Guild Wars 2

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Scepter.. 5? I thought only Scepter 3 could confuse.

Scepter.. 5? I thought only Scepter 3 could confuse.And with the confusion nerfed in sPvP is it viable there?

Sorry when I said 5 i was thinking on combination with torch off hand phantasm for some quick stacks of confusion. In sPvP it can still do some good damage on fast attacking targets melee warriors/rogues(d/d & s/p rogues melt in seconds). It’s strongest in wvw and pve though as it does twice the amount of damage there.

Scepter 3 is nice for stacking confusion on a fast attacking target especially in WvW/PvP. Counterspell has some situational uses as a ghetto aoe blind if the mobs/people are tight together. While kiting someone in pvp/wvw it can be nice for setting up shatters as the #1 attack clones do spawn right on the target when you want to keep a safe distance.

Other than those uses you’re actually hurting yourself using other things as a main weapon in PvE as it results in lower dmg, lower utility and thus less overall contribution. A lot of people like it “only” because of a aesthetic hangup and stick with it as a result.

It use to be the “condition” weapon before launch even it’s trait gives bonus condition(malice) damage. Thats not the case anymore since the auto-attack had conditions/confusion removed from auto-attack. It needs to be revised imho.

This is why i run Sup. Rune of the Centaur esp when roaming in WvW sure its nice to get to places faster but its those annoying kittens with all the passive run speed buffs w/accessible swiftness and not many options to slow them down. Really annoying for melee builds and condition builds those with condition builds get forced in gear for +cond duration to compensate thus lowering overall dmg for when they exit staff range.

You should report this to PETA it’s clearly animal abuse.

NineOnine.4327:

On that note if your swiftness hits your illusions they run in faster to shatter…..

Yes, it’s a very nice perk.

I’ve run S/S with a condition build toughness/precision/condi gear and it works out pretty well. I do like to use other offhands though the block is nice but the phantasm itself is a bit lackluster.

Nice thing about sword clones with sharper images and a condi build is since sword auto attack and blurred frenzy generally hit AoE in a small area they’re applying bleeds on a aoe group of mobs can end up with 15 stacks of vulnerability +15% damage for everyone and along with 8-15 stacks of aoe bleed going on it’ works out surprisingly good. So w/this kind of set up you actually to have a reason to let them “live” and do dmg instead of just shattering them right away. With Debilitating Dissipation in chaos when they do die in melee range(due to natural causes or summon beyond limit) it’ll apply more conditions(the weakness is nice). I will occasionally run focus off hand for warden the aoe dmg helps in pve and you can use temporal curtain to “pull” mobs into it’s aoe before shattering it. It’s aoe will also be procing sharper images. For single targets pistol off hand is generally going to net you more dps. I may get some hate on this but Sword/Torch for a condition/melee build works great too w/the prestige you get AoE Blind & AoE Burn along with a way to “drop agro” momentarily can be great in pve/dungeons or for soloing supply camps in WvW. The phantasm synergizes well for the condi build with the confusion dmg if you’re meleeing since the mob is going to be hitting something to trigger it.

Tip: With a condition setup I’d recommend having blurred frenzy off cooldown when you shatter with F2 you’ll have about several stacks of confusion up pop it for invulnerability and the mobs will generally hit you once or twice for rather large dmg while you yourself take none.Then you can get your clones back up.

I’m sure it works great with a pure power/shatter crit build too if not better in a lot of cases and would require less “work” to achieve some things. You just have to know when to weave in and out of melee range with either setup.

For secondary weapons staff for chaos armor / chaos storm is nice for defenses when in melee range(protection/aegis) Great Sword is nice to not only for ranging when you “have to” GS 5 is good for making some distance between you and the mobs if you need to heal all be it staff phase retreat is good for that too. As a power build if you take staff as your secondary weapon most of its damage is going to come from iWarlock which scales very well with power and still gains the +10% dmg per condition on the mob bonus.

Drederik.5679:

that about sums it up, dont forget staff5 and have a ele combo finish it to apply chaos armor to everyone

Just a FYI here. Feedback, Null Field, Time Warp all count as ethereal fields too so not only does Chaos Storm(staff5) give you a chance for AoE chaos armor w/blast finisher so do the other fields if you’re in/near them. Also great for aoe confusion with a Whirling Finisher(warden/zerker will do a whirl finisher for you)

Note: If you carry around a torch you can swap it out for a offhand and complete blast finishers yourself to give aoe chaos armor with torch4 (the prestige)

NineOnine.4327:

The best thing i ever did for my mes for wvw and pve was put rune of the centaur on.I couldn’t play without it. It free’s up your secondary since your not forced to go focus for swiftness and when used with mirror heal is an awesome escape tool.

