Guild Wars 2

Swish.2463:

The traits rework and re shifting of Stats to Gear only is also of great concern to me as a Mesmer. As a Trait bound class, we’re not getting More or Better options out of this deal.. In fact we will receive Less than what is currently available.

Could you elaborate on this, as I’m sure I’m not alone in not getting why you think this is the case. Aren’t all classes “Trait bound?” Why are we getting less than what is currently available, as on the face of it, we get more choices in terms of stats per build?

As far as revenant, you are right in that this will be an exact replay of the Deathknight fiasco in World of Warcraft. The new class is the pet project of the devs, designed to let PvE’ers run around in god mode and feel awesome on their new class, while in PvP everyone from mindless button mashers to skilled mechanic abusers will be rampaging and roflstomping everyone. The broken OP’ness will last at minimum 6-8 months until some big balance patch to deal with the unbalanced madness they have released. Despite this, however, I will continue to weather the storm on my faithful mesmer. For me the questions is why play GW if not on a mesmer.

I think it depends on the build. If it is d/p and they are using that pistol heart seeker combo to get back into stealth, you actually can get pretty reliable at interrupting that. Basically you see them throw down the field right at their feet, wait a tad (just takes practice to learn the timing) and hit them with a daze (say MoD) as they heartseeker. Most stand there like idiots for a sec and eat your burst, or they reflexively dodge, or they start mashing their other abilities. Either way it really levels the playing field IF you are also zerk and can quickly capitalize on it.

That’s one tip that works for me in some cases. As others have said, there are some thief builds that really do just hard counter zerk mesmer. But really that’s as it should be, builds have counters, and for us as mesmers that counter usually takes the form of a thief.

As others have also said, if you want to build specifically to beat thieves you can, but then you will have other weaknesses. I know you asked for specific advice about beating thieves, but I hope you take the following seriously: In the PvP ecosystem thieves just eat us, as we eat other classes. Just accept it, try to laugh, or at least not let it get you to, when a thief insta-gibs you, and get back to kicking kitten and enjoying your mesmer. I think in this game trying to have a class/build that just dominates every other class/build you encounter makes for a less enjoyable experience.

Yunalesca.9850:

I think you got it wrong. One new GM trait will be Master of Fragmentation which somehow improves all four shatter skills.
And as an example WM is shown here and it seems we get confusion and might added to MW with this GM trait so you now deal dmg with MW AND confusion and you get one stack might.

So nothing wrong here. ^-^

It seems they generally moved a few trait from one line to another;
Domination is still for interrupting, vulnerability stacking and direct dmg;
Dueling still is for sword and pistol, also we get a few things for evasion (DE is grandmaster trait now.) Also get a new “on crit” trait which will put us back on the confusion train it seems;
Chaos is about boons and boon duration, added a damage reflection for manipulation skills. Anything else seems to be how and where it was;
Inspiration buffes phantasms and glamour spells. Illusionary Inspiration seems nice;
Finally Illusions still is about shatter and they added a “torment on confusion”- trait, I think they want to push mesmer a bit more in direction of confusion again.

Overall the changes all seem nice and we’ll see how it goes.

Oohhh, ok thanks. Super late here, my bad. Apologies for causing Fay’s panties to bunch up; oh the calamity of a silly thread! Anyways, thanks for clearing this up for me, this makes sense.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Updated main post with DUlfy’s tl;dr.

(rip pve)

Anyone else kittening notice that Mind Wrack is now a GM trait? Click on the illusions link…

Forgive me for freaking out, but with all the celebrations over IP being baseline etc. did anyone else notice that they seem to have made MW a GM train in illusions?

Go to the reddit page of notes here
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33qrg0/specialization_ama_livestream_notes/

and click on the image for the illusion trait line, or click here http://i.imgur.com/h7a0WHQ.jpg.

I mean… what the fuuuuuuq? Yay we all get IP! Oh wait, but now we need to get a GM in illusions to use MW?! Not a good trade imo. Ofc always have to read the fine kittening print with Anet. Thought this was all too good to be true. As I said apologies for wigging out on this, but I think this is just stupid.

Not sure if anyone caught this little tidbit, but it sure jumped right out at me:

“I’m personally excited about a grandmaster trait that has the power to grant my character a defiance bar!” (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-two-reward-tracks-and-elite-specializations/)

D:

Fay.2357:

If you look through my posts carefully, you’ll notice that I never actually said that mesmer can’t do hybrid. I just pointed out a lot of reasons why hybrid builds often aren’t very good, and then finished with recommendations as to a direction to go for a more effective hybrid build.

I didn’t provide those recommendations in the original post because the smallest modification to the shown build was a slight stat change, compared with drastically changing weapon choices.

