Guild Wars 2

I would imagine that Necro you ran into was probably, a very, very, very, very good player. Because Necro’s against a warrior with the normal CC build is a tough fight, since we struggle to react to chain CC.

Either that or he just caught you off guard and he was a FULL zerker with rage on crit proc Necro that would put out some serious damage in an extremely short time frame

I’ve been an avid PvP’er since beta. I’ve played WvW extensively, sPvP, solo tournies and team tournies. This current meta is just frankly ridiculous, it seems to me that aNet are intent on dumbing this game down and giving people builds that are viable that shouldn’t be.

It’s almost like they are encouraging passive lazy play, low risk HIGH reward playstyles over people using builds that require some kind of rotation, timing of abilities and actual thought to their gameplay.

In solo tournies nearly every profession is some kind of condition bunker, with the exception of the odd S/D ele that’s scattered around and the occasional zerk thief. This is literally every single profession. I see Spirit Rangers that literally just spam Crossfire to stack bleeds and very little else. Thieves that will just spam Death Blossom to stack bleeds an nothing else, PU Mesmer builds that stack conditions just from AOE killing clones, Longbow wars, necros etc.. etc… it’s all just passive (no thought required) condition application. Condition via auto-attacks (ranger) or high bleed stacks from a thieves death blossom. Longbow/Hammer wars, Necros with condition burst, Engis in condition bunker builds. Point in case was the last match I played, where a rank 46 thief literally used NOTHING but death blossom and and at one point had 22 bleeds stacked on his target, I watched his target cleanse then immediately be loaded up with conditions from the thief and his death blossom spam.

How does that require any kind of thought or skill? It requires none. For aNet to have aspirations of this game becoming an e-sport, well it just beggars belief. For that to happen, they need to start moving away from meta’s like this where bunker condition builds like we see everyday reward lazy gameplay. It amazes me that there is no Risk vs Reward for any of these builds.

If you are capable of doing high condition damage you SHOULD be balanced by having weaker defense, not having toughness and vitality tacked on so you can just soak up damage whilst still pumping out high condition ticks. It should be HIGH OFFENCE from ANY source whether direct or in-direct is offset by WEAK DEFENSE. It shouldn’t be offset like is at the moment, by massive defense so your essentially a DPS tank, that can out-DPS pure power professions from sheer condition pressure and having high enough toughness/vitality to counter their burst, it makes no sense.

It seems like Risk/Reward only applies to none stealth burst builds which are vaguely viable, sure you might get the odd kill if you catch someone un-awares, but if your not a profession with a gimmick, well basically stealth, your screwed no matter how good you play, your essentially penalized for trying to play something that isn’t a condition bunker.

Stalefish.7615:

this is actually a pretty decent spread… granted eles are not even visable and mesmers are alittle lower BUT there is no proffesion wich is really over presented! and all in all a pretty okay spread!

Well mesmers are “op” as we keep getting told :p

I got told to leave a 1v1 server for using s PU Mesmer condition build :P

tattoohead.3217:

Loco.4561:

I’ve recently started playing my Necro in solo tPvP and I really love MM builds, not sure why, I just do I use Dagger/Warhorn for melee and Axe/Focus for range/kiting with Soldier and various different runes depending on role or what professions I’m fighting. I mostly run 20/0/20/30/0 or 30/0/20/20/0, more than normal I find myself sticking with 20/0/20/30/0 with fetid consumption as I really need the extra condition removal for this current meta.

Minion wise I use the norm, bone, shadow, worm and golem. I messed around with bone minions last night, Putrid Explosion is nice for an unblockable attack, seemed to be doing 1.5k – 2.2k on average per explosion, I found myself switching back to shadow because those bone fiends just die too quickly so I felt it was wasteful.

I am new compared to you guys so I might be getting this wrong, but healing power doesn’t seem to effect Vampiric Master at all, I did some testing in the mists with zero healing power on gear (rune/amulet) and it made no difference to the healing I was getting from minions. Am I correct on this? it doesn’t scale at all with healing power? If I look at healing Signet for warriors that’s a flat 400+ per second heal they get without even speccing into it, either that signet is grossly OP or Vampiric Master is grossly UP…not sure :P

I have noticed some annoyances, sometimes my minions will just stand there doing nothing while I’m getting beaten on, other times they will just randomly tear off across the map or take a completely bizarre route to get my location, the AI seems really buggy and the times when I’ve died is normally down to my minions bugging out.

I seem to do pretty well on point defense, I have problems with professions that can load conditions on me faster than I can clear them (even with minions drawing conditions), Condition Spirit Rangers can do this from literally just spamming crossfire and they can dump conditions on me faster than I can clean them. I struggle against really well played CC/Stun Warriors, the good ones seem impossible to kite and they have so much passive healing/defense that they are hard nut to crack. If I can peel and kite them then sometimes I win, but often I end up face down in the dirt lol like I said, I’m still learning, would definitely appreciate some advice from more experienced MM Necro’s out there,

Healing power does not effect any sort of drain life ability just your #6 atm. Oh if it did though lol… I would be immortal!

