Guild Wars 2

Because Mimic has to absorb a projectile first before it really activates.

We actually mentioned that particular trait distribution in our theorycrafting podcast.

As far as absolute points go, rabid is strictly better for condition damage as toughness scales higher with tuning crystals, scales from undead runes, and scales from chaos 25 (not applicable for a glamour build obviously).

That being said, carrion is also a very useful stat distribution, providing hp and a bit of residual power.

However, as far as those ascended items go, they’re much better than either carrion or rabid for a condition damage setup. They are actually half rabid stats, instead of fully the CD/V/T. However, even having only half the stats is really good. They hit both sides of the tuning crystals for more condition damage, and provide all the necessary needs for survivability in one package: vitality and toughness.

@Leo Paul: There is variation, but only to a degree. Mantra heals work well in a damage focused build, because the base heal on that trait is extremely large, and the scaling with healing power is extremely poor. For that same reason, phantasm aoe regen works very well, although the healing power scaling on regeneration is extremely high.

You still, however, absolutely need to adjust out of combat. If you walk into the jade maw fractal with a staff and a pistol offhand, you’re going to have a really bad time. If you don’t have the focus equipped, you shouldn’t have it traited. If you’re not in a situation where spamming MoP to provide aoe heals is appropriate, you need to untrait that and get something else. The build diversity works because of knowledge or at the very least educated guesses about the upcoming encounter, and the ability to change weapons, traits, and utilities out of combat.

Edit: Scepter has no use in PvE (my opinion, I’m not going to defend that in this thread, I’m way too tired for that), so perhaps a bad example. As I said before though, weapon swapping gives flexibility to the same build, but does not change the build itself. Attunement swapping is slightly different as one attunement may be very good at condition damage, and one far better at direct damage, so you will build towards one attunement or the other.

@Leo Paul: Variability of stats on weapons is an extremely minor part of a build’s total stats, and makes effectively no difference in how a build performs.

Swapping weapons in combat leads to flexibility in combat situations, and this does, to some extent, allow the stretching of a role. Taking an offhand focus allows you to provide projectile reflection utility when swapping from a greatsword which is primarily damage.

That being said, changes like that are rather minor. The weapon swap gives your build flexibility. It doesn’t allow you to completely change it from one type to the other. Guardians are absolutely no exception.

Edit: Fun edit you put there. My phantasmal support build does a fantastic job at what you outline there as a “battle priest”. It is an amazing build to run, precisely because it combines good dps with healing/reflecting/boon and condition manipulation/etc all in 1 package. That being said, a large amount of the build being effective is knowing what you are about to fight, and changing your weapons, utilities, and traits to adequately adapt to it. In-combat changes are simply not possible to a large degree.

@Leo Paul: Your problem is that you want a different game. This game is not designed so that you can effortlessly swap between healer and dps with the exact same build during a fight. That’s simply not how it is intended. No class is able to do that effectively, and no class will ever be able to. If that was intended, gear and trait swapping during combat would be a thing, and it is not.

You’re complaining that once in combat, your role is locked? That happens to be a basic principle of this game. There’s a reason why you cant adjust traits and gear in combat. You can make hybrid builds on the mesmer, like you can in any class, and they work just about as well as they do on any class.

As I said before, which you obviously didn’t read, an elementalist switching from fire to water while in glass cannon gear doesn’t suddenly become an expert healer, and switching to earth doesn’t suddenly make them a tank. The gear and traits make the build, and this is exactly the same for every class in the game. If you don’t like that feature, you’ll probably want to look for a different game to play.

@Leo Paul: I’m pretty sure you’re not qualified in any way, shape, or form, in this world, the next, or any permutation of the above.

Mesmers happen to have the highest number of extremely viable builds in the entire game. You have shatter, phantasm damage, tank, condition damage, buffing support/healing support, phantasm support, shatter support, glass cannon long range nuker, glamour builds, mantra builds (support or dps).

So. In addition to all of the above builds, each one can be significantly tweaked or otherwise altered with the addition or removal or different weapons, a different heal, or different stat distributions.

As you said yourself, most of your 2000 hours of play has been farming CoF. How on earth does that make you qualified to judge the diversity of any class in this game, much less the mesmer, arguably the most diverse and interesting of all the classes.

You’re complaining about buying more equipment when you somehow spent 2000 hours farming CoF? You don’t have one little bit of extra cash left over from all of that farming? Builds in this game are determined by equipment. The elementalist doesn’t change from tank to healer to dd by switching attunements. That’s not how it works. They gain access to healing skills, or damage skills, or protection skills, but a glass cannon ele still makes a kittenty tank and healer, and a strong tanky healer elementalist makes a kittenty DD class.

You need to get out of CoF and play this game. Experiment with different builds, get some kitten different equipment, and actually experience what this class, and by extension game, has to offer you.

