’s a L2P thing, and I haven’t spent enough time with GS to over the hump.

Greatsword took me a little while to get used to. I eventually found a rhythm that works for my play style. I use staff as my second weapon set. Usually, I open with Greatsword (mirror blade, berserker) and if I face a situation against multiple foes, I switch to the staff. If I time it quickly enough, I may be able to drop a chaos storm around my foes and my illusions. This will improve their survivability. I run in and phase retreat for the third clone (assuming the other 2 are still standing if chaos storm procs aegis). I run in circles within the storm so I too can benefit from the buffs. Then, depending on the timing of my cooldowns I may shatter then switch back to greatsword to bring out another group.

Most of the time, my targets die long before I get through this basic rotation and many times it varies fight to fight as I have to adapt to different situations.

@ArmageddonAsh

Yeah, 3/16 isn’t bad. Maybe it looked like more with all the clones out? :-P

I can’t talk much to the comment about the thief damage, but as for the 2 mesmers, in a typical 8 v 8 battle, I would think it would be pretty common to have 2 people from the same profession.

Otherwise with only 8 professions, you would only have 1 of each? Seems like that would be very rare to see.

I think the reason you see so many different perspectives on the mesmer is because the class in itself is very diverse. You will see some mesmers running with sword/pistol and maximizing damage output, whereas you will see some using staff defensively.

There are a ton of options out there, I can only suggest trying all of them. Leveling up I have tried every single weapon combination the mesmer has, and all have potential (some will argue scepter is a little underpowered, but I rather enjoyed using it for a while).

Test the waters on all of it until you find a weapon that matches how you like to play. If you like support hazing role, I’d recommend a staff. You have a lot of survivability and utility to support your team and weaken your opponent. As for damage, if you want to jump into the fray, then use sword/offhand or if you prefer to keep your distance, use greatsword.

If you’re a ranged player and a little purple dome drops around you, step out of it. The dome only covers a small amount of space but it returns projectile damage back to the attacker.

My current build is almost identical to this (I just use Debilitating Dissipation instead of Illusionary Defence in the Chaos tree). I haven’t done a whole lot of PVP yet, but I’ve noticed the staff gives great survivability.

I feel like the build has a good balance of damage and survivability. I haven’t toyed around with runes too much yet so I don’t think I can give you much advice.

The main weaknesses I’ve found with the build so far is AoE (especially with Chaos Storm on cool down) and very skilled mobile ranged attackers (usually in a 1 v 2 fight). I find that feedback is great, but once the ranged classes learn to recognize it, it’s so easy for them to strafe out of it. 1 v 1 isn’t too bad because you can overwhelm the ranged attacker, but as you start facing more it becomes a struggle. I am still working on some better techniques to counter this.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Rhyno.7084:

The issue is that people don’t know how to use the scepter, it’s pretty embarrassing.

Enlighten us – on what occasion do you need to use the scepter over every other weapon, in PVE?

I used to run with the scepter a lot. When traited for the dissipation skills, it applies AoE conditions very nicely. With the scepter, it is very easy to pump out 3 illusions, when you pump the 4th out, the dissipation traits are applied to all foes near the dissipating clone.

Basically, every third attack of your scepter would ideally add AoE conditions. If your clones go down too fast, the scepter still has a good defensive ability, that when timed correctly, gets you a clone back.

I think there is a lot of potential with the scepter, but it is a weapon that can only work with very specific play styles. (the most common play styles I have seen players using do not synergize with the scepter’s capabilities)

EasymodeX.4062:

The cool down reduction would really only benefit GS 5 in my build (6 second reduction) since I am already traited in Illusionists Celerity (5% reduction) and the other skills have decently short cool downs already.

The cooldown reduction effects stack. The tooltip is bugged to only reflect one of the two traits.

Ah, I was not aware of this, that changes things up a bit.

Thanks for all the feedback. I figured those last 10 points would be better elsewhere, I think I was just holding on to the “cool” factor of illusionary persona. I just needed some points to think through to help me convince where to move those points to.

I did test out some traits like Empowered Illusions, but there was really very little damage gain that I could see (since my build focuses on condition damage from sharper images which proc more often from clones than berserker). The condition damage from bleeds seemed to have no change with this trait either. It seems to be designed more for phantasms builds than clones.

I will take the advice for moving those last 10 points from illusion, but whether to chaos or domination I am still undecided. I’m still torn between damage or survivability.

I tested out the damage increase on the greatsword auto-attack by adding points into domination and while there was a difference, I’m still trying to see if the damage increase is worth the skill point cost (and not just something I can make up for with gear).

Greatsword training seemed to increase this damage by another 100-200 or so dmg (base equipment) per cycle of the auto attack, but I haven’t been able to do any solid testing on the rest of the abilities yet. The cool down reduction would really only benefit GS 5 in my build (6 second reduction) since I am already traited in Illusionists Celerity (5% reduction) and the other skills have decently short cool downs already.

