There were no negative changes to this build from the patch. Using the mantra heal may now be a better choice in more situations, and when the situation demands, using the condition removal mantra will also be more effective. I’ll need to do some testing to determine the normally optimal healing skill now, but ether feast remains a great choice.
try this build a couple day. and start using heal mantra with trait mantra heal alies. its better choise becouse cast mantra give u 2.7+k hp and use just heal give me 2.7×2hp
so we got 8k+healbtw still against s/d thief with daze hard to duel. 50/50 i can say
I’ve tried using mantra heals, but to get it, you have to untrait either mender’s purity or the phantasm hp. Mender’s purity is necessary for sure, and as it turns out, without the phantasm hp trait, they die so fast you wont even have anything to heal with the mantra.
It’s definitely an interesting thought, but ends up being far less effective in reality.
I would like to know what your ‘rotation’ for this build is. Do you start with GS and switch to staff? What weapon do you mainly use?
I use whatever weapons fit the situation.
For example, I actually tend to often use the sword/focus now, because the pull is so useful for grouping mobs. However, there are some fights where I don’t want to be close, such as the ettin/flameshaman/bomb/bunny in the harpy fractal, when I will use greatsword and staff. In the jade maw fractal, staff is not appropriate because it is projectiles, I’ll stick to sword/focus and greatsword, but when I get to the main platform, I’ll swap to sword/sword, because the extra block defense allows me to fight the tentacles at close range easier.
There really is no ‘rotation’ for this build, and there is no single weapon setup that I use for all situations. Every situation calls for different weapons and different utilities, and sometimes even different traits, so don’t be afraid to swap around everything you have to work better in a situation.
I’ll have you know, I dragged Kylia’s sorry kitten through the molten facility. Getting him there went like this:
“Ok, go to diessa”
“I don’t have that”
“Ok, you can get there by going north from the black citadel”
“I don’t have that either”
“>_<. Ok, you can get to the black citadel by going through the portal in Lion’s Arch”
" What portal in lion’s arch?"
“/facepalm”Please tell me this is recorded somehwere, and will make an appearance on outakes of Mesmerized :P.
Does this mean Pyro might be there for some Mesmer Q and A?
Yes, recorded in full (I think we got that part, though I honestly don’t remember. We got the whole run certainly [though I didn’t think to fraps it, silly me])
Why did you answer your own question?
He answered his own question in an attempt to make the question look legitamite.
Regardless, this is silly. If you’re worried that other people will use your build, then you just must not be very good with it. The effectiveness of a build is determined by the player, and good players have nothing to hide, as true skill can’t be merely copied.
I’m trying to make my question look legitimate? What exactly is an illegitimate question? And whether I’m a good or bad has nothing to do with it. It’s all a matter of personal preference. Some prefer not to share their trait set up; that’s all. And I don’t see what the issue is. Having the option to toggle viewing of traits off and on works for everyone.
It’s either you agree or disagree. But I don’t see why anyone would disagree with an option that appeases everyone. But I guess some people like to play devil’s advocate. And I guess some people got nothing better to do than to read too much into things to imply the person making the post must not be a very good player.
You answered your own question. That’s….so silly it’s hard to describe. The obvious reason is that you noticed that no one was going to give you the answer you wanted to see, so you just made it up yourself. It’s ridiculous.
Wow. Much friendlier than the thief forums. Most of that is l2p, nerf stealth, or as a poster above me said, burst or gtfo. (I didn’t use a burst build either)
As a different profession, I can spot the real mesmer fairly easy (the dodging usually) but I was under the impression I was supposed to pretty much have my target surrounded or else my shatter would fail lol. I’ve noticed a few times I’ll have someone targeted, press a shatter, it goes on cd yet I still have 3 illusions o.o
Thanks again for the warm welcome
When you summon illusions, they are bound to a specific target. That target will be the one they attack when you shatter them, not your current target at the time of shattering.
I’ll have you know, I dragged Kylia’s sorry kitten through the molten facility. Getting him there went like this:
“Ok, go to diessa”
“I don’t have that”
“Ok, you can get there by going north from the black citadel”
“I don’t have that either”
“>_<. Ok, you can get to the black citadel by going through the portal in Lion’s Arch”
" What portal in lion’s arch?"
