Guild Wars 2

JestersMadness.7528:

Then why ever kill somone? They just pop right back up!

Hence we need to consider CD properly in PvP. If you need moa to kill someone then you’ll be in the same sticky situation by the time he comes back. The point of PvP is not to win a single duel every 2-3 min, it is to hold an upper edge throughout the match to ensure victory.

Btw moa’s auto-attack is actually a physical leap skill with not bad damage (if run zerker). And moa’s flee is an evade skill that runs back moderate distance. Those are the things I wish mesmer have lol.

Yay! Another moa thread! I hope you’re not one of those who won’t change your mind about moa being OP no matter what others said

In seriousness though, even if you kill your opponent in moa. So what? He’s coming back in 10s while you’re on two and a half to three minutes cd.

Pfft why do we need speed signet when we have a portal that can teleport us 5000 front and back in 10s. I mean a lot of mesmers chose that over condition removals so clearly it’s the most OP skill in this game. *cough *cough

Just a suggestion, maybe you press a movement key before or during blurred frenzy? As I recall there’s a slight delay in blurred frenzy before you actually go into evade mode and movement during that time can cancel it.

I use sword+focus/GS with 6/6/0/0/2 to maximize my own damage. When I’m dealing with mobs (eg. Foulbear’s minions) I use gs+shatter to tag a bit more. I also use focus to pull mobs together then use iWarden against veteran or mobs with highest hp (or just shatter that iWarden if he misbehaves like a bad boy).

Against champion bosses I just sent out phantasms and auto-attack/blurr frenzy.

A bit boring I know, but I swap builds from time to time to keep myself interested. Sometimes I try standard shatter, sometimes I try reflect. I even try the obscure new GM traits. To me, no one is really picking on your choice of weapon or utilities in open world champs, so I like to get creative (well unless we’re talking about teq or triple trouble).

I secretly admire Diplomat Tarban. Even though he’s a mesmer on steroid and my guild hates him.

I run S/P+staff and full shatter zerker in PvP but traited for halting strike instead of mental wreck. Granted that my burst isn’t as high when compare to other shatter mesmers, but I can still deliver consistent damage using staff. I’m also feeling kind of stuck with it since the iLeap nerf and everyone can pretty much interpret incoming mind wreck.

Just to give you an idea when I’m holding staff. In many situations my diversion crit can hit 1.5k-2k (1-2 clone interrupt), and in ideal (full interrupt, crit and cumulating vulnerability) situations I can do up to 4k-5k damage. iWarlock crit can also deliver about 3k-4k. Plus further interruption from Chaos storm and mind wreck (though I tend to reserve this for sword) I can still do decent direct damage against light and medium armors. I know it is not the best damage there but staff is my defensive weapon anyway. Keep in mind daze also prevents my opponent from recovering after sword/mind wreck burst, and interruption damage + chaos storm can be really deadly against some S/D thieves who spam skills and think they can evade all.

Only problem I have in this set up is I’m pretty much a melee character, and may have problems against range opponents as oppose to GS/Staff.

If we add daze into part of the chaos armor RNG, would you guys think it become more viable while not OP?

Other than that I feel the CD is too long for this skill to be significant.

I always thought a good spirit or trap ranger makes a good bunker. Not as well as guardian/warrior but still does a decent job. Anyone want to enlighten me :O?

Currently mesmer tPvP meta (GS/Staff) is more about boon strip/damage from range. Portal is good for getting around but I find mesmer having hard time in hold points alone. Or we could discard point capture and play PU to harrass people and bring number advantage. Both seems to be very niche roles and limited options.

Curunen.8729:

“Phase Retreat now cannot cast without a target.”

…after all, it does summon a clone.

You can quote me on this one in 6 to 12 months.

Oh please not, and don’t give them that idea ><. That would vastly reduce staff’s viability against stealthy thieves.

