Guild Wars 2

Schattenlied.4873:

You could make the biggest possible Charr, people with rly small screens won´t see anything if you spam 3 clones close to them. It was absolutly horrible to fight such a guy on a 17 inch screen… :P

For aesthetic reasons I would chose Sylvari, although you usually need a lot of transmutation stones for proper plant-like armor and weapons.

Hold on to your gems! The new wardrobe system will make you regret buying transmutation stone.

http://dulfy.net/2014/03/25/gw2-introducing-the-wardrobe-system/#more-80766

Here’s a calculation done by kiwituatara at the ranger forum:

Lets compare the current full zerker ascended set (armor, weapon, trinkets, without runes) to future zerker set.
If you look at a soldiers ascended helmet, the stats are 47/34/34. I’m assuming zerkers will also become 47/34/34.
Current zerker ascended set:
71% additional crit dmg
101% additional crit dmg if traited for crit dmg.
Future zerker ascended set:
745 ferocity (49.67% additional crit dmg)
1045 ferocity (69.67% additinal crit dmg) if traited for crit dmg and assuming a full traitline will give 300 ferocity.
This is around 30% reduction in crit dmg.

For runes, we can use divinity’s runes as an example:
Current full set:
12% additional crit dmg
Future full set:
60 ferocity (4% additional crit dmg)
————-

So yeah the overall dps will drop by 10% if you run full berserker but the loss in crit damage is quite significant. We’re probably looking at 200% combined crit damage on average now. I know they try to adjust the stats for PvE but this isn’t exactly a balance in WvW considering how many people play condition bunkers.

Speaking of 200% combined crit damage, its actually a bit similar to the PvP set I played in (20/20/0/0/30 with berserker trinket). So playing standard PvP “kind of” tells you what the upcoming change will affect shatter mes. I say kind of because there’re more people running berserker build in PvP than WvW, plus WvW can have more variation in builds.

An easy tip is to go 90 degrees in decoy+blink, it is the blindspot for every player and can buy you enough time to reach far away.

Also if there’re water nearby, dive in. Mesmer’s mobility (spear 2 and 4) is almost unmatched underwater. Wish there’re more underwater area though.

We’re talking about 8 stacks of confusion (3 from getting hit that last 5 sec; 5 from interrupt that last 10 sec) just from the runes. Which imo is very powerful type of rune by itself. The confusion duration is broken, yes, but you can still have it on the mesmer. We got couple of interrupts ourselves.

lol nice catch, sorry I was also looking at sword warhorn. I think martial mastery could come in handy at wildness survival master. I know I sacrificed quite a lot of defense on crit chance, could probably lower it and add a bit more toughness.

Yes, I know that crit damage will drop after the patch. But I just can’t resist utilizing ranger’s perma fury for near 100% crit chance.

With the new NM grandmaster trait, every survival skill can remove 2 conditions and grant fury (with unknown duration atm). Which gives us useful active condition removals without using the healing spring. So I slot in lots of survival skills which create some sort of synergies with longbow and greatsword (eg. quickening zephyr and muddy terrain).

This build also kinda lacks sustain so I decided to use omnom ghost (66% steal 325hp for crit hit per second) and superior sigil of blood (30% steal 453hp every 2 seconds, but the update also suggests boosting the %). After the 2-handed weapon update I might use blood/perception on longbow and fire(or blood?)/energy on greatsword.

For pet choice I use jungle stalker for almost continuous 5xmight and owl for controls in close combat (use in rotation with muddy terrain).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQJARTjMq0xaLLmsw1agopgTmnpIRIy9YUeCAp8gTs2L-zQyAYrARRgIMAJvioxWULiGraBTVGU9qisPpIa1kCwclRA-e

Please comment on my build!

Does the ferocity change actually nerf crit damage to the ground? Don’t forget that crit damage started from 150%. Even if crit damage drop from 110% to 85%, a full zerk mes still have 235% damage on crit. This still sound more reliable than the condition damage that rampager provided (not to mention rampager main in precision than condition damage).

