Guild Wars 2

alanis.6094:

Was running 0/20/20/0/30; there are tons of builds and discussions on the forums, but I haven’t seen a single IP.

If you mean a standard confusion bomb build, then that has never really been effective.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

(Chaos,Pyro,Hexxen,Xavi) I’m not trolling here. I sincerely mean it.

sigh We know. That’s what makes it so bad.

kubetz.3058:

Now that was a really great explanation, Pyro! Thank you!

Pyroatheist.9031:

Therefor, taking carrion gear would be lowering your condition damage because of vit instead of toughness, vastly decreasing your endurance regeneration, vastly decreasing your bleed pressure, making your heals less effective, and reducing your power damage defense, while providing you with a tiny bit of power.

And aren’t there any builds that would make better use of carrion? I got carrion set a year ago because of some well-rated build (I don’t remember anymore, heh), but from your explanation it looks like rabid is better on mesmer pretty much all the time. Or did I miss something?

Yeah, I honestly can’t think of a particularly good use for carrion. Even a hybrid build wouldn’t want it, because you really do need that crit chance for sharper images in hybrids. Someone else might have an idea though.

Undocumented Ninja-buff: The scaling coefficient for mind stab (gs 3) has increased from about .60 to .85.

In normal terms, 30% damage buff.

Azo.5860:

it was before patch.. 1.33 co-efficient now check 0.748
and for dps in 60sec there should have 46 attacks mean / 15chains + 1 attack means
chain coefficient*0.766(46attacks / 60sec) =ll be dps.. can be other conditions as server delay etc.. my record can be mistake check.. i done it for all skills.. and dunno much but there is something have in my mind with Halting strike
there should be have some buff for it abiut %10 to %20 and there is a random effect mostly with MoD but rarly it can seems with chaos storm that halting strike can be instead of ~1.15 to 3.7 something where as it can have some different calculation cuz it doesnt fit with crit damage.. dunno what…
harrrr again getting upset.. Anet show us what is it.. WHY NOT? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Halting_Strike what is it ? 304?
and another thing i didint test mantra of pain before update it seems high to me it can get something maybe..

and didnt read any posts yet.. about update..
my note Nothing change maybe if i would have time i would go for guardian :P

Azo, in my tests of the damage coefficient for ether clone, it was .7878 prior to the patch.

So let’s start with the easy one: Precision.

A massive amount of mesmer condition pressure and sustain is obtained through crits. Your dueling 15 point minor trait causes all of your illusions to bleed on crit. That’s massive. Since illusions take your precision, having high precision is a must for good bleed pressure.

A slightly less direct reason is the interaction with the 5 point minor in dueling, 5 seconds of vigor on crit. Vigor = 100% faster endurance regeneration = twice as many dodges = twice as many dodge clones, which leads to more damage and more damage avoidance.

Next up is toughness.

Toughness actually has a direct benefit too. Your 25 point minor in chaos adds 5% of your toughness to your condition damage. That’s at least 100 more condition damage right there.

Now, both vitality and toughness are defensive stats, but they defend against different things.

• Power damage will eat right through vitality with no toughness, but conditions take much longer with more health, so vitality is condition defense
• Conditions don’t care about toughness, but power damage does. You get strong reductions in power damage with more toughness, so toughness is power damage defense.

In the blackwater build, you have strong condition defense already due to your traited torch, and so more condition defense is a lower priority. Additionally, mesmers already have medium base hp, so you’ve got a good amount of hp. When I run the build, I generally have 20k hp, which is fine, and so every bit of toughness you can get does much more for you.

Additionally, toughness indirectly increases the strength of your heals, while vitality decreases it. The same strength heal heals for a lower % of your hp with a lot of vit, making it indirectly weaker.

Lastly, we can talk about power.

This one really is quite obvious for anyone that’s ever played mesmer, but less obvious for a necromancer, which is why I’m thinking your friend is a necro. Mesmer condition skills don’t use power, generally. Your entire build is designed to do high condition damage, and not power. You have a couple skills that scale well on power, but the thing is that power does not matter at all without crit power. Pure power damage sucks, in order to do any appreciable damage, you absolutely have to have crit power.

