Guild Wars 2

That’s a pretty good question honestly.

As far as confusion in PvE goes, there are a couple specific instances where it is good. These are as follows:

1. Subject Alpha
2. Grenth

That’s it. There might be one or two things I’ve forgotten…but yeah. They actually doubled the damage it does in PvE during the betas in order to make it more viable, but it obviously didn’t work. I feel that they’ve mainly abandoned confusion as a PvE mechanic for now, with the potential of a rework in the distant future. Wouldn’t hold my breath though.

This is a pretty strong build. It’s got strong phantasm offense and actually pretty good sustain with the mantras (especially considering the mender’s purity buff). I’d be interested in seeing some videos of this build in action, particularly in a team environment.

What actually happened to FA is that we got a bunch of transfers the day before leagues started. We ticked +500 against mag for about 3 hours.

At that point, all the transfers realized that if they kept that up, FA would pop up into gold, so they stopped playing fora few days. Now, FA is ridiculously overpopulated for silver league, and stomping everyone else because of it.

That being said, I’m glad we’re in silver league. As much as I have sympathy towards the servers that we are stomping, I’d rather be the stomper than the stomped, and that’s the only choice that was presented to us, because going into gold league would mean 7 weeks of hell courtesy of JQ/SoR/BG.

Backstab damage is fine.

The rather not fine part of stealth mechanic is that the stealth attack (any stealth attack) can be spammed into blocks without revealing the thief. This shouldn’t be a thing.

If it’s blinded or otherwise evaded? Sure, the thief didn’t actually hit their target. If it’s blocked, that’s contact, and the thief should be revealed.

Just a friendly reminder to those of you dedicating walls of text to Jon Peters…

He’s not reading them. He doesn’t have the time to waste listening to the story of your guild wars 2 life. If you want devs to listen and read your feedback, you need to keep it concise.

• Bullet points
• Are good

1. Also helpful
2. Are numbered lists

By giving feedback with thoughts clearly organized into easy to read bullets and lists, then your feedback will be heard.

Note that you can’t just break your wall of text into bullets and call it a day. You actually have to stop spewing walls of text and figuring out how to phrase it in a concise manner.

Honestly, in my experience a single disenchanter is all it takes to neutralize the majority of condition spam, and that can be wedged into any build.

The problem with shattered conditions is you end up being completely useless other than a walking condition remover. You’re still rather fragile and you have 0 damage.

The 30/30 mantra build is also incredible fragile, and will get instakilled if a thief sneezes on you.

Loki, you’ve got full guilds.

I much prefer centaur.

100% swiftness uptime is easy with them, and that moves you faster than travelers can. Additionally, they cost about a 20th of what travelers do.

Bunda, go ahead and link this build into the OMFG testing thread for some testers to see.

On swap and on crit sigils share internal cooldowns. When you swap, you now have locked out any on crit sigils for that swap cooldown. Alternatively, when you crit, you can’t swap during that cooldown otherwise you’ll get no swap benefit.

@Einlanzer: Actually, it does.

The chain will not progress to the next attack until the previous attack has hit a target. This causes the chain to be significantly faster at close range and significantly slower at maximum range.

…wat.jpg

/15char

Just one note: perplexity runes are bugged. They don’t actually apply the confusion duration, making them rather underwhelming for the many Mesmer abilities that apply confusion.

This is easy to test, just tag something with confusing images and watch the duration.

Just one note. As far as vulnerability stacking goes, other classes do it far more easily and consistently than us. I would never ever count a few stacks of vuln on the boss as positive Mesmer dps for that reason.

In most dungeons I run 20/20/0/30/0.

However, in fractals I run 10/10/0/25/25. Illusionists Celerity and Phantasmal Haste together allow you to hit 100% uptime on reflects without any buildup, and that can be incredibly important in a lot of fractals.

The scepter autoattack SHOULD have a unique aspect that the clones can inherit.

The scepter autoattack SHOULD NOT have a condition.

Conditions on autoattacks are bad. They produce spammy gameplay that is only countered by spammy condition cleanses. It’s not fun, it’s not skillful, and it shouldn’t exist. There are already more than enough autoattacks (including Mesmer staff) that have conditions. Scepter doesn’t need to join the already too long list.

Yep, this really needs to happen.

Alrighty, taking down tequatl later today. Be sure to attend!

I mean, it’s an interesting sigil, but on-crits interfere with energy sigils, so I won’t ever consider using it.