What did I say: You can’t make an argument against a hybrid build based on stats alone. Yes I did not provide justification of roughly equating points in condi dmg and power, of course neither did you do the opposite, for the reasons you mentioned: That when it comes down to reality there are too many variables to make anything like that precise at all. What I can say though is what I did say and what I’ll say again: Simply saying one stat is too low is not enough to make a complete comment on a build, and in fact can be misleading.

If you had said in your first post, “You don’t have enough ways to effectively apply conditions to take advantage of that 515 condi dmg, and so you should just drop it for more power focused stats instead,” then I would not have written anything honestly.

Again, my point is: One cannot make an argument based solely on stats against any hybrid build. That’s it. While all the nuance in your later posts is appreciated, I guarantee you none of that comes across implicitly to a new player like the OP in your first post. In fact from your responses to me I can tell there is no achievable amount of stat tweaking that would make the OP’s build make sense as a hybrid build to you (or anyone really) because the problem isn’t the stats, its the application as you said. So that is what you should say. If you mention stats alone it is misleading, as I said.

Fay.2357:

MSFone.3026:

Damage stats scale linearly

-snip-

Unfortunately, this is a case of abusing math to obtain an improper result.

The equations you list are linear in x, just so everyone is clear. So what is my improper result? I said: “From a stats perspective” hybrid is fine. Everything you wrote supports that claim. In fact, your analysis using “Math Based Diminishing Return” implies that it is always more efficient to increase your lowest dmg stat, if you are concerned with % efficiency gain per stat point. If you want to make it, it is an argument for choosing hybrid stats.

You go on to sort of explain that choosing skills matter and how you apply them etc., which is fine, and yet look at your first post. You say 515 condi dmg is too little and that’s basically it, even though it’s a gain of over 50% over not having any in the case of bleeds for example. What’s more, your MBDR’s measure going from 0 in a stat to anything as an infinite gain in % efficiency. More concrete, going from 100 condi to 500 is a 500% gain. Putting that extra 400 into power will be much less efficient in terms of % gain in dmg. This is why talking about % gain can be misleading.

So if you want to make the claim that hybrid is ineffective based on ability to apply both types of dmg effectively in a build, go on and say that. But you didn’t, and the post after you also didn’t, which is why I made my post stating that from a stats perspective there is no argument against hybrid. In fact as I just showed, your post states that from a strictly stat perspective, it is almost always more efficient in percentage terms to allocate hybrid in dmg stats.

That’s all I’m saying: If someone posts a hybrid build, commenting and knocking it based on stats alone is incorrect.

Edit: Realized I ignored your last two paragraphs. This general statement about poor ways to do both is again some kind of implicit nonlinearity, in that having 1 or 2 condi applications and 1 or 2 power applications is less effective that 2-4 power or 2-4 condi (numbers for illustration only). Now you may be right, but to prove it you need some evidence to back up your claim. Basically saying it is impossible to build in a way that effectively applies condition and power dmg is pretty wild without providing any real arguments.

It’s kind of weird that in your last paragraph you actually start giving examples of tools we have that are in fact good at both types of dmg. So are you saying one can’t effectively build for hybrid trait wise or weapon wise? One could go scepter/torch + sword/pistol for example. Even great sword can be a good hybrid weapon, as the clones from it are the best ones at applying bleeds due to the GS auto attack. Traits I don’t see any obvious issue, but correct me if there is.

So ya, in your first post you use only stats, and in your response to mine you make some general claim about mesmers being unable to build effectively for hybrid, and also say that stats aren’t really the issue in going hybrid. You’ve done this before, and it’s misinformation, which coming from you is surprising. Given your reputation as a source of reliable info, I think you should either refine your arguments against hybrid into something coherent or stop making them.

I have to chime in as the above erroneous thinking is a pet peeve of mine:

515 condi dmg, while not that much, is not different from having about 515 extra power dmg. Yes it is a little different because of coefficients on skills etc., but the point is, and everyone really needs to accept this when discussing hybrid dmg:

Damage stats scale linearly

This is according to https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation , which if it’s wrong I guess kitten me and apologies to all for what follows.

For less mathy types, what this means is that the difference between 1000 power and 1500 power is exactly the same as the difference going from 1500 power to 2000 power. Same goes for condition dmg.

When anyone tells you, as many do, that for example 700 condi dmg and 1600 power is useless because your conditions are weak and your power dmg is weak, they are implicitly claiming dmg is nonlinear, because what they are implying is that the dmg coming from that 700 condi dmg is less than the dmg that would come from an extra 700 power.

Your 500 condi dmg does just as much dmg above 0 condi dmg as someone with 2000 condi dmg does above having 1500.

