Guild Wars 2

NecroN.8306:

denis.9487:

Mesmer rocks. Just start small. Ignore the people that say shatter or die. Ease into the class with forgiving specs such as condition pu move to power pu. Then gradually change over pieces to become a bursty spec in pvp/wvw. Mesmer is a boss class. Become feared on your wvw home world!!

Now I know you’re tolling.. No one and I mean NO ONE fears a Mesmer..

Seriously other classes can accomplish what a Mesmer can do in half the time with minimal deaths, but if you like pain with little reward then the Mesmer class is for you. I would not start any crafting or sink gold into soulbounds until you truly think this trash class is for you.. Oh and get used to being kicked from groups just because of your class.. (got a portal?). I would try other classes just to compare and you will see for yourself.

Oh LOOK OUT!!! Here comes NecroN’s Mesmer.. Haahaa OMG thats a good one… Thanks I needed that laugh.

Weird, all these try hard Cele elementalist/engis seem to fear me :X. Maybe they are just giving me free kills because I chose to play a suboptimal class

Fresh Air elementalist is a melee build. It loses lots of potential when you LoS or stay over 600 yards away. The only reason you have to be in melee is to mind wrack and then gtfo.

Poke the ele with greatsword auto attack from ledges or as close to max range as possible. Bait his dodges with Izerker and mirror blade. If you see him obby flesh, it means he is about to burst you. Always decoy when fresh air eles use obsidian flesh, don’t waste distortion on it. Never chase, especially in melee, because they CAN hit you while facing away from you, and good fresh air eles will use running away to trick you into playing too offensively.

Exciton.8942:

OreoWolf.9564:

This can been seen as an indirect ‘nerf’ to mesmer, but you guys are missing a pretty key point; boon strip bypasses all stacks of stability.

Other classes will be forced to waste 2-4 crowd control effects just to lock down that lich necro for a second or two. On the other hand, all it will take is a well placed null field or shatter to strip all stacks of stability off. If anything, this reinforces mesmer as a valuable asset for locking down these elites much faster. I mean look at AoE(Armour of Earth) on elementalist… 10 stacks of stability. They will be impossible to lock down without boonstrip (and who has more of it other than mesmer?).

tl;dr Boonstrip is going to be far more useful than other crowd control effects, as one single shatter can bypass every single stability stack. In my honest opinion, this nerfs other classes who lack boonstrip more than us ^^.

Well, it used to be that crowd control skills cannot do anything with stability. Now they can.
So boonstrip is overall less useful compared to before.

That lich is usually dead 4-5 seconds after you strip stability and burst it anyways, especially when you have a team who doesn’t sit there letting it 1 spam them. As a shatter mesmer, this barely changes things with lich. The only transform that may benefit fully from this is Rampage, as coupled with 25% damage reduction and -33% soft cc duration pretty much makes it worse to fight than necro’s plague form.

As others have said, we’ll have to see how the meta shifts.

This can been seen as an indirect ‘nerf’ to mesmer, but you guys are missing a pretty key point; boon strip bypasses all stacks of stability.

Other classes will be forced to waste 2-4 crowd control effects just to lock down that lich necro for a second or two. On the other hand, all it will take is a well placed null field or shatter to strip all stacks of stability off. If anything, this reinforces mesmer as a valuable asset for locking down these elites much faster. I mean look at AoE(Armour of Earth) on elementalist… 10 stacks of stability. They will be impossible to lock down without boonstrip (and who has more of it other than mesmer?).

tl;dr Boonstrip is going to be far more useful than other crowd control effects, as one single shatter can bypass every single stability stack. In my honest opinion, this nerfs other classes who lack boonstrip more than us ^^.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tormented_Shield_Skin

Pretty much SCREAMS mesmer, but because of this it won’t be unique or very original to use.

Fay.2357:

Advent.6193:

Never expect balanced numbers of skills here. You’ll probably be disappointed.
At this point, I’m holding out that the new skills and trait line aren’t chock-full o’ suck.

Precisely this. We’ve already seen how good they are at designing new stuff for mesmer in the new grandmaster traits. I’m just hoping to avoid a repeat of that.

To be fair, Power Block was an amazing trait until Anet nerfed it to the ground the very next day, LOL xD.