There’s a discussion on that, couple of great ideas coming from that thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Brainstorm-Phantasmal-Mage/

The build you linked is Osicat’s hidden cat right? It’s powerful as it is and I recommend you try it out. You can also check how he played hidden cat on youtube or his own page to get an idea on how to play it. I think he also ranked his builds according to burst, sustain, survival, and mobility somewhere in the main sticky so you can search it if you have time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTc-GuHlfKs

However I’m not entirely sure what you mean by extremely powerful…I can only assume you want to play power class based on interest for greatsword. In which case I also suggest Vash’s shatter tactics, which maybe more risky but awesome burst.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3fUhFuUP-E for gameplay display
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDXWRSKlQec for build instructions

Sorry for posting videos only, but I find watching videos work better than posting builds.

I wish my mesmer is an Asura, definitely just me but I always thought Asura mesmers are harder to catch haha.

Regarding the stats, a huge recommendation to Osicat’s builds, check the sticky in the forum. He always tries to add toughness while maintaining decent power and precision, which is helpful in dungeon/fractal/WvW.

However if you’re looking for “optimal” trait build, hendo is right. Power phantasm builds are easy in pve and can deal massive damage if you get all phantasms up. However they die too quick to do much damage in WvW so it is recommended to go for other builds. That being said IMO the best gameplay is the one you enjoy, don’t restrict yourself to optimal only but play the one that you have most fun.

Other OH skills may offer more consistent damages but torch is quite powerful in shatter burst. For example easier for ileap to land while approach with stealth, and damage from prestige is a little nice addition. Or you can use prestige to bail yourself out after shatter etc etc. Quite a lot of things can happen in 3s stealth. But I do agree that iMage is horrible, I usually used it on shatter pretty early.

I don’t think you need to worry about that Nephrenka, shatter builds remain viable for a very long time and the upcoming changes won’t have any direct effect on it. Sure it takes some practice but the burst damage is unmatched. That being said the ferocity change may render it slightly slower but every power classes and builds suffer from that anyway.

tooltip likes to lie, don’t trust it.
Not that you should always trust Wiki, but it does documented proper cd in illusionists celerity page. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionists_Celerity

What Jackums said, torch is really useful for bailing yourself out after a close in shatter. However I do find sword useful in its own way.

Illusionary Riposte can save a dodge and counter blade is a very useful interruption skill if enemy decide to ignore your block. Counter blade is especially useful in zerg fights, because when enemies are crowded together it can interrupt much more enemies than magic bullet. However you’ll lose chase ability due to lack of stuns. To lock people you might have to trait chaotic interruption instead.

iSwordsman provide rapid damage, whereas opponent will try to dodge iDuelist’s pistol barrage after taking a few hits. iSwordsman also attack more frequently than iDuelist if you leave them be. Sometimes if you shatter early, iDuelist may not deliver enough hits to deal significant damage, but iSwordsman don’t really have that issue. But the downsides is that it takes time to run towards enemy and they can’t apply bleeding that well. So compare to pistol’s iDuelist, iSwordsman are useful against non-stealth opponent that likes to play at melee range.

What I find most valuable in OH sword, however, is its relatively short cd compare to the rest of OHs. When I trait illusionary celerity or 20% sword cd reduction, I was able to constantly interrupt people and summon iSwordsman. If I play trait chaotic interruption I can land shatter much easier as now I can immobilize people with 12s cd interruption as well as ileap/shatter combo.

EDIT: Forgot to add why iDuelist is more useful against stealth opponent. Well other than it can hit further or iSwordsman have to chase reappearing opponent. Once iDuelist start attacking you can follow the bullet track and hit stealthed opponent couple of times with AA, provided that you’re close enough.

It is true that you don’t really need long chaos armor to survive in PvE. I guess its because I like to play at melee range and long chaos armor makes high level fractals much less punishing.

