Guild Wars 2

Burnfall.9573:

Palu, you said it yourself, “Finally, I know very little about thieves because I don’t play one”
Everyone here who post in this forum regarding theif mechanic are quite knowledgable of theif mechanics and has played one. I encourage you to not make assumptions without knowledge or experience.
I would like to comment of what you said, “there is no skill that allows for a full 90 seconds of stealth”.
Please look under Perma-Stealth theif under youtube, there you will see for yourself. And yes, there are many video’s there, also you will find under theif forum of users posting perma-theif builds, of course in youtube gameplay format.

I think you may be taking my quote out of context. I was replying to Pero, who seemed to claim that there is a single button that thieves can press once to give them 90 seconds of uninterrupted stealth. I am fully aware that thieves can chain together skills to have considerable amounts of stealth, but this requires the active usage of smoke fields. Placing such a field gives an indication of the thief’s relative position. One can predict, based on the location of the smoke fields, whether or not a thief is sticking around to fight or decided to run away based on where the smoke fields keep appearing. As I said, this requires a bit of coordination (not a ton, but the thief has to make sure that using a leap finisher through the field doesn’t break stealth, thus giving the revealed debuff). Again, as I said, I was referring specifically to Pero’s complaint, stating that there is not a single skill that gives 90 seconds of stealth, but that long-term stealth has to be actively maintained on the part of the thief. When I put a noun in the singular I do indeed intend for it to be so.

Also, if you read the rest of my post, you will see that I clearly acknowledge that thieves can have significant stealth uptime, but specifically state that they often need that due to their frailty. They have extremely low base health and only medium armor, and many builds don’t invest in a lot of toughness or vitality. Stealth IS their form of defense.

Don’t assume that everyone in this thread knows the thief mechanics well. As I admitted in my previous post, I’m no expert on the thief class. However, just by playing WvW and observing my enemies I’ve managed to learn everything I listed above about thief skills. When I first started playing WvW I got my face smashed in repeatedly by thieves. However, I told myself that the problem wasn’t thieves, it was me. I took to studying them and figuring out what they do and how they play. Now, I rarely go down to them, and only do if I’m not paying attention or if they are far more skilled than me. Coming from someone who doesn’t play a thief, I think that many people in this thread don’t understand them. If I can teach myself how to fight thieves, so can everyone else. It’s just that people don’t want to invest the time into actually learning about their foes and would rather take the easy road out and call for nerfs. It’s a phenomenon that exists across the world of MMOs.

I like money as much as the next guy, but I think that the repair costs are good. I think that there should be some sort of penalty for dying; it gives fighting to stay alive more meaning in my opinion and gives more reasons for people to run away. I want a game where people have to choose whether to fight or run, not just suiciding because there is no consequence.

As for random mobs, I think that they are important too. WvW is as much about situational and environmental awareness as it is about actual combat skills. Maybe you shouldn’t try and duel someone inside a pack of coyotes or krait. Maybe if they’re about to go down, you should try to get rid of the low-health mobs. If they’re downed already and trying to finish off a mob, consider stomping them instead of spamming AoE damage. Mobs force people to think about their fights in WvW. If you remove that, I think that you’d be removing one of the great aspects of WvW. Please, if you want to fight in a vacuum where combat skills are the only important thing, look into trying sPvP; it provides a much more contained environment for fighting free of repair costs and NPC distractions.

Pero.4362:

So how is stealth okay if it can counter every, I mean every single spell that I have?
Immobilize ? Oh hey, i have stealth LolzhahaXDXDXDXD
You have a circle that wont let me out ? Oh hey, i have stelath Lolzhaha…
You outnumber me and could kill me in 2 seconds because I’m just another non-skilled glasscannon thief ? Oh hey let me show you this 1:30 min stealth that I just got, cya tomorrow

I don’t think you quite understand how stealth works if you’re posing these questions. If you immobilize someone, they will stay immobilized even if they stealth. You are free to attack right where they were when you immobilized them and they will still take damage. Now, there is the thief ability to remove conditions and stealth, but that is one specific skill, not the entirety of the stealth mechanic. The same applies for your second point: being invisible isn’t going to help anyone escape the guardian’s trapping circle (I assume that’s what you’re referring to). It is possible to shadowstep/blink through the edge while invisible, but again, that is not stealth that is causing a problem.