Calliope.8675:

Arikyali.5804:

In a nutshell: play thief like a coward. Play mesmer like a crazy person.

This made my day. I can’t stop laughing.

Awright, awright… Time to go moa someone. Thanks Ari!

Probably the thing I love most about mesmer. Nothing beats running into a 1vX like it’s a normal 1v1, while unloading everything you have and watching those health bars drop and panic overtaking your foes. You may eventually get me down, but I have NO REGRETS!

jportell.2197:

Fay.2357:

jportell.2197:

You should pretty much just get rid of the soldiers amulet completely, it doesn’t work on mesmer and never has really.

This is a reasonably correct statement, but for all the wrong reasons.

jportell.2197:

We either go full burst, or full condi. Mesmers due to their terrible, and I mean terrible means of dealing with conditions on themselves let alone a group are not good using soldiers amulet for sure.

Mesmers have some of the very strongest condition removal in the game. You just simply have to choose to take it. It can sometimes be awkward to take condition removal on a mesmer, but saying that mesmers are terrible at it is just completely disingenuous.

Soldiers amulet doesn’t work well on anyone because it simply doesn’t have the necessary stats for doing damage. Power alone doesn’t do anything; you need power, precision, and ferocity. You’ll see tanky builds using the celestial amulet for this reason: it provides power, precision, ferocity, and stats for condition damage as well.

Soldiers is really only used in situations where conditions don’t work, you need to be really tanky, and your damage output isn’t the most important thing. This basically means WvW frontline zerging.

Really, mesmers don’t have nearly close to as strong the condi removal of the top 3 classes in the game. Simply because mesmers don’t have it in a healing skill or a weapon skill. We have to trait, or take a utility skill to get any sort of condi clear and in ranked matches that just isn’t possible. To get it from a weapon you have to TRAIT for torch which even though it is only used right now for the stealth/blast finisher to set up shatters.

Just because we have to spec into condi removal doesn’t mean we are bad at it. In fact, we are one of the best classes for aoe condi removal. It’s the fact, as you’ve stated, that we have to give up everything else to get this condi cleanse when we have mandatory traits and utility we simply cannot give up. Support mesmer in theory is awesome, but sadly in practice it is subpar at best.

To those lovely readers out there who are too shy to post:

-Blackgate is our home server, BUT is not required unless you wish to join us in World vs. World!

-We are most active between 6pm-11pm (EST) during weekdays, while on weekends you can catch the majority of us on between 3pm all the way until 1-2am at night!

-Whisper us in game to get to know us better! Joining a guild is a process not only for us to find more enthusiastic players such as ourselves, but for YOU to find players who fit YOUR style of play. Give us a chance, we don’t bite! (tho I do nibble from time to time…)

~Hope to see you readers in game soon!

Gust could definitely be changed to increase reliability. The speed of the projectile is fine; all that it needs is to follow your target if he moves or simply increase the radius of the projectile.

If anything, this reduces usability. It forces you to predetermine enemy movement which gives you less time to worry about your own position. Ground targeting also suffers from line of sight and uneven terrain. I can’t see this benefiting staff, especially in pvp. Btw, you can already aim fireballs manually.

Terrible damage, terrible defence and terrible synergy with traits.

Please don’t nerf it Anet D;

This seems likely because the current legendary crafting system is a huge gold/item sink. Unless they want to give out free legendaries or come out with 8 brand new t6 materials, I highly doubt they will alter the system in place.

Also, what is stopping you or anybody else from saving up resources for the upcoming expansion? You were told about new legendaries MONTHS before release, yet you want to blame everyone else for not taking advantage of something anybody and everybody who bought the game has access to? :/

Astral Projections.7320:

Is the Standard Edition the same as the Digital Heroic Edition? I would prefer to buy it directly from off of this site if possible.

Digital Heroic Edition = Standard Edition ^^. It will be $9.99 this weekend only on the Guild Wars 2 website. Better yet, the Deluxe version will be on sale for $15, so no reason to be cheap about it!

Qeve.5743:

OreoWolf.9564:

D/F isn’t as viable in high-level play because you are forced into close combat and lack the kitting pressure of the scepter.

I just Lol’ed, we have pros here.

Where?! I want some autographs on my staff :O.