You’re probably going to ignore this whole thing, and you probably won’t get helped at all by it, but some people will read it, and they’ll hopefully realize how absurdly wrong you are.

Edit: That signet build is amusing…but I wouldn’t quite go so far as to call it viable.

The mage probably won’t even live long enough to use its attack. The attack only hits one target, and is unaffected by condition duration.

The focus temporal curtain can be used to pull multiple people through your glamours. The warden is good for placing on cannons and such for damage, and will do a whirl combo in the glamours for more aoe confusion. Once you trait the focus, temporal curtain additionally reflects projectiles.

Ok, level 50. You have 40 trait points available.

20/0/0/10/10

Take w/e for the first one in domination, but take glamours cause confusion for the 20 point trait (I use cripple on clone death).

Take glamour cooldowns in inspiration.

Take 33% increased confusion duration in illusions.

Buy some cheap blue or green gear from the trading post, you’ll have plenty of cash for it. You want condition damage major, and then power/vitality/toughness/precision minor (carrion or rabid).

Make sure you put major corruption sigils on your weapons. These will perform amazingly with the upleveling calculation.

Take an appropriate level tuning crystal, and find the appropriate level version of +condition duration food.

As you level, put more traits into illusions to get confusion on blind and glamours causing blind. Lastly, you’ll put another 10 points into inspiration. Weapons should be scepter/focus and staff (with a greatsword swap).

I’m going to go ahead and paraphrase the op right here:

“The only thing I’ve done is farm CoF for 2000 hours, and now I’m bored, but I’m pretty sure it’s because mesmers aren’t diverse at all”

Do you see how ridiculous this is? Your lack of experiencing the diversity of the Mesmer is no ones fault but your own. If you expect to see class, build, and gameplay diversity while mindlessly farming a dungeon, you’re going to be massively disappointed.

1. Kiting or not completely depends on your build. All builds involve elements of damage avoidance, and whether you achieve that through dodges, kiting, active defense, or passive defense is completely dependent on what build you are running.

2. In PvE, a mesmer should be carrying every single weapon except scepter and torch, which are pretty useless. Greatsword is optimal in some situations and worse in others.

3. For dungeons and soloing, a mix of zerkerish stats combined with a touch of defense generally works best.

It would ruin build diversity, except that its a 5 point minor trait (also a reason that it is so strong). A 5 point minor trait has a tough time actually ruining build diversity, as evidenced by the massive number of viable builds the Mesmer has.

It’s the strongest trait in the game. It’s therefore essential in all builds. Leave it alone.

Mesmers have massive amounts of all around utility.

Group quickness with time warp.
Fast group movement with portal.
Massive amounts of projectile reflection through various skills.
Great group aoe condition removal.
Good damage, both single target and aoe.
Good aoe healing with mantras.
Good cc/defiant stripping.

Mesmers are great at doing everything, and there are quite a few things that only they can do. That’s why they are required in groups.

Dawdler.8521:

bhagwad.4281:

Go for the immortal mesmer build: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Immortal-Mesmer-Build/first

My gear isnt quite complete but I did a simple test with the “immortal mesmer build” by running solo into the center of 30ish Red Guard and I’m sorry to say, its not really immortal. That’s just false advertisement. But I survived for over 10ish seconds so I still approve :p

Ahh, but you have to run in, then leave real quick. It’s immortal cause no one can stop you from leaving, and they’ll have to chase you down. Eventually, it’ll be down to just 4 or 5 people, which I feel reasonably comfortable engaging in more of a head-on fight.

@fadeaway: On the subject of someone downed, I actually view this build’s advantage entirely differently. In a shatter build, you’ll have illusionary persona and the ability to push out lots of illusions quickly in order to use distortion to stomp someone. In this build, you can ignore them, and they’ll die in the next 15 seconds due to your phantasms chewing on them. Also, if you get downed, you’ll be guaranteed to win any downed fight when they still have 3 high damage phantasms eating them.

We understand you perfectly fine. It’s still not a reportable offense.

Ruprect.7260:

styx.7294:

That’s fine. I don’t want to earn dungeon tokens in WvW either.

But we seriously need a way to get ascended gear in WvW. Seriously. It’s only been November, December, January, February, March, and now April.

Only if it is slightly harder to get than in PvE. Otherwise we are going to have every PvE’er in WvW trying to get their ascended gear.

As long as the method for getting the ascended gear forces them to be productive members of a wvw group, there’s absolutely no problem with that.

Yeah, something bugs about this. When BP raids, theres usually 1 or 2 people that won’t get the achievement from capturing a keep regardless of hitting the lord or being in the circle. It’s obviously not a common bug, but it definitely does occur.

This is silly. I will defend pvp in jumping puzzles to my last breath, because it is wvw, and if you go in, expect to be attacked.