Finally, I know very little about thieves because I don’t play one, but as far as I know, there is no skill that allows for a full 90 seconds of stealth. Chaining together stealth skills like that probably takes a fair amount of coordination. Yeah, thieves can escape, but I don’t see that as a huge issue. They are so frail that they need to be able to run away sometimes. With the less-skilled thieves, you can often anticipate when they will attack and give them a big smack to pretty much insta-down them.

I had this very scenario happen today. My friend (who plays a thief) wasn’t really paying attention and got insta-downed by a thief and an upleveled guardian. I was a little ways behind gathering ore, so I ran over as soon as I could. Said thief went down quickly to a confusion burst (I play a weird condition mesmer) and I finished off the guardian and we went on our merry way. My point here is that the same thief who was able to pick off my friend had very little defense. Thieves have to do lots of damage because they don’t have the staying power of other classes; a quick burst will down them almost instantly (well, the glass cannon ones that are doing all this damage to begin with).

I would recommend that you learn to anticipate thieves and learn how to manage your own defensive abilities so that when you do get jumped you aren’t at a disadvantage. Culling with stealth is deadly, but as long as there is no culling, there’s little excuse for complaining about stealth.

I think that the mesmer is an excellent class in WvW. It excels, at least in my opinion, because it capitalized on confusing the enemy through the chaos of large battles or by just using stealth and clones to trick the foe into attacking the wrong target. There are numerous builds that work well in WvW. I’d recommend checking out videos by Osicat, FLIMP, and Pyroatheist as they show very different playstyles, all of which are effective.

In terms of traits, Dueling X and Illusions XI are popular because they are very useful (clones on dodge and shatter effects on the mesmer). Most builds have at least one of these traits, and a number have both. However, I have seen great builds which don’t use either of them. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that you can be as “cookie-cutter” or as creative as you want with your build, and you should be more or less successful if you’re skilled.

The greatsword is very popular for mesmers in all types of gameplay. It is usually run as part of a standard shatter build with berserker’s gear, but it also can do well in a phantasm build. Also, I’ve heard of it being used in a crit-based bleed build, but I’m somewhat skeptical of this usage of it because I think the staff applies comparable conditions with much more defense.

Leo Paul.1659:

I just wish they’d improve on our skill effects. We have some of the worst looking spells in the game imho. Guardians and elementalists and necros have cool looking elites and mechanics while ours are just a bunch of repetitive pink butterflies and stuff.

I love the butterflies. In fact, I would list it as one of my reasons why Mesmer is fun to play. What’s better than killing your opponent with butterflies? Anyway, to each his own; I’d just be really sad if the butterfly effects were replaced entirely, though giving some customization options wouldn’t hurt.

Another great stream tonight! My only suggestion is that you continue doing these livestreams!

I really enjoyed your stream! I look forward to more in the future (hopefully)!

I agree fully with what others have said about interactive gameplay and our versatility. In particular, I play a condition/confusion mesmer because I love the idea of my opponents bleeding and burning to death whilst and, in the words of Pokemon, “Hurting themselves in confusion.” All the while I get to dance around them with rapid teleports and stealths in a flashy display of purple butterflies. It’s quite sadistic actually.

Also, I like the high-risk, high-reward nature of the class. If I’m playing at the top of my game I can take on multiple opponents in WvW, timing stealths, interrupts, and shatters just right to confuse my opponents and keep myself alive. At the same time, if I’m not paying attention or just get overconfident, I’ll wind up with my face smashed in before I can blink (haha, mesmer puns).

I think that the main reason that the pistol isn’t widely used is because many people perceive the swiftness from the focus as a necessity. You’re absolutely right; the pistol is great. I use it along with a scepter in my condition/confusion build and the stun is really handy for landing confusion from Confusing Images, stopping a heal, or just stopping someone long enough to prevent them from running away. Also, the duelist does great damage even with my low power, can apply bleeds very well, and can even apply confusion if I use combo fields correctly. Obviously that’s just how I use it in my build, but I think it shows what a great weapon the pistol can be.

Like I said, a lot of it has to do with mobility. People just prefer the swiftness from the focus (though it is certainly a potent offhand in other regards). Ultimately I think it is personal preference. I think that the great versatility and power of the pistol is more than enough reason to use it. Others want more mobility or AoE and go with focus. Others yet go with the torch for more stealth. It’s all personal preference.

