Guild Wars 2

Could I get confirmation that the runes are bugged, and precisely how they are bugged?

@Unknown and shimmerless: I’ll test those out then remove them from the list.

If you could post the build you use to stack the vuln, I could give a better response. You won’t take a player simply because they can stack vuln, especially not a Mesmer. If you are able to do the vuln while still performing the normal utility of a dungeon Mesmer, then by all means run it.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

i understand completely, you guyz are right. But i truly believe that this build will come through. Like so what if i dont have the 20% extra burst for mindwrack. Osicat’s msit build doesn’t have that either and he is cool. Maybe i need to mess with it more. BUt i believe it can do better. Thank you for your comments though. I really need more feedbacks. Thank you again and keep commenting

The main issue is that your build simply won’t do anything. Your shatters won’t hurt at all, your conditions will hardly tickle, and your stealth skills are on long cooldowns that don’t really give you anything. People will basically be able to afk on your build without dying, and to top it all off, you have pretty much no defense other than stealth. That’s the problem.

Quite honestly, I don’t think this build is good at all. You are trying to hybridize between power shatter and condition clone on death, and you just end up with a build that has extremely poor condition damage, extremely poor power damage, extremely poor power shatters, and no phantasm damage. Not entirely sure what this is supposed to do effectively.

You have low power and low condition damage because you are trying to mix both sets of gear. Unfortunately for your power shatters, you also fail to take mental torment, meaning your shatters are going to do 20% less damage just as a base value. By not going 20 into domination, you also lose out on torch cooldowns, which means your chosen offhand will have absurdly long cooldowns in addition to having a useless phantasm.

Mesmers are a specialist class, and trying to do too many different things in the same build invariably results in failure. Since the start of this game, I haven’t seen a single hybrid condition damage/power build that was worth even trying out, and this is unfortunately no exception.

That is a phantasm build. It’s a somewhat poorly optimized phantasm build in my opinion, but it most definitely is one. It’s a decent build though.

vincecontix.1264:

Turn I had a bugged weapon anything like this happen to anyone else?

I’d love to actually see a video showing this bug. I’ve never heard of anything ever happening like this, but if you can really demonstrate it, I’ll add it to the list.

Palu’s post is excellent with one exception: the fury is not time limited. Phantasmal fury is a permanent boon on the phantasms refreshing every 10 seconds iirc.

You have very high crit power. As a rule of thumb, as your crit power increases, each point of crit chance is worth more, and at high crit power increasing your crit chance is by far the best way to increase damage.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Pyroatheist.9031:

If they 1shot you with 8,149 damage, I’d like to know how you lowered the minimum health on the mesmer by about 6 thousand.

Failure to read aye Pyro? He was “one shotted” from half health.

Anyway 8k’s nothing. I wakitten for 11k with at least 2900 armor. Sneaky backline warrior trying to take me out.

The op edited his post somewhat.

WingedDestinyX.1423:

Hi!
I’ve just made a Mesmer and I’m wondering… Is this build still effective?

Tnx!

Yes, this build is still effective. Since the patches, the proper trait setup has changed slightly, and I’ve been a bit lax at updating the guide. The traits should be 10/30/0/30/0. In inspiration, I’ll take phantasm hp, mender’s purity, and then sometimes restorative mantras, sometimes compounding celerity, it depends on what I’m fighting.

As was mentioned, the signet did get a nerf. However, base phantasm hp got buffed and the signet was fixed to apply its buff immediately instead of after 10 seconds, so the phantasm hp was buffed in general.

If they 1shot you with 8,149 damage, I’d like to know how you lowered the minimum health on the mesmer by about 6 thousand.

Take a look at the build and guide list stickied at the top of the forums. It has a lot of fantastic builds and guides for you to browse.

The sword phantasm is extremely strong. It does more reliable damage than the pistol phantasm as it is difficult to LoS, can not be negated with projectile reflects, and will ignore retaliation while evading on its attack that is also a leap combo finisher.