Now, someone could get really down and dirty with exact skill coefficients if they wanted to, and yes those determine how the dmg stats actually translate into dmg, but condi and power are at least roughly equivalent, in that someone with 1000 condi dmg and 1000 power deals about the same dmg as someone with 2000 condi dmg or 2000 power alone.

If you have the variety of skills to apply both direct and condi dmg, which mesmer is certainly capable of having, the argument that neither your condis not your direct dmg will hurt the enemy is flat out wrong. Yes, alone either of them won’t do much, but because dmg scales linearly the dmg from both added together will hurt your target, very much, in fact about just as much as if you focused on one stat alone.

So, from a stats perspective, hybrid is perfectly fine. Whether or not we have the skills and traits to optimally pull it off and deliver the dmg from those hybrid stats is another discussion (I think we do).

You could put an ICD on it if it really proved to be OP, which it wouldn’t.

Landing an interrupt is at least as hard to reliably do as a full IP shatter, the latter of which can 1 shot people and this never would. There is no way this would be remotely as strong a GM as IP for burst.

And yes, anyone who took IP+6 in dom would be bad without DE and die a lot; non-issue.

Carighan.6758:

Vague Memory.2817:

Mesmers are probably the least favoured class among the devs, they have shown this time and again.

Ah, the good ol’ “The devs hate us”-wristing.
Always a favorite of MMO players everywhere because it does essentially the same thing religious omnipotent beings did for people in ages past to explain natural phenoma like lightning or tidal waves.

“Ofc we don’t get buffs, I mean, the devs hate us!” Easier than having to admit we frankly don’t know why we’re not getting buffed, false as it will be.
(Devs have much better things to do with their time, like developing or getting a coffee or heading home to their families early, than hating on single classes or favoring the others.)

Also remember Ghostcrawler in WoW. When he left, people asked whether he could finally talk about his ingame account, and what he plays. Because for years, people were certain that classes were being favored “Because GC plays them”, and specs like Holy Priest or Resto Shaman went essentially forgotten for entire expansions because GC hates them.
His reply? Holy Priest. Been his main ever since he started. Also makes sense, given the need to avoid personal favorites accusations. So the one spec people were sure the devs just forgot about for the most part, yep, personal main of the lead.

It’s not that devs hate [our class], just that they don’t have a clue wtf they are doing with it. They took GW1 mesmer, changed everything except the names of some skills and created a clone spamming “1v1 ranged dmg dealer.” I think a strong case can be made that the devs do not know what to do with our class or even what the mesmer is supposed to be in GW2 and that is why we aren’t getting the buffs/changes/fixes most players think we should be.

I mean seriously a kittening shield?

Anet Lack of Transparency [regarding just about everything important to our class].

What is new here and what could possibly come from discussing this?

In my experience it is often the case that a lack of coherent explanation for the actions of someone or some organization comes from the inability to provide it. In other words, when a person or team is totally incompetent in some of their actions, don’t expect a coherent explanation of those actions because they aren’t able to give you one!

News flash: Anet is incompetent when it comes to mesmers.

Yeah it would be really sweet if us posting stuff made Anet fix all our bugged out or useless crap, without making it worse…but it hasn’t worked that way so far. However they do seem willing to add new stuff, so hey.

This trait combined with Halting Strike would still be nowhere near the burst possible with IP, and that is a perfectly fine GM so why not this one? You’d have to go 6 into Dom to get it, so a 6/4/x/x/x, which isn’t going to be super optimal.

In this game an interrupt build will never be OP, and I think it should be possible to nail someone for 3-4 dmg with a daze interrupt via this trait plus HS. It would increase the utility of MoD, making it possible to use for a little added spike when going for a kill, which I think would be sweet.

Deal damage when you daze a target.

I would take this over any other Dom GM. Thoughts?

Xaylin.1860:

Making it +1s Daze duration instead of +25% is long overdue when considering the quite low duration on most Dazes available to Mesmers. While I get that the +50% change to stun is bad due to RNG I feel that +1s Daze duration alone would lack flavour.

The question is: What else potentially build defining could CS do? I’d rather not see Slow or Chill there although it would have fit Domination. Stuff like that should stay with CI. Same goes for Cripple. There’s still Weakness and while I would love a better access to it I’d rather see it being something more exclusive to Necromancers.

I had two more ideas.

Version 1

• +1s Daze duration
• Deal 5% additional damage to vulnerable targets

Offers great synergy with the Domination traitline but is rather boring. Also, the additional damage should probably be Wastrels Punishment but who knows if ANet ever changes it.

Version 2

• +1s Daze duration
• Continuously deal damage to dazed foes (see Terror)

I personally really like that one.

Both of these are orders of magnitude better than current CS. I’d absolutely love either of these, kitten I hope Anet changes this stupid trait.