I agree 100%. For WvW you can acheive 100% Swiftness uptime with rune of the centaur + mirror & temporal curtain. Makes all the difference in the world when moving between locations in WvW. When you cast mirror or any heal that swiftness you gain is AoE so you’re keeping other people moving with the zerg too. (I’m a condition build and use it despite the power bonuses it does give +15% bleed duration though)

I’ve had it happen a few times this is usually when. You are all ready using an ability or channeling something and try to press it OR the mob has all ready executed an attack against you and it hasn’t “landed” yet and it lands right after you hit decoy. Just require a bit of finesse in terms of timing.

kettering.6823:

My mesmer is my favourite character, and I’m just about done buying the armor (visually) that I want for her. However, I’m still not sure what runes would be good to buy.

I mainly use a glamour build – 20 power, 20 vitality, 30 illusions. I mainly use the staff with a GS for my second weapon. A lot of my damage comes from conditions, but idk if condition damage is really a ‘viable’ thing when it comes to runes. I was thinking of maybe Runes of the Undead, or even Runes of the Thief… clearly, I don’t know a lot about runes.

I also have a question about armor stats; what stats should I be going for? Right now I mostly have power, vitality and con. damage. Just wondering if that’s for the best.

Thanks!

Rune choices have a lot to do with play style and what you’re doing. Perhaps you could elaborate more.. are you looking for more pve damage do you want to provide more support for your team, do you want to have more mobility?.. do you WvW more than you pve or spvp? etc..

insanesu.3965:

“Alt+F4 = dead”
no good, cuz I have crashes 1-8 times per hour (big thanks for last updates) when I see enemy’s zerg.

If everyone had your problem 1-8 times per hour this game wouldn’t exist and no one would log in. Maybe you should look into what outside of the game may be causing you issue.. i.e. drivers.. automatic updates to much junk running in the background etc..

Heru.5427:

I’m also having weird rubberbanding/desyncs I have not had before. Really making things frustrating.

This may be a different issue all together. I do not know anyone who has experienced this in relation to the culling issue. I play in a large guild and hang out on a couple other large guilds vents as well and we discuss stuff like this a lot and not once has rubberbanding/desyncing come up. Sounds like it may be a major latency related issue on your end some where.

Portal bombs can be easily be countered even with culling issues if you play in a organized manner. People who cry about this usually are pugs. Random players that refuse to be team players and communicate. They don’t join in on the organized play with their server or guilds at all and proceed to cry.

Now if they “think” they are playing in an organized way and are still getting roflstomped by portal bombs every time. That’s just called being bad. Sorry.

FuriousPop.2789:

Disconnected from internet/PC crashed – surely Anet will have enough smarts to detect if IP gone all together or just closed the client…….

There isn’t any way to reliably do this and combat the problem at the same time. Say they detect a standard game exit or quit, triggered via menu or via alt f4, possibly via a forced closing on the process. If they are detecting it in any of the aforementioned ways all you have to is “turn of your wifi”, “unplug the ethernet” etc.. and your connection would “timeout” as if you had a natural disconnect and you know what all the butt hurt kids that rage quit out of the game would do? They would start unplugging cables and turning off their wifi instead.

The kind of disconnects/crashes you describe do not happen frequent enough for it to be a “major” problem in WvW (you have to run back if you disconnect a lot then you arn’t contributing anything anyway) it’s very minor in terms of collateral damage. If someone does have these issue so frequent for it to cause a problem for them they need to fix the source of the issue instead of ignoring it.

Well “enemy” players seem to be showing up more to me. My own team and npcs seem to take longer to load but that isn’t as much of an issue for me as being able to properly see the enemy force I’m more than happy to sacrifice seeing some members of my own team temporarily while a proper fix is planned. Changing things in any kind of game/rendering engine is a monstrous task.

Foss.4830:

As for what the OP is talking about where large numbers of players are doing this teleporting past walls into keeps thats a pretty serious issue that needs to be investigated.

