Guild Wars 2

I stand corrected. That’s a smart way of looking at it. Makes me almost want to take it now…

Moa would be a lockdown if ppl in the know couldn’t super sprint away from you as soon as you cast it on them. Whenever anyone hits me with moa (rare in wvw) I turn around and book it outa there; I just escape 9 times out of 10. That is why I won’t use it. Now sure if someone doesn’t know about the escape they will just sit there getting ruled on, but who wants to count on that? If they are that nooby then you’ll probably kill them without moa anyways.

Re. the comments above about Power Block: I was super excited about this at first, but in the end I’d never take it over CS. And as someone just said, I’d take CI over both. I recently started running a hybrid lockdown with BI and CI together, nothing new I know but it’s the best build I’ve run yet. Just absolutely fun and effective.

I’ve been using AT also lately with reduced cd and increased range (along with blink) and I have a new love for that skill. At least in wvw, it is totally a lockdown skill. So many builds are relying on boons now, particularly might, and also swiftness for escaping, that with treated AT I can actually control those players well, both stealing their boons in combat and preventing escapes by taking their swiftness from them. I never thought of it that way, but lately AT is one of my favorite skills and it fits perfectly into my lockdown build. I barely ever use it for removing conditions on myself, just as a control skill.

Edit: @ Tealots: Yes that is exactly what I’ve been running and it rules. BI and CI like I said, buffed up condition duration for 3 sec immobilize from CI and the buffs from BI combined with sigils give really nice might stacking, I sit above 15 stacks very often.

I have to agree that shatter is definitely more difficult, but you will win more and die less as PU. Take two equally skilled mesmer and have them duel, one as PU and one kittenter. Who’s going to win? Questions about cheese aside, if both people are equally as good at playing the game the PU will win every time.

Now will someone get as good as a dedicated shatter player if they only play PU? Probably not.

But look this isn’t professional MMA, it’s a mmorpg and so play whatever is fun. If you like winning more than losing than go PU. If you like a challenge and will trade dying more often for some probably more satisfying wins, go shatter. PU is there and as long as it is those who strictly play to win and don’t care too much about how they win will probably spec into it because it’s hands down the strongest trait we have available to us.

I’ve played both ankitten ot a pro by any means, but I find shatter too frustrating in certain situations/fights and find PU very boring, so I don’t play either anymore.

One thing about PU, it can definitely be boring. Shatter is never boring.

I was running a hybrid build for a while, but it was PU and I just got sick of relying on stealth, so I tweaked it into this and have been having the best time in all areas of WvW (mostly roaming though) since release.

0/6/6/2/0 build

The gear is flexible, this is exactly what I run but you can see some things are sub-optimal, feel free to comment but also know I don’t really care about hyper optimizing my gear, as I’ve been shredding non-stop with this setup.

Harmonious mantras combined with Mender’s purity and centaur runes give you permanent swiftness and awesome condition removal. Build deals dmg like a standard hybrid build, dmg is from all sources except not too much shattering happening besides diversion. That leads to what separates this build from standard PU hybrid: Bountiful interruption and Chaotic Interruption. With the condi duration food and sigil, you get 5 stacks might plus random boon and hit them with 3 sec immobilize (and chill/blind/cripple).

With HM your daze mantra gets 3 charges, which is plenty to use freely and regulate on anyone. Seeing a Thief come at you and get interrupted and just sit there stuck for 3 sec, while your phantasms/clones/you are stacking bleeds and dmg buffed with might is very very awesome. Low cd and increased range on blink plus staff for defense makes you really mobile, and don’t forget constant swiftness. You will kite like a god.

Arcane thievery is not for condi clear, but rather for boon stealing, which especially ruins peoples day since feature patch with much more people relying on might stacking etc for dmg. It can also be a nicekittento a condi heavy clkittening you up. With mantra heal as above and AT condi is not a problem for you in this build.

It really can do it all besides shatter, and it is easy to hit 15+ stacks might very often which means you hit very hard. Survivability is good with 1600-1700+ toughness and all the mobility. I haven’t met a hard counter.