TL;DR: The pistol is a great weapon, but it often gets overlooked because people want to use the focus instead for mobility concerns.

FLIMP.8172:

In regards to streaming, I don’t think I’d be good enough to do that. Maybe if there’s a high demand but that’s unlikely :p

I, for one, would certainly watch any sort of live-streaming that you might do. I love watching your videos and seeing many of your exceptional battles. However, as I’m constantly trying to improve as a mesmer, getting to see live, raw footage of you playing would be invaluable.

I haven’t seen any issues with it. I know that sometimes it won’t work quite right if you turn away from your enemy or run past it. Is it possible that you’re doing either of those things?

I’ve noticed bugs with it too. It periodically fails for no reason for me. These are instances where I’m in range of the target and not blinded. It seems to happen most when the target and I are at different elevations, and I’ve noticed it not working if the target is above or below me underwater. It is a shame, because the skill seems great in terms of what it does, but I have a hard time justifying its use when it can just outright fail for seemingly no reason.

We do need some bug fixes such as certain abilities failing when used on a gradual incline or getting stealth broken by a bouncing attack, but things are not nearly as grim as you would have us believe.

Regardless of our bugs, we are quite strong. Maybe the auto-attack of the scepter and the torch’s phantasm could stand a buff, but even those weapons can be used well in certain builds.

I think that we could have a very deep and meaningful discussion about how to improve the mesmer’s weaker aspects on the mesmer forum without making the class overpowered, but I’m afraid your post seems too much like a rant with little evidence to support its claims.

Exactly my point – the only time that it’s “strategic” is when it’s being used against a brainless mob to begin with. It’s laughably easy to counter otherwise and all the attempts at portal-bombing that I’ve recently witnessed have ended up horribly for the bombers.

That being said, I think that portal bombing will just continue to be ineffective and will disappear from usage in WvW, and consequently portal should not be changed as it has plenty of other WvW applications for transporting more than five people which would get inadvertently nerfed if people with little to no situational and environmental awareness keep complaining about this outdated tactic.

I do not think we’re losing on purpose. Yes, there are likely fair weather players who only show up to karma train when we’re dominating tier four, but I think Maguuma’s lack of any sort of night crew really dooms us. I’m one of the few NA players whose sleep schedule is so weird that I’m still playing at 4:00 am. Just this weekend, I was on very late and our total points per tick reached a low of +25, as we only held one keep in EB. Even in our own borderlands, I was one of maybe a half-dozen people on the map, and on said map we owned nothing except a few sentries, and we’d periodically take camps that were then immediately recaptured.

During NA prime time we can hold our own for the most part, so I’ve really begun to believe that the night crew that we lack is making the difference. Now, that’s not to say that I’m complaining; if other servers have a night crew and we don’t, all the power to them. I’m just (hopefully) offering up an explanation of why we lose so violently every time we peek into tier three.

Instead of complaining about how powerful portal bombs are, you should try to realize that you can use them to your advantage. See an enemy mesmer? Think there’s a portal bomb incoming? Well, why don’t you focus AoE on the portal and devastate everyone coming through? Get a couple warriors to use hundred blades over it and watch as people melt. Honestly, portal bombing is almost always only effective against groups that are too focused/not paying enough attention to stop auto-attacking the door and focus attacks on the portal.

There are currently two main reasons for getting a legendary weapon: you like the skin, or you want the prestige associated with having a legendary. If either of the above applies to you, then you have to ask yourself “How much do I want the skin/the prestige?” If your answer to either of those is “a lot” then you should probably go ahead and get one. If you like the skin so much that you’re just dying to have it, presumably you’d like it just as much upon your return and it would be worth it. Also, legendaries will always be prestigious, so if you are really interested in showing off to your fellow players, getting one would probably be a good investment. Of course that being said, there may be new legendary skins out once you return, so you have to ask yourself if you want to rush and get a legendary now when there might be a skin that you like better out once you return.

-Too many invulnerabilities: Most mesmers don’t run the weapons that allow us to block as they’re generally considered sub-par. Distortion is on a long cooldown and Blurr prevents us from moving around and doing other things.

-Boons: Yes, we have a fair number of them, but not nearly as many as you are portraying. Might from Shattered Strength is pretty common, as is Vigor from Critical Infusion. Staff bounces provide boons here and there. Unless a mesmer specializes specifically in maintaining boons (resulting in a tankier, lower-damage build), I would argue that many classes (see: Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist, Engineer, etc) are able to maintain as many or more boons than the average mesmer.