It will not stack up bleeds like the pistol, but it will do reliable high output sustained damage by attacking every 3.6 seconds. It is not affected by phantasmal haste, and this is actually good here since it means you don’t need to put 20 points into illusions to maximize its damage potential. Additionally, OH sword comes with a nice block for a bit of added defense.

Your build doesn’t have a focus unfortunately. It’s got a bunch of random traits that don’t work together well.

You’ve got deceptive evasion, but lack mental torment, illusionary persona, and illusionary invigoration, so this is not a shatter build.

You lack phantasmal fury and both 15% traits, so this is not a phantasm build.

You don’t have glamour traits, clone on death traits, or interrupt traits, so it isn’t either of those.

You’ve just got a bunch of traits with no central idea, glass cannon armor, an odd selection of runes maximizing swiftness uptime without actually using them to provide swiftness…it doesn’t really make sense. You need to figure out what you actually want this build to do, and then build around it.

Devildoc.6721:

Esplen.3940:

Don’t run 10/30/0/30/0. If you’re doing Phantasm, run 10/10/0/25/25 or 10/15/0/25/20 for maximum dps (second one for solo, bleed stacks will help out).

If you’re doing shatter, run, for uber dps, 10/30/0/0/30 or 20/20/0/0/30.

Keep in mind, that base direct damage, Mesmers are the weakest in the game. Once you trait, you become really strong (your nuke isn’t quite as fast as thief/warrior, but you can down an enemy ridiculously fast, nonetheless).

Also, keep in mind that non-Shatter Mesmers CANNOT utilize Sigils of Force(or Night / XXX Slaying) because they have little to no direct damage.

Sigils of Accuracy are viable choices on Phantasm (and even Shatter) builds, since they are confirmed to work on Phantasms (and Clones) with a recent change.

Losing blade training and deceptive evasion is a lot, and you lose sharper images.

Deceptive evasion is not a high priority trait for a phantasm build. Quite the opposite in fact. You don’t want to take it because you don’t want to overwrite a phantasm with a dodge clone.

Pistol whip can easily mess you up on retal. It’s an aoe cleave attack, hitting 3 targets 9 times each for a total of 27 hits. If you take 230 damage from each proc, you will receive a total of 6,210 damage purely from retaliation.

@Martial: That is how it works. However, at higher levels, the defiant stacks scale massively, so you’ll end up with 20 or 30 stacks each time, making skillful interrupts more or less completely useless.

Tots.3056:

I was on my mesmer. He was a mesmer. Maybe it’s the downed skill? But from what I remember it says Phantasmal Rogue hits you for XXX damage. Not Smoke bomb. The issue is he wasn’t downed when it hit me.

Ah, that’s right. It is the phantasmal rogue skill. All the phantasms have an odd skill name that shows up in the combat log, and smoke bomb is the skill that comes from the phantasmal rogue.

What class were you playing at the time?

echofoxtrot.4239:

different opinions on confusing enchantments. understandable, seeing as the debatable usefulness of confusion in PVE is the reason i switched from a confusion build to this phantasm build in the first place. the best thing to do unfortunately might just be to put these last 10 points in a line with stats that help balance the build and not really worry about the trait.

keenlam.4753:

Also, i strongly suggest you try Shattered Conditions as an alternative to Mender’s Purity. Because you run with Signet of Illusions, you basically can have 8 conditions cleansed on demand (4 shatters with reset = 8 shatters), for you and your allies..

i gotta say, im a big fan of mender’s purity. i use mirror so i can reflect, which has a shorter cool down than ether feast, in addition to the on-demand condition removal. it’s a nice smaller removal so i dont have to use null field every time i want to lose one stack of something.

plus, shattering in a phantasm build just to remove a condition seems counter-intuitive, even though it does it in an AoE. on top of that, the inspiration line already has too many good trait choices to use one of them on this. i wish just one of them was in dom or duel so these last 10 point weren’t such a bother.