Therefor, taking carrion gear would be lowering your condition damage because of vit instead of toughness, vastly decreasing your endurance regeneration, vastly decreasing your bleed pressure, making your heals less effective, and reducing your power damage defense, while providing you with a tiny bit of power.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Pyroatheist.9031:

That being said, the radius is way too small for it to matter. You have to get intimate with anyone before they receive the effects of the mantra.

And that’s why my Mesmer prefers a team of ladies. Preferably norn. “C’mere baby-gurl… Fixed, Focused, Concentration.. Giggity.”

But just to point out.. 30 Dom + 20 Dueling + 50% boon duration = Around 45% Stability uptime.

Hey Guang, would you use Mantras in dungeons without any of the traits or would you find Harmonious a necessity?

Traits shouldn’t be necessary, and there’s really no room for them. In dungeons, you don’t need super high output stability, just a bit here and there, and rapidfire 4 condition removals is far more than enough to handle pretty much any situation.

Actually, the effects of the mantras are pretty great. 4s aoe stab on a 25 second cooldown is very similar to othe skills such as stand your ground. When you consider that you can trait for 3 uses and heal on charge and cooldown reduction, it’s pretty good.

That being said, the radius is way too small for it to matter. You have to get intimate with anyone before they receive the effects of the mantra.

Valarauka.2719:

Alissah.9281:

I prefer the look of my super sword :/.

Why the long face!? It’s a rockin’ combo .. I’ve been a die-hard Super-Sword + Anomaly user ever since I got my hands on them.

http://imgur.com/xPi29xx

Granted, I would still like to get my hands on a Bolt at some point, but there ain’t nothin’ wrong with the sword you have!

I sorta want a bolt…but…purple………

Before anyone can give adequate advice, you really need to specify your question. Highest damage output where vs what?

Gab Superstar.4059:

JQ will win Gold League, SBI will win Silver League.

Instead, the only competitive league will be Bronze. I don’t see any huge blowouts occuring there, and the victor isn’t even crowned yet!

SBI isn’t that much above FA, so if the rumors of FA getting a couple transfers are accurate, it could be quite a fight for first.

GenNuttY.3891:

before this patch I was able to blink and not continued to be snared…

No you weren’t.

So, I’ll just put down a quick analysis of how the blackwater build functions, and how to beat it.

The build applies conditions from several sources, but the most potent of these sources are clone deaths and the scepter torment block. However, both of these work much better if your enemy actually attacks you. Clones can be force-exploded, but there’s no guarantee that they will be in range, and so a careful opponent can avoid the on-deaths if they avoid damaging the clones.

However, with the exception of phantasm mesmers (for the most part) in order to kill you, they will have to attack you. This means they can get hit with your conditions. If a super bursty thief jumps on you, you can hit them with the block, a couple clones, and stealth out. Same deal with a warrior or engie or w/e. If they are actually attacking you, you counter with conditions.

A phantasm mesmer beats the build because they never have to attack. They can simply summon phantasms and let those beat the crap out of you, and most of your offense is disabled due to their lack of direct offense.

Hybrid builds are weak against this build simply because they offer nothing in abundance. This build has strong condition cleansing, and that means the partial conditions applied by a hybrid build will not be too powerful, and this build also has extremely high armor/good protection uptime, and so the partially strong damage that the hybrid build applies will simply not cut it to kill this build.

That being said, well played (non-phantasm) mesmers can be a royal pita to take down with this build because it’s so incredibly hard to actually get the block torment onto the right target. You have to use the block with specific skills to get it to work. Good candidates are chaos storm, confusing images, obvious shatters, and greatsword autoattacks. Once you land the torment, fights generally get finished rapidly.

You mention how it takes a long time to ramp up damage. This is not necessarily the case. The damage ramps up however quickly you are able to start applying counters. Often I’ll dismantle people within the first 10 seconds of a fight because of how offensive they go. Torment block + several clone explosions + confusing images + chaos storm can often kill lower hp classes outright (I have 2000 condition damage when roaming).