What I love most is the lockdown kind of control you have with interrupts and Arcane Thievery. You really have a lot of control and will find yourself laughing out loud very often at how bad you are kitten people. That for me is the number one thing I look for in a build, how often do I lol at how bad I just jacked someone with control, not just burst dmg. For me it’s just more satisfying to control someone and frustrate them then to outright kill them with raw dmg, not saying it’s better or worse than say shatter, just apples and oranges. But if you like lockdown but don’t want to go full out for it, this for me has all the joys of lockdown and enough dmg and utility to in my opinion have the best of all worlds (except extreme shatter burst ofc).

Nobody will escape you with perm swiftness, cripple from izerker and AT with increased range to steal swiftness from them. This is the main reason I will not play pure condi, with this build nobody can just run away from a fight. Not to mention, CI combined with Mantra of Distraction will allow you to get some phat interrupts on targets mashing their escapes trying to run, which roots them. So ya, you can escape anyone and noone will escape you, two requirements for fun wvw roaming at least for me.

As far as pacing of fights goes, you’ll notice people just steadily fall apart, the bleeds and confusion plus phantasm and your dmg wear them down, and when might stacks up I will go for a mind wrack or close range mirror blade for some burst. You won’t see shatter levels of burst, but when your might stacks are high up you will definitely hit people very hard.

I think that covers it. I’ve worked on this a lot and for me the traits are optimal, but I’m very interested in your feedback and ideas for improvement.

Not super pro at filming and ever more not super into taking the time to edit into a nice video, so take it for what it is and see how it goes. Hopefully some day I’ll remember to hit record often enough to get a sweet video to post, it’s a goal but I don’t have one now; apologies all around.

Last but not least thanks to all the pro mesmers who have posted builds I’ve learned from, Chaos and Doiid ( I think) in particular for the lockdown ideas and hybrid ideas, and any others too. And ofc free pyro!

Edit: Also just want to say that the Mesmer community has been awesome from day one and one of the things I really enjoy about GW2. So thanks as well to all you dudes and dudettes (any?) out there who keep mesmerizing despite the never ending waves of nerfs and bugs and everything else.

Ah ok that explains it. I forgot to mention something extremely important, and I’m sure this is why 90% of the people who don’t like AT don’t like it:

Do not rely on this skill for condition removal!

When I run it I basically only use it as a boon steal, and any conditions that happen to get transferred are a bonus. If I happen to be in a 1v1 with a condi heavy class, sure when the time is right I’ll throw some conditions back on them. It can be used like that, but it will lead to sadness and frustration if you rely on it for condition clears at all, like seriously at all. Run with some other condition clear and don’t even think of AT as a backup.

AT is in no way a defensive skill, don’t try to use it that way and you won’t hate it. It is an offensive boon stealing skill that you can sometimes use to offensively transfer conditions to a target. When I used to use it a long time ago I thought of it as a condi clear and hated it and stopped using it, like everyone else. After the feature patch when there were a lot more people stacking might I started using it again to steal all the might and started to love the skill.

I run with treated mantra of recovery and mender’s purity for my condition clear, and AT for stealing boons. Basically don’t think of AT as any kind of defense, only offense. If you do then it works great.

Pretty much what other people said, you need to have a target, be facing them, etc. But I have to disagree with people saying AT is bad. Traited to have increased range and reduced CD, I honestly love this skill, run with it all the time (WvW only though).

Just follow the rules and you will ruin peoples day all the time, especially runners in wvw. They pop swiftness to escape, nope time to die. Warrior pops his signet for three cool boons to come go WWF on you, hey thanks for the boons time to die. Some elementalist thinks they are cool with phat stacks of might, hey thanks for those time to die.

I honestly love this skill. Learn to use it right and you won’t be sorry.

I’m happy with the change (and I don’t play condition).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

MSFone.3026:

Here is a system i think would be better: Merge dmg stats so that power and crit and ferocity each buff direct dmg and condi dmg the same amount (somehow). Then have toughness apply to both. Having two different dmg types with their own mechanics is dumb imo.