That was a very well done use of this skill: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toss_Elixir_R

Note the ghostly looking revive icon and the mist around the engineer.

JonPeters.5630:

I think the mesmer discussion has been pretty positive overall and productive but I wanted to bring up some points that I am seeing and some new ones as well.

Scepter
Scepter is still missing something but we don’t want to overload the autoattack as we think that promotes more mindless play and are trying to move away from builds that focus so much on the “1” skill. I feel like that scepter should be the tricksy defender that can stop enemies from attacking and defend allies, but maybe it’s single target nature is keeping that from working.

Confounding Suggestions
We were hoping this change would improve this. I’m mostly seeing people saying they liked the old one. That will certainly be a topic of discussion early next week so I would love to hear some opinions either way in case there is a split.

Mimic
Last thought. This skill is for almost all intents and purposes just not working, but is causing some broken behavior with certain bosses. I would like to replace it with a complete redesign and am open to discussion on that as well.

Overall I think this a good small step for a profession that has a lot of roles it can fill fairly uniquely. I think this might give us 3 strong mesmer build archetypes.

1) Shatter
2) Phantasm
3) Mantra

I think right behind those are the interrupt shutdown mesmer and the signet mesmer, so future suggestions towards those are appreciated as well.

Thanks,

Jon

Scepter Autoattack

I absolutely agree that this shouldn’t be just another one of the spammy autoattacks in the game, and for that reason I would say that there really shouldn’t be any conditions (damaging at least) attached to it.

That being said, it IS really weak, and needs to have some work done on it.

Confounding Suggestions

Some people really did prefer the old one for the stun conversion, others prefer the new one simply because it’s a 100% change, I’m not too much a fan of either. I think it’s still a very weak trait for a grandmaster. It doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. Perhaps work in an additional effect to interrupts with it?

Mimic

I personally love this skill, but it is a bit broken. I’d love to hear what sort of direction you’re looking at taking with it.

Build Archetypes

The current build archetypes are as follows, in no particular order

1. Shatter
2. Phantasm
3. Condition Based
4. Lockdown/Interrupt

Note that I didn’t include mantras or signets. Neither of these are even close to being viable right now. Signet builds aren’t really viable simply because the traits are far too chaotic. They’re in bad spots, and none of them are really good. Mantras have some strong trait choices, but the problem is with the skills themselves. There are too many drawbacks to recharging them in combat, and that’s not a sacrifice that the vast majority of builds can handle.

My personal feeling for confounding suggestions is that it needs some sort of additional effect. Something along the lines of…

Increase duration of dazes by 25%. On interrupt, disable the skill for an additional 3 seconds.

Me Games Ma.8426:

SlimChance.6593:

On my iphone, so I won’t address everything but I want to make a quick comment on the Mender’s Purity change. First, the change is a very nice. Just remember, Mender’s Purity has an internal cool down of 10 secs. So this doesn’t necessarily make MoR more viable in pvp.

And I agree with Chaos on the CS change . Still not worth a GM slot, but it’d be a good replacement for Wastrel’s.

Since when does mender’s purity have an internal cooldown of 10s? Did I miss a patch or am I mistaking some traits? Are you sure? I’m really confused and can’t even test it since I’m not at home. My only source is the wiki and there’s nothing written about a cooldown.

It doesn’t. They are wrong.

keenlam.4753:

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

You don’t need a tester~!
If you can’t find the time to find a tester or just can’t find one, it doesn’t matter. We will gladly make sure your build gets entered. The Tester thing is just for your own benefit, so if you feel that you can’t get a tester or that you don’t need one, just post the build here. Just try to make it as viable as possible, so as to increase your chance of winning the contest

LET EVERYONE SEE THISSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Menace, please for the love of god, don’t spread misinformation.
In order to enter, you need to pair up and get a tester.

@ Butter: you can try the tips skcamow listed above, and if you really struggle, pm me or in-game and I’ll do my best to help you.

That’s incredible, I can hear the annoyed exasperation in your voice all the way over from behind my monitor…

These changes are interesting. Quite honestly, I feel that many are either unnecessary or unimportant.

The boosts chaotic transference and mender’s purity are awesome, but quite honestly not necessary.

The change to IC is great, no arguments there.

The change in dazzling glamours changes nothing. Chaotic revival, mirror of anguish, and illusionary invigoration ditto.

The shattered conditions change is interesting, but it’s still not a viable trait to take. It works pretty well, but the problem is you end up in a build that does pretty much 0 except remove conditions. In some really niche situations that might be ok, but for the most part it’s not.