Having mantras auto charge, passively gaining one charge every X seconds would be a nice QoL change for us.

Also yes, elite mantra would be great.

Xaylin.1860:

What about…

• +1s Daze duration
• 50% chance to stun your target for 1s when your Dazes expire

That would be nasty.

Just +1 sec daze duration would make it a great trait. 2 sec dazes would be an awesome GM, forget the stun altogether. Really just get the kittening stupid kitten rng out of all our kittening traits.

Hey man way to do something different, I really enjoyed your vid! The music was good and the fights were good too. Made me want to try this out. Thanks for posting.

Ya thats fine to say, but a necro is still basically a necro, warriors are still warriors, rangers are still rangers, they all have the same basic class philosophy in place. Mesmers are not still Mesmers, our entire class philosophy was changed. We used to be all about controlling the opponent, now our primary meta build is built around stealth and exploding clones, there is no controlling the opponent like in GW1. So ya this is a new game, but our class is the only one that got essentially changed to a new class, with mostly skills names being the similarity with old mesmer.

Zenith.7301:

Menaka.5092:

Zenith.7301:

Hell they could simply place an icd on the chaos storm daze of like 2 or 3 seconds

please, don’t

Please leave a mechanic that kills build variety and strangles the design of other skills for the mesmer. Especially if it helps my preferred 1v1 roaming build at the expense of the skill being useless everywhere else. As in, a weapon completely kitten in spvp and pve and even zerg wvw.

I don’t know if you are complaining about Chaos Storm or staff or what, but this weapon is not kitten nor is chaos storm kitten . Here is why I like chaos storm with it’s current chance to daze 4ish times in a row: with halting strike people can die in a chaos storm, I see it happen often enough to love chaos storm.

Thing is people can move out of it while dazed, only the button mashing morons die in it. If it were a stun with no cd, they would be perm stunned in there, which would rightfully be complained about.

Nretep.2564:

We don’t know if it’s intentional, but that’s the current mechanic.

Illusions inherit:

• Power
• Precision
• Condition damage (malice)
• Critical damage
• Toughness
• Healing Power
• Condition duration
• Boon duration

Illusions don’t inherit:

• Vitality
• Critical chance
• + x% Damage (traits, buffs, skills, sigils, runes)
• Weapon Power

Does this apply to shatters as well, i.e. does EM buff shatter dmg?

Being pretty open to the many world hypothesis of quantum mechanics (aka multiverse), whereby every possible event is realized in some universe, I’d have no problem with this. If every time I shatter a clone it is banished to some universe or whatever to be sad, there are already an infinity of universes where a copy of me is sad in an infinite number of ways, so I’m not really changing anything by shattering thousands of clones over the course of my mesmer career.

So yes, I’d def. still shatter. In fact, there may already be a universe where this exact scenario is already playing out!

Confounding suggestions should just be: Inflict 1 sec stun whenever you daze your target. Forget this rng stuff and the meaningless duration increase on daze. If you go 6 into Domination you should get to dominate by stunning at will when you daze, because your mesmer mind crushing powers are maximum.

Edit: Yes there should be a small icd to prevent perma stun in chaos storm for example.

Drakortha.6974:

Special abilities of mesmer;
your own personal zerg!
troll your enemies with an absurd amount of visual effects, effectively “blinding” the player from their own interface.
teleporting across the map at any time
going invisible during fights at a whim. teleporting up to areas your foes cannot reach
annoying “whirrr whirrr, whirrr whirrr” sounds included!

LOLLOLOLLOLOLOL whew this is awesome, big laughs +10 thank you

You jumped in the deep end going shatter right off the bat imo, it is not an easy spec to get good with. There are a few other power builds to try that work well, check this forum.

Really though if you are set on going full zero shatter without trying any other builds, it can be done just going to take a lot of dying to get good I think (and then still a lot of dying).

Ross Biddle.2367:

Sebrent.3625:

Simonoly.4352:

According to my guildy in the beta Revenat IS the new specialisation for Mesmer…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Banish_Enchantment

Looks like we may be getting more competition in one of our “niches”.

On one hand, poo.

On the other, the more boon removal in the game, the less likely boon-stacking will be an effective meta.

Just look at the power of that. It’s a utility, 20s cd, .5s cast time. Removes boons, stacks healthy confusion, AoE, targets 5, 600 range, UNBLOCKABLE. WTF, Mesmer skills/utils get some buffs already.

Let’s compare:
Mimic: 30s cd, 1/4 cast time, 900 range, single target, unblockable, crap.

This is the exact same thing that happened in World of Warcraft with the Deathknight: Devs go crazy giving the new class better versions of existing mechanics and end up creating a super class, without fixing/improving the other classes in dire need of attention; if your class sucks roll a Revenant, problem solved!

