Guild Wars 2

There’s a couple bits of information to note here.

Firstly, you can stack up sigils and then swap to a weapon with a different sigil. The stacks will remain.

Secondly, direct boosts such as damage % or crit % will not transfer to phantasms. Phantasms only gain a bonus from basic stats: power, precision, toughness, crit power, condition damage, condition duration, boon duration. This means accuracy or force sigils will have no effect on phantasms.

With regards to bloodlust vs perception: the damage boost you get from a higher critical chance is directly related to your critical power. Depending on your gear, etc, you may or may not get a higher overall boost from perception compared to bloodlust.

I tend to use energy sigils on much of my gear. This is primarily because I use my gear primarily for pvp, and secondary for pve. Sigils of battle will definitely provide the biggest damage boost for your phantasms as might on you does have a normal effect I the damage they deal. For your secondary sigil, either accuracy or force are fine. Since on swap sigils share cooldowns with on crit sigils, you can’t use two actually effective sigils on the same weaponset.

Gotta say vashury, you’re one of the most incredibly technically skilled players I’ve ever seen in this game. Mad props.

My recommendation is to just go full phantasm and stack 3 wardens on the head. They will protect each other and never die up there. That way, you just have to worry about dealing damage.

Ok, going to assume you mean torch instead.

It’s actually an interesting build. A bit odd, but I sort of like it. Your damage is going to hurt a bit since you only have 1 good phantasm and it will die VERY easily, but the combination of the clone death traits is interesting. You could definitely tie someone up very well with them.

I would put the sword with the scepter and the torch with the sword, just personal preference, I like to have the 2 blocks on that one weapon set.

I would avoid summoning the iMage at all costs unless you desperately need it for the condition removal.

I would drop null field in favor of Mantra of Resolve. With PU, you’ll have plenty of chances to charge it, and it’ll provide far more effective removal than null field.

This wouldn’t work as a condition build at all really. I’d recommend putting energy sigils in place of fire though, and replacing those runes of the pack with something a bit more useful.

You appear to have sword/sword+scepter/sword as your weapons. I’m thinking that’s a mistake?

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

Wait, how many people should I try to fight from each classes in the video? around 3-5?

You don’t need to go around fighting every class. You just need to show enough fights that it is obvious whether or not you are competent and/or this build is competent.

Joonks.7501:

Thank you, Pyro… and since I have your attention, a follow-up question:

I’m in love with the idea of retaliation and I was curious about how Phantasmal Defender works with the 5 point Inspiration minor trait (Vengeful Images). If I have retaliation on myself and also have a Phantasmal Defender out with retaliation, will a person attacking me receive retaliation damage from two sources? Or does one cancel out the other?

I hope that makes sense…

They will receive retaliation from two sources. For more on how this can work, see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6ASnuG8uI

Unfortunately, anet nerfed that trait so that it only applies retaliation for 5 seconds. That makes it 100% and completely useless, and nuked my build into oblivion.

Joonks.7501:

Couple of quick questions:

The 3rd attack in the scepter #1 chain, “Ether Clone”: description says that it “confuses your target.” So does it actually apply confusion or is that just poor wording?

Torch phantasm: description says it grants Retaliation to your allies. Does it also grant retaliation to yourself?

Scepter chain: this is a tooltip error, just something the devs forgot to correct when they removed the condition application back in the betas.

Torch phantasm: the iMage uses a bouncing projectile, applying confusion to enemies it hits and retaliation to allies.

@Xaylin: You are quite right about testing builds in the scenario for which they were designed. The chillruption build is going to encounter mainly 1v1 or outnumbered fights while roaming in WvW. The bountiful interruption build is designed primarily as a team support/damage build, which is why I considered the effects of aoe interrupts in that build. The worry with that build is that it fails to have any effective aoe boon stripping, and so in the current situation where a guardian will be dropping all sorts of aoe stability, it could fall flat.

colesy.8490:

Shouldn’t a build have to be consistent to be … legit? For example a power shatter build can always get clones out and shatter them. A phantasm build will always get phantasms out for burst.

Luck …. I really don’t know.

