Guild Wars 2

Pyroatheist.9031:

Geiir.7603:

quercus.9261:

Shatter is second rate right now. My zerker GS Warrior auto attack for the same as a fully specced Mesmer zerker shatter. He can 100b for 20k with self-buffs and it is way easier to set up in laggy WvW aoe splash. 100b is a noob killer but then again so is shatter.

What I think is that a well timed burst with shatters with several clones and sword 3+2 skills can make anyone panic :p have to test it though. I’ll also make sure to stack vulnerability at the same time so that my burst does as much damage as possible ;p

Take a look at Vashury’s videos if you’re trying to learn shatter burst. He runs very glassy burst builds in WvW roaming, and his techniques and playstyle allow him to pull of burst that’s just plain disgusting. Watch this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3fUhFuUP-E

I think the word you were searching for was “awesome” (burst)

I second the suggestion, Vashury and Osicat videos are a must for everyone that wants to learn shatter mesmer.

I find shatter a lot more fun to play than any PU build, but it’s personal taste I guess…

Alissah.9281:

Curunen.8729:

As much as I’d love mesmer to be the focus, I can’t in good conscience put it above ranger or ele at the moment.

Here, drink this water, then go to the cdi thread again.

• gives a scentless, tasteless and colourless liquid containing 95% alcohol *

May I have some?

BTW, I played my lv 30ish ranger a bit the other day and I felt quite sorry for them.
Eles? I think most of Ele problems are L2P issues.

I only played a few hours in EOTM, but there are some things that could “easily” apply to the borderlands and EB:

• better IA for NPC defenders, including those nasty auto-cannons
• secondary objectives that give powerful tactical advantages (worm tunnels, etc): could be a nice way to use the centaur/skritt areas in the borderlands and help spread the blobs around a bit

One thing that I love in EOTM is the destructible bridges, but I think it’s a bad idea to implement them in the borderlands/EB without a major map rework.

But the best thing is, in my opinion, that EOTM is not necessarily locked to your server. If there was a better way to join the Edge with a guild group (for example a “squad join” option for the commander) and there was a server list that provided basic info, like the number of players per faction, people could choose a less populated server for roaming or a more populated server if they want to blob around following a commander.
I’m not sure this could apply to the borderlands/EB, but similar solutions have been suggested in this forum earlier, and maybe it’s worth a tought.

Neither a mesmer with one, two or seven thieves. You can always spot them when they are refreshing the stealth, and hiding spots are the same since the start of the game.

Not much love for my frontline builds

Rank 684, no ascended, 3-4 exotics.
On the bright side, I wasn’t disappointed by the season 1 reward, since the usual rewards were already so poor

Sword/Focus + Shatters.

After the patch, if you spawn a iWarden on a gate in wvw, it doesn’t always attack the gate.

Another thing I noticed is that the warden now spawns behind the gate and if you switch target after the warden is spawned, it will move and attack your new target, for example siege or players inside the keep/tower, not sure if “working as intended” or another bug.

Mantra of Concentration, Null Field, Veil.

I might switch Null Field for Mantra of Resolve if there’s no warrior or guardian in my party.

As for veil, depends on how many mesmers we have online… if there’s at least 2 veils, the others might run portal or feedback. In some cases even mirror images or signet of illusions (makes more sense for GvG than in zerg busting).

Very close match so far, nobody is slacking (or maybe everyone is).

Shoutout to [BI] and [SC], nice to see some guilds from Abaddon instead of the usual blob!

ANet should publish stats about how many times those items have been ‘touched’.

I noticed something funny (sad): when you cast the iWarden on a gate (WvW) it sometimes Wander (see what I did here?) around and starts attacking stuff/guards inside the keep/tower instead of the gate.

Ironvos.9014:

I have noticed my warden doesnt attack structures anymore as it’s supposed to.
Was at Lyssa earlier and tried attacking the trebs there.
After the warden got cast it just ran after the mobs instead of spinning next to the treb.

I tried it against the seperatist trebs southeast of Diessa, there the warden just spawns at the treb and does nothing at all.

Noticed this on the cages inside the Twilight chambers. Bug?