Ross Biddle.2367:

… Really though its the interrupts that make the target suffer. That damage hurts.

See, this is kind of where I’m at with lockdown now: Is the most important lockdown trait is Halting strike, an adept trait? Kind of says a lot about our GM lockdown traits if so…

Could we call any 2/x/x/x/x with MoD a lockdown build? Not like nobody knows this, just brings home once again that I think lockdown deserves more buffs/attention, at least in terms of interesting traits, *cough Disruptor’s Sustainment *cough

Hey mesmers. Back after taking a few months off. What’s new? Oh they nerfed our blink spots? Cool, cool. Glad to see things are humming along as usual…

Seriously though, coming back and playing lockdown again, loving it as usual. I had a though last night, and of course I’m not the only one since I saw Ross posted another 6/6/x/x/x build.

My question is: Is CI essential for a lockdown build? I used to think so, but now am questioning it.

I’m thinking 6/6/0/2 with CS and HM for 3 charges, running mantra heal with menders for good surviability. The triple heal plus 6 condis cleared is awesome.

Giving up CI and bountiful seems weird though, as I’m very used to it. The main thing I like about CI is that it always works, no rng; you interrupt they get immob. The rng on CS bugs me, but what else should you take instead of CS? Not PB…

Basically a rambling post to discuss how essential people see CI as for lockdown in the current state of game.

This is possibly the worst idea I’ve ever seen for this class. Thinking of this happening, I’m just speechless, what a horrible horrible thing that would be.

Nice video, +1 for fun. I can tell how hilarious that must have felt.

On the guide side as usual with 1vX, I’ll point it out because you know someone will, at least one of those thieves was just terrible, spamming HS etc. Also you are running MtD, with staff and torch, you should probably mention that because it’s a pretty important part of the equation there.

The overall strategy was awesome though, nice commentary on mobility and controlling when you engage.

All in all thanks for posting! I think a fun fight to watch and some good commentary too.

Calypso.2578:

MSFone.3026:

Sure you need to time your stuff, but with lockdown you need to pay twice as much attention because you are timing your own dmg, paying attention to everything they are doing, AND trying to distinguish what are the key abilities to interrupt.

So your base level of attention and awareness has to be higher, and on top of that your reflex level knowledge of other classes has to be pretty complete.

This for me is the real challenge, it’s just that much more time to not only master my own class, but I kind of need to know every other class pretty well in order to lockdown truly well. Or I can go shatter and just yolo burst as warlord said (lol).

All the stuff you said you need to pay attention to w/ lockdown…you STILL should do this as a $hatter mesmer. You still need to know other classes and builds and animations. Just because YOU play shatter sloppily does not mean others do.

You cut off the first sentence in that post where I said “I know for the top players this isn’t true…”. If you’re going to aggressively respond that way at least read my whole post before you stress out. Yes, in my first sentence I explicitly acknowledged that there are some very good players who are just as aware as anyone and choose to play shatter.

My point was that for many (but not YOU of course, or anyone else as good as you ) in the more average skills zone (like myself) what I said is true, that they can go shatter jump in and perform pretty well, but be unable to do so as easily with lockdown and I think a big reason is the increased awareness required.

I posted this to add to the discussion as to why maybe we don’t see lockdown more among the whole player base. Maybe if someone were interested in making (another) guide or vid, they would, if they agree with me, take some extra time to go over this point well and maybe it will help people. Just trying to be constructive.

I know for the top players this isn’t true, but for many I think it is, but part of the issue is that I can play shatter and succeed while paying less attention to my enemy’s actions. Sure you need to time your stuff, but with lockdown you need to pay twice as much attention because you are timing your own dmg, paying attention to everything they are doing, AND trying to distinguish what are the key abilities to interrupt.

So your base level of attention and awareness has to be higher, and on top of that your reflex level knowledge of other classes has to be pretty complete.

This for me is the real challenge, it’s just that much more time to not only master my own class, but I kind of need to know every other class pretty well in order to lockdown truly well. Or I can go shatter and just yolo burst as warlord said (lol).

Just have to say great thread Chaos, best discussion I’ve seen regarding lockdown. Tons of good info here.

I hope the conversation keeps going.

The point above about no top mesmers running lockdown on a team is interesting. I wish I were as good as Warlord, but I’m not, and if I were solely concerned with performance and “playing to win” as they say, I’d still go shatter. But no matter what I build I still die plenty so I just play for enjoyment, which for me is lockdown

Does anyone besides warlord honestly feel that if they were playing solely to win as much as possible that they’d be better off with lockdown?

Edit: Above post came in as I was typing this. Good response, thanks.

Edit Edit: Here’s a question that is a little off topic, but interesting: In a 1v1 between a shatter and a lockdown mesmer, who should win, and why?

