Guild Wars 2

Quite honestly, longbow and shortbow make absolutely no sense for mesmer. Mainhand pistol is the obvious choice, and then daggers (either ranged or close-combat) would fit far far better than longbow and shortbow.

The Baws.5164:

I’ve narrowed it down to Guardian and Mesmer for WvWvW and tPvP, so which is Mesmer the king over the two of them?

I’m talking about general utility, DPS, AoE, the lot. I know that they both are gods of boons and utility, yet neither have too much AoE.

Mesmer is better.

That being said, I’m just a little bit biased. Honestly though, you’ve picked the 2 best all around classes in the game. Generally speaking, guardians have a bit more group utility in pve than mesmers do, but bring a lot less damage, and you really need the Mesmer utility to complement the guardian. In tpvp, similar situation. For wvw, both mesmers and guardians can do things that no other class can do, but Mesmer definitely takes the edge with their abilities really being the bread and butter of organized group combat.

@Dastion and Carighan: The problem with that implementation is that the signet is by nature a temporary buff. If you activate the signet, all your illusions need to be able to drop back down to normal hp, and if the actual summoned illusion was different, then that would be nearly impossible to do. The traits can do this because you can’t change them during combat, so what gets summoned will never go ‘out of date’ as it were.

Mesmers in high level pve content (fractals and dungeons) are fantastic. The best possibly team composition will include a Mesmer in all cases, with no exceptions.

Mesmers are in a similar situation for tpvp. Almost all competitive teams will have a Mesmer because of the massive damage or bunkering they can achieve, along with the other party utilities and the ability to be in multiple places with portal.

In wvw, although the glamour Mesmer just got severely nerfed, mesmers are still absolutely essential to any sort of organized group play. Portals allow for massive group movements at high speed, as well as making golems a dangerous threat as opposed to a slow, massive target. Veils allow for massive groups to achieve stealth movements.

Of my three builds, this one is the only one that really took a noticeable hit from the patch. The retaliation change is inconsequential, I’ve noticed no difference. The confusion change hurts, as it removes a lot of the burst potential that this build had.

As of right now, I recommend no changes in the basic build. I will be experimenting with possible alternatives to mirror images now that its utility for bursting confusion is no longer as strong as it used to be, but again, that needs testing.

The lack of confusion damage will be noticed and missed, but ultimately this build remains just as viable as previously.

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.

The recent changes in the patch only impact this build to make healing through MoP spamming even more effective. There were no negative effects on this build from the patch.

Simonoly.4352:

otherwise you’d have a decent AoE available every 4-5 seconds.

Soooo, we’d be on par with every other class in the game is what you’re saying?

This is silly. The only mandatory 5 trait points are to get the minor 5 point trait in illusions. That’s it. Tons of extremely effective builds don’t take deceptive evasion, many non-shatter builds don’t go into the illusions tree much. You’re just totally wrong.

Well, torch is pretty much completely useless across the board in pve. Focus is fantastic, but primarily if it is trained. You should always have a focus, but as a secondary weapon if untraited. Sword will probably be the most versatile, as it has strong defensive and offensive options, with a great ohantasm and good clone generation. Pistol is similar to to the sword, just with slightly weaker phantasm.

If your goal is versatility, you keep all the weapons. You need to swap between them depending on the situation, and that gives you the versatility.

You’ve got sig of ill listed up there instead of sig of insp. Might want to edit that.

Lightsbane.9012:

McNuggetBandit.8376:

as said above scepter/focus is only used in glamour builds really as it has 1 small confsuon burst on it, and becasue glam mesmers do not do well getting close (no condition removal really and no stun breaks if going full glamour) so we avoid weapons like sword.

Scepter has never been good except for the “okayish” reason i stated. the 1 skill is slow as hell and does negible damage the number two block is good but sword still gives much better utility here with a evasion plus damage wraped into the 2 skill, plus a gap close (a buggy one at that though) and a powerfully 1 attack.

Reason staff is used in almost all pvp based builds is that it is a heavy defensive weapon that can still produced huge damage via clones for shatter making it in my mind our most balanced and best weapon at this stage (bar the useless vunrablilty on staff 1)

i see almost every mesmer in wvw using a scepter with whatever offhand.