I’m using either MSI Afterburner or Nvidia Shadowplay.
MSI Afterburner pros: records 1920×1200, high quality uncompressed video. Downsides: video size (think tens of gigabytes) and performance.
Nvidia Shadowplay pros: high quality video, compressed in hardware, very lightweight, continuous recording mode (press a key and saves the last 5 minutes on disk, very useful). Downsides: only records 1920×1080, can’t manage (yet) to make it use my SSD, sometimes freezes/loses frames.

Thanks for the fights of this matchup everyone! cya Deso on reset and FSP in the next weeks maybe? Who knows what ANet will throw at us after the season ends?

To the EXG elementalist I was fighting tonight (I think it was FSP border), sorry that we’ve been interrupted, I shattered (F4) my illusions because I didn’t want a 3v1 fight.

where’s my skill lag?! now I need to play properly to survive huge 3-way battles

(good job, ANet!)

It’s sad how these threads (and the game) are more and more about points and less and less about good fights

Ansau.7326:

These are examples of what we call blob, a huge zerg with all people in the same place (+40 people, but normally 60 to 80):

stop scaring them with EU blobs :°)

I don’t know much about US wvw, but that’s a pretty common sight on EU servers, in particular during resets.

Lahel.6381:

dont have illusionary persona and clones die quickly so never have any up to shatter :P

aww
I know your pain :\

Lahel.6381:

I was thinking of putting in a text over his head saying “my people needs me” but simply forgot it in the end :P

LOL
that would’ve been awesome :°)

might join you if I’m not in wvw

gj mate

why so few shatters tough? I’m stuck with Illusionary Persona only to have them always up, even if my clones die horribly in the zerg…

(loved the guy jumping off the bridge and you looking over the border :°D)

… you press the 3 key hoping that this time the iLeap clone will get to the target

DrDivine.5378:

sendmark.4731:

Yeah for tpvp Helseth’s build is best, although also uses it very well. It’s not really something a new player is going to jump into and notice much improvement right away. The strength comes from how he uses phase retreats, portals and the timings of shatters and so on, takes a fair amount of practice and research. Sensotix has great vids to help here though.

For wvw mesmer has a lot of really good roaming builds, can’t really go wrong. Warrior with cheesy build may still be easier, but mesmer better and more interesting once you master it.

GvG / big fights is still mediocre outside boring glamours.

Thanks for the advice, I’ve been getting a bit frustrated as I’ve been trying all these builds and it’s still getting miserable results. I’m not sure if I’m just used to the warrior, but I cut through other players pretty well with him. My mesmer can’t even get one kill.

How many hours played you have on your warrior? How many on your mesmer?

Small video from one Nov 5 fight in MS border:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xje72dq9Nkc

Got some footage of small roaming yesterday, lots of small guilds roaming in UW borderland (the PVE patch allowed people to join wvw I guess?) I hope I’ll be able to make another video before the end of the matchup

• Show average queue length for prime time in the server list: you’ll think twice before transfering to a server with a 2h average wait time. Maybe even make the player wait for the average time before confirming the transfer: “are you really, really sure?”
• In the server list, show servers with 0 queue on top by default
• Let guilds keep their upgrades when transfering server
• Let guilds use influence and merits to gain discounts on transfer fees

Bacon.4918:

Make the reveal debuff apply to mesmers already!

Try to play a mesmer before posting on the forums, maybe you’ll notice that we already get the revealed debuff, and in many silly ways (bouncing attacks for example)

Things I would fix on mantras to get them on par:

• bad sinergy of Harmonious Mantras with Restorative Mantras: having one more charge to spend means you get less healing per second from Restorative Mantras. Make Harmonious Mantras reduce the cooldown of each mantra so that the hps remains the same.
• from a WvW big-fights point of view, the lack of AoE effect on MoPain and MoDistraction makes them useless (altough MoPain is nice in combination with Restorative Mantras)
• MoConcentration and MoResolve AoE radius is too small: change it to 600 like shouts (or at least 360 like venom share!)
• Restorative Mantras radius is too small: change it to 600 like shouts
• get rid of the toughness on protected mantras, make it grant 3s aegis at the start of the the cast instead, with 3s internal cooldown
• damage from MoPain feels too low considering how long is the downtime
• the downtime for using multiple mantras makes it unpractical to use more than one of them: a 2.75s cast is already hard to pull off in combat. Maybe make it that a single cast recharges all mantras that are off cooldown? But it’s not an optimal solution…

