“Mesmer Salvation”
“It is turning into a BEAST build.”LOL…. the hyperbole never ends with you, does it?
And you wonder why you haven’t had a lot of helpers lately?
And halting strike when you’re condition spec.. wtf?
You forgot: it’s the Ultimate Mesmer Salvation build.
I saw this name change, and I just doublefacepalmed and started laughing.
There is no internal cooldown on any interrupt trait other than furious interruption. You are probably just not interrupting anything.
Jatoro’s was the old “Traveler’s” spread, which is now “Dire” so it is in the TP and you can outright buy a full set. A little pricey, but it gets it done.
For trinkets, there is a Traveler’s Amulet and Ring, and the corresponding accessory you would want is called “Vallog’s Demise”.
There’s also dire-ish ascended, which is what i’ll use.
So uh….how on earth did you guys lay your hands on full sets of dire already?
I had the luck to pick up some sets of Jatoro’s armor and wayfarer weapons/trinkets before the recent update. Since they removed magic find, they let you pick whatever stats you wanted, dire included. A little embarrassed to say it, but I ended up with a complete set for about 6g.
That said, I still think the extra vitality is wasted on the mesmer … but I’d really love a good build that proves this wrong.
My immortal build functioned completely on Pvt armor, until they released sentinels where I swapped to a full set of that.
I had idea
Power Spike: Damage target and increase their next skill’s cast time by 1/4s
Veil: Applies revealed debuff to enemies for 2s
Honestly, mantra of pain is one of the better mantras we have due to its interaction with restorative mantras and the protected mantras traits.
That being said, that would be an awesome interaction with veil, and very in-line with mesmer abilities.
So uh….how on earth did you guys lay your hands on full sets of dire already?
Most likely worse than berserker. Due to how phantasms have permanent fury, they’ll always have pretty high crit chance, so it’s better to focus on your power.
I have over 2k hours on guardian and been in the top 50 for tpvp many of times. So I like to think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Guards. Just by looking at your build and stats I can to tell it’s inefficient and subpar. If you don’t believe me post it in the Guard section, and see the comments you get about it.
But whatever floats your boat.
you don’t need all that, I only have 250 hours on my guard and even I can see:
> trait for faster torch skills recharge
no torch equipped
> meditations recharge faster
no meditations
> runes only useful for torment
only access to torment is over healing skills, which only #6 counts unless they’ve changed it – also, he can only heal every 30 seconds (he could’ve improved signets, gone for the signet heal every 32 seconds with nearly double the healing).my bad I was messing with a another setup and forgot to switch it back
So what I see here is a build with low healing power, low condition damage, low power, low critical chance, low critical power, low health, and low toughness.
What am I missing?
As far as condition damage, the reasons for it being bad have 2 main parts.
Condition Damage in General
Stack Cap
All condition damage is affected by stack caps, in which no more condition damage can be applied without having to overwrite old damage. This wouldn’t be a problem by itself except that most classes and builds tend to spam conditions without actually trying. Example: sharper images. This means that most conditions will be capped by non-condition classes, and so any condition classes won’t have room to fit their actual damaging conditions in.
Kill Speed
In PvE, mobs die fast. Conditions take some time to build up to full strength, and by that time the mobs are already dead. This means that the condition classes will be doing far less damage. This doesn’t apply on bosses of course, but that’s where the original problem comes into play.
Mesmer Condition Damage
Application
Mesmers have 3 ways of applying conditions: staff clones, phantasm bleeds, and debilitating dissipation. All 3 of these are subject to RNG. Staff clones can apply vuln instead of a damaging condition. Phantasms have to crit. Lastly, debilitating dissipation only applies bleed 1/3 of the time. This makes the condition pressure unreliable.
Condition Type
A large amount of the Mesmer toolkit can apply confusion, and the scepter block also applies torment. Unfortunately, both of these conditions are worthless in PvE. Many mobs rarely move, so the torment is extremely weak, and mobs (with a couple notable exceptions) attack very slowly, so confusion is worthless. This means a large amount of the condition Mesmer toolkit is worthless in PvE.