While channeling the autoattack (3 seconds long), you are unable to use any other FGS skill until it finishes. This causes the elite to become extremely clunky and in times can cause death because the inability to quickly react to cc by spinning out of the way. I checked to see if the ground target option I was using caused it, but it seems to be that way for each one.

Has anyone else experienced this? Was this a stealth nerf of some sort? I’ve just got back to the game and this ‘bug’ is extremely annoying.

S/F and D/F are completely different playstyles.

S/F is basically a burst combo spec which sets up multiple hard hitting abilities to take out other glass builds. S/F is great to counter other light armored players and has insane downstate pressure with phoenix/dragon’s tooth. It is also very unpredictable if played well.

D/F is more sustained damage (in my experience) and can better pressure players. I wouldn’t use D/F without Lightning Rod, as dagger mainhand makes more use out of LR than Fresh Air. D/F isn’t as viable in high-level play because you are forced into close combat and lack the kitting pressure of the scepter.

Poor shatterstone; a gimpy version of staff’s ice shard :c. At least ice shard (water 2) is consistent and still hits hard enough to be worth the keystroke. Anet is justified in not straight out nerfing celestial, as much as I dislike it, as they are taking baby steps to tone it down.

I’ve solely been playing 6/6/x/x/x berserker builds on my elementalist for the past 5 months and it works fine for me and my teams. Nothing is ‘pushing’ you into playing a certain build, people just use it as an excuse to play the easiest thing possible. Hell, lightning whip is a buff imo, as now those cele eles I fight can’t abuse the signet heal and in result lose a ton of sustain ^^. Can’t wait to interrupt some ether-renewals <3.

I run it on my tpvp staff ele build, but the main reason people don’t take it is because the single target blind limits its use, even on a 5 second cd. That being said, it helps to counter thief basilisk steals with staff 3 or mesmer greatsword clones, so I have a niche use for it.

Why not take all invulns away from ele? How about we take their armor too? While we are at it, let’s remove scepter and focus from the game so d/d celestial is the only viable spec we got in pvp. Thoughts?

“If you knew anything about balance then you would know that you don’t have a ranged burst that powerful – it makes any other melee burst in the game look like a joke. Fresh air elementalist is even worse than ranger longbow because there isn’t counterplay to it. "

Don’t know if clueless, or…

First off, they nerfed rapid fire in this patch. It only takes one dodge roll to migitate the damage (not to mention reflects and the like). Just because rangers can actually hurt you now, it is suddenly OP? They did this amount of damage prepatch, but now you actually have to dodge/use a skill to counter it.

Secondly, fresh air ele isn’t ranged. Most of our burst misses at 900 range anyways. Regardless, if your playing scepter ele at +600 range, your doing it wrong. You’ll never get that “range burst” your crying so much about.

You just ran into a rather decent s/f ele is all. I say decent off the bat because your opponent utilizes lightning flash into his burst. It saddens me since he didn’t use gale to set the pheonix up properly tho ;x.

Anyways, same thing can happen against a thief or shatter mesmer… So just watch your surroundings more and get ready to pop defensive cds against a sceptor weilding ele ^^. We can’t stealth like mesmers or teefs, so we’ll try to hit you from behind your line of sight.

Ground target comet would honestly be a nerf lol. Right now, you don’t need LoS to use it which allows you to interrupt people hugging walls or a thief who just shadowstepped.

Dragon’s tooth on the other hand needs a faster cast time or higher base damage to actually make it worth the keystroke. As it is now, it is only useful for wrecking resbots or arrow carts ontop of keep walls. Ground target won’t magically make all your dragon tooth attacks hit, because the animation is godawful long.

JMadFour.9730:

so being able to swap places with a clone that doesn’t exist anymore is a “defensive part of the skill set”? that really does sound like a bug to me. was the Mesmer meant to swap places with nothing?

because that patch note does not say you can’t switch places with the clone anymore. it says you can’t switch with the clone if the clone is already gone. i.e. the clone has to exist, in order to switch places with it.

You know that clone in question is instantly killed by pretty much anything that looks at it, making this skill borderline useless?