I never actually try full combo out in PvP as I’d lack stun breakers, as well as condition cleansing during nullfield cd. And frankly feedback is very situational and may not help much in pvp. It makes you quite hard to kill normally, but there’s a lot of ways to get pass that. Especially with so many conditions and stuns in pvp. Plus I need phase retreat and ileap in other occasions. So its hard to adapt that into WvW or PvP. That being said I do find chaos armor useful, even better with mobility like phase retreat. Just not exactly a fight-defining skill in pvp.

Personally I find it very useful when playing shatter, just useful in a different way compare to greatsword.

Its phase retreat is really useful for escape and leap combo. It also provides 2 ways of chaos armor rather than utility or elite. Its not a stun breaker but it can be use when stunned. Staff makes you very slippery which I value it more than damage in roaming WvW.

Its a good weapon in PvP where you can drop chaos storm on points. If you combine chaos storm with the trait chaotic interruption (Chaos XI), you can root enemy in the AoE and make them really hard to escape that red circle (along with other conditions and further interruption).

In PvE situation, you can get almost perma chaos armor with staff. Just combine leap skills (phase retreat/ileap) with following rotation: chaos storm-phase retreat-swap to sword-nullfield-ileap-feedback-ileap-swap back to staff-chaos armor then back to chaos storm etc. Which makes a huge difference in mesmer’s survival.

Compare to greatswords, you probably will have a hard time chasing down roamers in WvW due to the slow projectiles in staff. The staff’s direct damage is also rather weak in a power build. Most of my damage comes from shatter and staff is more of a defensive weapon. Which is a shame as I’ll lack consistent damage after each shatter burst (again this is when I compare to greatsword).

I guess if I want to improve staff, I’d increase AA direct damage. I could be bias due to mainly playing power build but I feel that the condition damage doesn’t make up for slow projectiles and weak direct damage. Buffing condition damage is good but with the random picks from 3 conditions, condition damage could be rather inconsistent. Also they should really fix illusionary elasticity and allow clones’ wind of chaos to have additional bounce (or they fixed it? I don’t remember).

Buffing chaos storm’s condition duration will make mesmer more important in WvW zergs since its one of the few AoE’s we have (plus it has long cd). The short condition duration within makes it way more viable for buffing than applying condition. I know the best offense in that AoE is daze but its not frequent enough to make a difference.

What about adding confusion/torment to subsequent scepter AA? Which kind of justify the long AA chain and those two conditions rarely occur compare to bleeding/vulnerability/poisoning etc as in AA from other class. Plus those condition seems more mesmer-ish. However they could be less useful in PvE situation.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Celestial is questionable for anything except a staff ele in WvW.

Generally, you’ll want a set of zerker/assassins for PvE, a set of tankier stuff (knights/cavaliers) if you want to run power in WvW, and a set of rabid if you want to run conditions in WvW.

Celestial can be useful if mix with a lot of zerks or assasins. If you look at Joe’s build you’ll see he manage to get a little bit more vit/toughness without losing too much power. The key is to use celestial coat.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgIQNAW8alwzipXUzpGb9ICqHYH49dkU0asWJF82FC-j0CBYfRGbEg+IQEBwJfCiJPKrVNFRjVXDT5iIq2aeQrW0JWKgRFGB-w

If I change to mostly assasin instead of zerker and manage to get 25 perception stacks I can get 75% crit chance with 1150 vit/toughness. Maybe a bit redundant but quite powerful in shatter burst. Also guarantee phantom 95% crit with phantasmal fury.

However that’s about to change with ferocity. Celestial’s ferocity will be reduce appropriately, most likely below berserker/assasin……which makes perfect sense lol.

Really depend on your build tbh, are you running phantasm? shatter? PU? lockdowns? Also do you want your mesmer to be WvW roamer or support? PvE? PvP (less variations here though)?

If you’re going for power, best multitasking set will go with mixture of berserker, knights, and cavalier. With the right mix in build editor you can get 50% crit chance, 1900-2000 power and 1200-1500 toughness with decent crit damage.