Then you’re probably not looking very hard.

datawais.7209:

What would be interesting would be if confusion would be put back onto the scepter auto, and that’s the reason they’re halving the damage.

It would nerf engi discharge builds and buff the hell out of scepter.

It still doesn’t give mesmers a fantastic option for wvw, though.

Well, that would be a lovely and sensible change.

For that reason, it’s probably not happening.

Crossplay.2067:

Aveneo.2068:

Next time they say ‘Portal pls’, you say ‘10s pls’.

Reminds me of my old WoW days where you gave Mages a tip for making you a portal.

This is what you do! Make them pay for your services. If they refuse, they have two good legs and better mobility powers than you to complete the jp on their own.

Then YOU can sit there drinking coke eating your mcdonalds and KFC slumped on the chair going: aren’t you guys here yet?

Hahah, Mesmers Unionize Now!! This would be hilarious.

Since when has the scepter been anything more than marginally tolerated in a few very specific builds?

No one gives a rat’s kitten about scepter. The staff scepter/focus build you refer to is the glamour build. We grudgingly use scepter in that build because it almost sort of pretends to fit, not because it’s actually good.

You’ll all just have to wait and see how it really is implemented. We know what it sounds like the change will be, but we don’t actually know how it will work. If someone dodges, does it count as a hit? We don’t know. If it totally derps and just decides to not hit someone standing perfectly still for the purposes of testing (as I had done to me last night) will it count as a hit? We don’t know. The little things like that are what really will make or break this change.

Daecollo.9578:

McNuggetBandit.8376:

Daecollo.9578

Yes, but traits that remove conditions don’t remove conditions until after the ability is finished.

The ability for example grants you stealth after you use it.

1 You use the ability. (Cloak and Dagger for example.)
2 You take confusion damage.
3 You go into stealth since you used it. (Because it successfully hit a target.)
4 Then the trait that removes conditions proc.

This is how just thieves are, I have no idea how other classes work except warrior, and it has traits similar with the warhorn that are also strange, it removes conditions before the ability happens, so you get less condition removal from warrior warhorn because of that.

I see what your saying however i just see that as a trade off for using a condition removal trait instead of a condition removal utility. You save yourself a spot in your utility bar that can be used for something else while still getting condition removal (i do the same with my mantra build).

However that lies the problem. Stealth thieves cannot turn last refuse off, its a ‘5’ point minor trait that we are forced to recieve. When it procs at 25% and we have confusion, it usually just spikes and kills us.

Last refuge is a problem totally separate from confusion. It happens to interact with confusion in a nasty way, but last refuge is a horrible excuse for a trait that should never have existed in the first place. Don’t blame confusion for the failure of the dev that designed last refuge.

Godmoney.2048:

Mister Mustard.7203:

What I don’t get about the confusion nerf is that if it needs a 50% nerf now, why didn’t it need a 50% nerf in September? Or October? Or November?

Why is it that when the forum warriors make a cry-of-the-month topic, it’s suddenly OP?

Perhaps it was OP from the get-go. But why wasn’t it addressed then instead of 8 months down the road?

Exactly my point. A 50% nerf would lead me to believe that the game was borderline unplayable.

I’ve seen Champions in LOL and Smite that were more game breaking on release and they didn’t get 50% nerfs and they also got nerfs quickly….not 8 months later.

Hard to believe something that’s been around for 8 months suddenly needed a 50% slash and burn overnight.

This is exactly it. LoL is, for all its failings, the absolute best game on the planet in terms of how the developer team handles nerfing and buffing. They patch often, and every time they patch they do ******SMALL****** tweaks to skills, abilities, and items. This allows them to slowly approach a more balanced situation, instead of what the ANet dev team likes to do, which is balance with a sledgehammer and a chainsaw.

I think the change to ride the lightning is fantastic, but needs tweaks.

The spirit of this change is making it more difficult for elementalists to disengage and reengage at will without anyone being able to stop them. That is a good thing.

What this change actually did was make elementalist in combat mobility strongly reliant on buggy pathing and hitting. An ele asked me to stand still the other day in wvw. He used RTL on me. I didn’t move. It missed. Completely. Things like that are what make this change from good into less brilliant.