Well in my case I often see people “flying” over them. As far as teleporting goes its fairly simple.. There is an issue with the mesmer portal in some “locations” at keeps/towers all you have to do is stuff your face against the wall(or gate usually) / autorun and place your portal and a then a second one and use it a couple times sometimes you will end up on the other side of the wall if part of your portal is ticking through it(usually the majority length of the portal has to be on the other side). It’s the most common tactic used by some guilds. The process has been explained the death on the forums but there is nice fix to it.

A simple fix would be:
Give keep, tower, castle geometry i.e. the separated parts a special ID that could be referenced en masse for measuring purposes. When a portal is launched check it’s proximity to these objects based on where it would land should the cast complete. If the proximity check detects any overlap terminate the portal cast. Simple as that.

There are easily accessible hacks out there people can find and download that involve speed adjustments and actual “flying”. I’ve heard rumors of one that allow for teleporting but I haven’t seen any proof to substantiate that one.

I’ve seen concrete proof for the other two they’re essentially just hijacking some things in memory to make it possible its fairly easy to combat against them I guess they don’t have a security team familiar with such things?

I’ve witnessed some of the aforementioned going on in WvW by two guilds from Dragonbrand at odd hours. Thankfully I had screenshots taken and have it recored in video as well. Thank you fraps! Emailed to ANet hopefully something will be done but I doubt it. I’ve submitted such things before then see the same people going at it, oh well one can hope.

I don’t get the repair cost issues people bring up? Is this some kind of kitten excuse as to why they cry and exit the game if someone is about to beat them ?

The repair costs never amount to anything significant. You can solely do nothing but WvW and make plenty of coin to cover that, gear and other things if you’re actually actively killing and doing things and not afking at random just following some zerg around.

nerva.7940:

i dont think dagger/power builds are viable in any way, compared to staff/scepter/x. we’ll have to wait for patch, but currently there’s no reason to go axe or dagger MH.

Dagger/WH Power w/Staff for Marks and 2 slotted wells = win

Very viable at range and in melee. Can solo supply camps easily great at roaming as well. Can provide some minor team support/utility with wells as well. Fantastic during defenses w/mark&well bombing. You can dagger melee rams through the gate (dagger hits like a truck w/full sequence) Warhorn daze will hit people on the other side of the gate too when defending. Works well also for hit and runs going out building up some life force with dagger and taking half their life in the process going DS →finishing them off running back inside. Rinse Repeat.

During assaults on a keep/tower dagger will have a bit less function unless you spectral grasp people off walls and kitten their face w/the dagger. You’ll want to staff for marks on edges of walls and drop wells obviously in those situations but keep/tower assaults is actually a fairly minor part of WvW unless you’re on some bottom-tier ranked server that isn’t defending/fortifying and cutting off supply.

The balancing teams at ANet really need to watch that video and take it to heart. There is to much FOO going on all over the place.

Yeah its pretty dead.

Hacking happens ALL the time in spvp/tpvp and they don’t even have a good way to even report it. It’s ridiculous at 4 teams I played in tpvp with all ready left the game to do slow implementation of balance fixes and the rampant incessant exploiting that occurs.

power/vit/tough gear works well for this too if you’re running with smaller groups it lets you effectively disrupt a zerg solo by either melting a good part of them are scattering them. Oil+Precision food helps for al ittle extra crit if you feel you need some. If you’re running with a large organized group a glass set is nice to carry with you.

My necro is still fairly low level. I stack/wells/marks and primarily only play in WvW it is amazing. Chill+Stack wells/marks = dead people lots of loot bags. Love it so much fun and durable enough to be able to run in a crowd and do it solo at times too. Very effective. Surprisingly good in pve too.

Durzlla.6295:

Disastro.4086:

Most of my favorites have been listed all ready but they definitely need to look back at GW1 for some more inspiration for the Mesmer. Feels like we don’t have as much build variety now. So much I miss from there.

I feel like we have some of the greatest variety when compared to the other profs…

Oh I agree in GW2 I’m just comparing it to GW1 as is the subject of the thread.

Most of my favorites have been listed all ready but they definitely need to look back at GW1 for some more inspiration for the Mesmer. Feels like we don’t have as much build variety now. So much I miss from there.

Staff marks & wells on a power build in WvW will net you more bags than you know what to do with after bombing all wells+marks into a group DS+#4 i ended up with 11 bags from that one group. For non aoe situations I run D/H ..D#1 is really brutal in a power build even if you run knights for more surv.

Downside to power builds though you more often than not find yourself “waiting” on cooldowns.