Other things I would like to see fixed:

• make Shattered Conditions work with Illusionary Persona: if I get 2 grand master traits, I think I’m entitled to have them work with each other
• make the effects of Prismatic Understanding work for everyone affected by your veil/mass invisibility (or at least make it work on your party members)
• reduce the duration of Null Field, but make the effect progressive: first pulse strips 1 boon/condition, second pulse 2, third 3.

One idea for mimic: change it so that the effect of the skill that next hits you, will affect the attacker aswell – if you lose 4000 hp due to the attack, the attacker loses 4000 hp too (not affected by armor), if you get stunned for 3 seconds, the attacker will be disabled too. Countless possibilities with positioning and pushbacks!

One 5-people team from the tPvP queue (“defending team”) faces increasing number of opponents from hotjoin queue, starting 5v5 and adding one player to the opposing team every 60 seconds up to 5v10 (“attacking team”).

Defending team players do not respawn after being defeated, but they can be ressed.

Game ends when all the players in the defending team are defeated or after a time limit (I’d say 3 or 4 minutes after the last player joined the attacking team).

The glory reward increases with survival time for the defending team and decreases the more time it takes to kill the defending team for attacking team.

ZStefanovic.2475:

GG to YaK and Diva tonight, few good fights around west camp area!

louis antoine.1287:

GH Bl, very good fights, all guild gank everywhere, trifaction fight in openfield just awesome. Big thx to [Diva], [Yak], [Fury] and other…

/salute
thanks everyone for the nice fights in FR bl yesterday and cya on the battlefield o/

Ryn.6459:

I actually like the idea of getting stability while charging mantras. Dont think will be OP. you maybe able to be permastable but you will be channeling so…

It would definitely be OP.

As someone mentioned, reflection or block for projectiles would be better. Or, maybe, 3s Aegis. It would stop the first attack/skill that lands while channeling, but after that you would still be vulnerable.

My Shattered Mantras build for group WvW

This build has been destroyed by the swap of Mantra traits in Domination/Dueling traitlines. RIP.

Hello everyone!

I did some more testing this week and I’m ready to share my new build.

Weapons: Sword/Focus, Staff.

Traits:

• Domination: I
• Dueling: IV, X, XI
• Illusions: I, VIII, XI

Utilities and Elite: Mantra of Concentration, Null field, Veil. Timewarp.

Check the link for gear and details.

How do I play this build?

This is intended as a (guild) group frontline build, played alongside warriors and guardians, using the iLeap/swap, blurred frenzy and Mind Wrack combo as the main source of damage, with focus for pulls and minimal projectile defense (the phantasm will die quickly, but maybe he’ll intercept some projectiles) and staff for defense/escape and harassment.

This build has enough armor and HP (Guard Defense stacks are a big plus) to survive in most zerg fights up to 35-40 enemies. Condition removal comes from the Warriors and Guardian shouts (with soldier runes) and warhorns and elemetalists water fields. Condition duration is reduced by 65% with runes and food, so you shouldn’t have problems with immobilizes or damage from bleeds/poisons.

The heal is very weak, but in group play most of the heals come from blasting water fields, guardians (staff, dodge) and warriors (shouts).

WHY 10-30 instead of 20-20?

The classic shatter build go for 20 points in Domination, using diversion to stack vulnerability before the mind wrack. Since in bigger zerg fights we don’t have the time to “prepare” our targets (and other classes will drop vulnerability on them), this build focus on getting more damage from having mantras charged.

VARIATIONS

• Switch Dueling X for VII for more support
• Switch Null Field for Mantra of Resolve for a bit more damage (and a different kind of support) but at the expense of a very powerful utility
• If your group has many mesmers, switch Veil for Signet of Illusions (shatter 2 times in a row!)
• Switch Melandru for Hoelbrak runes for more damage, at the expense of survivability (only works for smaller groups and roaming)

I’m looking forward to comments and feedback, cya on the battlefield! o/

I think most fears have the “unblockable” tag (necro traited staff, warrior)

Great fight in FSP Bay a few mins ago!
Got disconnected at the end, but was the best fight in a long time

Back to the queue…

Very well done, nice fights!
(and being a sylvari mesmer in t2 cultural is a plus!)