-Massive boon and condition removal. Here you just have your facts wrong. We can use Null Field (which an opponent can easily dodge out of) or Arcane Thievery to remove conditions and boons. Both of these are on fairly lengthy cooldowns and Arcane Thievery is bugged and doesn’t always work. I’m not sure how this counts as “massive.”

Finally, I’m going to ignore the bottom portion of your post as the above shows that it is completely hyperbolic; it only serves to show your lack of understanding of the mesmer if you think we are invincible and can perform the roles of all classes simultaneously.

TL;DR: A mesmer cannot run a 30/30/30/30/30 spec whilst triple-wielding greatswords. Your frustration with the mesmer class is mainly based on your own lack of understanding, as evidenced by your many complaints, especially with regard to how “overpowered” clones are and how unpreventably lethal confusion is. I recommend that you study the mesmer and learn the common builds and how to counter them. As many have said, the Necromancer is generally seen as having an innate advantage over the Mesmer. That being said, I’ve met Necromancers who I facerolled in a matter of seconds and others who completely wiped the floor with me. Please try and use this thread to learn how to become a better player instead of arrogantly assuming that your defeat was the result of class imbalance.

In reply to Ruufio’s most recent post (text omitted for brevity):

Yes, mesmers can do all the things in that list, but certainly not simultaneously! Every class has some very powerful tools at its disposal. This post incorrectly implies that a mesmer has the ability to do everything on the list at one time, but it actuality a mesmer needs to choose carefully which of the things he or she wants to pick up. Now let’s look at your post in detail.

-We can create NPCs, but so can Necros, Elementalists, Thieves, Guardians, Engineers (if you count turrets). Rangers have permanent NPCs helping them, but they don’t seem all too overpowered.

-You do not HAVE to destroy clones. Unless you’re fighting a condition mesmer, you should probably ignore them. In general, it’s only worth it to destroy phantasms, which are CLEARLY identifiable.

-Our invisibility is very limited and mainly used as a target drop. Learn how to spot the real mesmer and this will stop being an issue.

-If you are referring to the sword invulnerability (since Distortion is on a 60 sec cooldown), yes it’s a good skill but it also immobilizes us, and the immobilize skill on the sword is short-range and unreliable. Also, invulnerability does nothing to stop existing conditions on us.

-I can’t deny that chaos armor is good, but if you see it on your opponent, consider slowing down your attacks for a few moments.

-Time warp is powerful, but it is most useful in a group scenario. 1v1 you can CC the mesmer, use a defensive skill, or gasp move out of his range until time warp is finished.

-Portal, like time warp, really shines in a group setting. Yes, it can be used well in a solo scenario to escape, but it is on a very long cooldown. Just take note of where the entrance portal is placed and you can anticipate the mesmer’s moves.

-Confusion – Don’t attack if you have it on you. Remove it or take a breather. Any mesmer who puts tons of stacks on you at once is talented as such a thing is difficult in and of itself, but also probably spent a lot of cooldowns to do it. Take advantage of this.

-Burst damage: dodge roll INTO the shatters and don’t stand in Blurred Frenzy. Those are our main sources of direct burst damage.

-We are not too great disengaging fights. Sure, we have a few seconds of stealth here and there to try and trick you and we can get a little swiftness if we run focus, but generally any class with a passive movement increase has the upper hand on us if we try to run.

-To get tons of stuns and dazes as you claim, a mesmer would have to run Signet of Domination, Pistol, and offhand Sword. This prevents the mesmer from using the very powerful Greatsword and Staff and such a build is extremely rare. AT MOST you can expect a mesmer to have two stuns, though one or none would be much more common.

-Reflection: Don’t wildly shoot into Feedback or Temporal Curtain. Try sidestepping slightly so that you aren’t shooting through them. Also, some mesmers have reflection upon distortion. If this is the case, try not shooting wildly at them for the MAXIMUM of four seconds that they can have it up on themselves.

Hi Nurse, glad to hear that you’re looking to get more into mesmer!