Haha yeah, that’s what I was thinking, so I stopped stacking it :P Oh and I’ve been moa’d before and was like wtf where are my minions, is it meant to be like that or??

I’ve recently started playing my Necro in solo tPvP and I really love MM builds, not sure why, I just do I use Dagger/Warhorn for melee and Axe/Focus for range/kiting with Soldier and various different runes depending on role or what professions I’m fighting. I mostly run 20/0/20/30/0 or 30/0/20/20/0, more than normal I find myself sticking with 20/0/20/30/0 with fetid consumption as I really need the extra condition removal for this current meta.

Minion wise I use the norm, bone, shadow, worm and golem. I messed around with bone minions last night, Putrid Explosion is nice for an unblockable attack, seemed to be doing 1.5k – 2.2k on average per explosion, I found myself switching back to shadow because those bone fiends just die too quickly so I felt it was wasteful.

I am new compared to you guys so I might be getting this wrong, but healing power doesn’t seem to effect Vampiric Master at all, I did some testing in the mists with zero healing power on gear (rune/amulet) and it made no difference to the healing I was getting from minions. Am I correct on this? it doesn’t scale at all with healing power? If I look at healing Signet for warriors that’s a flat 400+ per second heal they get without even speccing into it, either that signet is grossly OP or Vampiric Master is grossly UP…not sure :P

I have noticed some annoyances, sometimes my minions will just stand there doing nothing while I’m getting beaten on, other times they will just randomly tear off across the map or take a completely bizarre route to get my location, the AI seems really buggy and the times when I’ve died is normally down to my minions bugging out.

I seem to do pretty well on point defense, I have problems with professions that can load conditions on me faster than I can clear them (even with minions drawing conditions), Condition Spirit Rangers can do this from literally just spamming crossfire and they can dump conditions on me faster than I can clean them. I struggle against really well played CC/Stun Warriors, the good ones seem impossible to kite and they have so much passive healing/defense that they are hard nut to crack. If I can peel and kite them then sometimes I win, but often I end up face down in the dirt lol like I said, I’m still learning, would definitely appreciate some advice from more experienced MM Necro’s out there,

Honestly a match should be VOID if someone leaves/disconnects and the match is reset, everyone goes back to the queue, the position is back-filled or the match doens’t progress in an unbalance state. Simple.

shaolin.9716:

Pretty funny how people think they can ever force other people to play. If they don’t wanna play they’ll just afk. If somehow a system forces them to play they will just play like kitten on purpose.

The only real solution is to make the game as enjoyable as possible even for losing players to reduce the number of players who quit as much as possible but completely eliminating this issue is simply impossible.

Are you kidding me? Forcing people to play? This isn’t hotjoin, it’s tournie play, if you are NOT there to play and start immediately giving up when things look tough, you have NO PLACE in tournie play and should stick to hotjoin.

I’ve been doing nothing but tournaments lately and it shows just how cheesy some specs are and how they require the least amount of effort to be effective. This is highlighted by thieves, every single thief I’ve come across in solo tournies is using conditions and just literally spams death blossom with the odd other skill every now and then.

In what other game that offers “tournament” level play and certainly a game that’s aspiring to be an e-sport (which it never will be) has a profession who’s rotation involves spamming 3 until initiative runs low, stealthing then continuing to spam 3. If that does not tell you alone that this game requires very little skill and that in tournaments you can have a profession that effectively presses TWO buttons to be effective. It is BEYOND a joke and the perfect example of utter cheese and the things that are currently wrong.

Get rid of the cheesy specs, give people actual rotations to use and apply that may take some minor degree of skill.

The two professions I use in sPvP/tPvP are Mesmer and Necro, I play a power interrupt Mesmer and have no problems dealing with PU mesmers, hell I don’t even have any condition cleansing on my Mesmer and still do ok. I run power builds on my necro to and again, don’t have that much of a hard time dealing with PU Mesmer builds. But they are easy to counter once you understand how they apply their damage.

WvW is slightly different as you have a lot more room to move around so PU builds are harder to counter in WvW than they are in sPvP. I still run power/zerker builds for WvW and PU builds in themselves are not over the top, it’s this ridiculous condition meta that’s making various professions too powerful.

If your looking for a counter class for PU mesmers, either go full zerk burst and down them before they get a chance to stack up conditions on you (this tactic applies to any condition profession you face) or counter with another cheese condition build profession, either Engi, Necro, Ranger, Warrior or even P/D thief will do, basically anything that can apply cheesy conditions fast.

One good piece of advice, don’t spam AoE on the Mesmer & clones, the build is based around the clones being killed and applying various conditions on death, so try and focus damage on the Mesmer, just watch out for scepter 2 block and scepter 3 when they stealth.