The build does have some reasonable phantasm damage, and so provides consistency that way. The signet of inspiration does have the potential to spread 20 or 25 might to the team with the aoe interrupts in the sword block and illusionary wave, but it also can double the duration of things like stability from guardian shouts or might stacked on you by someone else, so it doesn’t depend completely on interrupts.

Your build has been approved Sensotix. We’re not convinced that it’s actually going to be effective, but it definitely has the potential to offer strong team support given a few lucky interrupts.

skcamow.3527:

@Pyro, cool thanks for the elaboration. I will keep these things in mind. Aside from your proven knowledge of the mesmer, knowing you played around with build gives huge credibility to your comments, since you obviously experienced it. Thanks for taking the time to do that.

Outside of the contest, we will probably continue testing a staff variant as that seems to be stronger – more survivable for sure.

A staff variant would probably be stronger. Among other things, it gives you burning pressure, bleed pressure not tied to the duelist, and the potential for more confusion stacking from the duelist combo with chaos storm.

Edit: I should mention that a majority of my stress testing of builds was done against a very good p/d d/p thief. Very difficult to interrupt, very good at applying conditions.

@skcamow: All of my criticisms are made assuming skilled opponents. With that in mind…

The scepter block is avoidable, even when used very well. A fast reaction dodge after hte block, or simply avoiding attacking during the block can effectively eliminate most of the torment, as long as you are VERY careful.

If you watch your video, you’ll notice that the duelists die in about 2 hits. However, the people you fight generally ignore the duelists and let them stack bleeds forever, when they could have simply killed the duelists instantly.

Again, confusion without pressure is not strong, even with the runes. A lot of your opponents in the video simply suicided on 15 stacks of confusion, which is just poor play.

What I meant by my comment about diversion is that if you have a couple duelists or a warden or w/e up, shattering them with any shatter is an extremely high cost, because you have very long cooldowns for all your phantasms. You can still use diversion fine, but the problem is you diversion…and then you might have next to 0 condition pressure for the next 15-20 seconds because all your phantasms are on cooldown.

One last thing is that your build runs into the same problem that all interrupt builds face: varying effectiveness against different opponents. Against warriors/necros/etc they can be very strong, but a good thief or engineer can be brutally difficult to interrupt, and a guardian farting stability will be tough to interrupt. This varying effectiveness of any type of interrupt setup is why I really tend to stay away from them.

I did actually play your build, having most of the equipment to do so. It does ok vs some classes if played very well, but it just runs into that problem of it’s simply not all that great against a skilled opponent that knows to counter the duelists by hitting them, or to avoid the torment, or w/e.

@skcamow

• Conditions: Immobilize is only from leap/swap or interrupts. Chill is only a % chance from interrupts so doesn’t count. Blind is only from the activation on scepter block aka no torment, so shouldn’t count. Poison is only applied in 5 second chunks on weapon swap and is easily avoidable. Torment can not be applied actively. Confusion is worthless on its own. Bleeding is only applied through the duelist.
• Duelist: The duelist is fine as a source of bleeds, but as your only source of bleeds it falls very short. It will die incredibly quickly if someone attacks it, as you lack the signet or traiting to make it durable. Additionally, you have no cooldown traits for it, and so you will on average get 1 unload from it every 20 seconds.
• Confusion: This only procs constantly against unskilled opponents. Confusion bomb builds have always been trash for this reason. Combining confusion with other pressure makes it effective, but the lack of other pressure makes the confusion ineffective.
• Interrupts: I did forget diversion, but your build happens to have very low clone generation and very long cooldowns on your phantasms. Using any shatter is an action that has a massive drawback for that reason.
• Defense against conditions: Your only active condition removal is arcane thievery which can only remove 3 conditions every 45 seconds. Your only other condition removal is the iWarden whirl combo, which can be difficult and/or impossible to set up at times. Condition pressure from most opponents will get through your defenses (which consist of scepter block and iWarden spin) and once you use arcane thievery, they can just go to town.

Chillruption Condition Build

We’ve decided that this build is not viable. This build has a lot of issues with it.

