Guild Wars 2

Tried both tanky spec and glass spec for many professions in WvW. Toughness and vitality doesn’t really matter anymore, active defenses worth more than anything (even with vigor nerf). You either melt people or you melt, I think they need to tone down damage or buff everyone’s HP.

In mesmer I run Domi/duel/inspi. Inspiration + mantra of recovery really help a lot with conditions, especially when mantra of recovery recharges at the back. There are not a single instance when I don’t have a heal + condi cleanse ready.

Iavra.8510:

If you don’t see how broken PU is, i fear nobody can help you.

Bravo, let’s nerf every other traits because PU is broken. ANet logic right here.

Since when do you assume every mesmer running MtD run PU? I’m running Duel/inspi/illusion in tPvP and it works fine, should we nerf shattered condition? Oh wait we should nerf DE instead, PU can’t run without it.

+1

I really feel like just camping with those illusions instead of shattering them. Unfortunately iDuelist bleed doesn’t work and iMage hit for 1 stack of burn instead of 4 stacks of confusion, soooo I’m out of idea for a viable condi spec except scepter 2 and 3. Best advice I can give is run condi on other profession, you get more for less effort.

In hotjoin the button next to player name allows you to look at player’s build. CTD refers to “crash to desktop”.

Well timed focus + signet.

Or even better, staff guard + SoI. Before any fight ask the staff guard to empower you, then activate the signet to get instant 24 might stacks. Pretty easy to perform.

used to be 1 per illusion, now its 1 per shatter.

Just trying to have a casual morning during small break but every time I tried to look at people’s build in PvP I crash to desktop, anyone else have similar issue?

You gotta admit Pyro, thieves maybe able to evade immobilize with their easy retreat (which btw CD is now 3s more), but they can’t avoid accessible stuns every 5s. Especially since our mantra CD recharges at background, making mantra of distraction very very accessible.

But MandJ, how do you handle condition? Have you encounter any condi heavy opponents yet? How viable will this build be in WvW where condi thieves are everywhere?

Another side note, does this stun duration work with sigil of paralyzation? I’m too busy to test this out in the morning but 55% stun duration is quite potent for support lockdown (I know offense won’t be as pretty).

Probably should wait until Tuesday to decide hybrid/power/condi DPS now that confusing combatant is changed to fury on 50% instead of confusion. I wonder how much they said today will go off tomorrow.

Dulfy haven’t update much.

I agree with Pyro on this one, essentially they’re removing reasons to shatter your illusions by nerfing Maim back to 1 year ago, back to when no one really use it. That was a time when people take PU over Maim, why? Because illusions can deal more condi damage with bleed and auto than shattering.

I’m speaking from experience as well fluxit, I bought tormenting runes when Maim the disillusioned first came out, and I melt the gear and shove it in my bank when I find it lackluster compare to instant damage from power. I craft out gears again when I find they change it to 6s, but again I melt gears and store those runes when opponent can clear torment stacks before torment realize their full potential.

I finally manage to keep those gear when MtD is buffed to 2 stacks, but it doesn’t make me OP in WvW. It simply means torment stacks can at least match up to the burst nature of shatter, allowing you to deal at least some damage before it’s cleansed.

I can assure you, competent opponents rarely let those torment stacks last full duration unless they have very little condi cleanse, which won’t be a problem after the patch anyway.

Just noticed you can achieve near-perma fury with SoI and Pack runes (plus a buddy), never thought of this before lol.

I agree with you on the raw stats, that probably means we’ll have to save few distraction/diversion/stun breaks for GS in case things go wrong.

I still find ele’s dodging worth more though, with heal (+ condi removal) and blast on various fields, blind and burn is kind of meh but welcomed.

I thought devs want us to shatter more often? Did devs forgot the very concept of shatter? Shatter is a burst skill that sacrifice DPS from illusion to achieve great damage in short time, if shatter doesn’t reward as much then why should we shatter? One torment per illusion is almost the same as keeping them alive and let them spam auto, this mean we’re back to PU + camping with clones again. Devs need to remember that we’re dealing with players here, not golems. Opponents know shatter mesmer sacrifice their sustain for burst and to an extend they’ll find this fair, because most builds can outcleanse burst conditions, not prolonged and sustained ones from camping clones.