Then everyone switches to Knight’s gear because it provides superb protection against everything while still allowing good damage.

No, condition damage needs to continue to ignore Toughness.

Well ya obis it would compress gear choice somewhat. But I’d be ok with not having dozens of gear options for better functioning combat.

They just need to fix the bugs they promised to fix, IE, warden, etc. Other than than I’m happy. Great patch overall, as I was getting tired of bursty builds anyway. And the mantra gm trait swap was a huge buff to some builds (and killed a few I’m sure), mine included

I think the general consensus is that in WVW burst builds like shatter are weaker now than before relative to other builds, especially conditions builds. I’ve been running a hybrid build and it got much stronger though, so I’m happy.

Definitely the “cheese” PU condi builds still work just fine, and I’d say hybrids by the same token.

Lockdown got buffed with a surprisingly awesome GM trait, that, at least for now, is putting everything on a 10 sec cd, even auto attack. Don’t think Lockdown is super viable in wvw, but in spvp I think it’s a contender for dominant spec with power block.

It’s possible that there may be new condition builds using the new GM in Illusions, but personally I don’t see it beating the standard condi builds with PU. You need deceptive evasion to really stack torment with it, so you give up PU and I don’t think you’ll have the pressure to play it like a shatter spec, especially without IP. But who knows some people might find a way to make it awesome.

For me, I’m loving my hybrid build for wvw and in spvp I run lockdown since the ferocity change doesn’t matter there anyways.

I also love this change, best part of patch for me.

Overall I think OP has it right when he says most of complaining is from dummies wearing full zerk and not bringing any condition cleanse. However some people do have some points worth making.

Overall I think conditions are fine, maybe a tiny bit OP in some cases, but overall just bring some more vitality and enough cleanses and play smart and you can win. I personally have zero problem with conditions, but maybe some classes literally can’t bring enough clears do survive, I only know my class.

However there is a balance. You can’t expect to be able to clear all conditions, because then condition builds would do no dmg. Some have to get through, just like how you can’t have infinite dodges and aegis.

Here is a system i think would be better: Merge dmg stats so that power and crit and ferocity each buff direct dmg and condi dmg the same amount (somehow). Then have toughness apply to both. Having two different dmg types with their own mechanics is dumb imo.

Putting auto attacks on cd is def. too much, but it should hit thieve’s skills. Heartseeker on 10 sec cd… would be so awesome to see bad thieves just stand there not knowing what do to not being able to spam 222222222

can’t get in game to test this right now, does anyone know if this is true? Seriously an insanely awesome trait if so, and sadly will absolutely be nerved into oblivion as well :-/

The one OJ posted is the one I basically run with a few changes, was too lazy to link it, but it’s a great build.

Honestly the play style has it all except self shatter. Phantasms own, bleeds own, shatters still hurt, tons of mobility. It’s awesome.

Recently started running a PU hybrid build and it’s hands down the best all around wvw build I’ve ever run. There are a few posts of such builds, mine is a variant of some that I’ve seen. Hands down insane mobility with mantra of recovery and centaur runes, it’s perm swiftness. Just a great all around build, super fun to play, super strong 1v1 or in groups, and great escape/chasing ability.

You can say the same for most well thought out hybrid PU builds I’m sure.

I just want to get some thoughts from the community on this. It might just be me being unskilled etc., but it seems to me that in order to roam effectively in wvw we need stealth. I’ve experimented a lot and this seems true independent of build. And not even talking PU. For example, I’ve found that to roam as shaatter effectively you have to take torch, decoy and mass invis. Anyone find this not true?

I’ve also found that with just about any other build if I don’t load up on stealth skills, like 2 stealth abilities plus mass invis, it is very hard to stay alive compared to when I have them, to the point where I feel like I’m severely nerfing myself by not taking them.