Purpose

This build seems to have no purpose. The theme is supposedly chill, but this build has no way to apply chill other than a % chance from chaotic interruption. Additionally, this is a condition build but lacks any actively applied conditions other than confusion and bleed.

Capability

This build doesn’t have the capability to do very much. The only good application of bleeding is from a fully untraited iDuelist, which is incredibly fragile and susceptible to retaliation and projectile reflects. There is no capability for strong power damage. The confusion can be applied in a couple ways, but with absolutely no other pressure, whether from conditions or power, there is no way to force the players to hit the confusion.

Trait and Weapon Optimization

The build uses 4 unique weapons and yet traits none of them. The build relies heavily on interrupts and yet only has magic bullet and temporal curtain as interrupts. The build relies heavily on conditions, and yet has no way to apply burning and only 1 partially effective way to apply bleeding and torment. The build has poor defense against conditions.

Summary
This build doesn’t particularly have a good way of doing particularly anything. As such, the ORB deems it Non-Viable.

JoeKnowMo.9325:

Me Games Ma.8426:

my record was to stay invulnerable in the enemy zerg for 16 seconds and then jump out invisible.

they all attacked me and stopped on their way to the tower they wanted to defend

How did you manage 16 seconds? :-O

Prior to blurred frenzy nerf:

2.5 BF + 4s distortion shatter + 1s signet + 4 second distortion shatter + 2.5 BF + 1s signet + 1 second distortion shatter.

Yeah, greatsword is your friend here. Both your auto attack and your iZerker are nearly instant 1200 range aoe damage attacks, so once you get good with positioning, you should be fine.

stun = daze + immobilize.

When using armor that comes preloaded with runes, the clones will get on-hit functionality of the original runes, in this case summoning golems.

Gozzo.7380:

you do not use a video camera to record gaming videos there is software like fraps, bandicam etc….

-_- Words fail me

Me Games Ma.8426:

• i used a sigil of bloodlust to have the same power with trait and without

That’s genious. Thank you.

I will test this out ASAP.

This isn’t a reason to avoid fights…this is a reason to actively hunt down fights and WIN them. Sure, if you go around getting smeared across the landscape, then you’ll be giving the other server a lot of points, but if you’re actually competent, this means you can rack up a massive amount of points.

trooper.2650:

Pyroatheist.9031:

trooper.2650:

K U T M.4539:

Can’t really give it a full overview atm, but “Phantasmal Strength” is more beneficial in phantasm power builds than condi builds.

This is something I will take in to consideration. But this build already allow me to get phantasmal haste and fury… missing out on p. strength seems a waste. The build is already lacking in power and the iduelist is suffering from this. Ok, he gives good bleedings, but why deny him a 15% more damage? Lets face it… the only damaging conditions are bleeding (we have plenty of that), poison (random from Chaos storm every 35sec ), torment (if I take tormenting runes ok… otherwise meh..) and confusion (again meh and don’t ask me to get Perplexity )

Phantasmal strength will be worthless in this build. An extra 15% of horrible damage is still horrible damage. % boosts only get effective when the base amount boosted is rather high, at which point they become great.

Are those 5 points better spent in Dueling for the last minor trait or in Illusions for extra cond damage and one more major trait?

Depends on how you’re playing. 5 more points into illusions is a pretty focused on shattering. I’d probably recommend the points into dueling. One more thing to note is that you’re taking Illusions 3. Being another % damage boost, this is useless in a non-power build. Replace it with illusions 5, and this combos nicely with dueling 25.

The thing is, most classes are really pidgeonholed in super organized zerg fights. Lets take a look:

Mesmer: Aoe boon stripping, veil, portal, aoe condition removal, projectile reflects, boon amplification (very important)

Thieves: Blast finishers (can be accomplished by guardians/warriors)

Ranger: Water field (isn’t really necessary)

Guardian: Heals, condition removal, stability (very important)

Warrior: Aoe stuns and damage (very important)

Necromancer: Aoe condition damage, condition removal (important)

Elementalist: …fire fields? (isn’t really necessary)

Engineer: …desperately try to not die from retaliation? (isn’t really necessary)

People complain that mesmers are only able to do a couple of things, but if you really look at it, mesmers are actually one of the most powerful and varied classes in terms of what they are commonly asked and capable of doing. Someone mentioned how there’s usually very few mesmers in a zerg. That’s because a single mesmer is such an incredibly dense packet of utility, that’s all you need to accomplish EVERYTHING. A zerg is forced to stack warriors on warriors because each warrior does extremely little.

trooper.2650:

K U T M.4539:

Can’t really give it a full overview atm, but “Phantasmal Strength” is more beneficial in phantasm power builds than condi builds.

