Guild Wars 2

The disenchanter is an incredibly strong skill that really doesn’t see much use in pve because needing high output boon stripping and condition removal is very rare.

@DuckDuckBoom: Nice follow up analysis on my statements earlier. That really lays it out nicely.

One note about shattering phantasms. In situations with multiple targets, I’ll often put my phantasms on different targets, to spread my damage out a bit. In that sort of situation, shattering is really tough to do effectively since the phantasms aren’t tied to the same mob death.

Xenn, you’re at maximum guilds.

Xyonon.3987:

And what do you think about hybrid damage? Ever tried it Pyro? :o

Hybrid in pve is basically affected by all the same drawbacks as a full condie build, just to a lesser extent. It’s not as bad, but it’s still a poor choice.

Well ultimately it comes down to this.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That being said, some peoples opinions are wrong, and Godmoney happens to fall squarely into that category.

For PvE

Shatter is viable but not a good choice.

Using a condition damage build as a mesmer is not viable.

Godmoney.2048:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Godmoney.2048:

0-20-20-0-30 hits like a wet noodle? That’s funny because it works great for me. Maybe you’re gear is out of date? Oh yeah you use pvt gear right?

I use full rampager with that spec. Maybe that changes things? You think?

If you’re using full rampagers, then I retract my wet noodle statement.

It was far too generous.

How about tickling them with a feather?

Are you saying that gear that is full offensive stats hits like a feather? That just doesn’t hold water on the most basic levels of common sense.

The problem is that rampagers has the wrong offensive stats. Lets take a look.

You’re in a shatter build (this actually doesn’t matter for this analysis). Your damage comes from power based damage. Your condition application is nigh nonexistent. This means that any and all condition damage is wasted.

Rampagers is power, Precision, and condition damage. This means that 1 of the 3 stats on there is completely wasted.

Power damage is significantly amplified by high critical chance along with high critical power.

Rampagers has high precision, which is good for that critical chance, but it unfortunately lacks any critical power whatsoever, which means that your crits are going to be unfortunately wimpy.

In the best of circumstances, in a full zerker build, 0/20/20/0/30 is going to be doing at least 20% less damage than 20/20/0/0/30. If you add on the fact that you’re using rampagers instead of berserkers gear, your damage will be incredibly abysmal.

Godmoney.2048:

0-20-20-0-30 hits like a wet noodle? That’s funny because it works great for me. Maybe you’re gear is out of date? Oh yeah you use pvt gear right?

I use full rampager with that spec. Maybe that changes things? You think?

If you’re using full rampagers, then I retract my wet noodle statement.

It was far too generous.

How about tickling them with a feather?

Godmoney.2048:

durend.6237:

Godmoney.2048:

Can’t tell you how many mesmers i see who hardly ever shatter…….IE most of them.

That’s because shatter damage is terrible in dungeons. The biggest use for shatters in dungeons is f3 to put on vulnerability (if traited) and f4 for defense.

Shatter damage is as you have said, burst damage -> highly effective at dropping targets in PvP but against target’s larger health pools in dungeons it is extremely ineffective.

Yes the phantasms die when the target they’re spawned on is killed, so you should shatter right as it is about to die, but until then you’ll do much better DPS by letting them live and continue to attack.

That said, 20/20/0/0/30 will work just fine for open world PvE as the content is extremely easy there with most mobs being normal (or bronze vets) and having smaller health pools where shatters are effective.

In dungeons however you’ll be facing mobs of a higher level than you, silver vets, and champ/legendary bosses. If you want to be doing anything approaching decent dps you’ll need phantasms that stay alive.

I’m sorry I can’t help you more, but that really is the harsh truth of it. The reason why you see sword/focus builds going 10/30/0/20/10 and 0/20/0/25/25 and cannot find shatter builds is because the phantasm builds bring the best support/damage to the party while the shatter builds do not.

Meh, i play shatter in pve all the time. Shatter builds can do very good dps and will really shine in path 2 of CoF or anywhere tons of aoe damage is needed. Personally I can’t stand phantasm builds in dungeons. I shatter off of cd, most people do not.

