Guild Wars 2

Qaelyn.7612:

Should I report it again or would it be on some long list somewhere of things that may or may not get fixed?

Never a bad thing to report it again.

hints.8036:

Pyroatheist.9031:

So the way the combo feels is:

About face+immediate phase retreat, tiny pause, about face.

You do this whole holding W

Another thing I noticed is that he use Phase Retreat to get on the bridge. I know you can use Blink for that. Is this still viable? How do you make sure it Phase Retreat up instead of just back? Is it just a camera angle?

I’ve never actuall done that trick myself. Since that video was fairly recent though, I’d assume it can still be done, so just go over and muck with it, see what happens.

So the way the combo feels is:

About face+immediate phase retreat, tiny pause, about face.

You do this whole holding W

Qaelyn.7612:

Thanks.

They removed a thread tracking bugs? How odd.

Changed policy, they decided they wanted all bugs reported to the bugs forum instead.

Yeah, I think this is a bug. I recall having something about this in the bug thread before it was removed.

I’m actually in favor of keeping it to the original 8 submitted builds, and pushing everything else to next time. 8 builds is a ton just by themselves.

Dhampyr.2104:

Pyroatheist.9031:

I fail to understand how you come up with 1260 hps passive.

Regen: 150 hps
Ether Signet: 1000/3 seconds : 333 hps
Blood sigil: 450/4 seconds: 120 hps
Omnomberry Ghost: 325/2 seconds: 175 hps

All that gets me about 750 hps, with generous estimates I might add. A far cry from your stated value of 1260.

I think he might be including the Restorative Mantras heal with MoP spam? Doing nothing but that would add right around the missing 500 hps, although that’s assuming that you’re doing absolutely nothing but spamming MoP.

I’m just going off of what he has specifically at the end of his first post.

Just as a note colesy, compounding power is calculated as 1.03*1.03*1.03 instead of 1.09. That’s actually how I tested the difference in the first place.

At any rate, the one specific fight where I would absolutely say you want greatsword is the molten facility boss fight. Range is absolutely essential in that fight, but the specific thing is that when the bosses get the rage stacks, the rapid-fire triple hit of the greatsword auto does a fantastic job of taking down the stacks. That fight is also pretty brutal on phantasms unfortunately, it’s very hard to keep them up for more than a few seconds.

I fail to understand how you come up with 1260 hps passive.

Regen: 150 hps
Ether Signet: 1000/3 seconds : 333 hps
Blood sigil: 450/4 seconds: 120 hps
Omnomberry Ghost: 325/2 seconds: 175 hps

All that gets me about 750 hps, with generous estimates I might add. A far cry from your stated value of 1260.

Shame on you Chaos!

You should have posted this in the [OMFG] testing thread!

Bunda.2691:

Can the +600 toughness on mantra cast be utilized defensively? I keep wanting to make that trait work, but haven’t yet found a way.

Not really. Ultimately if you’re in a bunker build, you’ll probably have around 3000 armor, which means that 600 toughness is only a 20% reduction in damage. In order to get that though, you need 20 points in dueling, you have to take a mantra, and you have to actually charge it with the intention of facetanking things instead of dodging or blurred frenzy or anything really.

Well, you say that a disenchanter would have died to the engie’s aoe quickly, but did you try it? Remember that the engie is mainly conditions, and the disenchanter will often clear conditions from itself.

Additionally, like all phantasms, you don’t just throw the disenchanter out and hope it wins the fight for you. Its presence allows you to push aggressively against a condition based opponent, which will inherently protect it.

I’ve done a decent number of the 30+ fractals, and so far I’ve encountered 2 that I would only enter again if payed a substantial amount of gold: 33 and 39.

What others should I avoid at all costs?

It won’t work with illusionary persona, I can tell you that.

Works for me.

/15char

Snorcha.7586:

I have to say as a diamond skin ele with my particular build pu mesmers are a non issue, and exceptionally easy to kill if they stay around and fight.. there are counters, you just need to figure it out

However, they are seriously annoying, and I normally just run away as I cbf fighting them.

Diamond skin actually isn’t a problem at all. Chaos storm, the iWarlock, and confusing images all do quite high damage, so you can take out an ele rapidly if you do it right.

I don’t really understand where you think your damage is coming from. Just because you’re going full zerker doesn’t guarantee you good damage. You’ve got literally 0 damage traits, only 1 phantasm that can deal damage, and no shatters to speak of.

You’re glassy alright, but your damage will suck.

phaeris.7604:

Pyroatheist.9031:

People still did the combo after the CnD nerf.

The signet change ultimately increased the damage from the combo, not decreased, if you actually run the numbers.

The mug change was the only nerf that actually affected the combo, but ultimately mug was only roughly 10%-20% of the total damage in the combo, making that nerf comparatively small to the rest of it.