Conclusion
Conditions are bad in PvE for every class for multiple reasons, and conditions are even worse on Mesmer than most condition built classes. Don’t use them.
I will have a greatsword in situations where aoe is required or it is advantageous to have range or a knockback. For example:
The boss fight with the 3 champs in harpy fractal. Having the ability to move around at large range and still do damage is really important here.
Any situations with a lot of trash mobs. I summon the iZerker then switch to sword. The mobs should be dead by the time the weapon swap is up again.
When fighting the knights in TA. Having the knockback to get those mobs away from you and/or your teammates can be very important.
The gs isn’t a perfect weapon, but it does have the abilitys of high range, a great phantasm, and a knockback that does see use (you can also use it to group up mobs is the terrain is helpful and/or you can position correctly).
It’s possible he was running Ina straighter line than you or he dropped combat or something else…there’s a lot of variables there.
A tip for that fight is using the phantasmal disenchanter to strip his boons. It helps a lot with kill speed.
I’d put in a note at the torch. It’s not a damage weapon, but a utility weapon. I always have one with me just in case for some reason I find myself needing some sort of stealth skill on a weapon.
No thoughts on scepter as weapon in regards to utility/phantasm?
It’s bad. That’s about all the thoughts you need on it.
I haven’t noticed that. I HAVE noticed that chaos armor now has an additional sound to it that is the same sound as lupicus using his single target life drain in phase 3. I’ts very odd.
I’m surprised the iZerkers survived considering he drops fire storms in his final phase.
Final phase he gets to be really focused though. The firestorms are small radius, short duration, high intensity, and everything else he does is more or less single target focused at you.
Movement speed boosts do not stack in any instance, full stop. Only the highest boost value will be applied.
Uhhh, I think you can craft exotic versions, and I’m pretty sure ascended versions are available.
I may just use the half rabid/half dire ascended trinkets I already use for other condition builds.
I’m working on obtaining a full set to work into my immoral build. I’ve got a few ideas on traits, but ultimately I’ll need to just muck with it a bit once I get all the gear…which will take a while considering it only comes from CoE.
All runes with an ‘on-heal’ affect will only proc on the use of the skill in the primary healing slot, regardless of what any other traits and/or utilities actually do.
Taking something that can interrupt ride the lightning is important to being able to catch a dagger offhand ele. If you let rtl go the full distance, they are very difficult to catch.
Also pistol.
/15char
@Pyros. I am sorry for annoying the heck out of you.
No you’re not. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions are telling a very different story.
I just want some suggestions on all of my builds is all I want.
You’ve gotten lots of suggestions every time. You haven’t listened yet.
So basically your only team support is signet, which all mesmers can use and apart from that you don’t have a traited focus or faster glamour cooldown/longer glamour duration, so you’re not even being that useful to your team, just leeching.
If you wanted to just do DPS, run a thief.
If you want to be a useful dungeon mesmer, you need to trait your focus.
25 stacks of Might every 45 seconds = kittens dies quicker = less need for reflecting.
I still run feedback. My warden still destroys projectiles. My Curtain still pulls mobs into balls. My null field still works just fine. So what? I lose 8 seconds of CD… or 2 seconds of duration….
I still run full team support, just instead of more glamour, I offer 25 stacks of Might.
AGAIN. Not necessarily better in all situations. But works just fine.
Most teams are going to have 25 stacks of might for a good amount of time after you double them with the signet. All you need for that is 1 guardian with a staff.
Ah so I can use my current weapons for the swap in the mean time?
And yeah I’ve got a rare piece of each other weapon just in case, but have only found use for the torch for, as you said, stealthing past certain dungeons.
I guess I’ll just have to come up with a better stat spread for gear.
Thank you again for the tips. They were just what I was looking for.
Just a suggestion, post what you’re thinking of here before running around and gathering the gear. Could save you a lot of time and money.