Funny because today when I was PvPing I actually spent 25s in down state in a hotjoin. A necro was trying to res me and fear off opponent, and he timed just enough for me to use deception (downed skill 2) the second time. Plus my phantasms are still up so retaliation would’ve be a nice addition to the awesome “DPS” I had that time.

Dawdler.8521:

Veruah.5302:

Personally I really hope that the iWarden not working 50+% of the time is just an intended part of the skill and there is a minor bug fix to update the tooltip.

I really think it would be cool if when the iWarden doesn’t attack you just don’t summon it at all and instead a little flag with “BANG!” on it pops out of your focus in a burst of purple-y mesmer butterflies.

What do you guys think? Cool bug fix or totally lame?

But if it was intended, we’d see similar changes across the board.

For example:

Warrior axe throw – now has a 50% chance to boomerang back and inflict 3000hp damage on the Warrior

Guardian staff buff – 66% chance to lock in an infinite loop while preventing any movement*

Thief basilisk venom – 33% chance to trigger an effect called “Maybe it needs to be sharpened first?” and turn the Thief into stone instead.

Engineer grenades – 33% chance to fumble.

Etc and so on.

*Asuran Guardians are stuck in an endless spin loop while a disco ball appear over their heads and “You spin me right round, baby” plays.

Sounds like an awesome April Fools prank! Except we’re having April Fools everyday, that’s what we get for cheating people with mesmers lol.

Honestly how many times can you encounter skritt burglar and why do you want to fight him after all those achievements. This “bugfix” isn’t doing anything at all and it is almost like the devs are testing mesmers’ patient.

Skritt burglar got more priority than those class breaking bugs, yay!

Just curious, how well do you guys feel about vitality vs toughness in PU? With standard PU builds you can usually maintain amazingly long duration of protection (lol) but with 2 utilities in stealth you have one slot left for condition cleansing. Thus require certain amount of hp to tank through conditions.

About the weapon choices, torch is great for continuous stealth but pistol certainly deal better damage/cc. Why not both though?

It is pretty hard for mesmer to deal damage without precision (for both condition and power builds), so I think zerker works better than soldier. PU provides excellent active defense (stealth) and passive defense (aegis/protection/regen for survival) so you could invest more on power than toughness. Just need to be more aware of condition metas (particularly full of condition thieves roaming nowadays), so a bit of vitality could be helpful.

And you think dead clone swap gives you advantage over others? How about other professions where immobilize doesn’t need such large choreograph and you only have one chance to dodge it? You can play word game if you want but in terms of balance I don’t see any advantage over it.

aaaaaand mesmer swap is exploitable because?

Define your exploitable please.

lol

I don’t want to be judgmental, but since you already judge me: I must say that’s some big words from people who just start leveling mesmer lol.

Do you read the thread? Do you know ileap is the only untraited immobilizing skill we have? Play PvP/WvW on a mesmer and you’ll find out players have 2 chances of dodging ileap swap in the past, one from ileap clone and one from swap. Even more chances if you’re further from your opponents or there’s a rock in the way. A projectile immobilizing from other profession has much less choreograph and pathing issue, not to mention we don’t have any other physical leaping skills.

This is before the change. Any player who verses mesmer in the past will dodge after seeing a dashing clone charge towards them. Some mesmers will swap instantly to immobilize and this becomes a predictable routine that can be easily dodged by experienced opponents. Some mesmer decide to hold their swap and this gives mesmer much better chance of immobilizing foe. It can even serve as an escape mechanism if things go wrong. Now that option is out of the way we’re restricted to predictable ileap combo. Do you like to be predictable?

Now in addition to 2 dodging chances they add another counterplay to our ONLY UNTRAITED IMMOBILIZE.

Mesmer immobilizing must be the most predictable one eva! Aren’t you guys excited?

I can see you’re running a hybrid build, in that case the scepter/pistol will work better than GS. iDuelist is pretty much the only reliable way of applying higher stacks of bleed. I know its frustrating that opponent will dodge after taking a few shots from iDuelist but GS isn’t very useful if you only have 1631 power.