P.S. as a side note, scepter block is going to be more powerful than maim…again

Kraljevo.2801:

It’s kind of hilarious what one interrupt can proc if you get all the traits.

errrrr I’m sure everyone want a 6/6/6/0/0/6 build but that’s not possible.

Btw what would you guys choose now that inspiration opens up? Still domi/dueling/chaos for max rooting or domi/dueling/inspi for cleansing? Or replace one of distraction/blink/decoy?

Its a real shame that we don’t get as much confusion proc as promised, but I can live with it when they significantly raise condi cap.

With your build Silver, am I right to assume mental anguish is for shatter against weak mobs; mistrust is for focus pull; Inept is for boss blind? Somehow I got a feeling that those GM trait aren’t as beneficial as their respective adept and master traits xD

Ah yes, let’s complain about specialisations when other classes’ specialisation isn’t out yet and we’re couple more months away from specialisation launch.

I’d say move on guys, these sort of argument have no conclusion.

If you look at the damage potential Warlord, I’d say iMage got nerfed (4 stacks of confusion changed to 1 stack of burn). But fury is something hard to come by for mesmers.

Fay.2357:

StickerHappy.8052:

Fay.2357:

The nightmare torch from twilight arbor looks fantastic.

How does that look fantastic? it looks like a burnt purple branch.

PS: This is a serious question, I play all low in pvp, so it must be I might be seeing different, or lower scaled skins.

The torch effect of it is unique in the entire game, and looks very cool, and is purple.

I agree, and it suits my purple sylvari really well. (no I’m not part of nightmare court)

I’m worry that it’ll suffer the same fate as blinding befuddlement, but to be honest one confusion per 10s rarely does anything to a player, not to mention current zergs who know how to blast heal.

I think Mistrust will have much better damage potential there, having to achieve high stacks of confusion against careless zerg.

Anyway I made a mesmer zerg build for now, ruptshare? Interboon? Whatever name you prefer lol. Certainly not a complete new concept, but I just want to tie it with newly released traits. Armor depend on your choice, you can go full zerk if you want. I choose knight so I don’t get picked off by thieves too easily.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-R;4ZUV11S7BWV71;9;4SUV;0048256147;44wG0U;1t_MTt_MT70FA4-sG;34-8WCXIYM3U4EsVGs0V;5F2-ocYDo;9;9;9;9;82k3O

• Strong boonshare in sustained fights with signet of inspiration and illusionary inspiration after interrupts, most likely still in backline tbh, but try to go in between to share your boons.
• Good interrupting potential with chaos associated stuff (storm, armor, dampening, interruption, power block), mantra of distraction, illusionary wave and gravity well (not in build editor yet).
• Moderate healing with restorative mantra + 600 toughness while channeling it, I know its clumsy to have 2 mantra though, try not to use it when getting sucked into melee train.
• Good condition cleanse with power cleanse on heal (2 per heal) and 1 condi cleanse per shatter.
• Negative: not much stun breakers, I choose blink to draw distance from melee units as well as 2s mirror for recover if locked on by range units, just a little extra time for you to heal while backing out.

I’m more interested in wells than boonshare though, which the build editor hasn’t updated yet. If it has wells I might slot in well of calamity over signet, dealing ~1700 + 2 × 300 base damage on a 20s CD skill. And I might change Inspiration for all chronomancer slow traits (interrupt, crit chance, every 3rd hit) to boost up crit chances. Or keep domination for interrupt damages. Calamity has very high damage potential, especially when opponents are rooted by interrupts in chaotic interruption. Still wonder how I’ll manage condition/stun in that set up though.

Btw is our well tied to chronomancer like necros shouts?

EDIT: some grammar issue lol

Sorry but even with mimic you’ll find it hard to get away from thieves, any thieves can easily chain steal/infiltrator skills/signet. 100% daze is the main game changer imo, pleasantly surprise to see them increase stun duration as well. Add that with CI as well as IP diversion on yourself means you can root/instantly retaliate the thief when he thought he had you. These are hypothetical rotations in old encounters anyway, who knows what thieves will get in their specialisation.

Eremite: new mimic changed to “reduce recharge of next utility skill to 1s after casting mimic”

Zoser.7245:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

There is one advantage mesmer has over thief, when engi try to smoke us out, our illusions may take the hit for their master and forced “locked on” into CD.

I assume you mean the other post of Exciton.8942 in the other thread.
I imagine that, if the skill that hit us or our illusions is an AOE, it can reveal up to the max of players/illusions that the skill can hit inside its area with the first tick before “Lock On” go into CD.