So in more explanatory terms, the rapid damage ramp-up is achieved by chaining together multiple quick condition applications. Drop a phantasm, get burning from the prestige, proc the block on an attack, a couple of dodges + chaos storm + confusing images can all be accomplished within 3-4 seconds, and that applies a massive condition load.

The key about this damage is you can’t always launch it right away. Direct damage specs will be able to jump right into combat, but this build needs to counter. If you face a person that just jumps right onto you, then you can counter immediately, but against someone that goes a little slower, you have to match their pace. You get a little more setup, a little more posturing, but once they go in, your counter burst is what kills.

Edit: PvP frapsed vs menace is a been there, done that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KEg07K7q7g

Only the last fight is using blackwater.

Let’s make a deal menace. You stop spreading misinformation, and I’ll stop calling you out for it.

EnderzShadow.2506:

I’ll make it easy on you guys, I would love to hear

“Enderz, youre crazy, this build is incredible and will only get better with gear.”

“Enderz, you just need more practice.”

And to be fair the above are true.

But, what I want to know, will I always struggle against HIGH DPS builds even with the ‘more practice and better gear’.

Enderz, you just need more practice.

The blackwater build, when played appropriately well (I suppose counting in the tweaks I make when I run it) will never lose in a 1v1 situation to any class other than an ultra high dps phantasm mesmer. That is the single build that can beat it.

As an aside, you generally want to completely disregard anything menace says until it’s independently verified, just a good rule of thumb.

Azo.5860:

i just notice that Scepter #1 skill 3rd attack(which gives clone) has %77 damage nerf

Oh really? I’ll have to look at that.

Helios.3598:

Dismissing people who used this combo as exploiters or whiners is unecessary and inappropriate. It was nice while it lasted. Stacking bleeds with duelist may still be worth while, but taking pistol won’t be nearly as essential.

They weren’t exploiters, but they are whining about a legitimate bug fix, which is silly.

It doesn’t work with illusionary persona. It is unclear whether that is a bug or intended.

colesy.8490:

Is there really that little going for greatsword that the only thing you can write paragraphs on is mob tagging?

The discussion at hand is regarding mob tagging. Winching about how I’m talking about mob tagging in a discussion regarding mob tagging is a bit odd, don’t you think?

You were arguing that staff is better for tagging mobs. I showed that you are wrong. Complaining that I’m just talking about tagging mobs isn’t going to change that. You don’t see me writing paragraphs on the defense of greatsword for killing dungeon bosses because it’s generally not the best weapon there, but this case is different.

Xyonon.3987:

Well you have to be fair Pyro – Back in my early days I used to play staff + sigill of geo + mirror images to deal aoe. I say the staff is much more useful for shattering than the gs is, since you can innitiate with the normal sword and switch weapons (proc sigil for awesome dmg (yes it does awesome dmg), mirror images and 2 so your clones are IN the enemies mkittentering hits 5 targets and if you use mirror images on range the clones will just hit the edge.

I say for a normal phantasm build GS has a better aoe tagging for sure, but the staff is more useful unter given conditions.

I’m talking pure long range aoe. You’re in a dynamic event, running around, and frantically tagging stuff as much as possible. You can’t use sword, running into melee would take too long. Shatters on too long of a cooldown for effective tagging, but you CAN use shatters better with greatsword than anything else since mirror blade produces a clone on target, as does iZerker. Staff has 0 capability to produce on target illusions.

Xyonon.3987:

they could do it cheap – if a weapon with +5% dmg sigill is in use they just at a *1.05 at the end of the phantasm dmg calculation. It’s a common “if, then” command.

Not quite that easy. Phantasms are treated as separate entities. That command would be similar to saying something like ‘if I have a +5% damage sigil on my weapon, all my allies in an area also get +5% damage’. You are related to any other random ally around you almost as much as you are related to your phanatsms. The only tie between you and your phantasms is basic stats, and in all other ways you are completely separate. Making this sort of change work could be incredibly time consuming.

colesy.8490:

I know right, that single target autoattack is great at tagging.

Chaos Storm persists for five seconds too, which means it can hit an equal or greater number of enemies than the zerker during that time if the enemies were dispersed but then grouped up as they were aggro’d, though after the field expires obviously the efficiency drops off completely.