That being said, the OP has the most convoluted and incomprehensible set of arguments I’ve ever seen.

“I felt bad about killing this guy that obviously didn’t want to fight me in the JP, so I decided to kill him again and see if that made me feel better”

I mean, seriously, did that thought actually go through your head, and come out the other side without you realizing that something about that made no sense whatsoever?

You can’t report someone for being an idiot, as much as you would like to. It’s your responsibility to make sure that everyone is on board with what tactics and strategies you are using, even though that can be exceedingly difficult with a large group of random people.

ExZee.8109:

Pyroatheist.9031:

You realize all block skills like that have a buffing icon that appears?

The small icons are like the back mirror of a car. You look at it once in a while for important information; it doesn’t mean someone should stare at it because the front windshield is painted black.

Exactly correct. In this case, noticing the block icon qualifies as important information. You don’t need to be staring at it continually, it’s just another piece of information you need to be aware of during the course of a fight.

ExZee.8109:

The smaller sizes are a definite advantage in my combat experience. I’m a Human Mesmer and I regret not going Asura when I hesitated at character creation. Shortest height Asura Mesmer in all-abyss armor is quite hard to see and extremely annoying to target with my mouse, which is something I have to do often if one of his clones is between me and him. It’s also harder to see what animation they’re doing, especially block skills like scepter #2 or sword #4. I even once had the urge to complain in the forums to increase the shortest height of Asurans so that it’s a little more visible. On the other hand, it’s not a coincidence that Norns are so visually easy to read in combat.

For hardcore PvP, Asura is the only rational choice.

You realize all block skills like that have a buffing icon that appears?

Hexxen.7216:

Sigil of Generosity doesn’t work in WvW.

Since when?

@mice: You don’t identify the Mesmer by lack of offhand. You identify the Mesmer by movement patterns, attack animations, buffs, signets, health remaining, unstealthing, relative location, etc.

@mecca: You need to be standing directly on the line in order for the combo to successfully activate. Stand on the line, leap, and then swap. You can actually activate the leap even if your target is out of range. It will still proc the first leap combo, even though you won’t get a clone or a swap.

Master of Misdirection applies to all confusion you apply, regardless of source.

Edit: Except the iMage…

zuroism.2471:

Hi Pyro, my question is what stats do phantasms inherit from yourself? I have a set of zerker’s but I think I read somewhere they don’t inherit crit dmg so would knights be a better set for this build for the added defense?

They inherit all your stats, most certainly crit damage. They don’t inherit vitality in the same way though. I’m pretty sure they get it on a vastly reduced basis.

ExZee.8109:

Pyroatheist.9031:

I believe you need to be facing your target, like mirror blade. You also have to be in range. It will steal aegis, so that’s not a problem. However, if out of range or w/e, it’ll still activate (like a phantasm) but will not work.

Nope, I’ve tested before and you don’t have to be facing the target.

Good to know.

Take a look at my phantasm support build, you can find it in Fay’s build guide.

You can adapt to fit any situation. You can do strong group healing, 100% uptime on either projectile reflects or proj destroys. You can do aoe boon stripping, aoe condition removal, aoe regen, on-demand cc, all while doing good damage. A Mesmer brings more to a party than any other class, because we can do everything at the same time.

I believe you need to be facing your target, like mirror blade. You also have to be in range. It will steal aegis, so that’s not a problem. However, if out of range or w/e, it’ll still activate (like a phantasm) but will not work.

bhagwad.4281:

I was using this build yesterday in tPvP and felt the need for something tougher. Switched back to your immortal mesmer for that

This is good for dueling, not good for holding points since I prefer to keep a distance with this one and let my phantasms do the heavy lifting.

Yeah, it’s certainly not a sturdy as the immortal build. In tPvP I usually use it to roam a bit, attack the far point, or help out at mid.

I’m gonna have to say, trying to run confusion in sPvP is a horrible idea. In wvw, a confusion bomb build is already somewhat of a noob stomping build, but in sPvP where confusion hits like a wet noodle, no one will even notice your damage.

Illusions are summoned on a target and stay linked to that target. When shattered, they shatter on that target. That is the shatter mechanic.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

It does make me curious though.. Wouldnt two iMages on one target be rather effective? Especially with a traited attack rate increase? ESPECIALLY with other confusion traits and scepter?

The problem is that the mage cooldown is stupidly massive, and the cooldown trait is in a horrible spot. This means that you’ve got 30some seconds to wait inbetween casts. If your mage hasn’t been killed by then, your opponent is doing something horribly wrong.

Well, let’s clear up some things right quick.

The averages used on the podcast are for a zerg situation only. That’s because in a zerg, people will spam skills like there’s no tomorrow. The mage doesn’t work in a zerg, like all phantasms.