Well, shatter builds simply have lower dps than phantasm builds, full stop, as well has having minimal support utility.

Shatter is great in PvP because burst damage is great. However, shatter dps is far lower than any reasonable phantasm build, even in aoe situations. With the iZerker and iWarden, a phantasm build can still output significantly more damage than a shatter build.

Edit: Additionally, a 0/20/20/0/30 build is going to have your shatters collectively hitting like slapping mobs with a wet noodle. Mental torment is absolutely required to do any sort of reasonable dps with shatters.

What is the role of GS for mesmers, in dungeons ?(and a little bit outside of them)

A reasonable question.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

-stuff-

An excellent answer.

colesy.8490:

-stuff-

Inflammatory garbage.

This sort of crap is why you have to wait an hour between forum posts, colesy.

I use centaur for roaming in WvW. It helps with the whole mobility thing, and they’re like 15x cheaper than travelers.

Actually, you can still skip past mobs using stealth, you just have to get out of combat range while stealthed. They changed it mostly because the moment you stealthed, mobs would start regenerating hp and resetting, and that just made for awkward moments.

Bunda.2691:

Pyroatheist.9031:

fadeaway.2807:

Is the 20 in domination really worth it when you could get 200 condi dmg and illusionary elasticity? With the extra bounce considered your overall condition dps goes up by almost 25 percent, likely to be even higher when you consider that you attack faster than your clones. In addition to that you get afreebie 6x confusion shatter and extra confusion duration thrown in.

Is that really worth less than 20 percent cd on torch and the measly condi removal?

20 in domination provides many things.

• 20% increased condition duration
• Crippling dissipation (one of the basic qualities of this build)
• Condition removal on torch
• Decreased cooldown on access to a stealth

20 in illusion provides very little.

• 200 Condition damage
• ….that’s it

Extra bounce doesn’t work on clones, and that’s not the main condition dps of this build anyway, in addition to being inconsistent. If you shatter in this build, you’re playing it wrong unless you’re shattering for an interrupt or defensively. For that reason, shatter cooldown doesn’t matter, and neither does confusion on shatter.

Pyro is right about the 20 in illusions being essentially worthless. However, you can put them in Inspiration instead for +200 vitality, healing, and condition (with scepter). Or 10/20/30/10/0 if you want to keep crippling dissipation. There are a couple builds out there that use these instead of the 20/20/30.

Personally, I’m looking forward to running a 0/20/30/20/0 once the update arrives.

I’ve actually been trying that build out right now. It’s definitely interesting. Losing the cooldown for the prestige produces some awkward moments for sure, and you don’t really notice how much that perma-cripple matters until it’s gone.

That being said, you can get some HIGH condition damage by traiting the scepter, and once you can trait for mantra cooldowns in dueling adept and take mender’s purity, you’ll have some very strong condition removal.

Well, first of all, they never changed illusionary elasticity. It has never worked with staff clones, and it still doesn’t.

Secondly, that would still be an attack from the clone, not you. You can tell because it does clone level damage, not your level damage.

profgast.7816:

with the sole exception of Yes if your iWarden is traited to reflect and reflects an attack.

Nope, not an exception actually. That circumstance still uses the warden as the source of the attack, and the warden uses no sigils.

For utilities, go ahead and take signet of illusions, and that’ll help significantly with the whole keeping phantasms up deal.

lujate.5432:

I just started using Feedback again, and the Retaliation is no where near as bad as it used to be.

I haven’t seen zergs stacking retal much recently, but there was a month or so when it seemed every single zerg had it, and feedbacks were painful.

Tentacle Love.3412:

thirty stacks of confusion

wat

Yep, it did get nerfed into oblivion I’m afraid. The mechanics relied on using the 5 point minor in inspiration, vengeful images, to put retaliation onto phantasms and then amplify the effect with the iDefender. Now, that trait only applies retaliation for 5 seconds, making it more or less worthless.

I recently tried to get it working again by using the Signet of Inspiration to spread a large stack of retaliation to all my illusions, but it just ended up being far too clunky to really use it as an effective tool.