Why am I posting about this? The reason I got tired of shatter was that I felt like I might as well play a thief. I mean why not? Relying on stealth to burst people down, hmm who’s really good at that? Trying out other builds for roaming, like say any kind of lockdown or phantasm build, I’m still finding that playing without serious stealth is gimping me. And please tell me if it’s just me along with what builds you roam without stealth in. I’m totally open to that.

But if it’s not just me, then I think this is a pretty lame situation. I get why everyone runs PU, but the stealth play style to me isn’t fun. I don’t enjoy playing a gimpy ranged thief wannabe.

This is not really an issue in spvp for obvious reasons. Thanks for reading and giving some feedback on this issue.

TL;DR: Mesmers are way too stealth dependent for roaming in wvw.

They should just give us an elite mantra, Mantra Mastery or something. Each charge instantly charges all your mantras.

Personally I’d also be willing to take a reduction in daze time for say more charges on the mantra. Honestly though I don’t think that will happen. But yes I agree the two charges on MoD combined with the buzzkill 2.75 sec charge up can leave one wanting more from it.

Aside from the general annoyance of mantras, MoD really is well balanced though, not underpowered or overpowered. Hopefully we get more mid tier traits that make mantras more viable. Like replace the armor while charging with a flat out reduction in charge up time, and move the extra charge on matras GM in Dom down a tier.

If you seriously focus on interrupts, the mesmer really doesn’t have that much downtime if you space em out right. Go check out some videos in the lockdown threads, you’ll see that we can pump out a pretty consistent stream of dazes if you space em right.

With two charges you just have to be a little careful with when you use MoD. I’d also love it if we got another instant daze ability, but I really don’t see it happening.

Not saying Necros are better than mesmers (for instance in small scale pvp they are def not), just in terms of the old school lock dot/kite play style, necro has it and mesmer doesn’t.

@OP: I totally know what you mean regarding old school lock in WoW, was very awesome back in the day.

I’ve got to say, in terms of stacking conditions the mesmer (imo) pales compared to a necro. Necros also have lots of nice aoe, including aoe fears, and if you want you can buff up fear duration etc.

Another thing, in terms of health regen like Siphon life/Soul link build back in TBC, necro beats mesmer hands down. They literally have aoe drain life, as well as a buff coming next week to where they can trait death shroud to regen health. Seriously in terms of kiting/doting large groups and regaining health to stay alive, necro rules on mesmer.

Someone above said it, and they are right: If you are looking for analogies the mesmer is totally the mage of this game, the necro is the lock when it comes to gameplay. However, the one way in which mesmer could be considered the lock of this game is that they are probably the most poorly understood and hated class 1v1, which reminds me of all the crying over locks being unkillable cc kittens that everyone cried about back in the day.

But really, you seriously should just roll necro. They have plenty of CC, including some CC from minions, tons more dot application than mesmer, and plenty of lock like health regen abilities that work while kiting around.

If they add mounts I’ll quit.

We need a trait to shorten charge time significantly, or just have it shortened baseline.

I only know that when I tested in PvE it didn’t stack. In another thread where someone tested not sure if it was pve or spvp. I haven’t tested in spvp personally. It’s hard to see without slowing down video of it, but once you do and time it you’ll see they don’t stack (at least in pve/wvw). It stinks because they should.

What QOL changes are you referring to besides slightly lowering the charge time to 2.75 sec a while ago? Are there changes to Mantras in feature patch?

As far as runes are concerned, without knowing which build you are using it’s hard to say. But since you mentioned mesmer runes you should know that it’s been tested and the runes do not stack with the duration increase from Confounding Suggestions (GM in Dom). You can easily video and slow it down to see for yourself.

Hopefully they fix this, because if they did we could get 1.5 sec dazes which would be really awesome.

You are awesome.

Add dueling plz

OS is okay, but I would love to be able to duel my friend that I play with regularly. Can’t do that in OS. OS is better than nothing I suppose, but that’s about all I can say about it.