There was a time I saw someone post a video of him roaming with sword/torch + scepter/pistol but I can’t find it

Come to think about it, perhaps you can use power greatsword rather than rabid one. But if you like pistol, blink + magic bullet is a useful gap closer. How you gonna deal damage after he’s stun is the main problem. Maybe swap weapon set then ileap?

So anyone actually test if untraited iWarden work better against Subject 7? Seems like wardens will break once the ooze number pile up. It’s always ok in the beginning but with Frailty and Squeemish the fight will drag long enough for iWarden to break.

Not sure what look you’re looking for, but from your examples I can suggest a few. Haven’t tested them together yet since my mesmer is a plant

Masquerade/Genius/Phoenix shoulder
Council Ministry/Phoenix/Stately (karma) coat
Crucible of Eternity pants
Masquerade/Exalted boot (all other boots seems meh on Asura)

Or you could always go for profane xD, never seem much Asura wearing this unique armor.

Your party will spend most of the time fighting vet/elite/champ in dungeon and GS really lacks the power in stacking spots. But I want to talk more about pros since the cons are covered above

GS – 4, 2, dodge, F1 on zerker shatter mesmer can kill most normal mob (emphasis on normal, not elite, not champ) really quickly, and down veteran’s hp by a lot. Works better if the mobs all group up together. Such burst potential is quite useful in guild rush as well, when you get to be escorts you have to kill things really fast.

GS could be useful if you’re targeted by cleaning ooze in Sparki and Slick fight. Just a little more damage in situations where you have to kite ooze to clean Slick’s poisonous oil. Slick is a poor shot that sometimes he shoots his oil to medium range. Just don’t stay far for too long though because it’ll take much longer for the ooze to reach the next pool (and he might shoot even further when aiming at you). GS could also be useful in fighting Clockheart, where you need to kite hologram to disable Clockheart’s aetherblade shielding. Ofc you can melee Clockheart, but sometimes it can be hard if he cluck all his long lasting spinning cogs around him.

How about a grandmaster trait that adds 300 AoE range to all mantras but 4s cd more between casts? This can make mantra mesmers very versatile in zerg fights.

So single target mantras can become AoE like healing (maybe 3 target cap? 5s cd between each power return), dazing (3 target cap, 9s cd) and direct damage (5 target cap, 5s cd). And with 540 range it’s much easier for backline mesmer to grant stability and cleanse conditions for the zerg.

The AoE power return/healing can potentially make healing power more appealing to zerg mesmers. Could potentially synergies with that interrupted healing power trait even though that trait is just lol.

The 4s extra recharge may seem intimidating, but I felt that it encourages you to do something else during the cd, like weapons skills etc. So mesmers don’t have to spend all their time micromanaging mantras like many people reported. This also reduces mesmers’ “advantage” in instant cast in the balance perspective.

Don’t forget its a grandmaster trait so we don’t have to choose it. Thus it can introduce a new WvW meta without disrupting the current builds.

Yeah I was wondering the extend to counter blade against stacking zerg. If it can hit everyone in the projectile path then potentially you can interrupt/immobilize half a zerg who’s charging towards your zerg?

I think making Mantra of Pain into AoE is a good solution, the damage it deals isn’t particularly impressive and 2.75s cast time is hideous. No one takes this utility in most situations except traited healings (and even with that isn’t great as well). Kitten we even have better mantra options when looking at empowering mantra. Creating a useless utility is just bad design.

Btw how well do you guys think about offensive interruption traits (HS and CI) + counter blade (riposte’s subsequent skill) against zerg? I never know how well it’ll work in such chaotic situations. Is it like a cleaving skill that only hit up to 3 or 5?

A lot of people are suggesting main hand pistol with AoE damage, but I can’t recall any pistol animations with AoE attacks. Maybe we can just imply its a MIB pistol that blast things off haha.