Heartseeker is not part of the combo, and was not nerfed when used after this combo was executed. It was nerfed at high hp levels.

Again, hilarious. I like how on explaining how c+d went from hitting for 5-8k to a 1/3 less on a skill which costs 6 initiative doesn’t somehow effect the combo.

You’ll also find that the signet is in fact now the only signet which has a better effect on damage if you don’t activate it!. Amazing! If you press it you actually decrease your damage output!

Also mug really? It used to crit and hit for 5k, now it barely makes 1.5-2k on a soft target.

Keep trying though.

I got hit for a 4.8k CnD just last night…in a build with 3000 armor…just saying.

Qaelyn.7612:

Carighan.6758:

If you press it while being moved to the target location it immediately aborts the movement and frame-resets you to standing “ready”-pose. It’s the equivalent of a one-more cancel in some fighting games.

I dealt with a thief doing this to me just the other day. The pull takes only a fraction of a second, and it’s often done while the thief was stealthed. Interrupting it with a stunbreaker while simultaneously doing all the other things going on in combat would require superhuman reflexes.

While it is technically possible to stunbreak something like scorpion wire, it’s much easier to avoid either the attack itself, or position yourself in such a way that it can’t drag you over a hole.

Most knockbacks/pulls have a really nice animation that lets you avoid them very easily, or you can simply assume that a certain class will hit you with them if you get close, and keep your back to a wall.

It also helps that I’ll always man the cannon in skyhammer, as the really tight space is pretty much the most optimal working environment for a clone death build possible.

MrAmputatoes.6031:

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

Esplen.3940:

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mesmers have the easiest access to the best stunbreakers of any class. Stability is not even close to necessary.

And that being said, there’s a mantra that provides 4 seconds of stability on a 25 second cooldown.

^this. Staff blink

Stop spreading misinformation.

Staff blink (Phase Retreat) is NOT. A. STUNBREAKER. (anymore).

Let me clarify myself then. Use it to position yourself and avoid stuns. PREEMPTIVELY
.

Hey! Its like Infiltrator Stike on thieves sword! Oh wait, that got nerfed….

Infiltrator’s strike has no cooldown, among other differences that completely destroy that false equivalency you tried to create there.

This week Shan and Chaos talked with Kaiyanwan about the new ascended armor, Mesmers in PvE, and the new content from the recent patch.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-mesmer-podcast-mesmerized-advanced-mesmerics-episode/

Past episodes can be found here:
http://sittingonacouch.com/podcast/guildwars2/mesmer-gw2/

The podcast stream can be found here: twitch.tv/soacgaming

The next podcast will go live on Sunday, December 29th, at 6:30 pm EST.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mesmers have the easiest access to the best stunbreakers of any class. Stability is not even close to necessary.

Skyhammer says hi.

I play skyhammer all the time without a hint of stability. It’s a wonder what simple good positioning, skillfull dodging, and fast reactions on stunbreaks will do.

Qaelyn.7612:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mesmers have the easiest access to the best stunbreakers of any class. Stability is not even close to necessary.

There are exceptions, such as Skyhammer. I’d much rather have 10-second stability when trying to knock a necro off that cannon than a stunbreak.

And have that necro corrupt it for a 10 second fear? I’ll stick to my short stability and stunbreakers. Especially at skyhammer, fast reactions on breakers will keep you alive, where stability can become a vulnerability.

Mesmers have the easiest access to the best stunbreakers of any class. Stability is not even close to necessary.

And that being said, there’s a mantra that provides 4 seconds of stability on a 25 second cooldown.

@insanemaniac: Historical nerfs and examples of punishment builds….like the entire mesmer class in GW1?

The very class itself was designed around punishment. That concept has been brought to GW2 in several ways. It is a basic tenet of the class’ playstyle and abilities, and it will not be removed, no matter how much you complain about it.

@naphack: I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying.

Confusing Combatants: This is a minor…it has no place in my build, and is only taken because I want 3 major traits in dueling.

Compounding Celerity: Yeah, these last 5 points are useless, agreed

Mender’s Purity: What? Firstly, I’m not generally even using the new heal in this build, and secondly, it still provides a fantastic source of condition removal when necessary. I also have no idea what you mean by it being covered by phantasmal strength.

Removing 15 points from inspiration would be an enormous mistake.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Hey keenlam, since there’s already so many builds entering and not enough testers going around, I’ll retract my build from the contest to free up both myself and Warlord of Chaos as testers. Will be happy to participate next time!

@Shadow: That was deep.

Instead of that, lets just do this.

There are 8 builds in the contest. Registration is locked. If you’d like to enter your build in the next BOTM contest, hold on to it and enter it then, and it will be allowed.

phaeris.7604:

Hmm, nothing changed about the old abilities?

so C+D didn’t have 33 percent of its damage removed?