Edit Edit Edit: Warlord, what would it take for you to make a video for lockdown the way Vash does for shatter. I’d love to get better, could we set up some OMFG lockdown workouts?

Hey Ross, nice work. Few questions though:

1)Surprised by torch here, you have very little mobility, which is normally something you rail on other builds for. I would take focus, actually based a lot on arguments and vids you made funnily enough.

2)Do you think BI is worth it over menders? You could lose MoR, take heal mantra and free up a utility slot, maybe for signet of Dom, MI, decoy, etc.

3) Illusionary invigoration over IE? The trade can’t be right with staff, so much added dmg with IE.

What do you think of something like this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNArdWl0npRtlpxGNcrNyqBdqlg6s0lgW6LktAA-T1xCABAcIAAUfgnq/s8+DJqEUinAQWK/IFAMzBA-w

That is what I’ll be running when I manage to get on and do the build.

Jackums.3496:

You’ll be food for any competent Thief with a decent build if you lack the clone generation of DE for defensive purposes, for one, which is reason enough to take DE considering majority of WvW roamers are Thieves.

Arrange some duels with high ranked PvP players and run a phantasm build without DE. Do the same in WvW. Record it. If you don’t find DE more useful than not, I’m going to assume you haven’t been playing with very good players.

I’m not saying that DE is bad in a phantasm build, and I don’t claim to be “pro” (I actually have a real job so this would be embarrassing to me anyway), but could you elaborate a little more on why you think DE makes a difference in a phantasm build?

What you say about body blocking doesn’t really seem realistically like it happens often enough to outweigh taking a traited pistol, say. I’ve run a couple phantasmish builds without DE (running one currently) and I don’t find it an issue. Now would it hurt me to take it, probably not too much, but I definitely do not feel kitten. Mobility and timing seem to be what counters thieves with a phant build, not an extra clone on dodge. Thinking of times I get jacked by thieves, I’m certain DE would not have made the difference.

Again not pro, so I suppose you can just tell me to go L2P or whatever, but on the off chance you’d like to share some insight, please tell me more.

Forgive me for assuming this, but maybe you are just talking about non-dungeon pve? Like LS and personal story and other solo stuff? I think for solo PVE condi with IE staff clones is really good, you melt through groups and it’s pretty ez-mode.

Now maybe you weren’t talking about that, but myself when I do personal story (still haven’t finished mine…) or LS or whatever, I just grab a staff and IE and kinda enjoy the show, very simple.

As soon as you have more than 2 other people with you this kind of build becomes pretty dumb, as everyone else said. And ya it’s not mesmer, go into any other profession sub forum and ask about condi builds in pve. Better yet give it a shot yourself, pay attention to what is happening and you will see why everyone says this.

Nice vid. What rune set were you running?

For WvW do you guys think torment runes are necessary?

BlackDevil.9268:

MSFone.3026:

It’s in inspiration, have it be phantasm related.

Landing an interrupt resets your phantasms attack timers. This would pair so awesomely with CI, mmmm.

I like Pyro’s idea from a while back: Landing an interrupt reduces the cd on all skills currently on cd by X seconds, so if you have a skill with Y sec left on cd, landing an interrupt makes it only have Y-X sec left, or brings it off cd is X>=Y, and it does this for every skill on cd.

This would apply to all skills, elite, heal, utility and weapon skills. This would also make for an awesome pair with CI.

I think any heal on interrupt less than 5k is not going to be worth 6 into inspiration, even them I’m not sure. It would have to be a boss heal with an icd. But then you have the icd issue, as I don’t think any trait related to landing interrupts should have an icd. The heal on interrupt was a dumb idea imo. Pyros idea above would be amazing.

Why should it be related to phantasm? Nearly the only ’’traits’’ that are affecting phantasm in inspiration are the minor trats.. A good +/- 90% of the adapt, master and grandmaster traits are based on anything but phantasm.

Why shouldn’t it be? How many “traits” in the line are heal related? Hey look, it’s the same amount as the phantasm ones!

It’s the healing power line yes, but ofc healing power is useless. Don’t tell me people go into inspiration for the healing power. Almost everyone goes into inspiration for menders or because they are running a phantasm build.

The only reason people are talking about this GM being all about heals is that some idiot at Anet thought it would be a good idea. Not a good base to start thinking from imo…

It’s in inspiration, have it be phantasm related.

Landing an interrupt resets your phantasms attack timers. This would pair so awesomely with CI, mmmm.

I like Pyro’s idea from a while back: Landing an interrupt reduces the cd on all skills currently on cd by X seconds, so if you have a skill with Y sec left on cd, landing an interrupt makes it only have Y-X sec left, or brings it off cd is X>=Y, and it does this for every skill on cd.