This is something I will take in to consideration. But this build already allow me to get phantasmal haste and fury… missing out on p. strength seems a waste. The build is already lacking in power and the iduelist is suffering from this. Ok, he gives good bleedings, but why deny him a 15% more damage? Lets face it… the only damaging conditions are bleeding (we have plenty of that), poison (random from Chaos storm every 35sec ), torment (if I take tormenting runes ok… otherwise meh..) and confusion (again meh and don’t ask me to get Perplexity )

Phantasmal strength will be worthless in this build. An extra 15% of horrible damage is still horrible damage. % boosts only get effective when the base amount boosted is rather high, at which point they become great.

The change proposed by the op would probably be relatively simple to code.

That being said, it’s an incredibly stupid idea that nobody in their right mind could actually consider implementing.

Iplaytokill.1674:

Sampo.9678:

Iplaytokill.1674:

It’s not skill to knock somebody off the map. Or to roll into a hole while fighting at points. Especially the rolling.

Are you saying you don’t like the map because you roll into holes?
That’s not very skilled indeed.
I’d say it’s skill if you wouldn’t be knocked off and rolling into holes.

Positioning, stunbreaker, stability.. ever heard of that?
And also try to not roll into holes

Stability on a Mesmer? Thanks bro I’ll use that one boon I don’t have access to. Positioning varies, and I don’t see how stunbreaker is supposed to help.. at all.

The advice on trying not to roll into holes is laughable at best. The home points are so tight and confined, it’s almost impossible not to fall in a hole or get pushed off. Or let’s not forget Necro chain fear.

Another big problem with the way the map is made is points, and contesting them. I play GS Mesmer so I NEED to stay at range, that’s fine, I’ll go above the points so I don’t fall into the holes, w/e. But because of the lame mechanics in this game, I won’t be contesting the point. So if I’m going up against a bunker guardian, I might as well run away because I will not win easily, if at all.

Secondly, the map has massive imbalances depending on what class you play. Mesmer has no stability, and our in-combat mobility is actually bad for us in this map because fighting on home points is hard thanks to the stupid holes we have to avoid constantly.

Necro and sometimes Warrior with FM! can be OP. Bunker Guards with their stability have absolutely no problems. Ranger, Ele and Thief I don’t play enough, so I won’t comment on them as much.

Ever consider that you might not be able to use the exact same build for every single map? Mesmers can absolutely excel at skyhammer. Just take the time to put more than 2 seconds of thought into how you play this game and you should do just fine.

Ah, I apologize. This isn’t a carbon copy of the blackwater build. It does in fact lack the condition burst that that build has.

This is literally a carbon copy of the blackwater build. Nothing to see here, move along…

Holy crap, this is the second thread in like 2 days about this. This has been in for about 2 months. Stop posting about it please.

skcamow.3527:

Pyroatheist.9031:

The phantasmal haste page is 100% accurate…and 100% useless.

For purposes of dps, you need to know the time from attack beginning to attack beginning, and that chart shows you the time from attack end to attack beginning.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but is it as useless for one shot attacks like iSwordsman/iWarlock and to some degree the iZerker (since their attack is so quick)? I can see what you’re saying concerning the iDuelist and iWarden.

It’s definitely better for those attacks, but still not as precise as it could be.

The phantasmal haste page is 100% accurate…and 100% useless.

For purposes of dps, you need to know the time from attack beginning to attack beginning, and that chart shows you the time from attack end to attack beginning.

@Revelations: My statement was made with no regard to your experience as a Mesmer. The opinions you stated would be meaningless no matter who made them.