No I absolutely do not want a new class added. First they need to properly balance the game as it is. Once that’s done we can maybe talk about adding a new class and throwing everything out of whack again. But getting close to proper balance here is still a long ways out.

@ Ruanchy: I understand what you’re saying. What about a trait that made clone generating skills have a chance to generate 2 clones instead of 1? Or maybe auto attacks have a chance to spawn a clone. Maybe ppl won’t like the random nature of those. Maybe criticals spawn a clone with some icd. Maybe every third auto attack spawns a clone with an icd. Those are just off the top of my head and aren’t totally beyond reason.

I get that it’s lame to ask for a skills removal without concrete suggestions for replacement. However I think that the community can figure out good alternatives, and that it is possible for DE to be replaced with something that is an improvement for the class overall.

As many other have said, DE should just be removed and replaced with other clone generation mechanism’s or cd reductions on current clone skills. Any new traits for clone generation should be in illusions.

IP is arguable the best trait in the game for mesmers, moving it down would be totally OP imo.

I honestly hate DE and have been forcing myself to play without it and I’ve been doing fine. Yes the dodge shatter move is cool, but honestly the required 20 points in dueling just sucks. DE is a dumb mechanic encouraging dodge spamming.

People don’t take DE because they want the clone on dodge, they take it because they want the increased clone generation. Honestly it’s a horrible way to increase clone production and they should remove it and decrease cd’s or give us other clone generating mechanisms.

Most importantly, these clone generation increasing talents should be in the Illusions (aka shatter) line where they belong, not dueling.

Seriously DE is the worst. Replace it with something else and the Mesmer class will benefit greatly.

Regarding CS and chain dazing, what they need to do is ensure that the duration increases from Rune of Mesmer and CS stack, as currently they do not (at least in WvW/PvE).

Until they fix that I’m not seeing CS as an option really over PB (is it Power Lock or Power Block???).

Also, does Sigil of Paralyzation still affect daze? If not then it does nothing for CS, because a 1 sec stun would only get .15 seconds added to it, which wouldn’t be enough to get it over the threshold of 1.25 sec where you would actually see an increase.

Great thread, just might want to get some clarity in the community on the stacking of Runes/Sigils/CS.

Just my two cents: What you point about above regarding chill synergizing with PB seems to put PB way ahead of CS, even if they do fix the above stacking issues.

Edit: don’t forget about sigil of Ice. I bet after the rework this sigil will be a few seconds of chill guaranteed every 10 sec or whatever the new icd is. Should be pretty awesome. Also runes of ice seem like a nice alternative to grenth since vitality may be more useful than condi dmg to a power based build. Overall adding chill to the mix looks pretty amazing, I’m excited.

All this talk about “spamming interrupts”… let’s take a look:

Diversion: Instant, ~30-45 sec cd depending on traits
Mantra of Distraction: Instant, 10 sec cd between charges
Offhand Sword daze (not instant): ~10-15 sec cd depending on traits
Greatsword Wave: (not instant) ~28 sec cd if treated
Focus Pull: (not instant)~28 sec cd if treated (I think, but close to that)
Signet of Domination: (not instant) ~35-45 sec cd depending on traits
Offhand Pistol: (not instant) ~24 sec if traited

For the impaired: You cannot have all of these at the same time, this is just all that exist.

So at best you have a subset of the above, only two of which are instant, and Diversion only if you or a clone is right next to the target, so really the only reliably instant interrupt we have is MoD, a mantra, which makes it a pain to equip.

As far as even calling something that isn’t instant an interrupt, I think that’s debatable, but even so the mesmer put one of his skills on a cd to put one of yours on a cd of equal or less duration…how is that unfair? It’s not like the mesmer didn’t give something up to put your skill on a short 10 sec cd, it’s 1 for 1.

Yes, I used a skill to put one of your skills on cool down for 10 seconds. Now for the next 10 seconds we each have one less skill to work with. This is OP how?

The only exception is if your heal got interrupted, which again is your own kitten fault for knowing you’re fighting a mesmer and 1) waiting till you need the heal to use it and/or 2) not taking some measures to cover your 1 sec heal cast.