This would apply to all skills, elite, heal, utility and weapon skills. This would also make for an awesome pair with CI.

I think any heal on interrupt less than 5k is not going to be worth 6 into inspiration, even them I’m not sure. It would have to be a boss heal with an icd. But then you have the icd issue, as I don’t think any trait related to landing interrupts should have an icd. The heal on interrupt was a dumb idea imo. Pyros idea above would be amazing.

Malkavian.4516:

Hmmm…. considering that I prefer to use 2 swords and a greatsword, I wanted to know which build would be best to compliment said weapons of choice?

I’ve been running a CI build with that weapon setup lately and it’s been fun.

The trait is unsalvageable. Anet bungled it and it’s over. The intent was a super interrupt, the normal penalty of 5 sec being amplified to 10. Well they showed themselves (again) basically incapable of implementing their vision for a cool mesmer ability/trait/whatever.

Only thing that makes sense now is to ask for a new GM trait to replace it, as this one failed big time.

What would be a really cool GM trait in the domination line? Hmm, well let’s think of all the cool GW1 stuff that has been kittenized and ruined in GW2: We had backfire, empathy, etc, which became confusion, which was nerfed into the ground and then given to other classes in better forms and then to everyone on a rune set. So that takes out a whole lot of the punishment possibilities from GW1.

Wastrel’s hexes have become a pathetic 5 pointer in Dom.

Auenerism and the mana drain abilities were also awesome, but no mana so those are out.

Here is why CI is the best lockdown trait: It always works and it has no internal cd. Either of those is a deal breaker, as we see from Furious interruption (icd), CS(% chance to apply stun) and Powerblock(icd and doesn’t apply to an entire class).

So whatever GM ends up replacing the truly useless PB, it should have no icd (any icd on an “on interrupt” ability is just kittenin kittened) and it whatever the on interrupt effect is it should always work, no CS stupidity.

Not a complaint more than just a comment: I think it says something that what many people consider to be the only “real” PvP build is shatter, and that shatter is the build and play style that least resembles the GW1 mesmer.

Yes Lockdown works and can work very well, but the point above stands.

I wish the “meta” mesmer build were something that actually felt like a mesmer from GW1. To me shatter has no resemblance to the class I loved in GW1. Yes it is very hard to play very well, and it is tons of fun to watch, but it’s mesmer in name only imo.

Just a tangential thought on this topic. Not a critique of shatter at all! Just a critique of how the mesmer in GW2 has diverged from the mesmer in GW1.

Interrupting without cast bar is indeed a lot harder, but it can be done. I play CI lockdown in wvw and a phantasm build in pvp just because to me these builds actually do feel like GW1 the most. The Phants are like hexes that if ignored (if you build for them) will jack your target. So it’s kind of GW1-ish because if they focus me they get screwed and if they focus the phants they probably also get screwed, they just don’t realize its happening until its too late. The phantasm build to me has the best troll factor, it is just very funny watching these purple ghosts chase after and down someone trying to run after they realized too late they were losing.

In WvW CI with MoD can be really fun. Landing interrupts is hard, but it can be done if you really watch and pay attention. You just have to be on the ball. Again it has a little bit of that GW1 feeling when you see someone mashing abilities to escape and you nail a daze and CI roots them in place and they get mobbed down, or better yet someone is coming at you and you nail that interrupt and land a big burst as they stand there looking dumb. But if you aren’t on the ball it can be very frustrating, as if you don’t land your interrupts then you can get walked on pretty hard.

I’m only interested in whatever the GW2 mesmer can offer that is like GW1, which is why I don’t play shatter, it has no resemblance to GW1 mesmer. I can’t say I get a lot of GW1 satisfaction, but I do get some.

One time, at band camp, this kid tried to play this mesmer, and hit his buttons at all the wrong times, and then he died.

Dude your videos are bar none the best mesmer videos I’ve ever seen each time. Way to go, awesome to watch!

All this “play to win” stuff is a good response to a whiner crying about being beat by a PU build, but used in a broader discussion of mesmer builds it is just hypocritical and silly; If you truly “played to win” you would not be playing mesmer.

If you’re going to lecture people on artificial limitations or mental barriers etc. you should probably make sure you don’t have any yourself. Choosing to play the mesmer is definitely not the optimal choice for winning in any game mode, so something else is motivating you, i.e., you yourself have a mental barrier or whatever.

This whole notion of “playing to win” tries to be all meta and deep, but anyone can see through it: Why “play to win”? Sense of achievement? You could get a much deeper sense of that doing almost anything else besides playing a video game, so you aren’t really being optimal. Money? Joke. Renown? Ditto. “Playing to win” at a game can be argued to be scrubby in life in general by the exact same logic as you apply to gamers who don’t “play to win.”