I also don’t see how bads traiting their greatsword makes the iZerker better, that takes some leap in logic to draw that conclusion.

Ok. Lets go through and analyse the situation shall we?

First, most offensive builds will be using 20 domination. This allows you to trait the greatsword. Additionally, if your focus is aoe tagging, the greatsword is the best weapon, meaning that traiting it is your best choice. On top of that, the iZerker is affected by illusionists celerity, if you choose to take it. Chaos storm isn’t. Lastly, the staff cd trait is in chaos, which no offensive PvE tagging build will ever take.

Autoattacks

• Staff: The staff autoattack is an excruciatingly slow bouncing projectile that hits an absolute maximum of 3 targets, but more likely just 1 or 2. Additionally, it is so slow that in DE situations for open world PvE, the mob you attacked is likely dead by the time it gets there.
• Greatsword: The greatsword autoattack is an instantaneous 1200 range 3 target aoe beam attack. There is no travel time, and so it provides instant tags from 1200 range.

Clear winner: Greatsword

Clone Generating Skill

• Staff: Phase retreat is an awesome skill. Unfortunately, it does nothing for tagging.
• Greatsword: Mirror blade is a 1200 range unblockable bouncing projectile attack that moves quickly and does good damage.

Clear Winner: Greatsword

Low CD Utility Skill

• Staff: Chaos Armor is a pretty good skill in PvP…not so much in PvE
• Greatsword: Mind stab isn’t the best of skills, but it is an instant 1200 range 5 target aoe damage skill.

Clear Winner: Greatsword

Phantasm

• Staff: The iWarlock does incredible single target damage, and I encourage people to use staff for large champ/boss fights because of this. Unfortunately, we’re talking aoe.
• Greatsword: The iZerker does high aoe damage in a large area around a target very rapidly at 1200 range. It spins quickly and will do its aoe hits fast enough to tag multiple enemies easily. It also hits between 12 and 20 targets.

Clear Winner: Greatsword

Long Cooldown Utility Skill

• Staff: Chaos Storm is a great aoe tagging tool. Unfortunately, it’s on a 35 second cooldown.
• Greatsword: Illusionary wave isn’t particularly good for anything in PvE unfortunately.

Winner: Staff

So, lets compare things. Out of the greatsword’s 5 skills, 3 are fantastic for long range aoe tagging. 1 is decent, and 1 is meh. Out of the staffs 5 skills, 1 is fantastic for long range aoe tagging, and 1 is meh, and 3 are completely useless.

Greatsword is THE weapon of choice for long range aoe tagging. There is no other effective option for mesmer.

colesy.8490:

Chaos storm is a pulsing AoE which means that while iZerker whirled past, chaos storm will be able to hit more mobs if they are running through the field.

Incorrect actually, for multiple reasons. So firstly, chaos storm is on a 35 second untraited cooldown, compared to the zerker which is on a 20 second cooldown, generally traited to at least 16. That alone makes the zerker far far better.

Additionally, the way whirlwind skills work is that they basically drag an aoe circle with them as they move. This aoe circle pulses a certain number of times as it is dragged across. Each of these pulses is a separate aoe (not sure if 5 target or 3 target, this would be exceedingly difficult to test). Since the zerker pulses 4 times, that means it will hit up to (12-20) targets rapidly and over a much larger area than chaos storm.

The greatsword is a far better aoe tagging tool than the staff. This isn’t a massively debateable topic.

Me Games Ma.8426:

Xyonon.3987:

sigil i meant – yes xD sry :P
(btw for me i’m talking about PvE)

And I’m talking about WvW roaming (and a bit of PvE).^^

Hm phantasms get the marojstats from their mesmers (Strengh, Precision, Toughness, a bit Vitality, …., and Critical Dmg) Even a already summoned Phantasm gains advantage of mightstacks/blooslust so they copy your stats the whole time.

Dmg ist calculated like this: (Power*Weapondmg*Skilldmg/Armor)*Multiplicators.
Why can’t they just get the mesmers multiplicators and put it for the phantasm as well?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in order to do that, they’d need to completely rewrite almost all of the code regarding phantasm interactions with stats. Currently, phantasms ONLY pull primary stats excluding vit. They don’t even pull secondary stats. Transferring damage modifiers to the phantasms could be excessively difficult.