ENGINEER -> Tools -> Master:
Lock On: Striking a foe in stealth analyzes them, revealing them and inflicting them with 10 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds. This trait has a 20 second internal cooldown.

You could be right, but no where it says target limits or ICD per foe. In the end I think its wording issue and we can only be sure until some official clear it out.

Dastion.3106:

Essentially slotted the same utility twice? Yes – that’s awesome. I can see some a support Mesmer getting some awesome play with this and Illusion of Life.

I wonder if it works on traits that trigger utility skills? Such as Mental Defense(iDefender) and Illusionary Inspiration(SoInspiration).

I used to use illusion of life like warrior banner before I actually read the tooltip properly, it’s a good troll in several situations. Love to see that kind of troll happening twice though haha.

Someone call the IT department.

http://cdn.meme.am/instances/56741824.jpg

Few disappointments like restorative illusions, confusing combatant and loss of 50% torment damage, but I generally like the change.

Exciton.8942:

azizul.8469:

double veil for WvW !

And a few engineers happily throw some aoes on top with Lock on trait.
The majority of your zerg will be revealed!

Its probably a poorly worded sentence that cause your misunderstanding, but Lock On has an ICD, meaning it’ll only reveal the first person in stealth then go into CD. Same idea as our glamour zerg build in the past.

P.S. unless specified like our Ineptitude, where it says ICD per foe

There is one advantage mesmer has over thief, when engi try to smoke us out, our illusions may take the hit for their master and forced “locked on” into CD.

How about a bunker slowmancer who spams high attack rate attacks to keep opponent slowed so you’re teammate won’t get killed so easily?

jks aside, you’re right that this doesn’t provide new gameplay. Maybe wells can bring some sort of synergy like necro wellmancer? Like gravity well + iLeap to root opponent, then calamity/recall (or together) for damage while you do other……stuff. That might not work though due to dev saying they’ll remove float in gravity well.

I think he’s asking about new playstyle Windwalker, not exactly undermining effectiveness of chronomancer.

Hehe I actually would like to see daze locking stun breaks as well, but I understand that this is a big thing to ask. As it stands right now daze is just a weaker version of stun/pull/knockback due to those CCs hindered both movement and skills (except stun breaks). Daze locking everything could create variety while leave some counterplay of kiting.

Sadrien.3470:

We should pretend to be mindless internet users and just reply #dodgeshatters and link vashury’s channel.

Maybe we should just follow what you suggest, since you formed such a brilliant argument on how those 2 traits work

Both traits are good in making your subsequent shatters easier, but they can’t provide clones on demand. I know you spend endurance so it may not be on demand all the time but I can’t think of another way to say it

Illusionary reversion won’t work with sword associated power shatter because sword clones rarely survive longer than 10s (roughly that time for next mind wrack), better if you have GS, but again any unintended/intended cleaving within 10s will remove that clone. I can see this works with condi shatter because you’re not limited to mind wrack (and the time interval between CD), but you’ll want to take dueling for on crit minors anyway and mistrust is more situated towards multiple opponents.

Chronophantasma has a vital counterplay in shatter. Due to phantasms running towards target to deal shatter damage, you’re exposing your phantasm to “danger zone” that can easily be cleaved out. So again, probably won’t work so well if you have to wait 10s for your next mind wrack cycle.

Traditional 30% decrease when trait illusion in full will be split into 2 parts. All professions will get 15% recharge baselined and the 2nd 15% recharge will be incorporated into minors for their fifth traitline (illusions in our case).

Regarding reflection on distortion baselined…..I’m not convinced that it should be made baselined. Distortion itself already mitigate all incoming damage. While reflection is a nice offensive measure for range pressures, it is not vital to the point of limiting build diversity and a must for class mechanics (like IP).

Me Games Ma.8426:

Fay.2357:

Want to take a guess at how dead the boss will be by the time you get 3 duelists up and fully ticking?

Very dead.

The answer to your problems is “Chronomancer”… without slow or quickness I’d be 4s for the summoning of all three. (maintaining them is a different story)
F5->Duelist->SoEther->Duelist->F5->Duelist (SoE is ready if one of them dies)

plus signet of illusions for phantasm health (not that it matters with boss) or F5 in case you need to restart after iDuelist and signet recharged. I suppose I’m being too optimistic to say that with the new harmonious mantra, there isn’t much point stacking mantras anymore lol.