Shatter build works in zergs, but be prepared to make room in your bank for your zerker gear and be ready to wear pvt/knights/cavalier

Hard to get the whole guild in the same borderland with these queues… anyway, good fights tonight. Reset lag was awful.

Running with the frontlines as usual

I tested a new frontline shatter build that provides a bit more high-risk high-reward playstyle but it’s very hard to play in my current matchup (against Abaddon and Desolation) facing 50-60+ man zergs… gonna share it with a proper thread in a few days along with the more tanky build I’m running during this matchup and I’m more confident with, having used it in previous zergy matches.

Sunday: huge lag in the borderlands, blobs, queues and disconnects

Was a very hard and long evening on Deso border.

Shoutout to AvA (hope I got the tag right), the only Abaddon guild running outside of the blob, hope to face you guys with (somewhat) even numbers in the coming days!

thank everyone for the fights and the bags

1) The scoring system: rewards coverage over fun/balanced fights.
2) Lack of a proper alliance infrastructure, lack of incentives for guild to transfer (for example: retain the upgrades, buy discounts for player transfer fees with influence/merits) and poor commander options (lack of a proper commander interface and maybe a command chain with sub-commanders and such) make very hard to organize a server over the 24/7 coverage
3) Rewards and gear availability: we’re still waiting for ascended back pieces in WvW, only a few armor and weapon stat combination available

Silly Scimitar + Quip for the ultimate humiliation weapon set :°)

I was testing Empowering Mantras and the tooltip for shatters doesn’t get updated with a charged mantra (but the % increase damage seem to apply from an empyrical test in the mists)

Gudradain.3892:

OK, seems everyone love that suggestion, but I will take the time to critic it…

So, you basically replace 24 worlds in NA and 29 worlds in EU by 3 in NA and 3 in EU. Everything seems fantastic in your post but…

What happen when 1 color get stacked and win all the time?

This is a good counter argument, but I don’t think the OP meant for the winning servers to be placed together in the same “team” the next week, so it would be harder /impossible to create a “stacked color”

quakeroatmeal.4829:

That is indeed a ridiculous mechanic.

The original design made sense (reflect a percentage of the damage back), the current implementation is… not very balanced.

Oh, no, another one of those threads… save yourselves!

Jackums.3496:

@Azo: I have no idea what you’re trying to say, but I’m guessing you disagree with my post.

Alissah.9281:

For single target dps, Mesmer comes 2nd or 3rd place, though.

Yes. In a zerg, though, our DPS is one of the lowest.

Sadly, in a zerg our class mechanics don’t work: phantasms and clones are way too fragile for ZvZ combat… so we can’t use phantasms effectively and shatters are crippled.

The glamour/confusion build has been nerfed twice (confusion damage and stacking cooldown) and it’s not a valid option anymore (works for tagging, but the damage is very poor).

On top of that, the current meta is very condition heavy…

ANet, do the right thing, put new shatter animations on the trading post, so this silly norn can have (pink) barbarians with 2 handed axes when he shatters his clones…

Hello quakeroatomeal, just check the retaliation page on the wiki … at the moment is a flat damage on hit based on retaliation source’s power (so if you get if from a guardian with 2k power, scales on that).

canadez.5328:

Menaka.5092:

I’ll repeat some that have been mentioned because these are important:

• Fix the random teleports on Feedback use (they are still there)

its not really random – skills like Dark Path from necro cause you to teleport if they cast it in Feedback, because its a projectile. I think Scorpion Wire has the same effect. Which makes me thinking if ppl can exploit it in WvW if you have a friend on the other server.

Yes. And infiltrator arrow for thieves… but it’s totally wrong to make the “reflect” effect on those skills affect the mesmer. It should simply cancel out the effect for the player casting it (teleport on one direction and then back), why pull the mesmer around?!