Xyonon.3987:

So – the reason why they don’t share such sigils is because of the lack of programming skills of arenanet? I don’t think so.

Not exactly. Well, sorta. Lets go with maybe.

Phantasms use their own special weapons. You can’t put sigils on special phantasm weapons, and so their attacks won’t be affected by sigils.

Now, I suppose Anet could code it so that your sigils are applied to phantasm weapons, but I’m a. Not sure they want to and b. not sure they can.

@Xyonon: Thanks for doing that. I was too tired to wade through that post right now.

the following post is mostly speculation. I have not had a chance to verify this

The reason +damage effects don’t work on phantasms is because of how damage calculations work. For normal skills, the calculation does its thing, calculates the damage of a skill based on your stats, applies crit multipliers, then adds any +damage effects you have.

For phantasms, it’s different. The phantasm is a separate entity that uses its own skill. It wields its own weapon, and it has its own stats. Those stats happen to be the same as your own, and so your gear and whatnot do affect its damage. However, +damage effects only change the damage of skills that were used by the entity with those effects. Since they are on you and not the phantasm, the phantasm sees no bonus.

Now, if you have something like the frost spirit aoe effect and get that onto the phantasm, then you will see it doing bonus damage.

MyCondolences.8172:

Pyroatheist.9031:

This was a bug. It was fixed. If you had a build that relied entirely upon getting out 3 iDuelists, that was a bad build, full stop. Hate to break it to you. If your build relied on confusion bomb, it was a bad build twice over.

This is a simple bug fix. That’s all.

You cant just assume something was a bug or not based on personal opinion.

And i was quite happy with my build. Although getting out 3 duelist was my goal i had alternatives depending on the situation. And as for confusion bombing, that was the icing on the cake, although it was the only reason i had to justify going rampagers gear over berserkers.
And although my build was flawed, for its purpose (single target dps) it did exceptionally well.
With all 3 duelist out, i was doing 4k dmg per a duelist with a conistant 20+ stacks of bleed, a few stacks of vulnerability, burning from staff and 3 combo fields for confusion stacking. I was happy with my build regardless of how “bad” it was.

Out of curiosity, did you use this build in PvE or PvP?

Traur.7680:

Entioch.6594:

sirsquishy.8531:

Me Games Ma.8426:

they did this to prevent ppl from stacking speed with running through the line multiple times

Not a good enough reason, you can stack swiftness from a guards Symbol of Swiftness.

we should be able to with the curtain as well.

you cannot stack either.

No, but Symbol refreshes Swiftness, Curtain does not. That’s the fix it needs.

It doesn’t actually refresh it, it just adds like 1 second to the duration so that it looks like it refreshes.

Warukitsui.4397:

Illusionary Defense: Fixed this trait to properly decrease damage taken by 3% per illusion.

Alright guys and girls. Time to prepare yourselves. Mesmers got a buff. Commence the QQ parade until we get nerfed again.

Hate to rain on your parade, but that’s a nerf. I tested it recently, it reduced damage 3%, 5%, and 10%.

This was a bug. It was fixed. If you had a build that relied entirely upon getting out 3 iDuelists, that was a bad build, full stop. Hate to break it to you. If your build relied on confusion bomb, it was a bad build twice over.

This is a simple bug fix. That’s all.

juno.1840:

squallaus.8321:

Pyroatheist.9031:

squallaus.8321:

Channeled skills are a skill type that activate over a period of time. These skills can be spotted by a yellow activation bar that fills when the skill is activated.

Wrong. Channeled attacks are attacks that deal multiple hits of damage over a period of time, while continually channeling them.

Hmm, appologies for the incorrect statement there. Looks like I misunderstood what it’s suppose to be despite “consulting” the ‘wiki’ before hand, because that is what it said word for word.

Either way, I think pistol trait now falls way behind in benefits gained compared to the focus when traited. I was testing it after the patch just then, its effectively 40-50% nerf for me interms of confusion burst damage.