“/facepalm”
Why do you need to keep your build secret? If someone else is “stealing” it you still can use it. You lose nothing.
Sure, you can still use it, but once a build become public knowledge, countering that build also does. So long as you are able to do things that your enemy didn’t think you could, you hold an advantage.
Any good pvper will recognize what your build is and how it does it after one, maybe two encounters with it. Countering a build is a non-issue.
One or two encounters can be the difference in a win or a loss in tournaments.
In a tournament it doesn’t matter. If your build is not able to counter the other build, you’re out of luck, and if it does counter it, then you counter.
The only counter to a phantasm Mesmer in a 1v1 is another phantasm Mesmer.
Since you’re assuming a 1v1 scenario, that allows for specific counter utilities. If I’m going against a condition heavy class, I will take the heal mantra for rapid condition removal through mender’s purity as well as the condition removal mantra. Between the 2 of those, you can remove about 8 conditions every 20 seconds, which is far more than enough to deal with any condition class.
Other classes and builds have different counters. I will change my utilities to suit each individual 1v1. There is no counter to a phantasm Mesmer with utilities set up for your class. If you catch the Mesmer with poorly set up utilities, you have a chance, although the build is still immensely powerful.
Why do you need to keep your build secret? If someone else is “stealing” it you still can use it. You lose nothing.
Sure, you can still use it, but once a build become public knowledge, countering that build also does. So long as you are able to do things that your enemy didn’t think you could, you hold an advantage.
Any good pvper will recognize what your build is and how it does it after one, maybe two encounters with it. Countering a build is a non-issue.
Why did you answer your own question?
He answered his own question in an attempt to make the question look legitamite.
Regardless, this is silly. If you’re worried that other people will use your build, then you just must not be very good with it. The effectiveness of a build is determined by the player, and good players have nothing to hide, as true skill can’t be merely copied.
Lol, everyone’s giving friendly welcomes and advice while completely ignoring the fact that op did ask a specific question.
In general, you don’t need to worry so much about where your own illusions are, within reason. As a side benefit of playing a Mesmer though, you’ll begin to recognize the differences between illusions and the real Mesmer, and as time goes on, you’ll be able to spot the real one very quickly. This is mainly a skill that just takes time and experience to develop.
One if my favorite scepter ideas (doubt it’ll happen) is make it so your scepter clones make a “lesser” clone from their auto attack giving you a total of 6 clones that can be shattered.
Too complicated. Keep it simple.
There would be only 2 options for the duration of confusion inflicted by this change, and no middle ground. It would either be so short as to be entirely useless, or long enough to be obscenely overpowered. This is a really bad idea.
Pyroatheist, I need advice on my new to mesmer, I would soon be levels 80, but I still hesitate on the build.
I am mainly going to make of the roamer, then I do not know if i can use your build (retaliation) or my build PVP (shatter: 20/20/0/0/30)
It is a good idea to roam to berserker armor?
Sorry for my english, i need your help/advice, thanks.
You can roam with either my build or a more offensive zerker armor build. They both work. I prefer my build, of course, because it has much more survivability. If I run I to 5 or 6 people, I’ll probably survive, whereas a zerker build would have a very difficult time of doing so.
Sometimes the stealth animation will fail to render on your character. You will have the stealth buff, but look visible as normal. This is a client-side glitch, and does not actually show up to other players.
This is very interesting. The iMage is still almost completely useless of course, but this change has very interesting implications for staff condition builds, as well as for on-clone-death builds.
Guys…guys….guys….you’re killing me here.
Seriously, have you all devolved so far that you can’t spot a troll this obvious at 10 paces? Please don’t feed it.
Thanks for the response, that’s what I assumed.
Actually my build is similar to yours in a lot of ways, but not AS tanky.
I have a question for you though if you don’t mind. Do you know if the double retaliation still works on the phantasmal defender? I tried testing this in the mists but I can’t really tell if it worked.
Most certainly does.
Shatter is a skill that is based from your character. Your critical chance/damage/etc are the stats used for shatters.
Feedback requires an enemy target to use precisely. However, if you cast it without a target, it will appear on the ground at 1200 range directly in front of you.
Additionally, you can trait to create a feedback bubble when you revive an ally, and that bubble will be centered on you.