As for the comment on Illusionary Elasticity, I definitely enjoy this with the GS mirror blade, but also when I switch to staff, I tend to fight a little closer because I usually like to run around inside my own chaos storm for a bit if there is room. This lets me take advantage of the WoC bounce from my own auto-attack.

I probably should have clarified that I run this as a PVE build and have not done any testing with it in a PVP environment yet.

Again thanks for all the advice, I will look through all the comments and tweak out my build some more tonight. I appreciate all the help with my theorycrafting.

So after playing around with all weapon sets (I enjoy all of the weapon sets Mesmer has to offer), I found that greatsword/staff seems to fit my playstyle the best. Now where I am struggling is I keep going back and forth on my traits and so I was looking for some feedback which may help me come to a decision.

Generally I like to start with greatsword 2 then 4. This throws a mirror blade creating a clone, and drops the berserker to do some damage and cripple. I usually dodge after this to generate a 3rd illusion (I try to keep 3 up at all times to continuously proc sharper images). I generally throw mirror blade every time it’s off cool down (spike damage, conditions/buffs, and conditions/cripple from clone death are always a plus).

I try to carefully time my shatters based on how long I have before my illusion generating abilities are off cool down. For example, in the above rotation, I’ll generally shatter when GS 4 has maybe 3-5 seconds left before recast. This gives me enough time to quickly throw out more clones/phantasms without having to use mirror images (I use this more when I need a quick clone generation if my illusions go down faster than I can generate).

Depending on the fight, I may put more emphasis on the use of staff. Staff 5 + 2 for combo field bubble and clone, dodge for more clones (this time casting WoC). This usually leads to a lot of condition damage from WoC (myself and clones) and from sharper images. If I feel damage is lacking, I’ll throw in a staff 3 for good measure. It always feels nice to have a pack of WoC casting clones in a chaos field with an aegis boon.

I will often swap back and forth in a fight between greatsword/staff based on the situations I am faced with. I’ll use GS 3 and 5 if I need to remove a regen off target or if I need to give myself more space.

Below is the build I currently run (10,20,10,0,30), and while it works well, I still can’t decide whether I can optimize it more. The points that feel somewhat out of place are the 10 grandmaster points in illusions. While I enjoy contributing to the shatters and the utility of F3/F4 when in a pinch, I’m wondering if they’d be better spent in Domination or Chaos for damage or survivability.

Sorry for the long winded build explanation but any feedback, positive or negative, is appreciated.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fgAQJARWlwziq3UzoGaNJipCBHqHYX29dkKUalUMbXIA

Or if you choose the path to have him disguised as a certain woman, he references “her apples”.

Awesome character development with him.

I was looking to know a little more about the staff clones. I know that staff 2 produces a clone that casts winds of chaos. What I am not sure about (hoping to test tonight unless someone can confirm/deny) is whether or not clones created by dodge from the trait Deceptive Evasion will also cast winds of chaos in the same way? (and not just mimic the attack like the scepter clones)

Also, I was wondering if the conditions of the clones and winds of chaos will stack with the bleeds from sharper images. (e.g. clone crits producing bleeds and winds of chaos applies bleeds. Does this stack on the 1 attack?)

Let me know if anyone has been able to test any of these out or can give some feedback on how effective it can be.

There are some builds which take advantage of the clone spamming of the scepter. For example, several traits (debilitating dissipation and crippling dissipation) take advantage of clone deaths. So when a scepter user has 3 illusions (clones/phantasms) the 4th generation will kill one of the 3 existing illusions (clones if possible or phantasms if all 3 are phantasms). This lets the traits proc and apply AOE conditions to all nearby foes.

Honestly, any time you can keep 3 phantasms up you can probably use a different weapon’s auto-attack. The only time I think you can keep 3 phantasms up is in a large group where the phantasms don’t take aggro.

I personally can’t think of a benefit of using a scepter when you are using 3 phantasms as I think the weapon was designed for a different style of combat.

I don’t use the scepter as much anymore (GS/Sword/Pistol now), but I loved the way they handled the mechanic. My rotation with the scepter, often based on the situation, would involve pulling out 2 phantasms + 1 clone. Then using the scepter, I would consistently kill/recreate the clone. If a phantasm went down, I’d pull out another. This had great synergy with Debilitating Dissipation in that every time a new clone was generated (“killing” the existing clone), conditions would drop on any enemies near the target (AOE conditions). This helped spread conditions just as good if not better than winds of chaos on staff.

I think it all depends on your playing style and how you trait your class. The scepter as a weapon is build for pumping out clones and was designed more for shatter builds and condition building. Also, the trait crippling dissipation works nice with this if you’re trying to kite.

If the OP is looking for more of a phantasm build, then I would suggest a different weapon. (maybe sword & pistol/sword and staff).