I use traveler runes in WvW for my burst builds, I would not use them for the full condition PU builds, you lose too much condition damage. And you need more mobility on zerker/burst builds due to low survivability. As for catching runners, on the PU build I typically use Scepter/ Torch and Sword/Pistol. It’s quite rare for someone to get away from me and if they do, well meh it’s a win in my eyes.

As for your “hybrid” PU build, I see what your getting at, but’s it’s never going to be as viable/optimal as either a pure PU condition build, or a pure Power/Zerk build. PU builds in themselves are very good, you are probably thinking your hybrid build is good but in essence it’s the nature of the PU clone/condition spammer build which is good. If you went full condition damage, you would see even better results than your current hybrid build.

Quite why you are so obsessed with counter PU based mesmers I will never know. I come across PU condition mesmers in sPvP/tPvP when I’m running my interrupt zerker build, I don’t even have any condition removal I don’t think I’ve lost to a PU condition Mesmer yet. In general I find pure burst beats condition professions at the moment and if you know the tricks and how mesmers apply their damage, they are pretty easy to counter.

This is basically the same as the other PU builds out there, I personally run with Sword/Pistol and Scepter/Torch. The reasons are: For the immobilize on sword 3, pistol for stopping runners/CC in 1 vs Many fights, block from Scepter 2 and the burst from Torment/Burning & Scepter 3. It’s a more complete weapon set for me than using Staff, sure phase retreat is nice, but you have so much stealth you shouldn’t really need the mobility from staff, you can also use iLeap as a mini phase retreat too.

I always land torment, it’s just down to timing and using it in melee range so good players can’t see you visibly blocking.

I can’t obviously comment on the players you fought against, but I’m pretty sure you can’t beat as many people as you openly claim, pretty sure any competent condition Necro would beat you and show you exactly how devastating real condition burst can be.

Helios.3598:

I want to like mantras and I’ve tested them thoroughly in spvp. The nearly 3 seconds if inactivity due to mantra charging kills any usefulness mantras provide. Taking three mantras and attempting to charge them during and even fight and winning is impossible. When you charge a mantra you are both not doing damage and are allowing yourself to be hit for nearly 3 seconds. Most tuned burst build can drop you in 5 seconds in pvp. As for the cleanse and stability updates, they’ll need to increase the stability duration to get my interest.

Jportell makes the only positive point about mantras and that’s the PU buff. You can kind of getaway with charging mantras while stealthed. Yet, doing so still forces you to be inactive which reduces your dps and lightens the pressure on your opponent.

The only thing that would make mantras viable in pvp would be for them to make you invulnerable while you charge them. Another option would be to make the recharge passive. Essentially, once you’ve used up your charges and the CD wears off, the mantra will passively recharge on its own and would not be interrupted by anything you do.

This pretty much sums up the issues with mantras, it’s the downtime for having to charge an ability, that’s the time that your completely exposed and pretty much defenseless. If that charge get’s interrupted you have a few 5 seconds before you can even start to charge again. I’ve started running an interrupt build for sPvP with Mantra of Distraction and even with one mantra I feel slightly handicapped when i have to hide somewhere to charge it up :p

As helios quite rightly says, there needs to be something added to mantras to give something back when charging them, a simple change to Protected Mantras would be a good starting point, maybe to give you distortion or a % chance to gain distortion or reflection/block while charging the mantra.

This will be the third week that I won’t be even vaguely interested in WvW, another week of facing blob/zerg servers, little point in trying to roam in a small group, just get smashed by 30-40 “skilled” PvP’ers….. I’d quite like to fight Kodash again, some really nice roaming groups to fight against

Hi Chaos, I’ve just started trying this build in sPvP and well…I love it I like builds that take a bit more thought, I also play extremely aggressively so this build and counterplay suits me right to the ground. I still need to work on timing my interrupts/dazes better, but you can really mess up people’s rotations if you get it right. I seem to struggle against phantasm mesmers and really good zerker thieves, but that’s the case in my normal shatter build.

It’s definitely not optimal for fighting on point, but I’m finding it a fun build for current meta and it’s nice to do give those pesky stun warriors a taste of there own medicine I encourage people to at least try this build, you may be surprised

ResJudicator.7916:

BurrTheKing.8571:

apt.9184:

BurrTheKing.8571:

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

Dude get it out of your head warrior is not hard to play…. I see so many warriors now in high tier tourneys that perform near my level (been playing warrior since the start). Your suggesting what is already in the meta… Although pretty much all classes in meta are not to hard to play. The reason people are complaining is because low tier players can compete with higher tier players because of cheese specs carrying them.

We’ve had this argument before, no class in this game is that hard to play. Every build tends to have some sort of gimmick behind it. Even Engis and Eles have very clear combos that you aim to pull off the only initial challenge is the sheer amount of skills and that doesn’t take long to get over. I still maintain that Warriors are heavily dependent on managing their utilities and long cooldown skills effectively, one misuse of a key skill and you’ll find yourself in a bad spot. This is especially true with the condition removal/mitigation skills. Other classes have this as well but with Warriors being melee with no access to stealth or some of the mechanics Guardian has makes it have bit of a learning curve.