But hey, let’s look on the bright side! At least our number 2 skill can do 10k retaliation damage to us in 3 seconds and our autoattack has amazing 2k crits and boon removal every 3 hits while standing in melee range with a whole 1.8k armour! /sarcasm

Have fun face rolling what little of us shatter mesmers remain with your passive condition spam and 3k toughness. It obviously wasn’t enough that we had to land 3-4+ consecutive mind wrack combos to kill these cheesy builds, because now we have to land it without you simply walking out of our clone range. LOL.

OreoWolf.9564:

Terrahero.9358:

OreoWolf.9564:

Why are you comparing us to a class we pretty much hard counter?

Anyways, to answer your question. Yes, you missed Dumbfire. The trait that got necro bleed output and terror nerfed. That being said, we also got some of the most useful grandmaster traits this patch and I am currently having tons of fun melting players in pvp. If your so melancholy about the class, why not reroll this imaginary mesmer with millions of clones and instant down wvw zergs with a single mind wrack? :/

The OP has a point, there is a bug/exploit with Mesmers. They can, through that dodge-trait, pump out more clones then normally permitted. Upto 5 can be acquired for a brief moment.

If they then shatter, with the trait that also counts you as a shatter, they can instantly shatter you for the equivalent of 6 clones, instead of 3.

Needless to say, the burst potential that has is terrifying, and its an over more popular playstyle. Altough obviously bugged.

An extra 680 damage per clone (including self) for using f2 to get a 5 clone shatter off. It’s hardly worth wasting mirror images for an extra 2k damage (maybe 1-2k more tops if they spam skills with 10 confusion stacks on them). Mind you, I speak of Tpvp, not wvw or pve. No clue why people think shatter mesmer is god tier that can faceroll anything, when a perfect shatter will barely take that engineer or pvt warrior under half health… The build nearly every mesmer is face rolling on is PU.

Edit: It is not possible to get more than 3 clones UNLESS you use a shatter skill and use mirror images or spam dodges right after. Even then, f2 will do 680 damage CRIT per clone in Tpvp, so I hardly see how this makes us god tier DPS… I would love to show you what I mean in game if you have the time. I don’t mean any disrespect in this post, it just annoys me when shatter mesmer is generalized by players like OP when we are now the least played mesmer build right behind mantras.

Terrahero.9358:

OreoWolf.9564:

Why are you comparing us to a class we pretty much hard counter?

Anyways, to answer your question. Yes, you missed Dumbfire. The trait that got necro bleed output and terror nerfed. That being said, we also got some of the most useful grandmaster traits this patch and I am currently having tons of fun melting players in pvp. If your so melancholy about the class, why not reroll this imaginary mesmer with millions of clones and instant down wvw zergs with a single mind wrack? :/

The OP has a point, there is a bug/exploit with Mesmers. They can, through that dodge-trait, pump out more clones then normally permitted. Upto 5 can be acquired for a brief moment.

If they then shatter, with the trait that also counts you as a shatter, they can instantly shatter you for the equivalent of 6 clones, instead of 3.

Needless to say, the burst potential that has is terrifying, and its an over more popular playstyle. Altough obviously bugged.

An extra 680 damage per clone (including self) for using f2 to get a 5 clone shatter off. It’s hardly worth wasting mirror images for an extra 2k damage (maybe 1-2k more tops if they spam skills with 10 confusion stacks on them). Mind you, I speak of Tpvp, not wvw or pve. No clue why people think shatter mesmer is god tier that can faceroll anything, when a perfect shatter will barely take that engineer or pvt warrior under half health… The build nearly every mesmer is face rolling on is PU.

Why are you comparing us to a class we pretty much hard counter?

Anyways, to answer your question. Yes, you missed Dumbfire. The trait that got necro bleed output and terror nerfed. That being said, we also got some of the most useful grandmaster traits this patch and I am currently having tons of fun melting players in pvp. If your so melancholy about the class, why not reroll this imaginary mesmer with millions of clones and instant down wvw zergs with a single mind wrack? :/

KaYTeW.5132:

8/10 — love the color scheme. Not a fan of the spinal blades, though. =p

I change my toon’s armor too much:

Not bad! You’re living proof that you do not always need a back piece to compliment an outfit. 7/10

It’s a well known fact that you don’t need a shirt to be serviced (by) hell.