As others have said, the staff is the central weapon for a condition build. With this build, your main source of damage will be from your staff clones inflicting conditions both from Winds of Chaos and from the Sharper Images trait in the Dueling tree. To generate clones, most people get Deceptive Evasion in Dueling as well. In addition to that, Chaotic Dampening and Debilitating Dissipation in Chaos are generally chosen as well as Master of Misdirection and Illusionary Elasticity in Illusions. That leaves 10 points which can be spent in about a half-dozen different ways to cater to your own personal playstyle.

With this build, you will spend the vast majority of your time using the staff as it is a great defensive weapon which is able to apply burning and bleeding. As far as secondary weapons go, there really is no bad choice. Sword is very popular for its Blurred Frenzy skill which will give you two seconds of invincibility. Scepter receives a lot of hate from the community, as while its auto-attack is very bad, the blind from Scepter #2 and the confusion from Confusing Images can be quite potent, especially in WvW where you will often be firing it into a zerg of people who aren’t paying enough attention to dodge it. For offhands, focus is the most popular because of the swiftness and pull it provides, but pistol can provide you with a very handy ranged stun and duelist illusions which can inflict a lot of bleeding (and confusion if they shoot through your ethereal field) as well as considerable direct damage, even without much power investment. Torch can be useful if you’re focusing a lot on stealth and provides a nice burn plus a blast finisher, though the illusionary Mage it summons is pretty lackluster. Finally, there is the offhand sword, which I personally would not recommend because its phantasm is very power oriented whilst the block/stun from it is inferior to that of the pistol. Also, you could use a greatsword as your alternate weapon for good range, clone generation, a cripple from the berserker, and a decent rate of bleed application due to clone attack speed and your own attacks if you use a sigil of earth.

Hope that helped a bit!

Excellent videos FLIMP! I also play a condition build very similar to yours. As I was watching, I noticed you really don’t have much in terms of condition removal. How do deal with conditions in your build? Currently I run Mender’s Purity but have considered switching to Prismatic Understanding because it synergizes much better with my playstyle. However, I’m constantly paranoid that I will get eaten alive by condition-packing foes. I use Null Field, but that’s on a pretty lengthy cooldown. Any tips?

Embolism.8106:

It sounds to me your opponent was a condition Mesmer, given how you speak of boons and three Clones casting.

As a Necromancer, you should be well-equipped to deal with condition Mesmers: you have the ability to not only cleanse, but turn enemy conditions and boons against them; plus you yourself are able to dish out conditions far better than the Mesmer could.

As a condition Mesmer, a competent Necromancer is one of the toughest professions for me to face: they are highly resistant to my conditions and are able to inflict lots of conditions themselves, which ironically are very difficult for me to deal with due to my low HP (Toughness does nothing against conditions) and scant condition removal.

In other words, if you are unable to deal with a condition Mesmer as a Necromancer, you may want to evaluate your own play rather than accuse others of being overpowered.

Yes, I have to completely agree with Embolism. I too play a condition mesmer and what you described sounds an awful lot like a condition mesmer. For me, necromancers are amongst the hardest classes to face for the reasons Embolism described.

If he was beating you, he was either very skilled or you were doing something wrong, or some combination of the two. This is especially true since you say you couldn’t get away from him. Mesmers in general are pretty bad at stopping people from escaping without specializing into just that area of combat at the expense of others, and condition mesmers in particular lack the burst damage to quickly cut down a fleeing foe.

Also, you say make very generalized statements about what he was doing. If you are going to call for a “nerf” at least be specific. Which abilities were giving you trouble? Which traits (of the ones overtly noticeable in combat) were giving him an unfair advantage? Which specific abilities were giving him all these buffs and which specific abilities were preventing you from escaping. Provide detailed information on exactly what aspect of your opponent’s build makes him inherently overpowered to such a huge degree as you describe. If you can’t do that, you probably need to learn more about mesmers. I know that I used to have a horrible time fighting thieves until I learned their tricks; now they are no different than any other class to me.

Finally, if you want to claim that mesmers are overpowered, provide multiple examples of how and why they are. Currently, you are providing only anecdotal evidence of how you lost to a single player, which honestly seems more like a case of a skill difference than some inherent advantage that he had. Right now it sounds like you expect to win every 1v1 you get into. Surely, if it took him 13 minutes to kill you, Mr. OP Mesmer probably had to invest quite a bit of effort to win. Maybe try to provide us with videos of your future encounters with mesmers so that we can either see for ourselves how overpowered we are or we can explain how to properly counter them.