So maybe if you cycle through all your interrupts, assuming you’ve just tried to equip as many as possible, you can spam what, 5, and then all those skills are on cd. If they ended up interrupting 5 skills on the opponent, well it just means they were sitting there spamming their crap too and shouldn’t be complaining.

People need to just calm down about this trait. It’s 30 points in Dom, there is no way people are going to cry about this half as much as PU.

At least understand what it does before you start whining about it.

It will not put any interrupted skill on a cool down longer than 10 sec. And honestly if you’re getting interrupted all hard it’s your own fault, as consistently timing and landing interrupts as a mesmer is actually hard to do and it should be rewarded. We can’t just sit on you and spam our melee stuff over and over like some other classes.

Awesome video! Thanks for posting this. I used to run a shatter confusion build before confusion got nerved. After watching your video I’m going to give it a try tonight!

PU is the source of 90% of the QQ about mesmers. Realize that you will almost never see a PU mesmer with 30 in Dom, which means just about any time you fight a mesmer with this they are going to be pretty squishy.

Most people read this thread and imagine a PU mesmer in and out of stealth all the time with perma regen-aegis-prot now throwing down all these fat interrupts with this new grandmaster trait. That is not going to happen. In order to really utilize the new interrupt trait you have to have certain weapons and certain utilities. It’s not going to PU mesmers locking people down with this trait.

In fact I seriously doubt most players have ever fought a mesmer with 30 in Dom. It’s radically different from fighting PU, so just relax it will be ok.

Power Block just made my next build Shatterlock. The stun overwriting the daze on CS really bugs me, so 30 in dom has just never seemed worth it to me. But this… The control it will add to Shatterlock is just amazing and to me makes 30/X/X/X/30 hands down superior to the standard shatter build.

First off this is 30 in Dom, so unless you are running 30 dom with PU also, which would be weird, I don’t think this will generate that much qq because the mesmer in question will still be very killable. Yes, in the hands of really good players this will make us even more insane 1v1, but it won’t really be OP at all in a group setting. You won’t see this trait enabling 1vX the way PU does. I really don’t see this being a source of serious complaint.

Second, compare this to other GM traits. Like thieves healing themselves just from crits? So now they can mash heart seeker and heal themselves too? I’m sure that QQ will overwhelm any over ours.

This is so incredibly awesome… holy kitten I can’t wait!

Instead of confusion/retal as it does now, it could apply torment.

The Mesmer doesn’t need the extra confusion at all, and one of the main issues I have with mesmer condition builds is that if someone doesn’t want to fight, they can just run away without much difficulty. This suggestion would alleviate this.

We also don’t have any access to torment besides the scepter block, which again only works if someone attacks us, it’s not offensive. The Mesmer in GW1 had skills that punished someone who didn’t want to fight, Wastrel’s Worry etc., and we don’t have anything like that here. Access to Torment would punish someone for running away, and if they stood still not wanting to use skills due to confusion they just eat dmg. So it would give us access to that Mesmer dynamic from the old days where people were kitten ed if they did and kitten ed if they didn’t, at least a little.

The Mesmer 30 point trait in Domination, Confounding suggestions increases Daze duration by 25%, which for most of our dazes means adding .25 sec, for example Mantra of Distraction or diversion or the sword offhand daze. With CS they all become 1.25 sec.

6/6 Runes of mesmer increase daze duration by 33%, which with the known rounding should increase the above dazes to 1.5 sec with CS talented.

The talent and the runes are not stacking in pie/wvw. To test this simply film MoD or whatever with talent and runes and with just talent and slow it down. You’ll see they are both 1.25.

So the runes and talent are not stacking, and they should. Of course, just in case someone assumes, only time the dazes that don’t become stuns front the talent.

Sorry to necro thread, but was searching and hit this. I also tested (in pve) and after slowing down video also believe that runes of mesmer and confounding suggestions do not stack, which is really lame.