With power component you can do slightly higher, but warrior and ele will still achieve the highest dps. I can easily achieve 25k+ with just one skill (HB or whirling attack if stacking) in full zerk scholar warrior.

Duelist discipline can make scepter/pistol+GS hybrid build look better in PvP/WvW though, but hard to say anything until the new meta developed in HoT. That 50% recharge can make pistol 5 an iDuelist generating skill

Only celestial stuff I crafted for my mesmer, the most accessible and decent purple shield imo. I got the rest of the weapon covered in purple already
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wupwup_Bastion

Adding ICD will destroy Mistrust just like the glamour catastrophe, you’re basically just tickling their zerg with 2 stacks of confusion.

Dummy version here Chaos, was asking how much condi pressure you can put with 3 iDuelists + duelist discipline + sharper image + confusing combatant.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Condi-builds-in-PvE-Dungeon-after-HoT/

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Multiply 3x Duelists, then multiply by 100% condition duration + 65% bleed duration = 65.51 bleed, 15.3 confusion

= 80.81 total

You lost me from here bruh, can you elaborate a bit more?
Also don’t forget crit attacks from mesmer himself also inflict confusion, which isn’t too hard with rampager gear.

PvP celestial amulet (important here!) is taking another 10% hit, which can potentially be detrimental to celestial meta if combined with loss of attribution stats from traitlines. We don’t know how much they’re compensating it in the armor sets though. You can still craft celestial armor for WvW/PvE without much worries, but I don’t like celestial armor in mesmer anyway…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Impact-on-PVP-with-no-stats-from-traits/first#post5004601

Whoops misread your question trooper, I don’t think you have to run traveler, any rune set is fine and pack is quite deadly. You just have to run with swiftness.

trooper.2650:

Menaka.5092:

\o/
told ya it was fun

my build is with sinister jewels and phantasm dmg/fury (dropping halting strike and imp. blink), it’s really fun to play and effective

sinister jewels and rabid armor? what about weapons?
I mean, the build works, no doubt about that. But I think the gear is what makes it okish, good or great (that’s the main reason why it doesn’t work that well in pvp, because lack of gear choice)

Have you though going full sinister? (or with the majority of pieces, anyway. If you wanna slot in some knight that’s fine).

Is sinister purchasable from TP?

edit. one more question: would it work without travelers? I am not keen in investing on a second travelers set of runes. I already have them on my zerk set and I would be considering something different, like air or pack (I run with focus and those sets gel extremely well with my wepaon choice)

You can’t purchase some vital sinister recipes from TP, you have to do it through Living stories. On the other hand rampager is also a similar choice, with minor reduction in damage.

I was talking with another fellow mesmer the other day about full sinister. You can check this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Sinister-Gear-And-Build-Advice

I’m running almost full rampager atm and so far it isn’t too bad. Essentially Maim the Disillusioned got beefed up by duration food. Just like what I said in that thread, you have almost 70% condi duration with food/traits/oil, so your torment duration from weapon skills and shatter are around the same time as skill CD anyway. This means traveler runes is perfectly fine, any more duration buff is welcomed but kind of unnecessary.

Back to OP, thanks for the fun video! I’ll try staff over scepter/pistol sometimes! But in my build one scepter block = 9000-ish damage over 13s so its a bit hard to give up ><

Evasive mirror is in dueling and its only real competition is blind on shatter. So give or take depending on melee or range opponent. This, however, doesn’t stop projectile if you got hard CCed/immobilized, which is the main problem I could see if you substitute it for masterful reflection.

One thing of note though this reflect lasts 1.5s after dodging. So you have roughly 1s of evasion to damage and 1.5s of projectile mitigation, effectively stop power ranger from hurting you with non-setup rapid fire. Since you’ll want to dodge deady range damage anyway (if you’re running glass), and you still have the option of tanking less lethal blows, I wouldn’t consider it as dodge spam.

Btw, anyone think there’s a possibility of working with blurred frenzy from the trait description? I could be missing something since I didn’t watch the specialisation video in full.

Important P.S. who doesn’t want to deflect arrows with their sword…back to whoever shoots arrows

Feel trolly lately so I chain interrupts a warrior (who surprisingly only have stun breaks or stability could be on CD) on 4/4/6/0/0. He turned into juggernaut after that but the juggernaut becomes a pretty bird.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I did a poll too. Most agreed that the 3 classes that need nerfs are warriors, mesmers and thieves

Source? Population? Bias? “Most”? Anyone who touch stats will laugh at this quote. You might consider FPS games when every class seems wrong to you…but you may find gun choices unfair.