Shattered conditions is a great burst aoe condition removal….but you really don’t want it in a phantasm build. You want to avoid shattering even in situations where you must remove conditions, and so mender’s purity really does a great job.

skcamow.3527:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Martial.4916:

So when bosses have defiant, they are immune to immobilize, cripple, chill and blind (Chaotic Interruption)? Well at least we can get might and apply vulnerability.

I have one more question. When we apply diversion and have 3 clones activated, do each clone apply one stack of daze?

Thanks everyone.

Bosses are immune ONLY to hard cc when they have defiant. The base buff that applies defiant, ‘unshakeable’ makes blinds only 10% effective and causes the duration of weakness and vulnerability to be halfed.

All other types of cc work fine.

Thanks for the clarification. So when a boss has Defiant, it is immune to these hard cc’s:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

Meaning immobilize, chill and cripple can still get inflicted if proc’d, correct?
EDIT: Understanding that in this case they can’t be proc’d from Chaotic Interruption, due to the interrupt requirement (daze/push/pull of which it’s immune), but it can get these conditions from other classes or our potential sources (like an iLeap/Swap)?

If you use an interrupt while a boss is casting an ability, the interrupt actually will occur. You’ll get the little interrupt floater, and your interrupt traits will proc, you just won’t actually interrupt the skill, but instead remove a stack of defiant.

This build does stack confusion very effectively for sure. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much all it does. If your target fails to spam buttons during the few seconds your confusion is on them, your damage potential really drops to almost nothing.

Martial.4916:

So when bosses have defiant, they are immune to immobilize, cripple, chill and blind (Chaotic Interruption)? Well at least we can get might and apply vulnerability.

I have one more question. When we apply diversion and have 3 clones activated, do each clone apply one stack of daze?

Thanks everyone.

Bosses are immune ONLY to hard cc when they have defiant. The base buff that applies defiant, ‘unshakeable’ makes blinds only 10% effective and causes the duration of weakness and vulnerability to be halfed.

All other types of cc work fine.

echofoxtrot.4239:

Nretep.2564:

@build
do you really need the 10 pts in illusions ?

it was for the “distortion grants reflection” to go along with my reflection thing i had going. never used it though, so i changed it to higher % mind wrack crit chance.

dont really see any better options. thoughts?

That trait isn’t hugely useful, especially in pve. You won’t ever be using distortion for the reflect, you use it for the defense, and with that trait you also get a reflect. With good play though, you only have to use distortion extremely infrequently, making this trait not particularly worth it.

Taking precise wrack instead is probably a worse choice though. You want to avoid using mind wrack since it’ll only lower your dps.

You could put the 10 into dueling simply for the increased damage, taking a random trait with it. You could also put it into chaos taking illusionary defense to get some extra durability based off of your phantasms.

Edit: Taking confusing enchantments in domination is an abysmal choice. Confusion is worthless in pve, and mobs don’t usually move a whole lot, so it is rare that they will even proc the trait.

Quoted from the wiki:

Retaliation is a boon that damages anyone who hits the affected target. The attacker will not be damaged if the attack fails to hit.

It does precisely what the wiki says it does; no more and no less.

Others have given pretty good advice. You have a reasonably solid shatter build though.

For open world pve, shatter is great. Mobs have low enough hp that shatter bursts are able to easily rip them apart. Unfortunately, in dungeons and fractals, shatter builds are rather lackluster. The shatter burst isn’t enough to take out any mobs, and it has significantly less available group utility than a phantasm build, along with phantasm builds doing far higher sustained dps. You may want to consider changing around your basic play style for endgame pve content, though shatter will also work very well in wvw.

Azo.5860:

Baa.4582:

Azo.5860:

yeah so its not bug.. however it doesnt make me any sense it should be on regular timing on all classes with defensive skills..
i put the video of what i mean how i get those confusion stacks..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yecRyBzCbW0
and it seems whadda big nerf on blurred frenzy..