I think clone death trait with direct damage is pretty cool. Could potentially make scepter auto a bit more viable in hybrid build, although scepter has a weird role in mesmer.

Well that’s a shame lol. Pretty much make retaliation hit like wet noodle. Thanks for the update!

A rather silly build I made, pretty much just for laugh. Still theorycrafting and no testing yet. Not sure if I’ll really test it haha. I’m also can’t be sure if this is for roaming, duoing or zerging.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWl0ApZo97wVIEENxARldUkgLo1BwA0mYNgA-TFyCABAcIAEa/hjfCAacBA8R9nEVC+iugsU+FAABgZOzZOzZOzSBMp0I-w

With the Radiant Retaliation trait and 2000 condition damage, you can deal about 500 damage to your opponent each time they hit you, as well as dealing 800hp/s burn on your opponent every 3 attacks. Burning is actually an interesting condition. It scales really bad with condition damage but 1s burn usually wears off so fast that opponent aren’t even bother to cleanse it.

I put quite a bit of emphasis on various retaliation application. 4.75s retaliation from each virtue and heal (with aegis in virtue of courage giving another 4.75s); 8s retaliation from stand your ground and 16.25s retaliation from save yourself; 20s retaliation from elite tome of wrath and 7.5s retaliation from symbol of wrath (GS4).

I have 2×3 condition management (virtue of resolve and purging flames) against high condition stacks and spikes, as well as micromanagement like purity sigil and signet of resolve. Not an ideal situation I know but should be sufficient. 2 stun breakers and a stability application.

Elite is where this build really gets offensive, as you’ll have 20s retaliation and skill 1 applies 2s burning (that is if you can hit them lol). Feel free to spam 1 on yourself when you have a melee opponent sticking on you.

This build is useful against fast attacking opponents such as mesmer (blurred frenzy x8 = 4000 retaliation) and thief (stealth pistol x5 = 2500 retaliation, pistol whip x9 = 4500 retaliation), but weak against opponents who can apply condition (condition necro) or stun (ham war) constantly. It isn’t effective against slow attacking opponents as well.

I think staff is also changable with sword/torch or scepter/torch.

Just out of curiosity, if you can change ileap range tooltip what range would you put down?

I thought you can’t interrupt if boss still has defiance? If so even if you power blocked one of boss’ moves he still has sufficient defiance stacks to prevent subsequent interruptions during that 10s. Unless you burn through all your CC skills in which case boss will be functional after another 5-10s anyway. I don’t really see the big deal with PvE power blocks, is it really OP to coordinate a mesmer interrupt? Its almost impossible to get it right in World Bosses/Meta-event bosses. And if 5 man team can coordinate that in dungeon/fractal then why not reward them with 10s cd?

I remember Joe had some celestial gears for WvW before the ferocity change, he moved onto assassin gears since. Couple of stats in celestial just isn’t favorable for mesmer.

You get about 500-550 healing power (HP) if run full celestial, which adds about 50-75 more in regeneration (0.125 * HP) per tick. 500-650 more in ether feast (1.0 * HP). 25-75 more per 3s in signet of ether passive (0.045 – 0.125 * HP) and 400 more in active (0.85 * HP). 200-250 more per power return (0.4 * HP) and 300 more in mirror heal (0.6 * HP). Which is hardly different from 0 healing power.

If you like using celestial gear, I think I’d go for phantasm build. Torment and confusion actually conflicted with each other in PvE mobs. How so? PvE mobs generally stand still when attacking, your confusion will tick but torment hurt less. When they move they generally aren’t attacking (with leap skills as exception), which means your confusion will not tick at all despite torment hurts more. And sometimes using shatter sacrifice chance of stacking bleed so condition damage won’t work well.

Well what I have in mind about mesmer is mostly covered by the posts above. So I’ll talk about something different in PvE. Please consider revert power block’s effect on PvE bosses, allowing us to effectively increase interrupted boss skill cooldowns to 10s.