Confounding suggestions change is interesting. Not entirely sure what to think of it.

The mantra trait changes are disappointing. The problem with mantras is not the traits really, it’s the fact that you can’t afford to be charging them up in combat. That just doesn’t work well (in tpvp at least). The traits also have some issues, but they pale in comparison to the functionality problems of the skills themselves.

The most disappointing thing is that they continue to ignore the glaring problems of the abominable scepter autoattack and the phantasmal Mage.

Now, I obviously won’t turn my nose up at buffs, but I can’t help but think that the devs seem not to really understand where the Mesmer is lacking.

Sensotix.4106:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Sensotix.4106:

Necrotize.2974:

Well there is always that super glass-cannon staff ele that someone recently posted in the ele forums. Tried it out for a while, someone breathing in your general direction downs you but you can easily turn around a fight for a point by dropping a meteor storm on it.

sounds like a lot of fun I guess I will try it

Something to note if you’re going to try this. When using long duration attacks such as meteor storm, you can jump into tornado form to get a transference of that power boost into your previously casted attack.

so meteor shower and immediatly afterwards tornado?

That’s correct.

Exploit: The use of game mechanics to achieve an unintended and undesired result.

If you really think the devs intended for a costume brawl skill to be used as a movement speed stim in WvW, then you’ve got another thing coming.

So your aoe set is greatsword+ sword/focus. You want to group up mobs with the temporal curtain pull, drop mirror blade, zerker, iWarden, blurred frenzy. Most things should be dead at that point.

With regards to ranged mobs, trait your focus. That’s about it. With a traited focus, you can just ignore ranged attacks for the most part, and simply use your curtain and warden for defense.

Also keep in mind what dawdler said. If you’re comparing yourself to a level 80 guard, you are undergeared.

Sensotix.4106:

Necrotize.2974:

Well there is always that super glass-cannon staff ele that someone recently posted in the ele forums. Tried it out for a while, someone breathing in your general direction downs you but you can easily turn around a fight for a point by dropping a meteor storm on it.

sounds like a lot of fun I guess I will try it

Something to note if you’re going to try this. When using long duration attacks such as meteor storm, you can jump into tornado form to get a transference of that power boost into your previously casted attack.

clipnotdone.9634:

I’d hardly call it an exploit, its just a dash.

Its not like its actively effecting balance in any negative way, especially since it only works ooc.

Are you kidding me? You bought it for the sole purpose of disrupting WvW out of combat movement speed balance and you’re trying to claim that it doesn’t disrupt that game mode at all? Ok.

It’s an exploit and will get removed pretty quickly I imagine. I wouldn’t waste my money on it.

So you showed 3 fights. The first was against a guardian that happily suicided on confusion multiple times. The second was a gangbang against a warrior, and the third was a gangbang on another guardian. It’s difficult to tell where the damage comes from in that sort of fight because it’s not necessarily your conditions.

It really depends on what you want.

A strong phantasm build should never lose in a 1v1, so it’s definitely a viable option. It loses strength quickly when fighting outnumbered though.

A strong condition build doesn’t have the burst or the chasing ability of a phantasm build, but it handles fighting outnumbered very well.

Honestly, all I saw in that video was enemies killing themselves on confusion while being gang-banged. Not too impressive.

Focus, blink, phase retreat, chaos storm, runes of centaur. Pick one.

Bad idea. Here’s why.

Doing that would be an incredibly massive split in basic game functionality between pve and everything else. This is confusing to players, nearly impossible to denote on tooltips, and makes balance changes doubly complicated.

That is the basic problem with any sort of massive pve overhaul to confusion. The changes need to be so large that the resulting condition simply isn’t confusion anymore, it’s something completely different, and that’s simply not something that can or will be implemented.

JonofPDX.2068:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Hey Jon, reading the OP really took me back. In the MMO I played before this (Champions Online) I had pretty much posted the same thing. Quick question: Do you use the mouse to click some of your skills? It’s a very common thing for people new to MMOs to do (unless you come from some other CPU game like Starcraft. I, unfortunately, came from consoles and had to learn all this frustrating keyboard stuff) if so, it may help to keybind your 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 to something more like Shift+1, Shift+2, Shift+3, Shift+4, Shift+ 5.