The main problem here is that everyone is talking in terms of hypotheticals; yes, there are probably many skilled players who can perform above-average despite being at a statistical disadvantage to characters without magic find. Likewise, a player with zero skill running magic find gear is missing out on stats that he or she desperately needs to scrape by.

These two examples are only the ends of a spectrum though; the average player is going to be of average skill level, based on the definition of average. These players are not the top-tier players who can use magic find, nor are they the skill-barren players who can’t help but die every pull. These players WILL be performing sub-optimally because of their gear, but at the same time, the party will be barely inconvenienced.

There is a lot of grey area here because, given the lack of absolute scenarios on one side or the other of the “spectrum” of skill, it is hard to determine when a player isn’t performing optimally because of his or her magic find gear. If a run takes thirty extra seconds because someone either isn’t doing the most DPS possible or because someone got downed because of low health, is that too much of an extra burden to the party? What if it’s five extra minutes? What about twenty?

Ultimately, people are going to answer this question differently. Some would argue that no delay caused by magic find gear is ever acceptable solely based on the principle that everyone should contribute. Likewise, some people would accept a fair amount of leeway because they hold the opinion that every player deserves to play in his or her own way.

Because of what I have just listed above, I believe that magic find should be removed from gear and maybe even from food and the game itself completely. I would suggest two options:
1) Remove magic find completely and simply increase drop rates to compensate. I don’t know if Arenanet is likely to choose this because of how greatly it would impact the economy.
2) Remove magic find from equipment (and possibly consumables) and make it something that one’s character accrues permanently over time, maybe by discovering lucky or enchanted artifacts or performing special quests or overcoming significant challenges. I like this idea a lot because it wouldn’t have a huge effect on the economy, it would provide a long-term goal for players to work for, and if implemented correctly it could give players a reward for doing something difficult.

While I’ll miss being able to insta-kill people in WvW because of stacking ten stacks of confusion on them with little effort, I welcome this change.

First, being able to stack that much confusion was very much overpowered. There’s no denying that. Secondly, since we are now able to stack bleeds instead of confusion, a) people can’t run away underwater since they’ll be bleeding, whereas before they could just ignore the confusion and swim away and b) in PvE (assuming the bleed cap isn’t being hit) it is a much more reliable source of damage. Now I’m writing this from the perspective of a condition mesmer, but hopefully this change will help the spear see a bit more usage amongst power builds. Also, being able to stack 15 bleeds on a target and a bit of confusion with the whaler is still very powerful, at least for someone specced into conditions.

Palaryel.2463:

where did they state that?
Also, didn’t Ascended gear imply AR by default, makes no sense TBH.

Even if what you said is true: you can still craft an off/def infusion with 5 AR or buy a versatile simple infusion and put it into an off/def amulet^^

Colin Johansen stated it about a week ago:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Good question!

Ascended rings will also be available for laurels as well. Back slot items will be made more widely available in the future and will likely tie into a different reward system.

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

We will also introduce an additional reward system (or systems) in the future to make these items more accessible to WvW players on top of the laurel system.

The remaining ascended item types will be introduced in future releases, and may or may not tie into the laurel system, TBD.

I interpret “ascended gear” in the above quote to include infusions, since they can only be put in ascended items.

Yes, ascended gear came out with the fractals dungeon, but I think the design philosophy around it has shifted to make it more of an overall upgrade to exotics than something fractals specific. It should also be noted that all the non-infused fractal rings and the first tier of the ascended back items don’t have any inherent agony resistance (though granted their final forms do).

All that being said though, you are absolutely correct that we have the option of infusing these new amulets with AR, and I think we will see many players (myself included) doing so to either progress further into fractals or to min-max their stats, since the infusions that provide combat stats +5 all have +5 AR as well.

ANet has already stated that none of the items which can be purchased with laurels will provide agony resistance; I don’t see why that wouldn’t apply to the infusions. I don’t think they will be upgradeable because a) agony resistance is only needed for the Fractals dungeon and b) with the new laurels system, in conjunction with the mystic forge-created infusions, one can get at least 15 or 20 agony resistance without ever stepping foot in fractals.

Edit: To reply to idorian, (correct me if I’m wrong) only an amulet can currently receive a utility infusion. So yes and no, they might be stackable in the future, but currently there are not multiple pieces of gear to stack them in.