Additionally, it severely impacts the out of combat mobility of an elementalist. The change should only affect them if they are currently in combat. The out of combat cooldown should remain 20 seconds.

Scora.5246:

Is it possible to make a somewhat tanky Mesmer, that has passive defense and dont rely on dodges and shatters?

Take a look at my build in my signature.

Completely depends on the build you run (like with all classes).

Mesmers do always have a large amount of active defense though, from multiple sources, but passive defense will vary greatly from build to build.

Yes, it is. Credit goes to Chaos Archangel for testing this thoroughly. Regen you apply to other people takes your healing power for the duration that you applied it to them.

Retaliation damage is not being cut in half, the build will be viable as ever, albeit with a small decrease in total dps.

Numot.3965:

Here’s a video: “http://youtu.be/LE7T4vq8JoM”

For those thinking “oh you’re bad if you just spam skills through it” consider this; confusion triggers on all skills, including your condition removal, and skills that trigger on dodge roll.

Getting hit with a massive stack of confusion is pretty much a lose/lose for the victim. For example lets say you get hit with it a large stack, dodge to avoid some other large incoming damage, take 4k for dodging, then eat another 4k cause you try to clean it off. Sure you could not do anything, but that means potentially taking more damage from just face tanking a skill, and waiting it out isn’t exactly the best choice either if confusion came bundled with other conditions.

Heck, I remember back when shatter bomb was all the rage, one of the most frustrating things was getting bombed, then almost killing your self from trying to defend yourself.

I’m not sure what that video is supposed to show other than a necro corrupting boons, and a couple bad players killing themselves with confusion.

Honestly, scepter is more viable in pve than torch is. At least the scepter sorts pretends to do damage…the torch has absolutely no saving grace in pve. There is absolutely no reason you should ever need it. Even the blast finisher doesn’t work properly anymore.

McNuggetBandit.8376:

Yea im tlaking about the trait,

So lets put this into a theory situation,

I have the trait selected and i go to charge mantra of pain,

On the end of charge the healing will proc which in turn will proc the runes?

(after runes internal CD) i then cast matra of pain charge wil lthis then pop a heal and another rune or not?

thanks for you help

Just read my first post, I explained precisely how it works there.

Godmoney.2048:

McNuggetBandit.8376:

also just checking, the wiki states the healing only procs on charge and not on the cast, is this the case still?

If you’re not 20 deep in the healing tree then it only heals on using a charge. If you take the healing tree’s tactic then it will heal on both charging and using said charges.

If you go 30 deep into power and get the 20 point tactic in healing you can have a total of 4 heals.
1 for charging
3 using charges.

I’m fairly certain op is referring to the trait, not the healing mantra, mantra of recovery.

Godmoney has an incorrect answer.

Might/fury/restoration/regen/swiftness/etc on runes that say they proc “on heal” will only work with a dedicated healing skill. You can use the healing mantra to proc these, but simply traiting restorative mantras will not cause any mantra you charge to proc the “on heal” characteristics of runes.

The heal is 2600 with a scaling of .2 per point of healing power.

The healing only procs on charge, and not on the cast. It procs as you finish the charge of the mantra.

Godmoney was confused, and thought you were referring to the healing mantra, not the trait.

ChaosStar.3162:

Retaliation can only be stacked up to 5 times, so the most you’re getting out this combo is 15seconds before boon duration. You get 5s of retaliation from one light + leap combo, and you only need 3 to beat Mimic + Retaliatory Shield which leaves 2 slots open for more retaliation. Even better, a simple combo from sword+focus (Temporal Curtain -> Illusionary Leap -> Swap) already gives you those 3 stacks.

So while Mimic + RS may have effective synergy, let’s not get carried away here :p

You have no idea what you’re talking about. With this combo, you will get 3 seconds of retaliation per blocked hit up to the cap of 30ish seconds.

Iavra.8510:

If they really want to increase build diversity, they just have to give condi mesmers something in exchange. We need at least an increase of 100% on our confusion duration or a massive increase in other damaging conditions.

But well, just about every other promise they have given to their costumers has shown to be a lie up until now, so…keep on nerfing until every profession got like 1 competitive build left.

Make illusionary elasticity apply to staff clones, and make condition duration apply to clones as well.