What class/build would you claim requires a lot of skill to play? I used to think Engi nades was hard to use but after a while I found that it wasn’t that bad once you get used to the travel time, and in the end all your doing is pointing and clicking. This game isn’t Counter Strike or any other game considered to have a high skill ceiling. At the end of the game this is 2rd person MMO combat, it can be fun but it it’s more about teamwork than it is about the difficulty of playing your class.

Maybe “high skill” isn’t the right phrase for it, but the risk-to-reward ratio is certainly not even between builds. I think that is what people mean when they say that some builds are “hard” or “easy.”

In other words, a build seems “easier” to play when you can mess up a good amount and still beat your opponent, who made far fewer mistakes.

For example, if you want to play a burst ele (and put out about as much pressure as a valk CC warrior), you are so squishy that you will die in a few hits. With a zerker jewel, a backstab + autoattack chain from a thief will kill you. A s/d thief will kill you with a few autoattacks or larcenous strikes. A shatter mesmer’s GS phantasm will take you down below half health in pass. This makes the class risky, or skill-intensive, to play. You need to always be aware of your surroundings (including the possibility of stealthed mesmers/thieves) and think ahead. You also need to be very, very fast on hitting your lightning flash (or arcane shield if you run with that as well). If you mess up, you will almost certainly die.

If you play the current valk amulet + unsuspecting foe CC build, you can afford to make many more mistakes. A backstab from a thief will take off about 20%-25% of your health. While you should obviously still pay attention and react quickly, failing to do so won’t guarantee your death.

Conversely, missing an updraft/earhquake on an ele puts the skill on a 40s cooldown. Missing a gale (focus air5) on an ele puts the skill on a 50s cooldown. Missing a skullcrack on a warrior means you have to wait 8s to try again. This, combined with the survivability issues discussed above, means you can miss more skullcracks as a warrior than you can miss earthquakes/updrafts/gales as an ele.

The complaint about this meta is that these “low risk” (i.e. “easy to play”) builds seem to be more rewarding than the “high risk” (i.e. “hard to play”) builds. Necros, spirit rangers, and phantasm mesmers in particular come across as being particularly low risk, high reward. While current CC warriors may counter necros and spirit rangers, they only exacerbate the whole “low risk, high reward” problem that people have.

What I would personally prefer is to give warriors, rangers, necros, and mesmers high-risk builds that outperform their low-risk builds when played competently. This gives players something to strive for and incentive to improve.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents. Thanks for considering these thoughts.

This absolutely hits the nail on the head and sums up the current problem and my exact thoughts on this current meta. Low Risk builds should never out-perform high risk builds, that is just plain unbalanced.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

One. Try doing one vs many without veil cooldown trait. It gets really kitten hard.

Two. In my personal opinion, I think mirror saves you a bunch from Full DPS range classes. you know how you were fighting a guy, and then you kill him, and you see a ranger jump on you from nowhere, and you have like 4k health? This mirror is a life saver in those situations, and those situations are so common when doing 1 vs 2 and more.

Rangers, or classes with range weapons are so common now. lol

My record was 1 vs 6 in my full zerk shatter build, NO VEIL COOLDOWN, in fact I didn’t even have veil slotted, I only slot it on the PU stealth/condition build. Positioning, timing blocks, timing stealth, timing burst is more important than a cooldown on veil…

Nice to see the SFR PvDoor crew in full force tonight, keep up your epic work!!! ^^

Red Falcon.8257:

How can people still be this uninformed on classes?

Ele’s mobility was nerfed because Ele can bunker.
Bunker+Mobility = no. Infact Guards/Necros have poor mobility too.

Warriors cannot bunker in the slightest, just like Thieves, so they rely on speed.
If they nerf War’s mobility, then War should be able to bunker.
And believe me you’d hate that a lot more than a runaway Warrior.

Do you even play the same game? Warriors can bunker while still pushing out more than respectable DPS, i duo WvW with a warrior who can do 17k hundred blades and he has over 3000 armor (can’t remember the exact number but it might even be 3500)… Tell him he can’t bunker lol

zencow.3651:

I’ve tried everything and it’s just not possible if the target is competent. The Hammer/Mace is just too much CC and the healing sig is just too healy and Cleasing Ire/Zerker Stance is just anti-Sigil of Doom poison or pathetic attempts at applying weakness/cripple with signet of RNG. You don’t even dent them with Zerker gear since they have such high toughness with Valkyrie yet they do Zerker damage on you while you’re stunned. And in hot-join you can’t even run away if they are Mace/GS or Hammer/LB.

Is there a secret way to beat them unassisted that I’m unaware of?