The video is private.

u can open with that link now

Just watched your video. It’s tough to tell on my phone, but that could very well be a script bug. I’ll look into it more when I’m on my computer.

UnknownFreak.2805:

Trait # Restorative Mantras Heal allies when casting a mantra does not work is it when you “Charge it” or when to cast the “Charged” skill ( like Power return)?

Pretty sure it’s when you cast it and not charge it.

Restorative mantras procs on charge, not on cast. This is not a bug.

Focus is very easy to characterize. Did you ever get pulled around, and did he ever produce a large, stationary, whirling phantasm?

@ArmageddonAsh: Do try to actually read the posts you are replying to. He aknowledged the fact that phantasm builds are hardly viable in tpvp, and was simply stating how he handles conditions in them.

With regards to shattered conditions—it is an incredibly powerful trait. 3 conditions isn’t super high, but 3 conditions in an aoe is. You’re going to be removing closer to 6 or 9 conditions every time you do a full shatter if you play correctly with that trait.

It’s not binding blade and its not infiltrators arrow. There are only 2 skills in the game that will work that way: dark path and that thief d/p 3 skill. Those skills teleport them to you on contact. When reflected, they count as being casted by you instead, and so teleport you to them. Iirc, the trait that adds a bounce to thief pistol skills can cause that attack to bounce, and while the first hit is unblockable, they forgot to add that fact to the second bit.

raMSayy.7413:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Having played extensively since the big patch, I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that this build is no longer viable.

are there any similar builds that may use up my hardly gathered soldier armor or it all should go to salvage?

You can make a pretty good tanky phantasm build with soldiers gear, though I don’t know exactly what traits youd want for that off the top of my head…something like 10/30/10/20 or so. You could also take a look at jportell’s protection build, that would work nicely with the soldiers gear.

What that analysis shows is that celestial is better in most cases for a build that wants to maximize crit damage, but falls behind for a build that wants to maximize about anything else. Even though the number of useful points is still higher in some cases, celestial gear is so spread out that if you just want to focus on a couple stats, you shouldn’t take it…unless that stat is crit damage.

• adding an asterisk and a space
• at the start of lines
• makes bullet points

1. adding a hash and a space
2. makes numbered
3. lists

Signets are just not very good. There are several problems with them.

Firstly, the traits are all over the place and have extraordinarily tiny effects compared to the cooldowns of the signets themselves.

Secondly, the signets themselves have issues. Most of the active effects don’t really mesh well with the passives, and the actives and passives DEFINITELY do not mesh well with each other. The result of equipping 3 signets is simply that you’ll have 3 random utilities on your bar doing random things that don’t in any way, shape, or form, work together. Any build that uses full signets will be worse than any other serious build.

That being said, it’s sorta fun to troll in PvP with a full signet + torch + PU build, maximizing invulnerability uptime and stealth uptime. It doesn’t actually do anything, but it’s sorta amusing.

@skcamow: My immortal build isn’t the only viable tank build out there, not by a long shot. However, the immortal build is designed as a retaliation tank, and that is no longer possible. You can make other very effective tank builds, but this particular one no longer really works.

Having played extensively since the big patch, I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that this build is no longer viable. The retaliation trait was the very basis of this build. With that trait effectively gone, this build no longer has any offense available to it, and simply becomes a difficult to kill Mesmer that you can completely ignore.

I will be adding this note to the beginning of the build. Many of the tips and tricks I have in the guide are still helpful and valid, so I’ll be leaving it up, but until Anet fixes the retaliation trait into a form that isn’t worthless, this build will unfortunately remain unplayable.

Kaisukii.7809:

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I am having increasing problems with engi 1v1 … do you have any advice on them? I read your piece at the beginning but it doesn’t seem to be working ..

Are you using this build for the duels? If so, that’s your problem as this build is no longer truly viable, but I’m glad to offer advice otherwise.

keenlam.4753:

I think Pyro shows a complete understanding of how the skill works.