Actually I liked your definition better squallaus. I don’t think Pyro’s is accurate with regards to “multiple hits of damage over time”. That’s typically not a requirement for channeled skills. Take Mantra charging for example or some of the Elementalist staff skills.

The definition I supplied was particular to the subject at hand: a channeled attack containing projectile combo finishers. It’s not an all-encompassing definition by any stretch.

squallaus.8321:

Pyroatheist.9031:

squallaus.8321:

Channeled skills are a skill type that activate over a period of time. These skills can be spotted by a yellow activation bar that fills when the skill is activated.

Wrong. Channeled attacks are attacks that deal multiple hits of damage over a period of time, while continually channeling them.

Hmm, appologies for the incorrect statement there. Looks like I misunderstood what it’s suppose to be despite “consulting” the ‘wiki’ before hand, because that is what it said word for word.

Either way, I think pistol trait now falls way behind in benefits gained compared to the focus when traited. I was testing it after the patch just then, its effectively 40-50% nerf for me interms of confusion burst damage.

The pistol trait is actually more in line with the other traits now. The focus trait is a bit of an anomaly in its strength.

Confusion burst damage is a misnomer. Confusion damage is directly related to the actions of your opponent. Putting 25 stacks of confusion onto a target guarantees the exact same damage as 2 stacks: 0. In PvP you do have a chance for your opponent to panic and spam skills to kill themselves, but PvE mobs don’t panic. By attempting to use the pistol finisher to confusion stack in PvE basically means you’re limiting the sum total of your damage to 3 skills all on 30+ second recharges to produce a shaky potential burst maybe. Not good.

squallaus.8321:

Channeled skills are a skill type that activate over a period of time. These skills can be spotted by a yellow activation bar that fills when the skill is activated.

Wrong. Channeled attacks are attacks that deal multiple hits of damage over a period of time, while continually channeling them.

squallaus.8321:

AndrewSX.3794:

No nerf fo Mes = good patch.

the duelist was a massive nerf. confusion no longer viable in pve AGAIN. thanks anet.

It never was. Even with that bug, trying to use confusion in pve is probably the least effective build you can possibly do on Mesmer.

@Ross: While I also don’t generally have problems with killing warriors, just to play devils advocate, if that warrior had had a greatsword instead of a longbow, that chase would have been over in 20 seconds, and he would have been out of sight in the distance.

Ew. This got moved here from the spvp forum. We don’t want this.

Interesting ideas. Some of them are insanely strong, but I like the basis for them, it’s a neat concept.

Honestly, the block didn’t need the buff (though I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth), and the problem with confusing images isn’t the cooldown, it’s with confusion, and so this buff didn’t really help at all.

Additionally, the major issue with the scepter —the incredibly clunky autoattack-- still is unresolved.

Mantras being buffed is good I suppose…but I doubt how much use they’ll really get. They still are going to be difficult to use effectively together in PvP simply because you can’t afford to be standing around casting mantras the whole time, especially in this interrupt heavy meta.

Additionally, I worry that the radius they decide to put these mantras on might be too small, sorta causing a venomshare issue where the only way to use them effectively is to be severely violating the privacy of your teammates.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

coglin.1867:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

So how is it “100% my fault” for the limitations of a skill?

No, I am fairly certain i specifically said

If a warrior pins you down, that is 100% your fault

I do not understand the confusion on this, I mean, its literally in black and white, one post up.

Blink: 900 Range
Pin Down: 1000Range

So unless you use it when they are away from you then you could still get hit with it. They could also just use Savage Leap, weapon swap and Pin Down. What skills can you combine to escape? when say a Warrior can just shain a few skills together and boom they are back on you again.

What skills can you combine to escape? Ima blow your mind here. Remember that weapon that you say sucks? The focus? What if I told you that a traited focus hardcounters a longbow warrior.

That, or dodge. Intelligent use of a major game mechanic works too.

It irritates me when I see incompetent players blaming the fact that they are bad on game mechanics instead of realizing it for what it is.