The mug nerf?

Heartseeker damage nerf?

Signet nerf?

…So yes, you’re basically correct, no abilities at all recieved any changes…

People still did the combo after the CnD nerf.

The signet change ultimately increased the damage from the combo, not decreased, if you actually run the numbers.

The mug change was the only nerf that actually affected the combo, but ultimately mug was only roughly 10%-20% of the total damage in the combo, making that nerf comparatively small to the rest of it.

Heartseeker is not part of the combo, and was not nerfed when used after this combo was executed. It was nerfed at high hp levels.

Using the blackwater build, I’d never drop Scepter for Sword.

The reason for that is that a majority of the burst in that build revolves around proper use of the block, among other things. That torment is how you stop runners, burst down condition removers, just put pressure on people in general. The sword has nothing to replace that with.

phaeris.7604:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Qaelyn.7612:

Lys.8621:

Easy to play and extremely rewarding = Cheese

You’re entitled to your opinion. I’m still going to use whatever works best to kill you as quickly as possible.

You can adapt to it, or complain about it on the forums, whichever you find more effective.

Best post in this whole thread right here.

This exemplifies the play style of someone who wants to win, not someone who wants to complain, and that is the difference.

Ha, the whole ‘adapt rule’ (or as people more commonly know it L2P!!) was what all the thieves used to write when they could insta-gib people with the old abilities, or when stealth had no reveal debuff so you could kill someone and stay stealthed almost permanently.

Or when people used to complain about crossfire spam, rangers were all like ‘hey! just adapt to it!!’

Or when in beta guardians were nigh unkillable?…..

When people use the L2P argument it generally means something is pretty kitten ed strong (cough hambow pre patch cough).

Nothing was changed about the old abilities on thief, you can still instagib people, but it’s fallen out of favor because….gasp people adapted and learned to counter it.

When stealth had no reveal debuff was still practically the beginning of the betas. Nobody was saying ‘l2p’….everyone was still learning at that point.

Since when did anyone ever complain about crossfire spam? Seriously now.

Guardians back in beta could be pretty tanky, but again…beta is beta.

Pre-patch hambow was just as pathetic as post-patch hambow is now. Warrior is hardcountered by mesmer, that’s just the way the game works. Perhaps other classes have a valid place to complain about warriors, but not mesmers.

Similarly, I don’t complain about PU condition mesmers. I know how to counter them, so I do.

Qaelyn.7612:

Lys.8621:

Easy to play and extremely rewarding = Cheese

You’re entitled to your opinion. I’m still going to use whatever works best to kill you as quickly as possible.

You can adapt to it, or complain about it on the forums, whichever you find more effective.

Best post in this whole thread right here.

This exemplifies the play style of someone who wants to win, not someone who wants to complain, and that is the difference.

PU condie builds inherently rely on an active opponent. Your damage is almos exclusively based around countering or punishing attacks. Understanding that is key to countering the build.

What you don’t need to worry about too much are the phantasms. The pistol phantasm is the one potential exception, but it will still die quickly. If you are running condies though, you’ll want to kill the iMage and/or iDisenchanter quickly.

The condition application comes from clone explosions and the torment counter primarily. To avoid clone explosions, keep your distance from the clones. Don’t use cleave, or you’ll get hit. The torment counter is also pretty straightforward to avoid. Dangerous skills for it are any kind of persistent aoe or channeled attack, such as chaos storm or confusing images. Watch for the icon+block and dodge the torment.

If you can avoid the clone explosions and torment, that reduces their damage to almost nothing. Just keep pressuring the Mesmer and they will die eventually.

Now, the actual hard-counter is a well played phantasm Mesmer, because a phantasm Mesmer doesn’t have to attack. This allows them to completely avoid the offense of the PU build, and the phantasms will rip them apart.

What you’ve got there isn’t even remotely a phantasm build, it’s mostly a rather weak shatter build.

Pvp and WvW are quite different game modes, and WvW itself has a lot of variation in it. Could you be a bit more specific in where you’d like to play?

Blackhat.4016:

takatsu.9416:

Mass Invisibility is ten and Time Warp is only five, from what I recall of what I’ve read from official sources. If my memory is correct lol

^

Most AoEs hit up to 5 targets unless it’s stated otherwise in the tooltips or wiki (e.g. Mass Invisibility or Meteor Shower).

Well, Meteor Shower is a bit different in that it’s multiple instances of separate 5 target aoes. It can ultimately hit more than 5 targets, but each hit is capped at 5.

Well, standard PU condie builds don’t use the signet very effectively because you pretty much ignore the active. As just a passive heal, ether feast significantly outperforms it, since you can guarantee a 3 illusion heal with ether feast pretty easily, but it’s hard to keep 3 illusions up for 100% of the time.