What is difficulty? Playing against a blind/interrupt spam thief is much more difficult as a phantasm Mesmer than as a shatter or clone death Mesmer. Where is the difference between difficult to play and simply worse? Mantra power builds aren’t difficult, they’re just bad, similar situation with most interrupt builds. Sure, they’re more difficult to play effectively, but that difficulty is artificial, arising from a build that is simply objectively not viable.

I would never attempt to classify builds by difficulty because that simple classification is meaningless

Lahel.6381:

why not? debating stuff is good oO

Sure, but I’m rather confused as to what sort of discussion was intended by simply classifying the builds in an inflammatory manner. Nothing useful would come out of that.

Lahel.6381:

He did say he was being intentionally biased when classifying difficulty between the different build types to encourage or, shall we say anger, for the sake of debate.

Which is my point, there is 0 reason to do that.

A generally decent post. I would tend to refrain from classifying build types with difficulty levels. Not only are your difficulty levels rather odd, they also are completely meaningless.

selan.8354:

ensoriki.5789:

Stability.

mesmer has barly any access to stability.also if u get hit by multiple people and the first stun happens, then u use a stunbraker, but by the time u are free again, u get feared, then u might wanna use a block, but the next cc has already knocked u down. u dont have enough time to react or a way to counter it. it happened quite a lot that i wnted to blink away but the perma cc prevented me through the entire fight. i wasnt even able to use a single attack.
so a immunity to it after being hit sounds pretty reasonable imo

Eh. Mesmers fart stunbreakers and evasion. There’s really no excuse for a mesmer to get stunlocked.

Halting strike is abysmal damage. From my testing, the absolute maximum damage you’ll get from it, as a full glass cannon interrupting another glass cannon (0 might, 0 vuln, yes crit) will be on the order of 3500-4000 damage.

Part of playing a mesmer skillfully is knowing what phantasms and clones you have on the field, in what order you placed them down, which ones are in danger, and which ones will be replaced first. That increases the skill cap.

Not only would a change like you propose be difficult to actually use effectively since the icons would be so small, it would also be dumbing down the class, which is bad.

1. Wrong forum
2. No.
3. You probably put this here because you knew it would get shot down in the mesmer forum, having been shot down multiple times before.

DevonCarver.5370:

Super Riceman.8702:

Maybe make the Dolyaks move faster per nearby ally, increased by up to ten allies. There would be incentive to guard them since it is helping your team overall even if you are not participating in big fights/being in other areas.

Conversely there would be more incentive for the other team to split up into small teams to stop these faster dolyaks

The issue is not about an in-game reason to defend them, it is about the way we actually determine who has defended them. Currently, you can get credit by standing near them when they finish. That is clearly not a good platform for delivering rewards.

And another issue is that back when you could escort yaks for rewards, you had whole teams of bots AND players walking around in your borderlands doing nothing but escorting dolyaks from north camp to the towers for exp.

This has been ingame for about a month and a half, approaching 2 months.

Xyonon….since when was a Duelist a clone?

Gozzo.7380:

last night, roaming the kitchen i encountered a massive chocolate cake and 3 blueberry pancakes… solod them. no veil. no condicleanse.

Oh man, that’s rough. Good thing you had consumables to help you though.

colesy.8490:

Killing the three golems in the mists by yourself doesn’t count as 1 v 3.

Comment of the year, right here.

You don’t test your builds out. That’s an outright lie.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

Sorry for changing the build’s name so kitten often. Thought that it would be best if the thread’s name reflected the current state of the build, which is called Ultimate beacuse I am trying to put this build into the BoTM contest and I can’t have anything less than the best I can do in my ability to successfully finalize this build. Also to Jportell. Maybe you are right. I shall look into your ideas more thoroughly.

Calling a build ultimate doesnt make it good.

Clean out your inbox bro

jportell.2197:

you seriously sound likie billie mays but less cool and no manly beard.

This is absolutely perfect. A wonderful description.

Portal range:

1. Be out of combat
2. Have a traited focus
3. Drop 1 end of the portal
4. Drop temporal curtain on top of the portal and run through it at the same time
5. Run in a straight line. When the recharge on temporal curtain hits 8 seconds, you are at maximum portal range.