Warriors in the current meta are OP, I have the same issues, people will say you can just kite them, you cannot kite a competent warrior, they just shrug off your conditions/damage. Thjey have so much going in there favor. I’m going to ask a friend to duel me and see if I can figure out some way of beating one

Your most recent patch seems to have broken the game for me, GW2.EXE just locks up, have to goto task manager and end the task. Has done it 6 times so far tonight, anyone else experiencing this problem?

Wolfheart.1938:

The descendents of Gwen have one of the most pathetic warriorw I’ve ever seen. Keep it up, while your build allows you to. How Dogged March is allowed to stay the way it is for months is beyond me but whatever.

Guess you met my friend Imok, a very, very good warrior. What’s the matter couldn’t blob him down? lol

This is a great idea!!!

In-game: Mashup Bootleg
Server: Piken Square [EU]
Role: Unsure!!
Playstyle: WvW (some sPvP) Solo roaming/Small group. Multiple builds, zerker, zerker shatter, condition builds, build theorycrafting etc… duelling and teaching other players about builds.

What constitutes someone being a teacher/tutor?

I had the opportunity to duel a very, very good condition transfer Necro last night, one who used his flesh golem to CC then chain fear/burst you with conditions, incredibly difficult to deal with. I countered by using a staff/sceptre/torch condition build + Arcane Thievery, blink, decoy. Each fight was tough, I lost more than I won but I learned a lot. Winning against a really good necro for me meant, staying at max range (the most important point), keeping clones pumping out, abusing stealth and timing my arcane thievery use to “counter burst” him

You have to time it perfectly and hope arcane thievery does not bug out, but if it works, you transfer back some nice bleeds/torment and can land sceptre block + prestige burning you will likely down them.

Osicat demonstrates this Playstyle/movement perfectly in one his recent videos, I think it’s listed in this thread somewhere.

silentnight warrior.2714:

clipnotdone.9634:

One very legitimate complaint I rarely see brought up is the fact a Mesmer can be stealthed while phantasms land hits.
It promotes cheesey fighting by spaming phantasms and stealth.[/spoiler]

That is so true.

And how is that any different from any other class that can stealth and channel an attack???? Thieves abuse this more than any other profession and yet you wine about a mesmer doing it.

Are you people insane?? iDuelest doing as much damage as a thief’s unload? Spatial Surge doing as much damage as eviscerate? If anything mesmer DPS needs a BUFF and no i’m not kidding.

I was roaming WvW the other night with a Mace + Shield/GS warrior who ran me through his stats., his gear was a mix of zerker, knights and cavalier. This guy had mobility, a ton of armour, could CC, could escape every single engagement we got into with his mobility and was still out damaging my FULL zerker shatter Mesmer. I certainly hope this is just a rumor, I already have to use a different profession for our roaming groups because my Mesmer is so kitten slow they have to wait for me to catch up.

I just don’t understand the continued crusade against mesmers, the constant stream of nerfs when you have warriors currently running rampant with there new OP spec, thieves still broken with their current stealth mechanic and bugs that need fixing before you look at slamming on more nerfs. I honestly believe that it’s just more horrible players complaining because they still can’t tell the difference between the real mesmer and his clones and cry nerf!!

And if you want to see what someone can really do with conditions watch a really good condition necro, ranger or even Engi do their thing.

i did wonder where my guildmate went!! Game crashed, can’t login!!! Piken Square [EU]

i just don’t understand how giving mesmers and guardians an out of combat speed boost to be in any way OP, all people are asking is to be brought up to speed with the 6 professions that have out of combat speed options.

I know this topic has been done to death, but I have recently joined a guild specifically for small group roaming and its highlighted just how slow mesmers are compared to other professions. Group composition tends to be Engineer, Thief or warrior. The engi has speedy kits for permanent swiftness, thief with signet and warrior with the new buffed speed trait 25% and mobility from GS + utils.

It’s extremely frustrating, even when using a focus which isn’t part of my build (having to hard change before fights and focus swiftness does not even stack) I can’t keep up, they are having to wait for me to catch up. I also should also not be expected to change out to certain runes just to get a speed increase at the detriment of my build/performance.

I really enjoy my mesmer but I’m starting to become a burden to the group so reluctantly may have to shelve my mesmer in favour of a profession that has equal mobility as the group. So anet, are you finally going to give mesmer some way of keeping up with nearly every other profession in the game? or do I have to retire my favourite profession or play something else just to do something as basic as….keep up.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

I can get behind the dodge binding idea. Shaky fingers and unexpected twitches tend to lead me to double-tapping keys more than I’d like. I’ve had to unbind double-tap to dodge so it needs to be someplace I can reach quickly. As my joints get worse, I’m also glad I’ve got my Naga.

Phantasmal Defender is still something I turn to from time to time. He’s no longer the retaliation damage farm he used to be, but he’s still a nice bag of health. Decoy is nice. I also favor my staff. Sadly, both of those last two will kill a phantie when you’re at 3.

And then I get frustrated and blow the whole load on a shatter. Because sometimes I just want to see the world burn in an eruption of purple butterflies. … Admittedly, I’m not very good at this whole phantasm thing.