Kavia.8249:

Pyroatheist.9031:

The retaliation nerf was (just like the last time they said they changed retaliation) unspecified and not clear. They said that it would be reduced to sPvP levels. The problem with that statement is that retaliation isn’t reduced in sPvP. So…..I’ll wait until the patch rolls out, and test retaliation as I always do.

I suspect that it was actually a mistaken statement he made. My guess is that he meant to say there will be changes made to retaliation and confusion, and the retaliation change is the visual thing, not the damage part.

It is kinda on the down low for some reason (not clearly stated in any patch notes) but retaliation does 2/3 damage in sPvP. I’m guessing they are planning on reducing WvW damage to these levels.

See:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Is-retaliation-damage-reduced-by-1-3-in-sPvP

Interesting. I never actually noticed that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

jportell.2197:

in spvp if you run scepter torch you are still very powerful in 1v1 battles…and are able to get 12 stacks up which can do quite a bit… But it is hard to maintain a consistent stack… which I wish they would address.

In sPvP, you can get 12 stacks up…for about 3 or 4 seconds maybe. It’s powerful if you get some idiots that attack through it, and useless if you fight anyone even slightly intelligent. I’ve run a confusion bomb build in pvp before. I ran it in all the beta weekends actually. It worked ok…because people had no idea what confusion was back then. Now….now its just patently useless.

Renny.6571:

It should become a landtuna.

Fixed that one for you.

selan.8354:

none of the nerfs of other classes has affected them so they were forced to change everything.their old builds were still vial.

While technically true, you wouldn’t know it by reading the elementalist forums. Go over there, read a few threads, laugh heartily at them, and you’ll feel a bit better.

Yes, condition duration reduction stacks linearly. It also stacks stronger than condition duration increase, as the increase is applied first, to outgoing conditions, and then the duration reduction is applied secondly, as the condition hits you.

chuckle

I have to say though, even with the amount of ridiculous exaggeration that people like selan are putting out in these threads, they’re absolutely NOTHING compared to the ele whining about the RTL nerf. Just go and look at that thread, you’ll facepalm your way all the way back to the mesmer forums.

selan.8354:

now the mesmer is slowly turning into a weak warrior with no other skills than sword skills and a a few clones.

Again, I’m as kitten about this change as anyone else, and have explained in depth multiple times why. However, useless overexaggerative bullkitten like this is not helpful. Complain about what actually happened, not ridiculous stuff like that.

zaxon.6819:

believe this crap. i can say from patch to patch i play less and less. i played gs/s/focus and greatsword got destroyed last patch. nerfing a whole specs damage 50 percent is crazy for a balance dev to do in any situation. retaliation is also cut in half. the game is less fun patch to patch and i do believe that. they are not adding things that make it more interesting or fun to play they make it worse to play.

I’m displeased as well with the upcoming patch, but kindly get your facts straight before spouting off. Retaliation is not nerfed by 50%. They said in the SotG that it will be lowered to sPvP levels, but retaliation functions exactly the same in sPvP as it does in WvW, so my best guess is that that was slip of the tongue.

Draygo.9473:

Uh

confusion is not an effective zerg burster, as it is affected by the aoe limit of 5..

Do we play the same game?

as an aside the mug->backstab combo is getting nerfed as well. So its not a good analogy.

Glamour traits turn glamours into Line-aoe boundary condition skills, which ignore 5-target aoe limits. That is why the glamour build is (was) a zergbuster.

The mage was worthless before, its still worthless now. Overall, not much of a change if you ask me.

RTL has the normal 20s cooldown if it hits a target, i.e. is used in a fight.

If it’s used to escape, to disengage, and hits no target, 40s cooldown.

Well, as I said before, and I’ll say it again, I’m still better than you ARM, and if we ever meet, I’ll still smear you across the floor of the battlefield. I could even probably still do it in a confusion bomb build.

@Nuka Cola: Yep, looks like it. Kylia is rather unhappy, I can tell you that much. As I’ve already said in multiple threads, this is probably one of the worst balance decisions the devs have ever made, and makes me extremely displeased with them. Changes like this are what happens when you listen to mouthbreathers like ARM up there.

sephire.7296:

I don’t have any ConditionDamage yet my Confusion does huge amounts of damage. That’s clearly not right. Blanket reducing it to 50% damage would punish those who do spec +CD too much though, imo the scaling/CD contribution needs to be changed, so that the damage is very punishing for those who have high +CD and negligible for those like me who have 0 +CD.