We need something to make mesmer unique in PvE, and power block is a revolutionary start. PvE champions already has defiance to prevent frequent interruption, in addition the chance of successful interruption comes with coordination and experience. If a group of players can coordinate themselves to let mesmer interrupt bosses, then they should be rewarded with 10s cooldown. To be honest 10s cooldown is a bit low, because the amount of defiance stacks scale with player number, making it incredibly hard to interrupt world boss/meta boss for instance. Why do you nerf this potential, when you created this trait to define mesmer?

I dueled my friend (who plays axe/shield + GS warrior) couple of times with similar build yesterday, but with mirror images and mantra of distraction, scepter/pistol + staff. I still have the upper hand due to large number of dazing (2xdiversions, magic bullet, chaos storm, 3xpower lock). But torment just isn’t the primary damage in those battles, confusion is. Many times I survived by the skin of my teeth because he was able to maintain 15+ might on him many time.

Well this could be in the Player helping player forum, but I want a perspective from mesmer community. So say if we’re roaming WvW and roaming solo becomes boring/hard etc, what other roaming partner do you think is best suitable for mesmers?

Few examples I know of:

- Shatter mesmer synergies well with hammer guard (big appreciation to Joe for his awesome videos), like shatter when enemy is trapped within Ring of Warding (shatter AoE basically cover most of the ring).

- Signet of inspiration works wonders with guardian’s Empowering (staff 4), ranger’s Call of the Wild (warhorn 5) and other boons skills etc.

- Mesmer can also be the annoying bait to distract opponent from fellow thieves.

- Lots of mesmers to make it awfully dazzling for opponents.

What else can you guys think of? Feel free to put builds and suggestions!

GW2 is my first MMORPG and mesmer is my first character. She could start from exploring the maps, doing some heart missions with dynamic events to understand it.

Believe it or not when me and my friend started this game, and he started with warrior and I tried mesmer. We spent about the same time in game but I actually leveled up faster than him lol. If you think leveling is slow try mapping beginner maps and racial cities. Should boost your wife’s level sufficient enough to go through plenty of personal stories. Before your wife hit dungeons the best way to level up will be in locations that include both heart mission and dynamic events. For example Morgan’s spiral, Grawlenfjord.

eldenbri.1059:

Ah, timing is everything. I was replying to Elitist.

Thx for the explanation, Fay. Is pvp really that different than 2-man roaming in wvw? I do tons of 2v2, 2v3, etc fights in wvw with a phantasm build.

For sure, in fights with tons of AoE, the phantasms die before they get multiple attacks. I use duelists a lot (and use ether signet for 2 duelist burst). I find if I drop them on the edge of a 2 to 5 person fight, they usually last for a few attacks.

Thx again for the answers!

In WvW your iDuelist has the better chance of standing afar until your opponent take noticed. In PvP when you’re contesting a point, different floors and terrain may limited space for your iDuelists. You could also use the terrain to your advantage if you don’t mind competing the points, but again this will make you unfavorable in PvP.

@Elitist
I know you hate AI but you may want to leave at least one phantasm hanging around before you trap the thief. Shattering illusions are also AI but they may stupidly lost track of thief when the thief stealth during the shatter. Much different from iDuelist who won’t stop/miss the barrage even if the thief stealthed after targeting. Imo S/D thieves are easier to time shatter, but that doesn’t mean its an easy job.

Having shatter traits doesn’t mean your primary damage against thief is shattering though, thief’s hp is low enough for shatter mesmer’s phantasm to hurt/pressure them. You can stay close to your phantasm and let them pressure him, if he slip up/run into your range then you can quickly shatter on him. It’s annoying that you can’t shatter to your heart’s content but its one way to combat the thief. What’s more annoying is this means shatter concentration aren’t working on other opponents properly. You can always alternate your focus between other enemies and the thief but fact is thieves will always serve as a distinctive, distracting and lethal opponent for shatter mesmers.