In a phantasm build, the signet is definitely competitive. You can pretty much toss it into any phantasm build and have it perform reasonably well. The one issue with it is the long cooldown, and if you’re relying on mender’s purity for condition removal, you’re going to have a rough time.

One thing that you definitely don’t want to do is use the signet with healing power. The reason for this is that the passive heals scale poorly with healing power, and the 1/2 illusion ticks scale very significantly worse than the 3 illusion tick, so every time you don’t tick at 3 illusions, you lose a large amount of potential healing. Ether feast scales at 1-1.3 depending on how many illusions you have up, so as a general rule of thumb, the more healing power you have, the more you want to use ether feast.

I guess what you’re asking for doesn’t make much sense. PU necessarily excludes any sort of raw dps build.

I love how people are responding to this thread as if a whine thread that’s over a year old holds any value whatsoever.

Ranger runes don’t work.

Qaelyn.7612:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mob attacks are predictable and slow, you can easily dodge/block/blurred frenzy/ignore with aegis them.

Maybe you can. I sure can’t.

At least not in more difficult content like fractals and dungeons, and certainly not so perfectly that I’d be willing to sit around with no healing because I blew a 35s cooldown on a heal just to get a tiny percentage of extra DPS.

The thing about at least fractals, is that the higher you go, the harder the mobs hit.

At first, you’d think that this means you should have more toughness and bring more healing, but the mobs end up hitting so hard that it doesn’t even matter. There are many mobs/attacks that if you don’t dodge or otherwise mitigate, you’re instantly downed.

Due to that, at higher fractal levels damage avoidance is almost entirely dodging/blocking/etc rather than healing up or being beefy enough to absorb hits.

Woah woah woah. Lets not get hasty with our mathing now…

3 mantras: 1.04^3=1.124864
3 clones: 1.03^3=1.092727
3 mantras and 3 clones: 1.04^3*1.03^3=1.22916926413

You have a multiplier of 1.23, or roughly a 23% increase in damage.

Now, if you tack on a sigil of force (1.05) and 15 stacks of vulnerability (1.15) you get up to..

1.229*1.05*1.15=1.48422188643

In total, a multiplier of 1.48, or a 48% damage increase.

Bunda.2691:

@WoC: Thanks for the info. In light of that, I’ve changed the build a little and put 20 in Illusions to take both. I’m going to spend a little time with static weapons to try to measure damage.

So as it turns out, % boosts are actually multiplicative. So…

1 mantra: *1.04
2: *1.04^2
4: *1.04^4
4 + 3 clones: 1.04^4 *1.03^3

Qaelyn.7612:

Pyroatheist.9031:

… proper play in pve means that you really should almost never need to heal …

Okay, I’m definitely missing something here.

Mob attacks are predictable and slow, you can easily dodge/block/blurred frenzy/ignore with aegis them.

takatsu.9416:

The signet keeps you invincible pretty much but I only tried it for a little. I can’t deal with the lack of swiftness on my centaur runes either. I’m just completely used to perma swiftness. I also switched to Mantra from Mirror heal. Literally perma swiftness

So in pve, yell at your teammates to buff you :p

So as far as conditions for Mesmer go, you’re going to have a really really really really rough time before level 40. Condition Mesmer is incredibly reliant on master level traits, so you’ll be pretty much completely useless without them.

Now, that being said, condition Mesmer in pve isn’t the best. I’ve gone into this in more depth before, but real quick:

Conditions in general in pve are weak. Mesmer conditions are additionally unreliable in pve for multiple reasons. You’ll survive fine, and kill things in a reasonable manner to an extent, but you’ll never even approach the damage and utility that a phantasm Mesmer will bring.

bhagwad.4281:

Now that Illusionist’s Celerity has been moved to a master trait, how about we take out 15 points from elsewhere (10 from Dueling and 5 from inspiration) and use the points to get that trait?

Yeah, I’ve been considering it. I haven’t had enough time to really test it out though, but when I get the chance I will.

Signet of the ether is by far the best heal in pve now. Since proper play in pve means that you really should almost never need to heal, you can make full use of the active ability, recharging your phantasms for maximum uptime and a full 3 damaging phantasms from the beginning of a fight.

skcamow.3527:

Watch out, zombie sighting. Looks like this one has been running around for awhile. I believe that’s November of last year.

EDIT: Dang! Was trying to get inb4 Pyro. -_-

Nobody gets inb4 me. I’ve got a red phone by my desk that rings when someone necros a thread.

This has got to be the gnarliest necro I’ve ever seen. GG.

Just a real quick note: armor affects critical hits exactly the same amount it affects everything else.

Win% = # wins / # games * 100

60/91*100= 65.93