NOOOO, don’t tell these rerolled MM’s to take blood fiendoff their bar! I enjoy killing them over and over with them wondering what the hell is happening :p.

Only problem I see is no death nova or that 30 point blood magic trait that’s niche. Sure, regen is nice… But if your clustering on a point where boon removal and poison is everywhere, it seems like a wasted trait. I’m presuming your running a condition variant, in which you don’t want to rely on staff for DPS. Staff is a utility(lol) weapon with high CDs. Even staff mastery doesn’t change the fact you’ll be spamming auto attacks.

If you are running a power varient, the evasive mark becomes even less of a use. Until the Nerf in march, death nova is unblockable aoe damage with high uptime on poison. Literally the bane of regen warriors and bunker guardians. I think your team would prefer 33% reduced heals over 2.2k health in 10 seconds :p my 2 cents.

But hey, if it works for you keep it up. We need more theorycrafters ^^.

Things can get nasty very quickly as a solo roaming necro (at least in tier one). That being said, we can very well ‘handle’ ourselves in very small engagements.

When supported by a (good) team, a necro is extremely strong at pressuring a single target. Other (good) groups will in turn out-pressure you, forcing you to blow CDs defensively.

A necro can either be a great asset or a great handicap, depending on the situation. But please don’t let that turn you off, it would be awesome to see fellow necros on the battlefield!

Saturn.6591:

1. Necromancers are weak! They have terror, but they are still weak!
2. Let’s give Necromancers fire! Let them burn their enemies!
3. Necromancers are overpowered! Let’s nerf terror!
4. Necromancers are overpowered! Let’s nerf fire!
5. Necromancers have no (useful) fire and weaker terror but are probably still in a good spot… hold on… aren’t they worse than when the whole thing started (point 1)?

Good thing that the build I’m planning to use once my condimancer reaches lvl 80 never included Dhuumfire at all.

Good thing Dhuumfire didn’t cause enfeeble, mark of blood, grasping death and terror to get nerfed. OHWAIT

Thanks for the build diversity Anet! Now ALL our condition builds are subpar and not one is better than the other! Rejoice!

Duelling (the way I look at is) is not to show supremecy over another, but to pass time while waiting for something to occur. I myself would love an option to have friendly duels with people while waiting in boss windows such as tequatl or jormag.

Of course, one may argue to go to spvp to duel, but do you honestly pop out of sparkfly main or any other map with a possible overflow just to pass time? I play tpvp to practice team fighting, not to make a past time more inaccessible. But hey, that’s just my view of the coin ^^.

Apart from the horrid grind of ascended gear, everything is basically looks in this game. Since some cultural gear has the highest esteemed looks, it definitely justifies the 120g price tag.

Oh and before buying a set, make sure you check if the shoulders/gloves clip through or not. For example; asura cultural 3 shoulders are overrided by the coat, making it a waste of 20g.

Godmoney.2048:

I just finished Bifrost.

Would never do it again. Trust me when i say spending 3000 gold on a skin is not worth it at all.

You finished crafting bifrost yet it costed as much as BUYING it straight off the trade post? Bifrost barely costs HALF of 3000g to make yourself >.>

Your first goal should be the precursor for the legendary your interested in. Get that RNG outta the way ASAP >.<. Also, don’t be afraid to vocalize your goal to your guildmates/friends after you obtain the precursor. There are some AWESOME people out there ^^. Hell, last thing I needed was 90 runestones and a person who I’ve known for 15 minutes sent 90g to me.

Paid him back asap for his kindness, and it also appeared karma was in his favor… 3 days later he got a dusk drop from a world event (The day he gave me 90g he mentioned his goal of twilight, but only having 120g) xD.

Mesmers have a decent health pool already, so traveler will almost always be the ‘better’ runeset. It comes down to the willingness to spend 60g on the runeset :p.

So what is the exact, step by step method to do this? I know it requires transmutation splitters and white level 80 weapons, but this is something I rather not take a risk on. If at all possible, a link to a video of someone doing so would be awesome ^^.

Spiky.8403:

I just spent another 600g in mystic toilet. Well, I think am finally done with this game. Can’t stand this stupid RNG in gw2, just can’t.

Wait, so instead of buying the precursor (almost all precursors are around the 600g mark) you went and gambled that gold away? Seems legitimate to me.