Now this is a nerf that actually makes sense.

My point in my original post is that ragequitting the class and/or game is a massive overreaction to a nerf of one mechanic.

That being said, I vehemently disagree with this change to confusion. People make the argument that confusion is balanced in spvp, but ignore the issue that it is in fact useless in spvp. The reason you see no confusion builds there is that confusion damage is so low that it’s completely ignorable. Now, they’ve made this the same in wvw. They completely destroyed one set of Mesmer builds, severely damaged the strength and viability of most Mesmer condition builds, and strongly decreased the possible auxiliary damage from Mesmer shatter builds (all while claiming mesmers are in a good place in the actual Mesmer portion).

I really can’t overemphasize how bad of a move this is. Confusion used to be one of the best mechanics in gw2, because it actually punished poor play. Now, it is once again irrelevant. No one needs to care about the purple swirly because the purple swirly won’t do any damage to them. This was a horrible change, and I’m monumentally disappointed in the dev team for rolling this change out.

Just goes to show how balancing on the small, vocal, and unskilled population of this game leads to poor choices.

bhagwad.4281:

In the latest April SoTG they mentioned they’re gonna nerf light fields retaliation combos. This will have a massive impact on gameplay

I watched it, and they didn’t exactly say that. They were referring specifically to blast combos, I’m fairly certain (due to the focus on the aoe team utility retaliation). It’s possible that they’ll nerf the leap combo, but I wouldn’t count on it. However, even if they do, it would have to be a really hefty nerf to drop this build below 100% uptime on retal.

I’m more interested in the passing mention they made of nerfing retaliation to sPvP levels…since there’s no difference between retal in sPvP and WvW. I’m thinking it was a slip of the tongue, but it’ll be interesting to see. I’ll also be looking forward to the new damage visuals, as those could be fun.

The biggest hit to this build instantly though, is the confusion nerf. This build has always been less effective in sPvP at killing things since confusion hits like a wet noodle. Now that confusion hits like a wet noodle in WvW too, it’ll inherit the same difficulties.

I honestly think that they made a massive mistake with the confusion nerf. There’s a reason that no one runs confusion builds in sPvP, and that reason is that confusion in sPvP is horrific. It does so little damage no one even has to care about it, it’s a non-issue. Now they’ve made it so that it is the same in WvW. They’ve completely destroyed a set of builds (glamour), and significantly nerfed a lot of condition focused playstyles for mesmer in WvW.

selan.8354:

soooo what condition does a mesmer have left then?none…ty anet! oh well be looking for a new class then or a new game.

See ya

The confusion nerf is a poor choice. It makes confusion (and glamour builds) pretty much completely useless in wvw now, since confusion does effectively no damage. That being said, mesmers are far from broken…removing 1 condition doesn’t destroy a class.

The retaliation nerf was (just like the last time they said they changed retaliation) unspecified and not clear. They said that it would be reduced to sPvP levels. The problem with that statement is that retaliation isn’t reduced in sPvP. So…..I’ll wait until the patch rolls out, and test retaliation as I always do.

I suspect that it was actually a mistaken statement he made. My guess is that he meant to say there will be changes made to retaliation and confusion, and the retaliation change is the visual thing, not the damage part.

I will say that needing to take a hit to return it is working as intended.

I don’t know if absorbing friendly projectiles is. Mirror blade is strange because it doesn’t function like a projectile for the purpose of most reflects, but for some reason it profs mimic. As far as WoC goes, you’re completely wrong. It is a projectile, and so that is most definitely working normally.

Nretep.2564:

The AoE projectiles cannot be reflected (as I’ve tried multiple times), but you asked for the single target one.

As Pyro said, Mimic absorbs the first hit – while receiving full damage – and reflects all following ones for the duration. Therefore it’ll not help you on single hits.

But be sure to use Feedback on Lupi in phase three during its rapid area shot.

The aoe ones can be reflected actually. You just have to reflect them in the proper spot. If you’re trying to reflect from the aoe radius, that won’t work. You have to reflect from where the projectile itself lands.