I usually play shatter in PvP with a bit of interruption builds sometimes and I must say its hard to counter thieves. Whether you can win is much more dependent on how great the difference is between you and your opponent’s skill and experience. Which imo means shatter mesmers have a starting disadvantage, particularly for someone who just started playing that in PvP.

If you really want to stay at shatter mesmer, I have few advises for fighting thieves. Not instant remedy but can mitigate your damage:
- Mirror images+Mind Wreck: Some people may smirk at this but it gives you an unexpected instant burst if the thief thought he’s winning and decided to stick close to you.
- Run with someone who can immobilize/stun/trap thief much better: Team up with a hammer guardian/warrior/engi when fighting in the mid point. You have much better chance of hitting them than your ileap/swap. Plus that’s where shattered concentration and AoE burst actually benefits the most.
- Keep track of thief’s skill usage: See if he use blackpowder/pistol whip more than he should have.
- Illusionary Invigoration: can’t stress enough how good this trait is, allow you to pop distortion and diversion much earlier to avoid thief’s attack. It may also mean two Mind Wreck bursts within 10 seconds.

Again these advises aren’t instant remedy and success rate heavily dependent on the differences between your (plural) skills, particularly the 3rd one. Now that I shared few things I’m ready to be shot down by Fay haha.

Personally I like full zerker armors. If you want toughness like Osicat and malferian you can always equip ascended trinkets, which are much easier to come by. Having 2 sets of trinket with full zerker ascended armor gives you both choices without much sacrifice.

Keep in mind that Joe’s build has zero condition removal and is fully rely on his teammate to cleanse them. Probably not the best choice when you’re alone and get ambushed by condition metas. But if you have support guardian who synergies well with you you can fight against difficult outnumbered situations like Joe.

Also if you’re facing condition opponents, having extra toughness will do little to help you survive. I fought dire condition warrior in knight gear before and the fight lasted 15 minutes, then I decided knight isn’t helping much lol. Osicat’s build has toughness because he knows you’ll survive better against backstab thieves in roaming, which isn’t minority in roaming either.

PvE shouldn’t be restrict to banging our heads against bosses/mobs. Reflect damage is a clever way to play the game, it shouldn’t be punished simply because its different from normal damage. Mesmer already have a very niche role, most other roles can be done better in other professions, why strip all our specialties?

This is part of the reason why I against Powerblock nerf for npc, bosses already have defiance to prevent frequent interruption. Players should be rewarded for coordinating mesmer interrupt. But apparently ANet wants everyone to play like warrior.

Back to the topic:
I really don’t hope for any “mesmer professional balance” they announced nowadays. Nothing good came out of it, and some can be bad things. There are so many good skins for focus but I rarely spend any gold on it due to this. Kitten, I craft the Anomaly to sell it instead of using it myself, I crafted four already and have yet to unlock its skin.

In PvE the faster you take down them, the less damage you take. Bosses’ moves are also predictable and you can learn after a couple of fights. So with enough experience, healing power, toughness and vitality is often exceeded by power, precision and crit damage. And in high level fractals, it’ll be hard to out-heal the damage you take, so people tends to maximize their attacks and dodge when necessary.

I must emphasize on the usefulness though, cleric really shines in WvW support guardians. I run 0/0/2/6/6, almost full cleric with trooper runes, shout and virtue traits. I have lots of healing and condition removals for people roaming with me. I heal about 1.5k when dodging and 1k when swap weapon. Along with all those boons/converted boons and sigil of energy I can deliver a lot of healing output to my teammates. Though I’m pretty much rely on them to deal damage so I must have roaming partners.

cheshader.5081:

selan.8354:

yeah i moved on to necro. maybe once no one plays this class anymore, anet will realize that they nee to fix the bugs and rework the class…but that would be wishful thinking

Nah, they just will be happy about it.
‘Yay, finally no one plays that annoying unique class that has no equivalents in other mmos and was contributing to making GW2 something standing out among other games, wich was totally unacceptable. And we don’t need to imitate active bugfixing for it anymore! Time to buff some other class every second player has!"