The better response to a whiner who cries about losing to PU is: LOL

Love this thread btw, no disrespect to anyone.

To the OP, I’d yes, it does, in that many people will dislike you, and scuumbag is usually determined by how others view your actions. PU like any stealth heavy build in this game exists, functions and wins almost completely by exploiting a crappy user interface. Stealth is just target dropping, that’s all there is to it, and then with PU you add some clutter making it slightly more difficult to reacquire the target, which you need to do in order to use most of your skills . Almost all people outside of those who rely on this mechanic view it with at best ambivalence, but mostly with extreme contempt, and so most people will view your playing it as scuummy. So yes, you will be seen as a scuumbag by most of the player base, thus for most intents and purposes, you are.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Fay.2357:

MailMail.6534:

To call something a “crutch” is to imply that you’re using something because without it, you’d be much less effective otherwise. However, there’s usually the second implication that people who use these “crutches” aren’t actually handicapped to begin with.

For example, in order to be an effective Shatter Mesmer, you need Deceptive Evasion. However, there are several builds that don’t need this trait yet most Mesmers trait into it, because in general, Deceptive Evasion is a crutch.

Yeah…I have to disagree with you pretty much entirely.

A crutch is generally used to describe something that is necessary to reach a certain level. Look at the real life item. A cripple needs a crutch in order to move around like a normal person. In a game sense, a bad gamer needs a crutch in order to play at a level that a good gamer would without it.

However, this analogy breaks down incredibly rapidly if you think about it a little. If a non-cripple uses a crutch…they don’t really get any benefit out of it. However, a video game crutch is generally a technique/strategy/mechanic that is highly effective, even optimal for play. This goes back to the whole scrub gaming definition (summons Ross Biddle).

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

If you’ve never reads Sirlin’s “Playing to Win”, which this article comes from (of the same website), read it if you’re interested in improving. And if you’re not, read it anyway because you need it more.

No disrespect, but I followed the link and feel compelled to respond. While from that players perspective of responding to whiners what he writes makes sense, from another perspective that was one of the dumb-est things I have ever read. I just need to point this out:

A scrub is someone who doesn’t play to win and whines about the results of that choice.

Everyone plays this game for fun, everyone. Some people have fun by winning as much as they can or “playing to win” or whatever makes them feel the most bad kitten . Other people have fun by theory crafting builds and trying them out, getting enjoyment out of what they think is creative activity. Other people have fun by focusing on a certain aspect of the game, say interrupts, even though this may be suboptimal. Other people choose to hamstring themselves by playing a really buggy class called the mesmer, because they like the feel of the class or the aesthetics (I’m being cheap on this last one, sorry…).

Calling someone a “scrub” because they play to have fun in way that doesn’t maximize wins just makes you a total loser. This is an online roleplaying game with a competitive aspect. Being good at this game makes you nothing more than good at this game. Thinking you are a bad kitten because of how good you are at this game makes you pathetic.

What makes someone a scrub is that they whine. I don’t think that was emphasized enough in the article or other places in this forum. I play for fun, and I get my kitten handed to me often. I never complain though, because I accept that I am not being optimal and so don’t expect to be.

I respect a lot of what you say, but please keep this in mind when throwing around that insulting term.

If it were 10 stacks of confusion and only 3-4 seconds of quickness and confusion, maybe this would work.

Or we could just get our confusion buffed in duration and intensity across the board…

Fay.2357:

MSFone.3026:

Here is another way of putting it: With this buff will maim be any stronger/better at roaming than standard condi PU?

I think something to keep in mind is that condie shatter builds will always be condie shatter. This means a build that’s somewhat more fragile, but has higher burst potential as a reward for that fragility. Now, I don’t know if this buff will fulfill that higher burst potential, but the higher fragility is absolutely there.

This means that you need to play it like any other shatter build when roaming. In other words…call up your guardian/thief/whoever buddy and go duo/small group roaming. PU condie will always be superior from a solo roam standpoint because of the defense it has, but the condie shatter has the potential to be fantastic in a small group.

This makes sense. But then the question is: Why go Maim over traditional shatter for roaming in a small group? I’m pretty sure most people are considering condi shatter as a tanky sort of alternative to standard shatter. Look at the build at the top of the thread: full dire gear. So this is a shatter build you can go full dire with.

It seems to me that in a good group standard shatter will always be stronger than condi shatter, and like you say solo you are just going to be a slow killing shatter that is also slower to die, but I think you’re going to die at least as often as standard shatter nonetheless.

I just don’t get why Anet chose maim of all things to buff. They have some condi vision for mesmers with the scepter AA and maim, but there are so many other things they could work on/give us.