This should really be fixed, as actually getting a 1.5 sec daze would be super awesome.

If anyone has video evidence otherwise, please say so.

Hey Osi, what do you think of Air runes nowadays? Say with ghost, is there enough power in the setup to make the lightning worth it? I saw in a few of your videos that lightning own a couple thieves, and travelers are expensive. Plus the speed on heal with heal mantra means pretty much speed all the time. What do you think?

edit: Tested it and heal mantra only gives speed on mantra charge, not the heal, which is lame.

edit edit: I am kittened, it works on charge and heal. Please forgive me :-)

I almost never play without MoD, I love it so much. I agree though the long charge time makes it so I basically only recharge it between fights, otherwise it’s a big pain that I need to cover pretty well, but like someone said it is doable.

I think the main idea is that while they are a super long charge and annoying to ready, once they are ready their instant nature makes them really awesome. It seems like something that could be developed further and wasn’t.

An elite that instantly charged them would be awesome, and probably insanely OP. What would be very reasonable is to give us a talent that shortened the casting time on the charging. I’d much rather have that animation time reduced than the actual cd reduced. Imaging if you could charge a mantra in 1 sec instead of 2.75 or whatever it is now.

I think they could really reword the mantra traits. The one that is 30 in Dom is pretty awesome, but to go for 30 to get that? You’d only do that if you were really building around them, and if you’re doing that 30 in Dom is pretty rough. That talent could be moved down imo to a 20 pointer.

The 30 point in Dueling seems solid where it is. Same with the inspiration traits for mantra heals etc.

I think the traits lower down in Dueling, like increasing armor while casting and reduced recharge time are pretty weak. Especially the armor one, it’s really dumb. Letting someone wail on you for about 3 seconds isn’t going to be much better with added armor. Really it should just shorten the charge up time.

@ OP what is your toughness when being melted on average? If you are full zerker, i.e. around 930ish, then adding about 400-500 toughness will cut the direct dmg you take by around 20-30%. So you’ll have 20-30% more hp remaining after that initial opener, which is a pretty big difference. If you spread the stats out right you still will have plenty of dmg left over to kill the thief quickly, as the are most likely pretty glass.

A little shift towards toughness I find goes a long way when fighting thieves. For an example check out Osicat’s most recent shatter build, ghost or something. He goes mostly knight armor and weapons and zerker trinkets, more or less, and you can see the stats he manages with that. You can get similar without too much cost and it should help significantly.

Doesn’t an elite mantra address your concerns regarding type? It’s type is mantra, and it does synergize with different traits, like a few in Dueling and some in Insparation too.

The whole point of mantras is that they are a pain to charge up, but once they are charged they are instant. Just make the effect not so strong that having it be instant is game breaking.

They were?! Wow, what a relief.

One of the things that really ruined The Game That Shall Not Be Named was when the developers began giving one class the abilities to another class, leading to a situation where everyone had the same recycled set of abilities that were once class specific, which is really really boring.

What I’m speaking of in particular is the proposed new Mesmer elite, which is essentially a purple Lich Form. This has nothing to do with the mesmer play style, in fact it’s just a horrible idea.

How about instead of getting a necromancer elite, we get a mesmer elite, for instance an elite version of one of our class specific abilities: an Elite Mantra?

Here is one idea:

Mantra of Domination: 2 charges, 15 sec cd between charges, 30 sec cd. Deals X damage and stuns target for 1 second. Damage dealt and stun duration increased if target is interrupted. (Cooldowns and numbers adjusted accordingly for balance)

This is basically an adaptation of the GW1 elite, Psychic Instability. This would be an example of a really Mesmery elite, being a powerful control tool as we as rewarding counter play, something the mesmer is supposed to excel at.

Please Anet, continue being creative and dynamic and do not follow the path of Bliz… er, you know what I mean.

Edit: I just was informed that the list of proposed elites that I reference here was fake apparently. In which case, disregard the stuff about how lame it is, but still please consider the elite mantra idea. My bad Anet, I still believe in you!