As far as retaliation/reflection is concerned, take a look at the build in my signature, as those 2 concepts are pretty much what my build is all about.
after this epic patch, i change a lil build. remove retalation from build and give more dmg from phantasm, still unbeatble vs thieves, but need more test
Retaliation IS this build. What you have there is some form of a phantasm build, not related in any way, shape, or form to this tank build.
My money is on a tooltip error, not a skill error. Every other ‘on death’ trait is only for clones. Confusing combatants most likely was just a mistake in the description.
I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of points wasted in the last trait tree that could be better invested for upping damage. I’d imagine that loss of damage would be that the user of the build can’t kill fast enough in a duel and enemy reinforcement comes and it’s GG.
Since you guys are saying phantasm is good, how about a build that takes all of the phantasm +dmg traits in the game?
10 (III=15% phantasm damage)
15 (II = Phantasm has fury)
25 (25th passive=15% Phantasm damage)
20 (the trait that increases the attack speed of phantoms)^ Guessing it would be a horrible build.
Since phantasms die almost instantly most of the times, the last trait is probably useless and then maybe this would be best:
20/20/0/25/5
^ This would hit more of the key traits, suchas illusions causing bleed and 20% reduction time in illusion in both GS and pistol. But then again, I have no idea what im talking about.
You were looking at my Immortal build. However, I also have a phantasm build for pve, and what loseridoit was talking about, a phantasm build for pvp. You can find the latter under the simple name of ‘overpowered’ in Fay’s build list.
mmm, only one proper response to this…
We are missing the floater and also whirl hits. IMO, we miss hits and we do not miss floaters.
Problem is, iZerker damage is greater at the 3 and 4 whirl rotation. We’re missing way more than a 25 % damage reduction. More like closer to 50 %. (It increases in damage like iDuelist and iWarden).
No, that’s just how multihit skills display. They show a running total of damage inflicted.
I got confused. Sorry i’m not the best reader, and checking the build site you linked it’s just got Staff and Greatsword. Would I be up close and personal with Blurred Frenzy? I quite like that aspect to be honest. I’m being a bit awkward. DX
My build is based off of staff and greatsword for general use, but requires having 2 swords, a focus, a greatsword, a staff, and a pistol for swapping between depending on the situation. Some fights are not suitable for getting into close range, so no sword. Some fights are not suitable for long range, so no greatsword or staff. Some fights aren’t suitable for projectiles, etc etc. In order to be a fully versatile mesmer, you need a fully versatile set of weapons.
Updattte; Decided i’d like to go with a shatter build, suggestions on that front, remember, main weapons being Sword/Focus! <3
Focus is a poor choice for a shatter build. The warden is on a comparatively long cool down, and is best used by dropping it and letting it persist on the field for as long as possible to provide the greatest utility.
Fair enough, what would you suggest then? If not Focus, what else?
Sword. You get to have 5 skills from one cool down trait. The sword phantasm has the fastest and most reliable attack, and so can be shattered quickly, and the sword block can either daze, or produce another clone if triggered.
Ok, and what would you suggest if I were to keep Sword and Focus, or the other combinations?
A phantasm focused build. Wardens do a lot of aoe damage, and their beauty is in the massive projectile reflecting bubble they provide. The longer they live and the more wardens you can produce, the more effective they will be.
Updattte; Decided i’d like to go with a shatter build, suggestions on that front, remember, main weapons being Sword/Focus! <3
Focus is a poor choice for a shatter build. The warden is on a comparatively long cool down, and is best used by dropping it and letting it persist on the field for as long as possible to provide the greatest utility.
Fair enough, what would you suggest then? If not Focus, what else?
Sword. You get to have 5 skills from one cool down trait. The sword phantasm has the fastest and most reliable attack, and so can be shattered quickly, and the sword block can either daze, or produce another clone if triggered.
Updattte; Decided i’d like to go with a shatter build, suggestions on that front, remember, main weapons being Sword/Focus! <3
Focus is a poor choice for a shatter build. The warden is on a comparatively long cool down, and is best used by dropping it and letting it persist on the field for as long as possible to provide the greatest utility.
For pve dungeon running, I use mostly zerker gear with a mix of pvt on my accessories and weapons to bring me up to 20k hp. Shatter builds tend to be a bit less optimal in higher pve content as phantasms will usually end up doing more damage over the course of a fight, and clone tend to get destroyed real quick.