Menace you ask for feedback but you already say that you have tested extensively. If you had tested extensively like you said then all of pyros feedback (which by the way is directly inline with what I said) wouldn’t be feedback that you would be thankful for because you would have figured it all out already.
Mhmm. The only thing this kid has been testing extensively is our patience.
The staff will be used in a power build for just its phantasm, the warlock. The damage it does, however, scales by 10% per unique condition on the target, meaning you need to have a team composition able to produce a high amount of condition pressure in order to make using the staff worthwhile. You’ll also want to stay away from the scepter, as it’s sorta a bad weapon overall, although it has a few uses.
Generally all PvE phantasm builds retain the ability to trait the focus (Inspiration VIII), even if they aren’t using it at every point. This allows the mesmer to produce an incredibly high uptime on projectile reflections through the iWarden and temporal curtain.
In my builds, I’ll usually carry with me a greatsword, staff, 2 swords, focus, pistol, and torch. The torch is purely to stealth past some things in specific dungeons, not for actual usage. What this allows me to do is tack on any combination of weapons that works best for that particular encounter.
Well, you mentioned that you want this build to be primarily PvE. Unfortunately, conditions from the best condition classes aren’t an optimal choice in PvE for multiple reasons, and mesmer conditions are very inconsistent with regards to dps (condition builds can do great in PvP though).
I’d recommend going for power damage in PvE. For PvE, you’d also want to focus more on the phantasm side of things. There’s quite a few viable builds that can do this though, it all depends on how focused on damage you want to get as opposed to survivability and/or support.
While my previous experiences with your abysmal builds, incredibly bad attitude, and overall annoyance do weigh heavily in my mind whenever I interact with you, Menace, I do read your builds, since a stopped clock is still right twice a day. Allow me to explain precisely why this particular build is horrible.
The first problem is that you have 0 methods of removing conditions. Even in a build that has high uptimes on evasion and whatnot, this means you will die to the conditions that get through.
A second problem is that you appear to be using Signet of Inspiration in a way that doesn’t revolve around its active, but instead around the passive boon generation. This is a horrific choice, and makes your build weaker.
An additional problem is your lack of any reasonable source of damage. You go 30 points into illusions, taking Illusionary Persona and Illusionary Invigoration along the way, indicating that this build should be a shatter heavy build. Unfortunately, you lack the trait Deceptive Evasion, which is necessary for any shatter heavy build, and you even lack high clone generation in your utilities.
On top of that, due to your traiting and rune selection, despite having a large amount of berserker armor, making your build squishier than a real tank build, you have very low power and very low critical damage, meaning that what shatters you are able to hit will do very low damage.
Fighting this Build
Fighting this build would be extremely simple. Since you don’t do any damage, you aren’t a threat in any way. There are multiple options to kill this build.
The most obvious one would be conditions. With your incredibly low health and lack of any condition removal, any applied conditions would melt you. In WvW, a single scepter block combined with a bleed and a burn would kill you (yes, that counts the food).
Alternatively, direct damage will also kill you. Your high uptime on protection and regeneration and reasonable armor will make this take a bit longer, but since you don’t do even enough damage to threaten a full berserker build, anyone fighting you has all the time in the world necessary.
The third option of dealing with this build is to simply ignore it and walk in the other direction. You can’t do anything dangerous in this build, so there’s no need to even kill it.
Well, in the build you linked, you’ve got a lot of rampagers gear. You probably want to avoid that. Here’s why:
Power builds require high crit power to really be effective. Rampagers gives no crit power, so your crits won’t hurt much. Additionally, your power ends up pretty low, so you have a low base anyway.
Condition builds are generally built for some sort of attrition fight. This means that they have pretty good defense, and this is supported by the defensive stats on condition gear. Unfortunately, rampagers has no defensive stats, and you’ll end up with less condition damage than in a full condie build.
Overall, rampagers ends up with a build that is incredibly fragile, while doing weak power damage and weak condition damage. Don’t use it.