Explore EVERYTHING! Try out WvW, try out PvP, don’t be afraid of dungeons. Never be afraid about being judged by anyone or that your performance is gonna drag anyone down. Especially don’t let that hold you back from exploring any and every bit of content that’s avaliable to you… And don’t be afraid to use sPvP (The Mists, Crossed-swords icon at top of your screen) to practice and experiment with builds. Even if you don’t go into an actual match, there’s a big playground where you can test all skill effects, weapon abilities, play around with your traits, ect with test dummies and enemy NPCs (fist symbol all the way north) you can screw with.

Also, don’t be afraid to PM anyone here who’s responded to you (and a few others around the boards) with questions or concerns whenever ya need. Really helpful bunch. I’ll post some parts of the Mesmer guide here that may help ya out… The full guide (as linked above) can be found in my signature.

Wow—thanks for the info! It’s going to take me a little while to digest, and dig into the guide, but that’s a great start. I can start to see why I haven’t been as efficient as I might have hoped.

As for the OP, I think it was important to let people know how little experience I was coming into this with. After all, pretending I’m less of a newb than I am isn’t going to help anyone

To answer your question—a bit of both. I am trying pretty hard to force myself to use the keys in order to get used to it but it doesn’t feel super intuitive. But then, neither does movement—I’ll just have to get used to it. That’s actually one of the reasons I have been trying to use Mind Stab in my opening volley: It’s a skill that I really need to be using from the 3 key or it takes twice as long to cast (because I have to place it).

I will try PvP eventually. WvW looks more interesting that sPvP to me right now but I’m sure I’ll try both. I am just generally a “campaign” and “co-op” player. Usually have a lot more fun with those aspects than the competitive mp so I am focusing on PvE for now. Definitely plan to do the Dungeons but I think I have only stumbled across one or two so far and the only one I really looked at had a level of 50-55, I think? The Nightmare Court one in Caledon Forest.

Anyway—I really appreciate the help. Looks like I have some reading to do!

You’ll be sent mails with a bit of story and placements of dungeons as you gain the appropriate levels.

Open world PvE: Phantasm
Dungeon PvE: Phantasm
PvP: Phantasm/Condition/Bunker (either or, not all together)
WvW: Phantasm/Condition

Smart choice on sylvari mesmer by the way, that’s the best class/race combo in the game, hands down.

So, something that needs to be kept in mind about mesmer is that it is incredibly trait dependent. You’ve heard that shatter is incredibly powerful, and it is, but only if you trait for it. Phantasms can be incredibly powerful, if you trait them. Mesmer can have high condition pressure and mobility…if you trait it.

Since you seem to be focusing more on phantasms, I’d advise you to use Signet of Illusions as your third skill slot. That allows your phantasms to be significantly more beefy.

You shouldn’t necessarily shatter more than you do…I personally use shatters incredibly rarely when running a phantasm build. The reason for this is I’ll often put my phantasms/clones on separate targets, allowing me to spread out my damage significantly more than any other class can. Shattering destroys all illusions though, and it’s very rare that all of my targets are about to die at the same time.

Now for some more general stuff.

Mesmer Damage
Phantasms can deal very high damage, and they are in fact the best sustained damage mesmer has, leading to the almost exclusive use of phantasm builds in PvE. The key traits for phantasms are domination III, dueling II, and inspiration 25 minor.

That being said, shatter can also pack a punch. Shatter is much more burst damage oriented, and therefor fits PvP much better than it does PvE (while phantasms can do both). Shatters are even more trait dependent than phantasms, requiring illusions XI to really do good damage, along with domination I.

Now, clones are more or less useless for normal power damage, excepting their role in shattering, but they can be used in condition damage builds. Sharper images, dueling 15, allows all illusions to bleed on crit, and your illusions inherit all of your basic stats except vitality. Additionally, since clones use your basic autoattack, staff and trident clones both apply damaging conditions, and sword clones will apply vulnerability AND strip boons.

Your general damage combo is pretty good. When you use temporal curtain (not sure if you already do) make sure you place it in a creative spot that allows you to group up all your enemies effectively. Keep in mind that you can use that detonation of it while casting other skills, so I’ll generally drop the curtain, start casting iWarden, and detonate the curtain mid-cast, before going into leap/swap+blurred frenzy.

As far as feedback goes, try to save it for when you actually need it. The combo finisher only applies confusion, and that really doesn’t do anything at all in PvE (a f ull list of combo finishers can be found here).

With regards to guides/help, there’s quite a few fantastic resources available to you.