Maybe a different build would be better? Have you seen any of Osicat’s Builds?

As others have said, Decoy/Mass Invis + Blink or changing direction (misdirection) can help as well as key binding your key utilities/abilities. Every single one of my key abilities is either bound to mouse buttons or specific keys, it really does help a lot.

I either solo or small group roam (no more than 5 players), I use either a full zerker shatter build with GS + Sword/Pistol or Prismatic Condition build which is basically Osi’s Condition Cat 2.0 build.

Condition Cat (I’ll refer to that as everyone knows that build by know) is a great defensive build, it’s basically an attrition build with some burst from Torment/Prestige Burning if you can land both. The survivability feels amazing, you have mobility from Blink/Phase Retreat and access to 4 stealth’s that provide boons. I echo other peoples sentiments, this build is literally unkillable to anything other than a really well played condition Necro, as you have limited condition cleansing available outside of The Prestige, good necros will wait for you to switch back to staff before dumping conditions on you. I honestly expect this build to be toned down in some way in the near future, I regularly go against groups of upto 5 with this build and have enough confidence in the build to know I can escape from all but most situations.

I personally prefer my Zerk shatter build, without offending the people that play the condition cat builds, I think the skill cap is a lot higher. You have hardly any defense through gear (I do use zerk/valk accessories to bring my vitality up), so you have to pay attention to you surroundings and constantly be ready to evade/dodge/blink/decoy if you get jumped as you will take a lot of damage. The trade off is decent burst (nowhere near as good as thief/war), enough to one-shot some players (if they are full zerk) or at least get them on the defensive if you take off over 50% of their health in your first rotation. I use Decoy, Blink and Arcane Thievery and Mass Invis as my utils, Arcane Thievery serves as a condition dump or a boon steal if someone pops swift/stability and tries to escape (not many do get away) I have CC from Sword 3,Magic Bullet, iZerker, not to mention an interrupt on demand and guaranteed stomps through shatter 4. I have decoy + mass invis if i need to try and get away. It really isn’t for the faint of heart though as you will take a LOT of damage, thieves especially can cause you problems as well as skull-cracker warriors if your defensive utils are both down. I actually do better against condition builds with this spec as my vital pool is higher (since toughness as no effect on condition damage) and I can dump conditions with Arcane Thievery. It can be a lot of fun and with great risk comes great reward, I took down a guild group of 6 (level 80) players with this build, I played like a beast though

Ultimately it’s down to you which playstyle you prefer, if you can’t afford to pay for the gear to test these builds in WvW, you can try them out in sPvP to at least get a feel for the playstyle, bear in mind that sPvP and WvW are very different, but try things out.

gotem.5284:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

gotem.5284:

Play the stealth/condi spec. Stealth in this game is beyond broken and it would be dumb not to abuse it.

Its broken on thieves, its balanced on Mesmers. As we cant go into stealth every 4 seconds, we cant burst from stealth as an opener either

As the fight continues on that can be true however the first 30-45 seconds of a fight mesmers are just as strong as thieves when it comes to stealthing. You can cycle through torch stealth, decoy, veil, mass invis and stealth just as many times as a thief can. Staff is a great weapon to stay alive while waiting for torch and decoy to cycle back in.

This amount of restealthing abilities is more than enough to survive for a long time. I’ve played this spec for 1.5 months now and when I group with my 2 thief friends the amount of zerg harass we can do without being touched is incredible.

While a mesmer does have pretty good stealth options using the Prismatic build, you cannot keep up with a thief for stealth.

And Elona’s Reach, ganking players trying to duel behind the windmill, what the kitten is wrong with you, 5 times you ganked people then /laugh at them.

SFR do you really need to camp the PS spawn in your own borders? There are 2 of us, you zerg us with 25-30 then corpse jump, real pro skills, should be proud ^^

Literally being the only PS player in Abaddon’s borders, fighting 2 deso players at Victors, downing one of them, then starting on the other just for 25+ Abadd’s to turn up, zerg me then corpse jump / laugh. About sums up this week I think ^^

To [UNIT] Desolation, seriously? Why couldn’t you just let me 1v1 your group member did it really need 5 of you to gank me then jump on my corpse. The kittenty sportsmanship on your server is what makes people think you are all just a blobby bunch of kittens.

I’m just one SOLO player trying to get some good fights out of this horrible blobfest matchup.

It’s 9.30am in the morning and I’m being chased across Blobbadon’s borders by 30+ players, I can tell it’s going to be a fun week (not).

I think I’ll sit this blobfest out.

Deniara Devious.3948:

genowefapigwa.5769:

Deso do you have guilds or are you like Visunah ?:)

I would still claim we got some of the best non-thief solo roamers.

After this statement I was expecting more hoping for some quality fights but Most Deso players run from my solo mesmer, they only turn around when they get reinforcements. Those that don’t run, seem inexperienced and don’t provide much of a challenge. Not sure where your “best non-thief solo roamers” are, maybe they stay in certain borders?