Its fun to do oddly placed portals in wvw and sit back at a distance and lol yes even if it ends up with the deaths of people on my side. Sometimes you want to kill some of your “allies” it’s the best way to do it without switching servers.

Scepter Air #1 needs to do that again! [edit: i see it was just showing the total of seperate channels, it needs to do that much damage regardless per channel! would like to see competitive damage out of it]

Personally attracted to air/lightning dmg aesthetic but it’s lack luster. If there are multiple enemies the bounces with staff is nice though. The lightning whip with D/D isn’t to terribly bad either, could be better though.

Thanks for the reply.

I have been immensely enjoying my low level elem.. hardly have any trait points but find myself performing well even in WvW. I’m switching between weapons a lot depending on what I’m doing however. D/D is definitely a lot of fun as everyone seems to have stated on here. Staff/Scepter is great for siege <3

Karka farming works, and running dungeons nonstop AC/TA w/omnom berry bars works wonders I have np farming or making money at all. I can farm other mobs orr events etc.. with no issues. You have great AoE at your disposal if you’re a power/shatter build. Other builds may have some issues. Other than that I have no idea what these people complaining about are doing wrong.

I would go with more cleric gear than you’re using. All that vit isn’t going to help you mitigate enough damage from the classes you’re worried about. Are you aoe mantra healing with your build? If you are not you may be better off going another route imho.

Creature.4038:

Wow… Pathetic, whats wrong with playing the class that you enjoy? You need to be OP to enjoy the game?

I would normally completely agree with you 100%. I would also go as far as to say it’s their psychological age (child-like even if 40). Some people just don’t grow up in the head so to speak.

However if the spec you enjoy the most is a GS build right now at least in “pvp” this extended delay that has appeared makes it almost useless playing against anyone skilled that knows about it. They can 100% avoid the damage and just rofl at you every time you pop zerker. You can still use it as “shatter” fodder if you’re a glass cannon shatter build. You lose monstrous amounts of dps if you are not a glass shatter build an rely on it’s damage though even in PvE the delay on the whirl can cause the Zerker to miss every mob if they’re being kited now.

There are still specs that work fine. You can still do “ok” using the ranged phantasms instead but against it’s a dps loss in any situation that requires AoE.

TL;DR ~ Some people get hung up on 1 single build and thats what they enjoy thats what they have fun with period and don’t enjoy the others that is their prerogative. For those people I can understand a decision like wanting to jump ship if they rely on the zerker(or warden) right now.

I however still enjoy playing my mesmer when I do.

LOL Yeah I love doing this especially to the breeders. Those lil shts stack bleeds like no tomorrow too.

What kind of variety is there build wise for WvW & PvE? Are there multiple viable specs/flexible play style? Are you pigeonholed into fixed priority based-rotation based on cooldowns? How viable are each of the available weapons?

I come from a Mesmer & Engineer and I like to have lots of variety/buttons and complex gameplay most other classes have bored me to tears. I’ve tried necro and it really was kind of interesting but unwhelming to the nth degree it is riddled with so many bugged traits and abilities right now that people that play them regularly have earned a great deal of respect putting up with it.

As a result I’ve come to see how things are over on the Ele side to poke your brains a bit.

It should that would be a beautiful site.

IIRC F3 will end their little fairy dance.

Wise.8025:

Wait wait…. you’re trying to tell me that Deceptive Evasion has always created a clone that attacks neutral targets that are not in combat with you and that is something we’ve been content to live with that I have never noticed until now?

It has always been this way. The mechanic behind Deceptive Evasion is such:

1. Dodge roll to spawn a clone
2. Said clone attacks nearest attack-able target based on it’s path finding algorithm to determine “what” that shortest distance may be so it may be next to you or far away depending on how it determines that.

Pinkus.2860:

Pretty sure Retaliation is calculated based off the opponents power, not your own, as they are the one hitting you.

Retaliation is calculated based on your power not your enemies.

“Retaliation deals 267 damage per hit at level 80 with the base power of 916, and +1 damage for every 13.4 power above that. It is not reduced by the target’s armor.”

It can also trigger damage based proc based effects from runes and sigils.

It stacks every time they enter and exit so if you drag them through it or get them to run / in out multiple times via baiting or knock backs(GS5) it stacks up quick dropping fields in the line of direction that people are moving/evading is generally a good idea.