Illusions do not proc sigils.

Bsgapollo.5364:

When gw2 is in Tab mode people often forget they were que’d cause they don’t hear any sound from the game itself.
When I que in games such as HoN I can easily switch tabs between my internet explorer and the game, whenever it starts you can hear a clear message.
I would actually stay in game if there was something do to, but since hotjoin doesn’t give glory anymore I don’t feel like waiting 10 minutes doing nothing. So if I happen to forget the que oh well might sound rough but tough luck for you guys.

If you’re a poor enough player to frequently forget that you’ve queued up for a tournament, then you don’t deserve the privalege of playing them.

Condition damage is absolutely not the way to go for Mesmer pve builds, especially in the build you’ve listed. You want crit damage to make those phantasms hit harder.

Also, those last 5 points in dueling are useless, and that goes along with the condition damage is bad in pve theme. Confusion is 100% useless in pve, so take those last 5 points and put them in inspiration.

Additionally, drop deceptive evasion for sword cooldowns. Deceptive evasion is a clone producing trait, but this is a phantasm build. Try to make sure everything stays conceptually clear in your builds.

Decoy: You’re asking the wrong people I’m afraid. I can tell you that it does have a different mechanic in some ways, but I can’t tell you if that’s intended. Only the devs can answer that question.

Temporal curtain: Also asking the wrong people unfortunately. We’ve been begging the devs to fix that skill for over a year now, but no luck.

Shadowkiller.6725:

i thought it to be ironic. i laughed when picking myself back up. you know laugh..like ha ha. can you ha ha pyro?

No. My sense of Internet humor was lost about 30 idiots ago.

FrostyBou.5491:

So I guess the consensus is that damage wise it hasn’t changed. No biggie, it just feels like it’s taking alot longer to kill things than it should. Last time I started her up again I remember thinking how fast I was killing stuff.

Guess I’ll shelve her and try again in a few months and maybe I’ll think back to now and imagine they improved the damage.

Honestly, if you’re expecting to kill things fast with any sort of Mesmer autoattack, you’re going to have a bad time. That’s not how this class is designed to work. You need to put some effort into killing things to get results.

Shadowkiller.6725:

ever since they put that LoS check on GS…it’s been slowly nerfed…telling you guys anet got some good ninjas. i can tell they used theird jedi mind tricks just by reading some of these post.

Unless you can actually point to skill coefficient data that shows the nerf or specific testing for beam width that you’ve done, I’d appreciate you not spewing garbage in our forums.

If the damage log isn’t showing a complete sum of the damage you took, then the log is probably bugged, but I haven’t seen that to be the case in my experience. Even with the descent into madness bug, your log still showed the proper damage, it was just in the 10s of thousands.

It’s possible that you’re just suiciding hardcore on confusion.

Shadowkiller.6725:

it’s aoe beam is not as wide since last patch. maybe giving the illusion of less damage? anet has some good ninjas pyro…they’ll nerf you and you wouldn’t notice a thing

The aoe beam width used to be massive on gadgets, and normalized on everything else. That gadget width was nerfed months and months ago, and the normal width has not changed ever.

Shadowkiller.6725:

i had confusing enchantments trait and i think that made their retaliation more effective against me.

That’s not a thing.

Dropping feedback on a zerg stacking retal will hurt though.

shimmerless.4560:

Heinel.6548:

Pyroatheist.9031:

jportell.2197:

JonPeters.5630:

I think we have a pretty good understanding of the mesmer scepter auto attack problem. I would really like to design a chain of auto attacks here that end with something good, and then allow the clones generated from scepter to also do that thing. That being said, we are trying to avoid just condition spam overload with that weapon because that would be greatly compounded by clones spamming as well.

Because you know nearly everyone else can’t condi spam like crazy….

Just because others do it doesn’t make it any better. I may have serious doubts about the balance team’s competence, but they’re right on with this. The less spammy conditions in this game the better.

Pretty sure that is not the point. Condi autos are fine, it is what allows degen builds to work. It is just that mesmer clones make the otherwise manageable stacks go overboard. Staff clones circumvent this phenomenon via RNG. Presumably they don’t want to duplicate this for another weapon, so it needs something new. AoE is an option as there currently isn’t one aoe clone.