Since most of “our own” attacks don’t inflict bleeding. If you’re going for condition, you’ll need some precision to inflict bleeding on enemy (along with phantasmal fury). Either from duelist or sigil. Clone death is also good but may not generate high stacks within short time. So I’d go with mixture of rabid and rampager. Confusion and torment from scepter is good but it requires enemy to actively attacking/moving. If you like confusion stackings, either carrion, rabid or dire works really well, as long as you have superior rune of perplexity. We have number of skills for interruption and combine that with iMage and scepter can generate 13 stacks of confusion or above.

FLiP.7680:

Why can’t they leap just like the iSwordsman? I have never seen the phantasm bug as much the clone.

I always wonder about that. I thought if someone jumps off to different ground-level iSwordsman still have to walk down before leap in? Still it would solve some silly issue where ileap just dash a short distance then stop.

They want to make other rune’s 6th slot and 2/2/2 rune combinations more viable. So its probably best to wait and see what happen before spending 60g.

tom.7468:

How about the basic attack? I don’t know if its just me but i find it to be one of the weakest autoattacks only guardian staff is weaker and condition weapons.
I feel like izerker die too fast to make up for the damage on skill 1.

Really interesting comparison there, I do feel that our GS’s auto-attack is a different version of guardian staff’s auto. Both can hit multiple targets and can’t be reflected. However, one focus on distant yet narrow targets while the other hit close target in cone range. I believe that’s why our GS has low damage auto just as guardian one. Problem I have with it though is enemy, player or mobs, usually don’t stand so close together, which makes its area damage minimal.

In my opinion damage depending on range isn’t too bad though. Ranger’s long bow is also affected by distance. They shoot each arrow 0.4s faster with higher single attacks. But those can be reflected and mesmer GS have x3 damage.

The real problem I have with greatsword is #3. It has little synergy with the rest of the skill and are very situational. It only removes one boon which players can easily recover in WvW/PvP.

Maybe alter it slightly so we can use ground-targeting travel like Tazza, with significantly less range and non-stun breaker for balance reasons. Maybe too beneficial to be true but 12s cd is quite long. Or some sort of evasion skill like sword #2.

I went for sylvari simply because it’s more natural for tree people to turn into butterflies

wait….

Additionally grandmaster in Chaos trait line isn’t exactly a must (although 20% reduction in staff skill can be helpful). You can invest that 10 trait on Dueling for vigor and Mantra Mastery (Dueling VI) or Illusion for illusionist celerity and Illusionary elasticity (Illusion VII). Correct me if I’m wrong but as I recall Phantasmal Haste (Illusion X) doesn’t work on iWarden so it isn’t very helpful. Or 5 in both for vigor and illusionist celerity.

Check the sticky thread on finding your build, there are lots of awesome suggestions up there. Personally I like 0/0/30/30/10 Staff/Sword-focus which allows you to provide decent buffing and healing for your group. I can’t say for sure how it is compared to other professions or even other game. You’ll also lack damage by yourself but I do find this build fun, which is what matters.

For buffing, bountiful interuption (Chaos VIII) gives 5xmight for each interuption and confusing cry (Illusions II) gives 15s retaliation upon 3 illusions shatter. The interuptions comes from temporal curtain or chaos storm. Phantoms themselves give regeneration. Staff’s chaos storm provide random boons and auto-attack gives fury or might. Activate signet of inspiration and you can deliver quite a bit of boons to your allies.

For defense you get chaos armor from staff skill 4 or leap+ethereal field combo. Which the field itself comes from chaos storm or utilities (nullfield or feedback). Your focus also provides reflects with Warden’s feedback (Inspiration VIII), allowing you to reflect projectiles when standing behind temporal curtain or inside iWarden.

For healing equip mantra of pain with restorative mantra (Inspiration X) and you can heal about 2500 hp to your group in approximately every 6s. You might want to keybind that utility though, because if you like healing you’re going to button smash that a lot lol. You can also have mantra of recovery as your healing skill to give yourself 7500 hp heal every 15s. Charging it also gives 2500 hp to your group but it takes longer time and can be easily interupted. Equiped with mender’s purity (Inspiration IV) and you’ll have 2 condition removals from each power return.