Looking at your traits, that hybrid confusion also spills over a bit there. My advice is to really figure out which type of damage you want to focus on, and then adjust your gear and traits from there.
One more note. Your runes are a bit odd, as you have 2 tormenting runes listed, but no actual ways to apply torment in your entire build.
Edit: I read your post again. Just as a heads-up, sharper images only causes your illusions to bleed on crits, it doesn’t affect attacks that you use.
(edited by Pyroatheist.9031)
So to counter condition builds, you make a build with 0 condition removal?
Teach me your ways!
There are extremely few things that don’t have a 5 target cap.
Mass invisibility is 10 targets. Meteor shower hits many targets, but each meteor is a 5 target aoe, glamours can hit infinite targets along with temoral curtain. The xxx of warding and spectral wall also have unlimited target caps.
That’s about it.
It looks like a pretty standard on-clone-death build. One thing I’d note is that your 15 point minor in illusions won’t be getting much use, seeing as you only use cry for the condition application.
I ran a Shatter build in PvE for awhile. Typical 20/20/0/0/30. I liked to think that while my sustained damage wasn’t incredible, that I did some pretty good burst. I also focused on using Dazzling properly, fitting in a burst of 20-25 Vuln every 30-40 seconds to increase the party’s damage is hard to quantify.
Other classes can do 25 vuln stacking without sacrifices and continually, not on a burst like shatter, which is the reason you generally don’t want to worry about that.
It is unclear what you are trying to say.
You can’t always out of LoS mobs on high level fractals because you may all die at once from aoe
LoS pulling or grouping mobs up with our focus is always an option, even at high level fractals. There are plenty of ways to keep mobs disabled for long enough to burn them down.
and if you don’t die, IP+all your shatter and iwarden (if you care about it so much) are here to hit everything at once while your phantasm builds need ages to re-engage (that is only if they aren’t dead and they’re most of the times)
You don’t get a full iWarden spin in a shatter build generally. Additionally, the shatter will simply do less damage. You have a full mind wrack 4 clone shatter doing maybe 10k damage in total, and just the warden spin, let alone the iZerker spin, will do that much damage. Phantasms simply do more damage.
You’ve also completely ignored situations where aoe is not necessary, such as boss fights.
In fractals, my zerker will generally do upwards of 4k-7k damage on mobs/bosses. This is roughly equivalent to 1 shatter. If the zerker attacks more than once, it has now out-dpsed shatter. Keep in mind that’s only 1 phantasm.
@Nuka Cola: I’ve never seen an explanation that holds water as to how shatter is better than phantasms in dungeons/fractals. If you did before, it wasn’t on these forums. You do seem to think you can explain it though, so I invite you to try.
how exactly do you want me to prove? If there was a dps tool, i would have proved everyone who seriously think phantasm builds are better but there isn’t… The main reason and mostly the only reason why phantasm build is much worst isn’t even the fact that they die quick but the lack of aoe phantasms. iZerker is the ONLY one that does what it should. Even tho, ai is garbage and will stay in its aoe, this won’t be happening all the time and iwarden will be killing more flies than anything.
In any competent dungeon group, killing trash will be done in an efficient and tight packed manner. This means that dropping a warden and a zerker into the pack of mobs will do a massive amount of damage (warden usually spins for >10k). That is the limit of necessary aoe.
Against almost all bosses, aoe is not necessary. You don’t need to worry about the aoe potential of your phantasms. You only need to worry about single target damage (and maybe reflects). So you get your warlocks or duelists or swordsmen up, and they’ll be chunking the target continually. Smart placement of the phantasms gives far higher rates of survival, especially since they can eat a couple hits after that hp boost.
In fractals, my zerker will generally do upwards of 4k-7k damage on mobs/bosses. This is roughly equivalent to 1 shatter. If the zerker attacks more than once, it has now out-dpsed shatter. Keep in mind that’s only 1 phantasm.
one thing you have to keep in mind is that a shatter build also has access to that same izerker AND is more spammable because of IC+deals as much or even more damage because you have might stacks building from shatter/SS.