I love the butterflies and the purple theme. As EsLafiel very clearly showed us, the butterflies and the purple really compliment the theme of the mesmer. There are already tons of customizations available through dyeing one’s armor, through the different particle effects and weapons, and even through the basic physical appearance/race of one’s character. I wouldn’t be opposed to an option to customize the color of the butterflies, but I think that asking for wholly new particle effects is a waste of time and resources for ANet, plus there would be plenty of players upset if the butterflies were removed.

Besides, everyone who plays a mesmer likely knew that there would be butterflies from the numerous videos/photos of mesmers that were available even before launch. Ultimately, people shouldn’t play a profession if they have major qualms about it, including aesthetic concerns. It is not wise to play a class you don’t like aesthetically and then come here trying to change it to fit your own personal style. Not everything has to have some dark/manly/tough/etc theme to it and I think that this subject is as silly as a necromancer saying that he finds death shroud and his summoned minions too ugly and undead looking and would prefer pretty well-dressed and groomed minions and a flowery death shroud.

Sincerely,
A male who plays a male mesmer

It’s hard to recommend sigils without knowing your build. For instance, I run a condition build with high crit and use a sigil of earth on my staff for extra bleeds, which works quite well. However, in general the stacking sigils are good – just pick the stat that corresponds to your build. Likewise, a number of the weapon swap ones are good, such as sigil of battle or sigil of energy (just to name a couple). Also, as others have recommended, sigil of fire and sigil of lightning are good if you have a lot of crit and power, and sigil of generosity can be good to transfer conditions if you’re using a fast-attacking weapon. I would advise against any of the +5% to a stat sigils because as far as I know, their bonuses do not carry over to illusions.

Embolism.8106:

Domination gives +CondDuration which isn’t actually that useful because it doesn’t affect Illusions.

There are two traits that are pretty much essential for a condition Mesmer: Deceptive Evasion and Illusionary Elasticity. Chaotic Dampening is almost always taken, though not essential. That leaves you with 10 points to do as you will.

Yes, just what Embolism said. 0/20/20/0/20 is a common and reliable base template for a condition mesmer. To elaborate on the potential uses of the last ten points though, there are lots of decent options, all of which depend on your play style.

Illusionary Persona (and Shattered Strength by extension) – both in Illusions, are extremely useful if you find yourself shattering regularly, plus you have a stun available on demand in melee range from F3. Also, in its current form, the might from Shattered Strength provides a fairly significant amount of condition damage.

Crippling Dissipation (Domination) – if your clones die a lot and you feel you need a little boost to your kiting abilities, you might want to take this. Don’t underestimate the advantage this can give you against melee opponents.

Prismatic Understanding (and chaotic transference – both in Chaos) – If you use stealth skills a lot this can give you a fairly decent defensive boost, and Chaotic Transference is a nice damage boost at the same time.

Mender’s Purity (Inspiration) – this is what I use on my condition build. In many scenarios, when you are taking damage you’re also going to have conditions on you. I like this because it can function as an emergency immobilize or cripple removal which can save your life if your anti-condition utility skill is on cooldown. Plus, you get some extra vitality from this line, which is always good in my opinion. This is a purely defensive option, but I think it’s a good one. o

Finally, you could get Confusing Combatants in Dueling and put the last five points in Chaos or Illusions if you find that your clones die enough to make the on-death traits worth it. This would be a purely offensive choice.

Gubrz.7283:

to the mesmer in [Taco], sylvari, survival staff build.. i so love u! u kicked my butt on 2 diff toons of mine, and im in the mists trying to copycat you! lol

held off amazingly well! i THINK you were a yak
i was busy trying to stay alive and watch what you were doing while you killed like 4 of us, it was so sad, but funny at least i was on lowbies tho, so i dont feel TOO TERRIBLE.. but some of those other guys were 80!

d’oh!

great job!!!

Hey there! That was really a great fight! That was some of the most intense, and consequently most enjoyable, fighting that I’ve ever been a part of. I’m actually from Maguuma, but there is a different [TACO] guild on Yak’s Bend, so it’s pretty easy to think I’m from YB. Thanks for the lovely compliments though, and if you want to PM me to discuss my build, I’d be happy to do so with you.