@Pyro: Just a couple of things I haven’t been able to confirm.
- Is the clone generated with the block being triggered or with the counter effects (0.5s after the block)?
- Is the counter effects (dmg + torment) required LOS to apply on the target?
Thanks

No idea, I’ll test it out.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Would be nice if they added some kind of short knock back so a counter feels like one

Warriors counter with knockbacks/dazes/stuns, we counter with magic.

skcamow.3527:

Pyroatheist.9031:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Pyroatheist.9031:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Pyroatheist.9031:

@ArmageddonAsh: You are wrong. Standing still for the duration of the block is absolutely unnecessary, and I have no idea how you managed to ‘test’ that as true.

I have tested in duels in WvW as well as in PvE. If you dodge AFTER you have been “hit” but before the actual duration runs out they don’t get the Torment proc. Seems like an issue to me, it should be INSTANT not wait until the duration of the block has ended…

The way it works is you have a 2 second channel. If you are hit during that channel, that attack is immediately blocked, and in .5 seconds your target will get hit with the counterattack. If you dodge in that .5 second window, the counterattack will not occur.

Thats the problem. It SHOULDN’T be like that, as if the duration isn’t short enough, It should INSTANTLY afflict them.

No it shouldn’t instantly affect them. In games, we like to have something called counterplay. If someone can dodge or interrupt in that .5s window, they are displaying extraordinary counterplay. Removing that possibility simply makes it easier for bad players to do well.

I tend to agree with this, but it brings up a whole other discussion of balance. I mean, there are plenty of skills that have no chance of counterplay from an opponent. e.g., mantras – take mantra of pain. Sure, the opponent can clearly see you charge it, but will have no control or be able to tell when you actually use the instant cast. Is it the fact that all classes have access to certain “instant cast” skills and that’s declared balanced?

In the case of mantras, the counterplay is interrupting the charge, along with recognizing what mantras they have charged, baiting them out, and then preventing them from recharging them. In the case of other instant cast skills, not all instant cast skills need counterplay. Stunbreakers for example, or skills that provide boons. However, with something like these blocks, where it not only provides you with a block, but also an extremely powerful counterattack (in WvW condie build, the scepter block does 13k torment damage) some form of skillfull counterplay must be possible.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Pyroatheist.9031:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Pyroatheist.9031:

@ArmageddonAsh: You are wrong. Standing still for the duration of the block is absolutely unnecessary, and I have no idea how you managed to ‘test’ that as true.

I have tested in duels in WvW as well as in PvE. If you dodge AFTER you have been “hit” but before the actual duration runs out they don’t get the Torment proc. Seems like an issue to me, it should be INSTANT not wait until the duration of the block has ended…

The way it works is you have a 2 second channel. If you are hit during that channel, that attack is immediately blocked, and in .5 seconds your target will get hit with the counterattack. If you dodge in that .5 second window, the counterattack will not occur.

Thats the problem. It SHOULDN’T be like that, as if the duration isn’t short enough, It should INSTANTLY afflict them.

No it shouldn’t instantly affect them. In games, we like to have something called counterplay. If someone can dodge or interrupt in that .5s window, they are displaying extraordinary counterplay. Removing that possibility simply makes it easier for bad players to do well.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Pyroatheist.9031:

@ArmageddonAsh: You are wrong. Standing still for the duration of the block is absolutely unnecessary, and I have no idea how you managed to ‘test’ that as true.

I have tested in duels in WvW as well as in PvE. If you dodge AFTER you have been “hit” but before the actual duration runs out they don’t get the Torment proc. Seems like an issue to me, it should be INSTANT not wait until the duration of the block has ended…

The way it works is you have a 2 second channel. If you are hit during that channel, that attack is immediately blocked, and in .5 seconds your target will get hit with the counterattack. If you dodge in that .5 second window, the counterattack will not occur. It does not matter if you are hit at the start of the channel or the end, the .5 second timer is the same no matter what.