Let me be absolutely blunt Ash: You are a bad player. You understand game mechanics poorly. You seem to be unable to figure out obvious counters or relations between skills and how to use them. It is entirely possible for you to stop being bad and learn to be a good player, but you first have to recognize that you are bad and stop blaming your losses on game mechanics.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

The topic of multiplicative multipliers got me thinking about 2 things.
1) Would a phantasm build rival a warriors damage if phantasms were affected by more than just the two traits and base stats?
2) Utility aside, how comparable is the damage for shatter and phantasm builds when the shatter build is capable of stacking multipliers?

Well, as far as phantasms go, those 2 traits provide a multiplier of 1.3225, which is rather high on its own. If you could then boost them with things like scholar runes, slaying potions, and sigils, the damage would be crazy. Counting mantras and compounding power, you could have a damage modifier somewhere around 2.2.

With regards to shatter, I’m going to have to say no. The only skills that change in a shatter build are the shatters themselves, which already start out worse since they only get a 20% modifier rather than a 32.25% modifier. Mind wrack really doesn’t do good sustained damage at all, and so even with everything else, it won’t compare.

This change would actually make a much MUCH bigger difference in WvW than in tPvP. Not entirely sure what to think of it, but suffice to say it is very interesting.

TyHW.2783:

Quick test shows it is multiplicative.

Using a Guardian sword and steady weapons, specced 0/0/0/25/10.

Gives us elusive power for increased damage on low endurance (10%) and 20% for unscathed contender.

Without unscathed contender and full endurance, eg. no multipliers, I hit the golem for 155 damage.

With unscathed contender but no elusive power, I hit for 186 (155*1.2=186)

After a dodge with unscathed contender, I hit for 204.

155*1.1*1.2=204.6

155*1.3=201.5

Just did some testing as well, with mantras and compounding power. It is, in fact, multiplicative.

TyHW.2783:

Pyroatheist.9031:

colesy.8490:

If you stack damage modifiers, might, fury, power and precision you’ll hit 10k DPS easy.

For example, in 30/0/0/10/30 which I use, I had axe/mace so you have 5%+ damage with axe, mace or sword equipped offhand, 15%+ from berserker’s power, 5%+ from sigil of force on axe, 10%+ from sigil of wrath on mace, 10%+ from scholar runes, 10%+ from slaying potion. So altogether that’s 55%+ in damage modifiers which are very easy to maintain.

Then you have 150+ power from empower allies, 180+ power from str banner, 180+ precision and 10%+ crit damage from disc banner, 180+ precision from signet of fury and then signet of rage. Factor in team might and fury stacking, vuln stacking and stacking sigil (I actually had my perception mace on rather than my 10%+ vs. svanir sigil on so I had 170+ precision fighting the boss rather than the damage modifier) and you’ll hit 10k easy. Even better if you whirlwind and land all your hits which is pretty much 2/3rds of a hundred blades but over 0.75s instead of the 3.5s channel. Axe auto chain is also very on par with hundred blades (about 2% difference in favour of 100b), and I didn’t actually take any food for the dungeon so I could have dealt more.

So I ran some quick numbers. I used the numbers for HB on the wiki, being a cumulative coefficient of 5.5 for all of the hits. I used 3626 as my value for total power, assumed 100% crit chance, assumed a crit power modifier of 120%, and the added in that 5% from offhand, 5% from sigil, 15% from zerker power, and 10% from scholar runes. I did not include the extra 10% from mob specific sigils, as that would be a bit over the top, but did include slaying potions.

My analysis assumed a mob armor of 3000. This could very well be far too high, but I really don’t know.

I came out to a total value of 16k for the full HB (this is why I think that the 3000 armor is too high) for a dps of 5400 over 3.5 seconds.

Now, if the mob only had 2000 armor, the total damage would be 25k, coming out to 7k dps. Even so, that’s not 10k. I find it really really hard to believe that you could EVER crack 10k dps under normal circumstances.

I don’t think you’re doing the calculation right.

I get:

1047.5(GS exotic avg) * 3626(POW) * 5.5(Coef) * 2.7(crit) * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.15 * 1.1 = 78664250

Divide that by 3000 for your example armor to get 26221 dmg, for a DPS of 7491.7.

Add in 25 vulnerability stacks, and you’ll get 9364.6 DPS.