Once you have a bunch of stacks up in combination with other abilities (not to hard to get 15-20) have a necro friend pop epidemic if they’re in a group of people (or mobs) and just sit back and LOL

Carighan.6758:

Because, that Delay is soooooo new. Hasn’t been there since beta or anything. :P

The delay is several times longer now. It is the result of a “fix” to a trait stacking bug. ANet has recognized this new longer delay is indeed an issue and will be lowering it 0.25s as stated in another thread.

Nuka Cola.8520:

what a joke lolz did two dailies and from every single chest (excluding Maw ones) its greens and more greens… everyone is telling you your dungeon reward system sucks and and its still got nerfed? I will do one more complete run to confirm BUT since FoTM was launched i NEVER got zero Rares in a full run. now two runs in a row and i got none in six chests.

It’s just a case of bad luck for you nothing was changed. I’ve gotten tons of rares a few exotics and couple ascended drops. I’ve had my days with bad loot too you’re just jumping to conclusions to fast based only on a random number generator and your luck.

I think most people know here that there are major condition issues. I keep running into these all the time on my Mesmer(staff/sharper images) and Necro both.

1. Bleed 25 Stack Limit – In groups as small as 2 people this is hit at times(riding with condition thief/war) and it’s even worse when more people are added to the equation making any bleed attempts at 25 stacks makes that damage 100% useless if you can’t maintain stacks with absurds amount of +condition duration sacrificing +condition damage.
2. Poison & Burns – Prioritizes highest damage poison/burns first pushes everything else beneath them to tick after duration. If someone with higher +damage maintains their poison/burn indefinitely every other person’s damage will never tick.
3. WvW & Meta Event – Mob/player tagging issues abound if you’re with people with high burst damage or riding with a zerg chances are nothing is going to tick for enough damage to properly mobs for “complete” credit or reward bags in the case of WvW. This is severely compounded when you combine the above issues.
4. PvP/WvW Removal – With organized large scale and organized pvp it is so easy to constantly have condition removal chained together completely shutting down any condition damage based builds 100%. There are no talents or abilities to help lower the chances of having our primary source of damage completely shutdown or compensate in any way for the removal. [edited added #4]

This happens in “small” groups even duos. And it’s a horrendous problem in anything large scale. Has ANet ever made a statement about these issues? Is there any hope in seeing this changed?

I’m curious how other players deal with them do you end up wearing Rampagers gear for hybrid setups with power to compensate? I know condition mesmers still have the option of Confusion which doesn’t have the issues the above does and their shatters/reflects can help compensate and be successful. What options to do necros have to compensate for the issues/option wise?

nldixon.8514:

Spirit builds are not particularly viable, because (to be totally blunt) spirits are awful. They die almost instantly to anything that sneezes in their direction.

Even fully traited, they’re still bad.

Melee builds, however, can be incredibly viable if played correctly with the correct build (there are probably three to four melee builds that are viable).

Thanks. I didn’t really take into consideration them dying to much especially with a 60second cooldown and a quick death from them definitely = useless.

In terms of the melee builds go I really do like the long sword/dagger(any off hand really) combination there are a lot of “evasive” tools in there for being in and out. Care to share any related builds?

What options are there for group/utility support outside of the spirits? Healing spring looks good since it’s a water field and removes ally condition, can make use of that field for some spot aoe healing w/finishers. I’m mainly concerned with such support options for WvW/FotM later on.

I am curious if there are any viable melee+spirit builds or combination there off. Obviously I’ll still use ranged weapons when necessary. I like the idea of having some passive utility via the spirits. Group support + decent melee dmg.

This is for PvE & WvW.

I’m currently considering rolling a ranger as an alt and the above is what interests me play-style wise.

Osicat.4139:

I prefere Air

I generally don’t go for a crit/burst build so the crit% won’t do me much good however the lightning proc seems quite nice. Do you know if it will still proc during reflection or distortion?

zastari.1730:

- Hang out with an epidemic necro and watch zergs melt themselves after dumping 12 stacks of confusion on someone.

Confusion/Reflection builds make me feel borderline OP in WvW that in combination w/the portal tools and other utility we offer is amazing.

Tip: Running around and using portals as escape mechanisms and bombing it does help to have centaur runes to maintain swiftness to get in too. Even if your a condition build IMHO

Durzlla.6295:

Ok noob Mesmer here… How does mimic make this possible? I understand feedback… But mimic? Doesn’t it just absorb a projectile?

PS: this makes me happy, that island is currently my favorite zone xD

When you trigger mimic you get hit by 1 projectile all others after that get reflected while the channeling is in effect. You can then shoot that 1 projectile back at the mob.