The shatter iZerker will do approximately 50% of the damage that a phantasm iZerker will do because of differences in traiting. There have been several phantasm builds shown in this thread that double trait several weapons, so using IC as an excuse is no relevant.
In fractals, my zerker will generally do upwards of 4k-7k damage on mobs/bosses. This is roughly equivalent to 1 shatter. If the zerker attacks more than once, it has now out-dpsed shatter. Keep in mind that’s only 1 phantasm.
@Nuka Cola: I’ve never seen an explanation that holds water as to how shatter is better than phantasms in dungeons/fractals. If you did before, it wasn’t on these forums. You do seem to think you can explain it though, so I invite you to try.
(edited by Pyroatheist.9031)
Unfair in every way isn’t fun. Nor is it challenging. It’s cheap, and bad game design. Being absurdly hard is perfectly acceptable, but trial-and-error gameplay is not.
I find it fun to puzzle through the levels, to do my best to avoid the traps by taking the less obvious path, and the immense satisfaction at the end when you’ve completed it.
That is fun.
While there are obviously still some hitbox and lag issues remaining in some spots of World 2, the complaining from all of you people is absolutely disproportionate to that.
Tribulation mode is designed to be absurdly hard, unfair in every way, and challenging to get through.
Josh Foreman should be feeding on the tears of you whiners, and reveling in the satisfaction of a job well done!
All invites should be sent. If you did not receive an invite, you had full guild membership already.
Was so focused on the ascended crafting and SAB that I didn’t notice this undocumented change!
Well done ANet! Good time to show off that improved Minstrel too.
You’re just a tad late on this one. About a month late as it were.
Please stop bumping this thread folks. Just let it die quietly, and report any of menace’s posts that he makes when he bumps it.
Please
And what would the criteria for build of the month be?
Hell if I know, got any ideas?
Hmz, this isn’t a half bad idea. We can look into doing something like this.
@Lockdown burst build: I’ve been messing with this for a bit. It just feels a bit weak and a bit too spread out. I’m certainly able to kill people sometimes, but not always, and often times the damage simply isn’t high enough.
Interrupts are still of questionable usage. It’s extremely difficult to interrupt asuras, and some classes have very few interruptable skills.
While the build works, it just doesn’t seem particularly optimal for particularly anything.
i’d say that in 0/20/0/25/25 its better to have a GS-sw/focus for istances.
You can’t play everything melee.
Fractals is a great example….where melee triggers stuff you don t want to trigger sometimes like ascalon boss or lava shaman (ranged you can keep your phantasms alive, the moment you melee you trigger aoe that kills all).
And with that build you are fast enough to keep enough phantasms uptime to not need anothyer melee set (if you need btw i’d use a pistol for added bleeding stacks rather than a sword)
While I do advocate having a GS in all PvE content, you used a poor example. The best way to do the lava shaman is melee range using your traited focus for protection against his attacks. The aoes happen randomly, and have no correlation with being melee range.
The problem is that crits deal 50% more damage than your base at 0% crit damage, so if you crit more then you’re basically getting 50%+ illusion damage (+ any crit damage you have in your gear/traiting), and 10 points in dueling and going for phantasmal fury boosts your phantasm precision by 30%.
To the OP, for the sake of PvE (WvW and PvP is different obviously) I’d recommend using exclusively melee weapons so that you develop good habits right now rather than relying on crutches like range.
Well, take a quick look at the math.
With 10 points in domination, phantasms will be doing 15% more damage. With an approximate base power of around 300ish at level 30, you will be increasing your total damage by 33% by adding 100 power, for a total damage increase of 33% on all skills and 53% on phantasms.
With 10 points in dueling, you’ll gain a passive 20% crit chance from the 100 precision, and another 20% from the fury, which means phantasms will be doing 60% more damage 40% of the time. 60%*.4 comes out to an overall increase of 12% on all skills and 24% damage from phantasms.
However, the next 10 points definitely go into dueling for the fury and crit.
(edited by Pyroatheist.9031)