As for the OP, a very well organized and explained collection of data, no matter how accurate it is. Many thanks from me and many others on this forum!

I find it a terrible idea to move glory, as it only hurts PvP even more. So they remove glory, and you only spend gold to buy rewards. Pvpers, at the short end of the stick, have limited gold even with the new currency after each match played. So now someone who has spent close to no time in PvP can buy better rewards than me? Seems broken tbh.

That aside, your compensation is giant gift boxes. Free 80g per 100k glory, so enjoy. Also, please don’t call glory a ‘progressive’ currency after the skyhammer mess.

According to dulfy’s live stream review, there won’t be pve/PvP armour anymore after that patch goes live. What this basically means is, you will use the same set of armour in both PvP and pve.

Although it rarely happens, getting 20 seconds of immobilize from a venom share thief is almost as bad as lag spikes. Of course, one may say ‘bring condi removal’ as an argument, but it doesn’t justify the cheesiness of stacking immobilize for insane lengths of time.

Still wish your character would turn around to attack like NPCs do <.> at least then it would be bearable.

So yeah, apparently the trait that supposedly gives a 20% increase to siphons actually decreases the amount each minion attack heals you for. Tested this with healing power and without healing power, and the results remains about the same; you siphon for about 7% less while using the trait. Go figure?

Apparently we were supposed to be spamming staff 2 90% of the time for our damage. I literally bursted into laughter when he stated the ‘2000 bleed damage every 6 seconds’ being strong. That’s barely 350 DPS? Just another excuse to push people into playing the brain dead dhuumfire meta I suppose.

Only reason people take staff is for utility, and even that was killed off… (You’ll be missed, putrid mark!)

As a decent Minionmancer, my toughest fights are usually:

Countless’ clone spam mesmer build – every time my minions kill a clone, it puts conditions on me and my minions.

Good bomb/grenade bunker engis – I say good as in ‘focus your minions before you’. Once minions are dead, it’s pretty much fair game for anyone.

Power rangers – This is hit and miss, because very few good rangers run power specs outside of spirit builds. Kiting with longbow and great sword for defense/utility can easily wither down my health. Of course, this is assuming they use terrain to their advantage (using cliffs and edges to kite minions).

I don’t include warrior on my list because death nova hard counters them like no other. Even if they stun lock me with a full hammer chain, I’d only be down about 10k health with a soldiers amulet on. Oh, and hydromancy sigils are your friend ^^.

Minionmancers are extremely strong in a 1v1 situation, so I simply put the classes which have the best ability to take me down.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

For groupPVE you shouldn’t even use MM :/

Why not? If your worried about min/maxing DPS, you mine as well say “for group pve you shouldn’t even use necro :/”. Not trying to come off as rude, but MM aren’t about having warrior tier damage. They provide sustained damage while being inheritly tanky through traits. And as bhawb has stated in other MM forum topics, using berserker gear while running minions can provide very good damage output.

As for the topic of the main post, I prefer to run a power setup mainly because minions lack the condition output to keep condition pressure up. My view is biased because I mostly PvP with a MM spec tho. If you have no problems running 40+ fracts with your current build, then I think you should stick with conditions and just optimize your build through small tweaks here and there.

+10 seems to be the max according to datamined information.

Same happened to me, but I highly doubt they will do anything about it except a tooltip change somewhere. Good thing it was on my necro right? right?…

It has always been a thing. Your rings have a CHANCE to be infused. This chance rises as your fractal level does. I heard somewhere about them changing it to always be infused after 26+, but it appears to be false.

I opened a discussion about the same thing about 2 weeks ago, but people were too busy qqing to keep the post alive :/ Well anyways, here’s a link to that thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Speed-of-Shadows-Trait/first#post3162395

Some interesting ideas were brought up, I think you’ll like them.

What about something that is not yet in the game yet?

Such as:

Superior Sigil of Selfishness ~ 30% chance to steal a boon on crit (10 cd)

Basically the counterpart of Generosity. To make these not outperform the two sigils that simply remove a condition or boon from yourself/enemy, they would need a shorter cooldown OR need a completely different effect.

As for things already in the game, please make sure Sigil of Momentum is added to the list!