Now you have 2 free traits in Chaos and a free utility, which you can get creative yourself. If you feel like condition cleansing is too slow you can have mantra of resolve. Additionally you can have mantra of concentration for stability and stun breakers. Staff’s phase retreat isn’t exactly a stun breaker and ileap swap may take too long to break the stun.

Whether its underpowered really depends on how you view this skill. Personally I think of arcane thievery as an offensive utility, a method in hurting the enemy by stealing their boons and return their conditions. Thus I feel that evasion and invulnerable misses are justified. But if you view this as a defensive utility it really falls below mantra of resolve and only really shines when you have high stacks of conditions on yourself.

Well I got fooled by the tooltip into believing charging mantra of recovery would clear conditions. Anyways its a nice addition to healing but not necessary in clearing conditions. Using it depends on who you’re facing though, I tried that a bit myself and I usually have to pop all 2 mantras together while facing BS thieves.

I don’t know about Mirror of Anguish, its 1 min cooldown is rather long and constant stunning from opponents (warrior etc) would render it pointless. I’d go for Debilitating dissipation just to add some punishment on people who wants to take down your phantoms.

Also I would want to add that you kind of lack condition cleansing. Since you have the chance of trying out inspiration trait line. Try change persisting images to restorative mantras and change signet of ether to mantra of recovery. You get total of about 7500 heals in 14.5 seconds and 6 condition cleansings at the cost of 20% phantom life.

In theory I find Bloodlust more useful than perception in this build. Full perception stacks only increase sword 2 burst critical chance from 47% to 60%. Phantasmal fury also added significant amount of crit chance (67% in 14.5 seconds) on izerker. While going from 67% chance to 79% for phantom crit has slightly more potential, I feel like 67% with +250 power can deliver more consistent damage.

But I must agree on Bloodlust’s price though, currently I can only use perception.
/weep

I think its more about adapting to situations (well all class and builds are like that :P). Sometimes I run shatter mesmer and sometimes I run PU crit/power, which both are perfectly viable in WvW.

I typed a whole lot then deleted it because I realise Alissah provide the a great video on shatter mesmer.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/video-Troll-of-the-Mists

Use your chaos armor, it gives condition to enemy, boons to yourself and grant -33% damage. Excellent in survival for fractals and dungeons.

Mesmer has almost infinite chaos armor if you slot feedback, nullfield and equip a staff. Combine staff’s phase retreat (skill 2) with those fields and chaos storm (skill 5) you can have continuous chaos armor. And if you think its not enough staff’s skill 4 gives you chaos armor directly.

If you like close combat, illusionary leap (sword skill 3) with those fields also give you chaos armor. Also blurred frenzy will also give you evasions to evade attacks. Riposte and Prestige is also a good escape skill if you want to back out from PvE’s close range attacks. Personally I think mesmer is a great close combat class, just not the type to stay and tank in the same spot. You usually need to be ready to dodge out of attacks.

If you think the PvE’s range attack hurts your mesmer a lot, use your illusions to block it for you. Standing behind an illusion may sound silly but they actually block arrows for you.

hi Osi, thank you so much for clearing that out for me. Now I have a much better idea on the condition and hidden cat build.

For the heavy shatter build, I suppose it’s because I’m not really good at constantly interrupting people for might stacks. During a group battle, I can deliver a good initial burst but at sustain fight I feel like its hard to gain enough might to contribute to damage. Although I’m pretty confident in surviving at zerg fights.

Hello Osi,
I’m a big fan of your heavy shatter 3.0 build and has been trying it out on my mesmer since I started playing gw2. I have a couple of questions in mind.

Recently I feel like I can’t keep up with my group and so I thought about changing to your condition build. However I’m a bit concern with the change in DE. Many speculated that this would cripple PU build. Does this change seriously affect your condition, hidden and power build?

I’m also curious about the might stacks in power build, in the past I used to rely on pistol or focus and diversions to interrupt people, which can interrupt in large scale and boost my might to 15 or above. With the power build would GS be the main source of might stacking?

Also this may sound really silly, but I noticed you prefer superior sigil of battle a lot in might builds. Would superior sigil of strength also do in power build?