MrMacAndCheese.3907:

Send me all your Karka shells! I’m making Apothecary gear, and pretending I can heal with my mes

Specced and geared for it mesmer heals is some of the better sustained healing in the game it’s not as bursty as guardians but with mantra of pain spam it’s nonstop 2-3k + heals. You don’t have to deal with the 10-45 second cooldowns other classes have on the heals.

scooby treat.8420:

I can’t believe a mesmer is even on here trying to complain. How OP is your 4 or 5 mirror images that blow up doing massive damage you can spam every 10 seconds give me a break don’t even cry. Not to mention your mini invis please…..

In tower assault though those illusion shatters do you pretty much no good at all. The topic of this thread is siege combat not roaming/1v1/spvp etc..

glamour/aoe confusion specs in wvw is freaking amazing if they nerf it in WvW at all i will rage quit lol or at least switch classes

Bones.5762:

I haven’t even seen a reflect/glamour mesmer yet in all my time of playing gw2, but it’s either i didn’t notice them because they didn’t do anything to wow me, or because they are that rare

They’re rare because people prefer front-loaded damage. Reflect/glamour builds require good timing and baiting(i.e. more work that people don’t want to do). It actually kills people en masse quite reliably if you pop feedback on people all ready channeling big ranged dmg they’ll suicide before they notice it’s up usually same with the confusion dmg. I swap out mirror a lot with bigger heals depending on the situation it’s one of those run in do my reflection chain watch people die run out, swap it back out heal up wait on CDs rinse repeat. I run with people that know my play style so there is a lot of synergy I have outside healing to compensate a lot of the time. I run in a very large and rather skilled WvW oriented guild and we’re very organized so I’m never running solo most of the time.

I do hope some more option open up for those who prefer the front loaded damage, I wouldn’t mind going back to that kind of spec either but we still do have things that work quite well in the mean while.

For defending keeps/castles etc.. confusion builds are still my favorite since it’s so easy to keep applying and very few pop their condition removal when they see it.

Bones.5762:

Also please tell me what builds would work for sieges

Reflect and glamour oriented builds work great. You have focus reflect, feedback, reflect on distortion, mirror, mimic. Confusion on glamours (you have several which you can target on walls) You can trait so glamours also cause aoe blindness and it’s reapplied if they exit/enter the glamour(feedback, chaos storm, null field etc..) This helps everyone stay alive longer even if its only a short while every small number helps in siege warfare. You can also trait it so that you instantly cause confusion when you blind coupled with the confusion on glamour traits and people running/in out it stacks up decently. There are traits to reduce the CD on some glamours and increase the duration well placed glamours with those traits or well placed reflects of any kind can kill people without you doing any direct damage. Obviously for the confusion damage you’re going to be pigeonholed into wearing a ton of +condition damage and condition duration gear. As you mentioned shatters won’t do ya good here a lot of the time unless you get inside a keep/castle then you usually have some open-action.

You have mirror heal + distortion reflect trait + mimic(you will get hit with 1 projectile with mimic any and all others that hit you during its duration get reflected after which you can fire back that 1 projectile). you can chain all of those back to back with feedback on someone shooting at your from a wall or bait them into doing so and kill them and usually multiple people at once even if you can’t finish them off, you can down them in bad spots letting those with the heavier hitting aoe finish them off.

Lets not forget portal bombing when assaulting a tower this is obviously useless. However during keeps and castles there are a lot of situations where you are inside fighting. You can instantly move your force onto their siege or into a cluster of players and aoe them down in seconds. This is a great tactic and turns the tide of battle.

I can still hit people on walls with my weapons if they are on the edges pulling people off still has value. I can still get izerker on walls at times to. All of that coupled with some of the above yields lots of kill credit for me and loot bags/badges and I’m helping folks out while doing so too. Staff + extra bounce trait condition builds can actually work all right too for kill credit if you have enough +cond dmg but its not nearly as good as a glamour/reflect/confusion setup. From my personal experience.

During siege defenses obviously you aren’t limited to these options as you can shatter/summon clones on people and all your usual stuff in those situations. AoE shatter confusion builds are absolutely beastly in defenses.

While I haven’t done much with them there are heal-oriented mantra setups I have a friend I run with that goes that route and can spam aoe heals for 3.5k non stop takes the edge off using rams while standing under arrowcarts. That build was better before the aoe heal cap of 5 targets though. It’s still a decent option for people that like that sort of thing.