Zenyoga.6910:

This is a common response that I’ve seen from everyone, however this has not been my experience. If it were I would of lost a lot more duels since D/D ele’s and Guardians and Rangers would of just cleaned everything I had to throw at them, but this was not the case, plus I was dueling on a non-point, which makes it easier for them since they can move out of the fire field easily and not suffer losing a point in tpvp.

Also if what you say were true, then this problem would be eliminated even more with your teammate giving cover with their conditions as well.

Quite honestly, if you won duels vs d/d eles and guardians, then you were fighting very bad players.

The only really stackable condition you have is bleeding, and you really sorta have to be in melee range to do that effectively. You can do burning from your longbow burst, but you can just move out of that, and it’s not high potency anyway.

When you only reliably apply 1 condition and unreliably apply a second, you have no chance of succeeding against anyone with even mediocre condition removal. Let’s compare it to some other condition classes.

Necro: Bleeding, burning, poison, weakness, vulnerability, blind, cripple, chill, fear, torment

Engineer: Bleeding, burning, poison, vulnerability, blind, cripple, immobilize, confusion, chill

Mesmer: Bleeding, burning, vulnerability, cripple, weakness, torment, confusion, blind

All of these other classes can apply massive numbers of conditions in high quantities. You have bleeding, a bit of burning, an immobilize now and then. That’s about it.

The thing about CC warriors is that every ounce of CC a warrior has is strongly telegraphed and easily dodged. If you are complaining about a CC warrior, you need to significantly re-evaluate your playstyle.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

(Please don’t nerf Restorative Illusions ANet)

Oh dear god, is the wiki’s math right on that?!

…

In the immortal words of Sergent Hans Schultz, “I see nothing—NOTHING!”

Pretty sure the wiki math there is from Chaos himself, so I believe it is accurate.

The form of the scepter and sword blocks is perfectly fine. The pause between block and response basically allows for counterplay. It allows good players to be able to trigger the block and then dodge the reaction if the mesmer just sits there with the block. On the other hand, the mesmer is also able to rapidly put up the block, reducing the ability of an enemy to react to the block reaction.

The time between block and response is about .5 seconds. This is really an inconsequential amount of time. Putting a blur or invuln effect in here is unnecessary. If someone actually manages to interrupt you in that time, that is extraordinary counterplay and should be rewarded.

Making the skill into an aura would follow the same troublesome trend of rewarding bad players and punishing good players. The current implementation punishes you for holding it out longer. Good players will activate the block just as necessary, and not walk around holding it out. Bad players will walk around holding it out. Making it into an aura essentially encourages a poor playstyle with no consequences.

@ArmageddonAsh: You are wrong. Standing still for the duration of the block is absolutely unnecessary, and I have no idea how you managed to ‘test’ that as true.

Yeah, this is an old one

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Levitas mentioned WoC but what about mirror blade? Probably a wvw thing but charge up mimic with mirror blade on an unlucky moa. Run around for a while. Double cast mirror blade on a poor soul. Traited, it will do 6 hits with 18 vulnerability and 12 might and 2 clones to shatter.

Instagib? Mirror blade could also help proc the blocks when your opponent is only doing melee/lasers.

If I recall correctly, you actually have to get hit by the attack that you are absorbing. So absorbing kill shot is a no. Channeled ranged attacks are better for guaranteed reflects but then you only echo 1 attack not the volley? Mirror blade seems perfect for getting around both of these caveats.

Unfortunately, an absorbed mirror blade does nothing. I think this might have something to do with it being an unblockable, but it’s hard to tell.

Trigr.6481:

Levitas.1953:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Only the one that give a random condition because all three conditions given are crap. Additional confusion on shatter or cripple would be too much

edit: actually even that would be too much unless its in Grandmaster trait

Crap? that trait is golden.

The golden rule is, if you ignore the oblivious, they go away eventually.

The trait is irritating because it disregards the rule of good RNG: All effects must do something useful. It has vuln (again with the vuln >_<) on a condition damage trait, and really hurts its effectiveness.