Condi autos aren’t fine, and Mes clones are what’d make it a balance nightmare, never mind push it “overboard”. This whole thing with conditions and DoTs needs a serious rework (along with a pass on this game’s tremendous amount of AoE) and I’d much rather they wouldn’t toss the scepter into the muck ahead of time.

Well said.

You are imagining things, the damage on greatsword autos has not been changed in this game. It was not ninjaed, it was never nerfed, and it was never buffed. Shadowkiller is just straight up wrong.

You’re going to want melandru runes as a commander. You can keep up with the zerg no problem, but wading through the front line of a fight needs a bit more specialized runeset.

You’ll want staff and probably sword/focus. I’d recommend going for gear that’s very tanky, probably a mix of soldiers, knights, an cavaliers to keep you alive and kicking in the middle of the pain train.

jportell.2197:

JonPeters.5630:

I think we have a pretty good understanding of the mesmer scepter auto attack problem. I would really like to design a chain of auto attacks here that end with something good, and then allow the clones generated from scepter to also do that thing. That being said, we are trying to avoid just condition spam overload with that weapon because that would be greatly compounded by clones spamming as well.

Because you know nearly everyone else can’t condi spam like crazy….

Just because others do it doesn’t make it any better. I may have serious doubts about the balance team’s competence, but they’re right on with this. The less spammy conditions in this game the better.

So, let’s clear up a bit of misconceptions.

Decoy provides stealth. Not some other mystical ability called ‘invisibility’ or whatever. The decoy stealth provides boons from Prismatic Understanding, and it will apply revealed to you if you attack from it.

That being said, the application and the buff is somehow different. It forces the mesmer into stealth through a revealed debuff, and this probably has something to do with the different buff icon being used.

It’s not overpowered, and it forcing it to function as other stealth skills wouldn’t break the whole mechanic either. This is really just a non-issue that needs a bit of clarification from Anet as to whether it’s a bug or intended.

Alissah.9281:

Oh, it would be cool if the defender and disenchanter would be cast on yourself, though. Just 1 rule to make it not OP:

1. must be in combat, if you’re out of combat, they’re instantly destroyed

Having illusions up out of combat would be extremely OP though. Imagine roaming with 3 swordsmen up. A thief jumps on you, 2 seconds later the thief is downed.

Yuppppp. This actually happens. If you’re fighting a class that can peace out of phantasm aggro range while stealthed, the phants will just sit there and instantly autotarget onto the next living thing that approaches. Cue squish.

Xhean.3452:

Really glad I can use my staff with my sword/focus phantasms, that’s great and really exactly what I hoped for.
I have been thinking of using full zerker but with cavalier trinkets but maybe that’s a waste,

That’s a good choice if you feel like you need a bit more toughness. Cavaliers is probably the best stat distribution to tack on to a zerker set other than zerker itself.

You can really just toss the staff into your sword/focus phantasm build and it’ll do fine. The staff is basically a defensive weapon with a phantasm that hits like a truck, so use it accordingly.

This thread comes up like once a month. Just search for the old ones and you’ll see why it’s a bad idea.

Boundary fields will not hit you through invulnerable.

Distortion is still invulnerable. It has not been changed. You can not be hit with anything while in distortion, for any reason whatsoever.

Blurred frenzy is not distortion, it is blur, an evade.

Previously applied conditions will still tick while in distortion, but you won’t receive any new conditions.

So against a that sort of thief build, the important thing is getting the phantasms out in the first place, any way you can. The main problem is not the confusion stacks themselves, but the fact that the thief is interrupting the phantasms. There’s a few ways to facilitate that.

You can do it by using stealth. Hit decoy, drop both your phantasms rapidly. You can also do it with a daze on the thief, either with magic bullet or activating the sword block. Alternatively, you could even grab the stability mantra, and protect your casts with that.