@Justine: completely agree. It’s frustrating that the reward system is such that they will get a badge from me even though they are lvl 80 and I’m uplevel. Many times they just sit and wait for the uplevels, ignoring the lvl 80’s that are also running supply. Why work for a badge when you can take the uplevel with relative ease? Sad……
Not sad, smart.
You and everyone else are all carrying the same supply. It’s all going to the same place, for the same purpose. All other things equal, every one of you is worth the same as a target. However, uplevels die faster and easier. The faster they kill, the less supply gets run.
@hardloop von edgehoven: This thread is for posting links to a separate thread, website, or other location where your build is located. This thread is not for posting write ups about your build. Please make a separate thread and remove the post from this thread.
I’m a little confused about the retal nerf in WvW to Spvp levels, as I don’t play Wvw, but I thought there was no difference previously?
Also yeah I had swapped out mirror images a while ago for one of our condition removing skills because I didn’t feel like in Spvp mirror images was helping all that much, and I felt I needed the extra condition help because whirl finisher isn’t always on demand. So for tpvp the switch is a no brainer, but for Wvw where melandru’s + food makes conditions a non issue, I’d have a tougher choice on what to replace mirror images with
Apparently retaliation damage is lower in spvp. That being said, I’ve noticed no difference in retal damage compared to pre-patch values.
Other choices for replacing mirror images are mimic (I run this in zergs very often), blink, arcane thievery, feedback…I mean, most of our utilities are great. There’s a lot of choices for replacement here.
I will redo my previous test tonight. If this has become a floater problem, I will know, and if this is truly a hitting problem as I suspect, I will know that as well.
Hey there Pyro! I just tested it in sPvP with guildmates (individually) as they can see how many times it hits and how hard in their combat tab. IT IS A HITTING PROBLEM. I will record it myself too and post the video after class.
Good to know. I’ll probably run a test myself just for the sake of redundancy, and I hope that Jon Peters is still hovering around this thread somewhere to see this information.
@Thorson: This is probably the one time I’ve ever recommended someone use a torch for any reason in any situation, heheh. What I would recommend is having focus in one set, and torch in the other. You will use this setup for running supply, where you really don’t need that staff utility when you’re just running supply. Your only consideration is staying alive, and the torch gives you a blind and a stealth, which is exactly what you need.
I will redo my previous test tonight. If this has become a floater problem, I will know, and if this is truly a hitting problem as I suspect, I will know that as well.
Take a torch offhand, decoy, blink, and possible even veil. There is no possible way for you to normally survive an attack made by a competent thief as an uplevel. Your only course of action is to break stuns, turn invisible, and run away really fast.
Edit: make sure that every piece of your gear is as high level as possible, including trinkets, and make sure that it all is toughness and vitality.
Interesting…I just watched Dulfy’s video on the final boss fight in the Flame and Frost dungeon. There is a scene where she gets thrown into that stun circle around the center area and I noticed her using this talent there, but it seem to take a bit of time to activate once I saw her circle show up.
So I wonder if there is a small lag involved there? hmmmm.. I’ll keep trying.
Blink is a ground targeted aoe skill. All such skills work the same way. When you activate the skill, your cursor becomes an aoe targeting reticule. Activating the skill a second time or left clicking will then cause the skill to actually be used, at the targeted location.
If you turn on fast cast ground targeting in the options, you will no longer get the targeting reticule, but the skill will instead immediately activate using your cursor’s current position as the center of the skill.
Yea, I knew about the karka double blast but for crying out loud, I do wish Anet would just FIX these things so they actually work properly. Having messed up skills/talents just makes the community want to pull its hair out because they don’t work right.
They do work right. Blink works quite fine. I’ve used blink continually for the entire duration of this game, along with all 3 beta weekends. The utility is amazing, it works perfectly the vast majority of the time, and the few instances where it doesn’t work in situations that you would expect it to (the only one I can think of is inner bridge at east keep) are very rare.
I’ll keep trying it then….perhaps once it will work for me, but so far it has not in any situation I’ve used it in. I knew it would not work on uneven terrain or in jp-type situations. I do fairly well in jumping so really do not need that to get over jumps. But on something that stuns it has not worked at all.