Possibly combined shatter traits, such as extra crit chance in MW, retaliation on cry of frustration, AoE diversion and reflecting distortion. Hopefully they’ll change some of the underpowered ones, seeing no one actually take the retaliation lol.

Both GS and staff are quite decent.

The clones from GS could generate decent bleed stacks and mirror blade will give you the burst power you need to push people to defensive. But if you want to run GS your precision demand will be slightly higher than staff.

Staff is more consistent with condition applying and you get to kite better, but you lack the burst power and you can’t stop opponent when they’re running in low health. Also you’ll lack the power pressure needed to push people to defensive (eg. pew pew rangers etc).

Runes…I run tormenting (waaaaay overkill the duration I know) right now because I don’t want to sell it yet haha. You’re confusion duration is almost 90-100% so no worries there, your rest of conditions will be 60-70% depend on your oil etc. This means you’ve almost reach condition caps and you’re condition duration have surpassed skill CD. Anymore plus durations will be overkill.

You can run whatever you like tbh, travelers for the passive speed or runes of pack for extra power + precision + fury. Hoelbrak if you have trouble managing conditions or balthazar if you are running staff. Perplexity proc on interrupt could be helpful, but you’ll only gain condi duration benefit if you’re facing opponent with minus condi duration food (which is more likely if fighting zerg etc).

I’d recommend stay off of celestial gear for now. Not only does it invest stats on healing power (yuck), the devs did say they’ll tone it down further in the future. I suspected it’ll take another hit in HoT.

Sinister could work with MtD shatter in WvW due to how powerful the condi duration food are. You can actually surpass power shatter in the long run if your opponent can’t manage cleansing under power shatter pressure.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAraWlknpRtlpxINcrNCrBh6rslfSyBEgSmhrB-TVyHABSfKAASJ2PKDoVfARKNwV9HV2fAgnAwTKBJFgYDrA-w
Just some random set for you to consider, the main idea is to keep power 2000, condi 1000, crit chance 50% and the rest for vitality/toughness if you need some passive stats to survive (which you might need since you don’t have immediate damage as full power shatter). Better to roam with a friend tbh, I find healway guard/DD ele quite useful in keeping you alive, or thief partner if you want to be a bit more aggressive. I prefer sigil of incapacitation because my thief partner usually handle the poison part.

Exactly what baylock said, the duration in ecto is so long that you gain more by drinking it early than not.

With steal traits you’ll have pretty much 100% fury/swiftness uptime, and you’ll have the upper hand to down mesmer with all support and damage mitigation boons like aegis, protection (10s, yum), regen and vigor. Why not go offense before mesmer build up enough phantasms to counter you? Stability is a nice addition but 3s isn’t doing much when you need to anticipate mantra of distraction etc.

I may find this change more helpful if I’m fighting against +1 by myself (that’s usually bad for thieves anyway). Then I’ll hold onto that plasma until mesmer is more vulnerable.

Though the devs did say they’ll reevaluate stolen items, so plasma may not be the same in HoT.

33% increase in duration is in adept illusion right now and its hardly build defining, GM worthy…slapping 2 stacks of confusion on blind (with ICD!) won’t make it so either. You can achieve + 70% confusion duration with food+perplexity, and that’s very close to 100% uptime confusions for your weapon skills and traits. That extra 33% (around extra 1-3 seconds across all access) isn’t worth it when you can apply 2 stacks of torment (6s) for each illusion on shatter.

Not exactly the reason to stop progress though.

If we’re just tweaking numbers then changing it to 4 stacks are a lot more reasonable. The ICD are longer than confusion duration so it won’t be OP anyway. Currently 2 stacks just got outshined by confusing combatant.

If they’re afraid of the confusion stacks but fear that the trait is underpowered, then add a new effect that increase our blind access: charging mantra skill or each pulse of well cause blind on surrounding foes. Or like OP said, cause blind and confusion when you start confusing them.

Reason for this addition is because maim outshined BB in blind on shatter, and trading 5 stacks of torment on block with blind isn’t a very good option. I know opponent may wait for you or you have no AoE to proc it but that makes BB very niche.