NewLogic.3480:

I think the bells are in the key of C

Am I correct? (I’m not a big music person)

The bells are in the key of D Dorian. Basically, if you started on D on a keyboard and played a scale on all the white keys you would have a Dorian scale. For those who are not familiar with the musical modes, Dorian is like a natural minor scale, but has a raised 6th degree, making it sound somewhat more major and brighter (in this case, whereas D minor would have a B-flat in it, D Dorian has a B natural instead).

Hi, I’m in the process of creating a condition bunker build for my mesmer and I was hoping that a few things could get cleared up about rather specific aspects of the build. Now I know that there have been a couple other threads recently on condition mesmers but none of them really reached the level of specificity I’m looking for, though they were invaluable for learning the basics of the build. Hopefully this thread can serve not only as a means for my question to get answered, but also as a platform for more discussion about condition mesmers in general.

Anyway, I’ve recently switched from a more specialized tank build with healing power to a more traditional build with Sharper Images and Deceptive Evasion, focusing on stacking precision and toughness. I have almost everything figured out about the spec except for some very specific things such as runes, gear, and a few traits.

Here is my build; it is mainly for WvW but I tried to make it viable in PvE as well.

First, my current spec is 0/20/30/0/20:
I have:
Desperate Decoy, Deceptive Evasion

Illusionary Defense, Debilitating Dissipation, Chaotic Dampening

Master of Misdirection, Illusionary Elasticity

I really like this trait combo as it allows me to be quite resilient and is able to quickly produce clones and rack up condition damage from sharper images.

For my weapons, I use staff and scepter/focus with Sigil of Earth on the staff and the scepter and sigil of battle on the focus. My other skills are Ether Feast, Decoy, Null Field, Blink, and Time Warp.

For gear I will use (once I obtain it all) rabid gear in every slot, except for rings where I will use the ascended vit/tough/CD rings and weapons, where I use carrion for extra vitality (though I eventually plan to use the Bifrost so I will lose condition damage in my weapon slot).

Here are my stats at level 80 with the above configuration, not taking into account things like Chaotic Transference or runes:
Toughness: 1729
Vitality: 1190
Condition: 1217
Precision: 1537 (About 36% crit chance)
Power: 1089

Now, please help me critique this build to help me finalize it. I’d prefer it to be a bit more on the tank-ish side of things as I like having a pretty durable character, so with that in mind, here are my questions:

1). What is a good balance point between toughness and vitality for maximizing bulkiness? I mean, this spec can take physical hits just fine, but it suffers terribly from conditions. Null field helps somewhat, but its long cooldown limits it. I’ve been thinking that perhaps Runes of Lyssa of Saffron-Scented Poultry Soup would be a good investment. What do others who run a similar set do to avoid being destroyed by conditions?

2). What would the best runes be? I’m leaning towards runes of the undead, but runes of Lyssa would be good too, as would runes of the nightmare. How valuable is an extra 10% condition duration and should I be going out of my way to get it?

3). How valuable would more precision be for me? Would an extra 165 precision from runes outweigh the benefits of 165 condition damage from runes? If so, would Lyssa be a good choice or would something like Runes of the Thief be best?

4). Finally (though this ties in somewhat with number 1), how valuable is vitality? I expect that I should have some to not get destroyed by conditions, but I don’t want to waste too much of my itemization on useless Power points from Carrion gear. If only I could get precision, vitality, and condition damage on one piece of armor…

Anyway, those are all the questions I had. Please offer any other comments or feedback you might have on the spec! Thanks!

I am also having severe lag issues like the ones described above: activation of skills is delayed by 2-30 seconds at times, I encounter extreme “rubber banding” whenever I’m near other players, and I sometimes get disconnected. There is no indication that any of these problems are originating from my end. There is no graphical lag, simply connection based lag and I have had zero problems until just a few days ago. I have a solid internet connection so I highly doubt that my side of the connection is the problem.

Additionally, the lag seems to be worse depending on the zone or when near other players. I’ve tested the game in unpopulated areas and there is zero lag, but when I go to Lion’s Arch, WvW, sPvP, or just about any dungeon, the lag worsens. Also, during one of my Twilight Arbor runs today, some of my group members were complaining about similar problems. Hopefully this is a problem that can be resolved soon as it prevents me and others from playing the vast majority of popular content.

I would recommend the masquerade set as well, and I also think that the Exalted crafted set can look pretty good. Ultimately though, I think that most of the light armor available can suit a mesmer rather well with the proper color scheme and weapons to tie the look together.