Seriously, sometimes I can understand devs unable to solve bug due to mechanism limits. But lack of responses and delayed/unable to fulfill the promises they make to mesmers are downright disheartening. We have amazing contributions from this thread and mesmer forums but the conversation seems rather in one direction only.

It’s almost like mesmers are BEGGING for fixes now. A very strange consumer/producer relationship indeed.

There’s an interesting food that’s always overlooked when it comes to chill only. Just something to think about, and it’s also wallet friendly.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghost_Pepper_Popper

40% on crit to inflict 1 second chill at night, with 1 second internal cd. So if you have decent precision you can deliver a whole lot more chill. Though I understand people are using 40% extended duration on other conditions.

Build I’m just start running in WvW atm, had a couple of amazing roaming moments with my friends. Cleric gear with trooper runes and shout condition removals.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASRlsApfn1CxVI8DNRCRldR8fBI2fQIkCXFAA-T1SDABHp0ILlZ4o+zxPBgCMNEimAm2fAATQKoE0gLBwf6AIFgTbBA-w

Basically my job is to mitigate opponent’s damage, chew up conditions, use binding blades and warding rings to hinder opponent and serve as a distraction. This isn’t a new build, but it can support a full zerker teammate who has 0 condition removal. I still die from time to time, but I think this has great potential and synergies.

Mugi and he’s friends recorded some awesome outnumbered fights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zdrtMu2x1Y

The devs said its a pathing issue that they have no solution for, so players have to watch for terrain and range themselves.

If you have a rock on the path or too far your illusion might do crazy and silly things. To reduce the chance of that happening you have to be close and on flat terrain, which is stupid considering the purpose of the skill is to close in anyway. This severely hinders mesmer’s chasing ability. Some mesmers use stealth and safely approach their opponent before sending out for ileap.

Another setback is ileap/swap is probably the most predictable immobilizing skill in the whole game. Compare to all other immobilizing skills, opponents are given at least 2 opportunities (or more depending on the range) to dodge the swap immobilize. The cripple won’t help much because players can still dodge the following swap. The chance of success rely so much more on your opponent’s experience than your’s, so don’t beat yourself for not working.

I wish they change the condition in ileap to immobilize, would at least mitigate the horror in ileap pathing.

My advice would be to play both. Both have frustrating, boring or fun moments so you don’t want to restrict yourself to one build only.

Shatter is fun and you’ll get lots of adrenaline rushes, but there are times where you just can’t graze condition tanks or hit someone who’s experienced in facing shatter. PU can also be fun and manipulative but, as you may noticed, can lead to different kinds of issue such as arguments, simply ignored or long battle.

If you like shatter, I also recommend you to watch Supcutie or Vashury’s channel on youtube.

Try both phantasm and shatter in Pavilion’s arena and you’ll find out you waste a lot of sustain damage against PvE bosses. However I think full power shatter works great in cleaving normal mobs, since I can melt a whole group of Orr risen in a matter of seconds. Wish that trait-sets/trait-decks thing kick in soon so I can swap traits easily.

The practical uses are there, both fury and swiftness are valuable boons to mesmers in PvP and WvW. I don’t see why someone want to dismiss it simply because someone else wants to unload “at an inflated price and make a nice profit.” It is your freedom to assume the motives behind these posters, but what these posters intended has nothing to do with the uses in Rune of Pack.

Probably have to adjust for confusion a bit since it strikes harder in condition build than glassy shatter. But yeah 4 stacks with 2s duration is pretty good.

I think one of the fun part of this trait is dealing damage with diversion and distortion, which isn’t something you can do with glassy shatters (unless you trait for reflect or interruption damage). Opens up several ways to damage opponent though still a bit undermined by 1 stack only.