Once you have phantasms out, the fight is over. You don’t need to attack into the confusion, and you can just let the phantasms do their job.

fadeaway.2807:

Is the 20 in domination really worth it when you could get 200 condi dmg and illusionary elasticity? With the extra bounce considered your overall condition dps goes up by almost 25 percent, likely to be even higher when you consider that you attack faster than your clones. In addition to that you get afreebie 6x confusion shatter and extra confusion duration thrown in.

Is that really worth less than 20 percent cd on torch and the measly condi removal?

20 in domination provides many things.

• 20% increased condition duration
• Crippling dissipation (one of the basic qualities of this build)
• Condition removal on torch
• Decreased cooldown on access to a stealth

20 in illusion provides very little.

• 200 Condition damage
• ….that’s it

Extra bounce doesn’t work on clones, and that’s not the main condition dps of this build anyway, in addition to being inconsistent. If you shatter in this build, you’re playing it wrong unless you’re shattering for an interrupt or defensively. For that reason, shatter cooldown doesn’t matter, and neither does confusion on shatter.

Just tested.

It appears that sometime between now and when the glamour build was popular, they increased the cap on confusion duration, both in PvE and WvW (not consequential in PvP).

The confusion runes are bugged though, and they don’t actually give any benefit to confusion duration, so the maximum confusion duration you’ll see is 20 seconds from an interrupt if you have 30 domination, 40% food, and 33% duration from illusions.

Xyonon.3987:

A skill that stacks in intensity has no limit of duration. The only limit is the duration of the longest lasting confusion with the highest amount of condition duration. Thats all.

Not correct. Confusion maxes out at 10 seconds.

This is a fact that has been explored thoroughly during the era of glamour builds in wvw. If you don’t believe me, feel free to test it yourself.

messiah.1908:

i would like to know in general and with this build how to fight against signet warrior hammer +sw/shield.
i cant make enough clones and the dmg i do is nice but i cant do much sdps for long so he outheal my dmg while have 3 stun/kd skills

Why are you trying to pump out clones?

It sounds like you’re trying to use this build as a shatter build…

If the warrior hits you with stuns/knockdowns, it means you’re not dodging well. That being said, this build has stunbreakers on stunbreakers. Use them.

DavyMcB.1603:

Kohler, Arah Priest, FOTM blizzard map boss… those are the bosses with most dmg you could do with confusion.

you can reach 2280+ condi dmg max as a mesmer (no might) that about 450+ dmg per stack. With perplex rune and correct trait, your confusion can last 20 seconds at most.

Confusion maxes out at 10 seconds. Good thought though.

Ultimately, most sane strategies work as long as you coordinate them with your team.

If you decide to rush far point, that’s fine as long as your team is working with that in mind, but if they expect you to go mid and you rush off to far, now that’ll be a problem.

Seriously, communication is by far the most important aspect of having a working strategy, especially in solo queue, where you actually have to make an effort to have that communication.

Xyonon.3987:

ElQuebecois.4691:

…. with no condition damage skill….

condition damage condition damage condition damage condition damage

Stop talking about how awesome the spear is – sure zerker mesmer is probably the best underwater fighter. However the OP complains about condition damage underwater.

Speer is 100% direct damage, except the bleeding of illusions. Even the trident is more power viable than with condition damage. To fight with clones seems to be the only way to deal medium damage :/

You do realize that roughly half the posts in this thread have pointed out how overpowered underwater Mesmer condition application is?

So illusions inherit our basic stats other than vitality. I should have been a bit more clear in my first explanation.

If a sigil provides a boost to our basic stats, then that will carry over to the illusions. Sigils of Bursting/Malice increase our basic stats, so those will carry over.

Basic Stats:

• Power
• Toughness
• Precision
• Healing Power
• Critical Damage
• Boon Duration
• Condition Duration

They do not work on clones or phantasms.

Stacking sigils will, since they apply a stat boost to yourself. Same thing with sigils that stack might on you, that’s a stat boost to yourself.

I wouldn’t assume that ether feast is being used. You can use the mantra heal, charge it, use a charge, and then swap to ether feast with no cooldown when you enter a fight. When you’re actually IN a fight, your mobility is strong, so I wouldn’t worry about uptime there.