• The official guild wars 2 wiki
  • Most of the technical information is available in it, if you look
• Comprehensive Mesmer Guide: Lyssa’s Handbook
• Fantastic Leveling Guide by Kai
• Official Mesmer Forum Guild
  • This is a community driven guild that is full of helpful people that can offer advice and suggestions

Azure.8670:

20k hp? …. I def did something wrong im running around at 15-16k hmm

I reach 20k hp by using the dire/rabid blend on full ascended trinkets, and rabid everything else.

This sounds like a pretty great idea. I’m pretty much repping OMFG 24/7, so will be welcome to have some more people around.

kusosama.1346:

It’s been 3 months since the last update… What is everyone’s thoughts on viability? I’m still debating between empowering my interrupts or doing a passive confusion stacking build.

Yeah, my build is no longer viable unfortunately. I explained this a bit more in-depth in my post several months ago.

This build was designed around the mechanic of retaliation amplification, and that just isn’t possible anymore in a viable way, despite trying several ways to get it functioning again.

This post written from the perspective of a Mesmer.

Warriors have a lot of abilities that allow them to perform very effectively when under unfocused pressure, and this makes them quite strong in team fights (and WvW zerging). However, in a 1 vs 1 situation, this isn’t really the case.

Almost all warrior attacks are slow and obvious. The only way to land them is by using equally slow and obvious disables. A good player will dodge the damage and disables, as well as carrying a few stunbreaks just for good measure.

I haven’t yet met a warrior I couldn’t beat. The only part of the class that is irritating is their insane disengage and running ability.

As far as crippling dissipation vs mental torment goes, those are 2 very different directions. Mental torment is a shatter trait, and crippling dissipation only works if you don’t shatter, so you’ll have to decide between them.

Scholar runes are a poor choice. With all the aoe and damage pressure in zergs, you’ll very rarely be at consistently high health. I’d advise for something like divinity for offense or melandru for extra defense.

Ok, so on this mesmer forum, there are a massive amount of resources for people learning the class.

You can join the Official Mesmer Forum Guild [OMFG] here. This is a guild full of mesmers that are available for questions or advice at all times.

You can look at a comprehensive mesmer guide here. That guide contains an incredible amount of good solid information about the mesmer class.

You can look at a PvE specific leveling guide here. That guide is specific to PvE leveling, and does a good job of explaining and helping things along.

The full build list/guide list can be found here, or you can look in the stickied section of the forum.

@Joe: I have to agree with you on the boon strip matter. That traiting will depend a bit on who you can run with though. With a guard ( aka 0 boon strip), boon strip on shatter is probably best.

Ok, here we go.

Traits are 10/30/0/0/30.

Domination: I: Mental Torment
Dueling: IV: Blade Training, IX: Duelist’s Discipline, X: Deceptive Evasion
Illusions: XI: Illusionary Persona, VI: Illusionary Reinvigoration, III: Compounding Power

Staff+ Sword/Pistol

Staff: Superior Sigil of Energy
Sword/Pistol: Superior Sigil of Energy, Superior Sigil of Accuracy (Swapping both out for Superior Sigil of Perception when stacking)

Hard to say on runes, but judging by the hp, I’m guessing full divinity runes with a full set of berserker armor and trinkets.

The portal will exist for about 10 seconds after the second end is placed. The first end will exist for 60 if you don’t place the second end.

Both of these facts are reflected accurately on the in-game tooltips.

StickerHappy.8052:

Pyroatheist.9031:

So there’s a good bit of misinformation floating around here regarding damage.

Halting strike has a set damage calculation. It ignores your weapon strength, and simply uses an internal modifier. This does not change ever. The method of getting the interrupt has no effect on the actual damage. This is true whether the interrupt was from chaos storm or from the mantra.

That mechanic is why the damage on it is so low, and so unrewarding in an offensive build.

Then it would make sense to use full condition gear? The halting strike damage will just be considered as an extra one tick condition because the damage is “low” (low = insert number here) instead of using it as an ideal considerable source of damage?

i wanted to pick halting strike because it would synergize better to a mainly (not pure) interrupt build. so just wanted to know some clarifications. Some skill scalings in game are too odd just to figure it out instinctively. hmmpf. Anet.

Well, using full condition gear will be an entirely different sort of build. That’s a choice that you have to make, whether you want to go for condition based damage or power based damage, but in neither build is halting strike generally optimal.

In condition gear though, it will do extremely low damage, since it DOES scale off of power.

Snappppy.8137:

test with 3-4 people on you and some wells, sigils, traps. Some damage will def go in.

That’s because conditions currently on you will continue to tick, along with retaliation damage bypassing evade.