Damage multipliers are additive, not multiplicative. So, if you have 15% and 5% and 10%, you get a total of 30% increased damage. That being said, I also forgot to account for 25 stacks of vulnerability, I only assumed 600 power from might, and I did assume a high armor value of 3000 or 2000. I honestly have no idea how much armor mobs have, so that could make a big difference.

colesy.8490:

I have no idea how you got such a low number.

You might want to read my post again then. Fully. Do you really get HB over 26k?

colesy.8490:

If you stack damage modifiers, might, fury, power and precision you’ll hit 10k DPS easy.

For example, in 30/0/0/10/30 which I use, I had axe/mace so you have 5%+ damage with axe, mace or sword equipped offhand, 15%+ from berserker’s power, 5%+ from sigil of force on axe, 10%+ from sigil of wrath on mace, 10%+ from scholar runes, 10%+ from slaying potion. So altogether that’s 55%+ in damage modifiers which are very easy to maintain.

Then you have 150+ power from empower allies, 180+ power from str banner, 180+ precision and 10%+ crit damage from disc banner, 180+ precision from signet of fury and then signet of rage. Factor in team might and fury stacking, vuln stacking and stacking sigil (I actually had my perception mace on rather than my 10%+ vs. svanir sigil on so I had 170+ precision fighting the boss rather than the damage modifier) and you’ll hit 10k easy. Even better if you whirlwind and land all your hits which is pretty much 2/3rds of a hundred blades but over 0.75s instead of the 3.5s channel. Axe auto chain is also very on par with hundred blades (about 2% difference in favour of 100b), and I didn’t actually take any food for the dungeon so I could have dealt more.

So I ran some quick numbers. I used the numbers for HB on the wiki, being a cumulative coefficient of 5.5 for all of the hits. I used 3626 as my value for total power, assumed 100% crit chance, assumed a crit power modifier of 120%, and the added in that 5% from offhand, 5% from sigil, 15% from zerker power, and 10% from scholar runes. I did not include the extra 10% from mob specific sigils, as that would be a bit over the top, but did include slaying potions.

My analysis assumed a mob armor of 3000. This could very well be far too high, but I really don’t know.

I came out to a total value of 16k for the full HB (this is why I think that the 3000 armor is too high) for a dps of 5400 over 3.5 seconds.

Now, if the mob only had 2000 armor, the total damage would be 25k, coming out to 7k dps. Even so, that’s not 10k. I find it really really hard to believe that you could EVER crack 10k dps under normal circumstances.

colesy.8490:

Zerker warriors will be doing a reliable 10k-ish DPS

Wut. I find that hard to believe. That’s massive.

Lapreea.4287:

why are you all so offended, just because its not exactly the same is not what is important, they rely on the clone death/condition removal from torch, and boons, Might I add kate even used the boon on stealth before it was patched as well… black water was all after these patches, so I find kate to be very creative to manage all that so early on.

I understand you have a …raging clue… for kate, but please look at the builds themselves and actually compare them. You’ll quickly see that they are rather different, as I explained at length in a previous post.

Lapreea.4287:

well on the guild website, kate uses perplexity(once it was released), wat does blackwater use?
also yes apo is there, but they talked about rabid and using dueling not illusion, dont forget to read the chats….

PLEASE do remember this was BEFORE TORMENT, and perplexity, so she had no access to such things

I suggest you read the chats yourself, as they tell a significantly different story than what you’re claiming.

So after fixing your link, I was able to look at the real build.

That build has a focus on confusion and retal as exhibited by the points in illusions. It takes full apothecary, and since there is no crit chance, there is of course no use for sharper images, which already significantly distinguishes that build.

However, the real key to understanding how these builds differ is in the runes. The build that you posted uses a boon duration rune mix. This focuses on maximizing the defensive benefits of PU, and uses the condition damage traits and stats as more of a side benefit of the build rather than a main focus.

The blackwater build is the opposite. It focuses on the condition damage and offensive condition applying capabilities of the Mesmer, and uses PU as a way to shore up the defense.

The fact that you think these builds are the same simply betrays your lack of knowledge about this topic.