Well I hope I come across some this week, otherwise it’s going to be very, very boring.

/sigh Quite happily 1v1’ing Deso players by the windmill and players from the Deso (LION) guild decide to start ganking for cheap kills. Seriously, if you can’t get kills of your own Deso, don’t start disrupting 1v1’s with players on your own server, just makes you look like a bunch of idiots.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Silinsar.6298:

Deniara Devious.3948:

I would still claim we got some of the best non-thief solo roamers.

Looking forward to meet them. Which maps do they prefer?

I think you will find most of them in borderland maps. Best bet would be Desolation BL, but any BL is good. If you find guys with Team Paradigm tag, you know they are good (they are the best / highest ranked tpvp players). [GODS] is also good. I am myself from [TLA].

I am not into pre-planned dueling. If somebody gets on my way, surely I defend and attack. I am actually doing points for my server and providing intel in TeamSpeak or map chat. Two supply camps is worth the same as one tower. Denying supply from enemy is important. Each sentry is 1 point. Quaggans, Hyleks, Ogres and Dredge are good at contesting enemy objectives.

Warning: If you plan to gank our solo roamers with a group, don’t do that to me or so that I see it happening to one of my friends, because so far I have always been able revenge that. Losing 1 vs 1 is all fair and usually worth a /bow. Usually revenge agaisnt cowardly enemy groups comes quickly (in < 30 minutes I will be collecting loot bags from those who attacked me). But sometimes sweet revenge let’s to wait a bit. E.g. last match up certain AR 20-man team was chasing me underwater and finally got me killed. I saw on the following day the same guild tag 5-man group trying to capture same Visunah supply camp. I downed couple of them at range and for some reason they didn’t even notice me (I play an engineer!). Then 2 allies came in, so I wasn’t alone anymore. They all got wiped, despite they had the numbers. Obviously we got the camp.

So far all I’ve seen from Deso “roamers” is bad sportsmanship, thief duo/trio last night running around ganking solo players then corpse jumping. Deso players using baiting tactics to lure players then gank them corpse jump & laugh at them. Hardly behaviour befitting “some of the best non thief solo roamers” and the first time probably ever, I saw people complaining about Deso players camping a Jumping Puzzle. Not to mention the ranger that ran 1v1, Warrior that ran 1v1, Ele that ran into the tower and jumped on an AC. Another warrior that kept on running in and out of the tower etc… etc…

I will be honest and I actually think out of all the servers I have faced and all I do is solo roam or small group. Kodash has some of the best solo roamers I’ve fought against thief and non-thief I’m looking forward to fighting them more than Deso.

Many congratulations to SFR who feel the need to field 30-40+ to dispatch our brave group of 5 players who dare to capture anything in ER borders. Special mention goes to XAOC’s spawn camping thieves!! Who know that if we even attempt to fight back, we will just get smashed to pieces by the aforementioned 30-40+ player zerg that seem to be on standby just to smash any brave pikeneers who dare to try and fight back!!!

This show’s that bolster is out of whack, but seriously if I lost to a level 10 anything in WvW, I would probably delete my character and play something else lol

Kudos for playing a different build, some of your opponents were not the greatest, most noticeably, that Ele was pretty terrible. Netherless, you do have some skill on your Mesmer, but I still see to many drawbacks with Mantra builds to think they would be viable for what I do, which is solo/small group roaming.

A bit of humility might go a long way, there will always be someone who will be better than you or knows more about something than you, learn from others, everyone has something you can learn from. I used to think the build I used to run was pretty top-notch, quite happily run around WvW beating nearly every player I came across, then I duelled a phantasm/retal Mesmer and lost every single fight, he was simply better than me, but taught some really valuable lessons.

Thankyou to the FR guild PEUR for providing me with my favourite screenshot of the month and most enjoyable fight for a while. The 6th player is out of camera shot unfortunately, maybe next time you wont try and gank my solo Mesmer!

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9272/sp3j.jpg

I’ve duelled quite a few bunker guards, the key is to keep constant pressure on them and INTERUPT that main big heal. With that first build you posted, you have 3 sources of interrupt, F3 Shatter, Pistol 5 and Chaos storm. You can also save Arcane Thievery for when they pop stability or regen. If you get them on the back foot, interrupt that heal they can actually be quite easy to take down.

Seven plays a different style and is quite defensive in his Playstyle. I was very impressed with your videos, one thing that you have in common with the other exceptional mesmers out there is positional play. You can see in your videos your movement, use of terrain, line of sight, Osicat and seven do this too, any player regardless of profession can get some great tips from your videos.

I would imagine this build is not for the faint hearted, going full zerker in WvW can be very unforgiving. I have a great deal of success on my current condition/shatter hybrid solo roaming, but will definitely try a full zerker spec.