Is there a special trick to using it perhaps that I am unaware of? I get stunned I press that talent, I see it fire off and nothing happens. The tool tip says range 900. Does it actually have to be 900 range before it works? Was I using it too close to where I was?
I don’t know. But I appreciate everyone’s comments. I’ll keep trying to see if I can get it to at least break stun for me.
I’m not sure where you’re running into trouble. You can blink anywhere within a radius of 900 range, and it should break a stun/daze/knockdown/knockback no matter what.
This is absolutely ludicrous. While being able to do some damage in downed state (which mesmers do quite well, since stacking confusion from 2 rapid-fire sources still adds up, and the rogue hits like a truck as previously mentioned), the most important aspect of a downed state is reliably disrupting a stomp.
Guardians can stop 5 people, unless they are blinded. Rangers can stop 2, unless blinded. Engineers can stop 1 unless blinded or projectile reflected. Warriors can stop 1 unless blinded or projectile reflected. Necromancers can stop 1 unless invulnerabilitied or blinded (I think).
Then there’s the big three. Thief can stop any number of stomps…with the caveat that if they are fast with a blink (blink, lightning flash, steal) the stomp can still be finished first try.
Then you have mesmers. Mesmers will stop any number of stomps with 100% surety, as long as there is at least 1 creature or object in viewable range for the mesmer to target.
The best is elementalist. Elementalist will stop any number of stomp with 100% surety along with mobility and invulnerability for a few seconds.
As you can see, mesmers obviously have the second best downed state in the game in the ways that matter. The only legitimate complaint about our downed state is how it has a tendency to teleport us into aoe attacks in PvE on occasion.
Yea, I knew about the karka double blast but for crying out loud, I do wish Anet would just FIX these things so they actually work properly. Having messed up skills/talents just makes the community want to pull its hair out because they don’t work right.
They do work right. Blink works quite fine. I’ve used blink continually for the entire duration of this game, along with all 3 beta weekends. The utility is amazing, it works perfectly the vast majority of the time, and the few instances where it doesn’t work in situations that you would expect it to (the only one I can think of is inner bridge at east keep) are very rare.
Take a look at losing 5 points from chaos into inspiration. The 15 point minor in chaos is decent, but the internal cooldown means that it’s really not something you should put 15 points in to get. Instead, get the major trait in inspiration, which has a lot of interesting options, between extra vigor, condition removal, or traiting glamours for cooldowns.
Looks fun, although I won’t be able to attend this time unfortunately. These tournaments are great though. I can’t wait to see the footage from the mesmer one.
This skill is in fact doing full damage in our testing. The bug seems to be damage floater related where not all floaters appear on this skill.
Jon
I’m a bit skeptical about this. Back when I did a lot of testing with the berserker, my tests were done with basically 100% crit chance for the berserker. This allowed me to determine number of hits based on number of bleeds on the target through sharper images.
What my testing found was that the berserker would completely miss often, and hit only once or twice many times, and this was definitely not an issue with floaters, and missing floaters wouldn’t affect number of bleeds.
Fay has a fantastic and in-detail list of guides here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/List-Find-your-Mesmer-Build-Guides/first
One of the categories is power builds.
Its the animation bug that really annoys me, probably never getting fixed.
You blink while running and 50% of the time, after blinking, your moving but sliding along the ground liike your stood still.
That’s been in since the first beta weekend. I remember reporting that bug multiple times, never been fixed though.
Gaidax, that is what I thought too. So when I cast that particular talent when stunned by that karka, I was trying just to get unstunned and hoped that I could just get the two steps away from him that I thought I needed.
As I mentioned this was on a totally flat area and the karka was actually on top of my character. Where I wanted to get to was on the other side of his body but on the same flat surface I was laying on.
But I would have been happy if it had just broken the stun, which it did not.
Veteran karka will do somewhat of a doubleknockdown. If you don’t wait until the second one, you’ll get knocked down again.
The ability blink will not cross gaps in the ground. In general, it will work when going up a ramp, although there are some places it will not work. In general, it will not get you from the bottom of a sharp cliff to the top, but there are some places that it will work.
These are things that you will eventually figure out as you play, the places that blink will work, and the places that it wont. This is working as intended in all ways.
However, even if the blink does not completely move you to the spot where you intended to go, it will still break the stun.