The only question I have is around how you deal with conditions, is this your primary reason for using arcane thievery?? To offload conditions?? Or are you relying on your burst to down a target before they can apply a significant amount of conditions on you??

ZudetGambeous.9573:

CryxTryx.9208:

So I guess my question is, why does it anger you to see other people trivialize their own game playing expirience?

It angers me because a legit alternative to making money instead of CoF farming doing something I like (JP’s) was nerfed because of this skill.

It angers me because I can work with a small team for 20 minutes to take a keep in WvW just to have to flooded with an enemy zerg because of this skill.

So it has nothing to do with players trivializing their own experience, they are actively making my experience worse.

I have to respond here to your comment regarding WvW. If you guys take a tower/keep and do NOT sweep for mesmers, it is entirely your fault if it gets recapped via portal. It is not the skill being at fault. Do not call for a skill to be nerfed/banned because of laziness.

Godmoney.2048:

Loco.4561:

aNet will NEVER increase the damage on Torment, because the same people who cried about confusion would cry about torment. aNet seems to cater for those lazy players who rather than not attacking (confusion) or not moving (Torment) would rather keep the ability to press 222222 until their fingers bleed.

The continual dumbing down of anything that requires any kind of thought to use or gives a penalty to a player is being removed from this game to cater for casual, lazy players. A shame really.

Are you kitten kidding me? You want it to hit harder than 11k? WTF.

I got to say some of your peoples whining is just silly. I would go so far as to say you’re bad and you should feel bad for being so bad, but I’ll stop short and say you should practice more.

Serious, if these changes really keep you from owning face then that’s your problem not Anet’s.

Buff Torments damage even more? That’s insane that you would even ask that. My torment takes people to below half health already.

I’m starting to lose patience with this complaining. It’s obvious that people haven’t even tried torment yet. There is no way a rational person could be asking for a damage buff on it unless they are completely clueless.

Did you even read what I said before you went on this angry little rant? I said aNet will NOT increase torment damage, I was NOT asking for an increase in damage.

I’m starting to lose patience with people like you, not reading something and then going crazy. My point still stands, damage won’t be increased on any reactive condition because aNet wants to make it easy on casual players who don’t bother to counter.

And I had NO problem dealing with confusion Mesmer’s / Engi’s pre-patch, I use cleanses when they stack confusion or I disengage and don’t spam attacks (turn of autoattack on ability 1). It was simple to counter, but people were not prepared to put time/effort into thinking on how to counter it.

If they buffed Torment, Condition Necro’s would be pushed into the realms of OP with the DS Torment + Terror + 7 Second Fear build.

LastDay.3524:

Do you guys remember when people called 100 Blades Warriors OP in sPvP?

Fear is removed by both Condition removal AND Stunbreaks.
Once people learn to let the Necro land 2 or 3 Fears before using their Stunbreaks it’ll make the fights look very different.

Not to mention that people keep running into Spectral walls for no reason.
They’ll eventually learn that “WALL = BAD” and just Shadowstep or dodge roll through them.

However I do think that there’s something that was probably unintended.
I think that Dhuumfire’s problem is that it was probably meant to bring up Hybrid builds, but now you see Rabid Fear builds running it.

I’m guessing that Anet valued +50% Fear Duration as more important than it really is.
Personally I didn’t imagine people would just skip it, either.
It’s a great trait, but the Condition duration from Spite traitline just makes it lose value.

If that wasn’t possible then you’d have to trade Greater Marks for Dhuumfire, which would make landing Reaper’s Mark rather tricky as it’d not only be a small mark but also blockable.

IF Anet decides that the build needs a Nerf then I’d like to just see the trait positions changed.
Dhuumfire by itself isn’t OP, and I doubt Terror by itself is either, as it has simple counters.

Here’s an example (disregarding trait name themes etc):
Dhuumfire -> Grandmaster Blood Magic trait
I don’t think many use Fetid Consumption and Blood Magic is an OK trait tree for Hybrids but could use a bit of extra love.

Master of Terror -> Grandmaster Curses trait
It’s a build defining trait.
Why it’s not Grandmaster already I don’t really know.

With those two changes Hybrids would have relatively easy access to Dhuumfire but it’d be in an absolutely horrible spot for Fear builds.
If you went 30 Curses and 30 Blood magic you wouldn’t have enough trait points for increasing Fear’s duration.

Again, that’s just an example of how IF it’s a problem the two could be separated.

The problem you have is, aNet do not seem to take player skill or lack of skill into equation. Same thing happened with Confusion, people cried because they couldn’t keep spamming through it without even attempting to either cleanse or just stop attacking, so aNet nerfed it. I would imagine they will do the same with the fear builds. Because people don’t like to use stun-breaks or it’s do difficult to avoid a wall.

I do have a Necro, it’s not my main but I have been playing around with it since the patch. I have also been on my main characters and I am glad Necro’s have been buffed to a point where they are ON PAR with some professions, I welcome the challenge, I also use stun-breaks and can avoid walls :P