Additionally, the bounce doesn’t quite work like that. In my testing, I was able to get it to bounce from 1 enemy to myself, and that’s it. I couldn’t get it to even touch more than 2 targets.

A bit of condition duration on runes is advisable in a glamour build to hit the 10 second cap on confusion duration from glamours. Other than that, it’s generally not worth it. You can find a more detailed discussion of the 2 in one of our recent Mesmer podcasts actually, from the link in my signature.

@Ferawyn: Glad to hear you’re liking it.

As far as the scepter goes though, I don’t really think it works very well in most power builds. In this build, I would use the scepter if it only had one skill, the block. The autoattack is really slow and clunky, and the same can be said for confusing images…

Cube.4905:

Kazhiel.8194:

No secrets especially considering the number of people who replied to this thread saying they run the same or a very similar build lol, sorry Cube you’re not special :P

I’m sure there are other people running it derpstorm, I’ve even run into some that were very similar, but nobody posted it on the front page of mes forums. I’m not even sure why im bumping this post FML

My friend, that ship sailed 10 days ago. This thread currently has slightly over 6800 views, and has been on the front page of the forums continually since I created it.

Besides, you should know that it’s not the build that makes you special, it’s how you play it. I could have sat on my immortal build for months, and it’s unlikely other people would have discovered it, as it’s such a strange compilation of mesmer abilities. I thought it would be fun to share an awesome build with the community, and so I did. I’m not insecure in thinking that someone’s gonna come along and do it better than me. As a matter of fact, without making that thread, I wouldn’t have modified it (as per someone’s suggestion) to use the -condition duration gear/food, which really took it from great build to stupidly op.

@wookie: Pretty sure that comment referred to “spilling the beans” as it were =P.

Cube.4905:

@pyro , you havent probably fought trig as p/d as he hasnt been running it for about 2 months now, but hes the best p/d out there by far. Also, I designed this build to crack bunkers and it has never failed me vs. any bunker type build, but I disagree with some of your changes. Honestly, i also don’t really appreciate seeing my build on the front page of the mes forums for a week.

The duel was in sPvP fwiw. I can’t actually remember the name, was just another thief from my perspective, but I seem to remember something about trigger in it.

As far as the build goes…no secrets here in the Mesmer forums.

Wick.1280:

You can hope that DB moves up in a tier so you can get up. That is all.

When DB moves up a tier, Kaineng will be moving down. Things aren’t gonna suddenly become all sunshine and roses down here in T3 with that switch.

@Tek: The way whirling wrath works is that it is a large number (7 I think) of separate aoe attacks, each of which doesn’t do a ton of damage, and each of which has a separate aoe cap. This means that each one can hit 5 targets, or with the phantasms, 3 targets. So, that’s 3 hits of retaliation return per hit at 7 hits, which is 21 total from whirling wrath.

Now, in my immortal build, I also have retal, and I have a defender. That adds up to around 7 hits of retaliation per whirling wrath hit, at 7 hits, and that’s what instakills them, since retal ignores all damage mitigation.

@Tek: I noticed that you mentioned something about having no blinks. What utilities do you usually run with this build? I always have blink and decoy, and then generally the signet though I’ll swap that out as per my opponent. You can also use illusionary swap as a blink. Since the clone generally won’t actually stay on your target, you can wait for it to get distanced, and then swap, generally allowing a quick blink (stunbreak as well) to a location usually behind your target.

You are right about the greatsword pull. It works wonders for grouping the phantasms. The problem is that most guardians will follow that with a whirling wrath, which is a really odd attack. On my immortal build, I’ll instakill guardians from 80% hp when the use whirling wrath just from retaliation alone. It won’t hurt quite as bad in this build, but it’s still dangerous. Now, if he swapped to hammer after the gs pull, then you’d have a good combo.

As far as gs mesmers…I swap to the daze mantra for any Mesmer using a greatsword (indicating heavy phantasm damage). What this allows me to do is get out both of my phantasms before they get off their first set of attacks, giving me an extremely strong opening position.

Also, I’m on Dragonbrand. We will most likely end up in T2 in around 2 weeks, but I’m quite happy to demonstrate any of my builds in spvp before then.

@Tek: Swordsman are extremely difficult to ball up properly due to how they attack. Duelists are similar. You really have to abuse Los to get them to ball up, and that can be difficult.

The thing about guardians is that they’re slow and obvious. Nothing about their attacks is subtle, especially hammer. Kiting a guardian is really really easy. Blink works great of course, but you can also use leap/swap to either immobilize, or wait for them to run away from the clone and then swap behind them.

A sword/shield staff guardian has pretty much no range, and the autoattack on the staff is crazy for proccing retal damage (aoe low damage hits). That sort of fight shouldn’t be that difficult, at least from a survival standpoint.

Now, if you’re talking tPvP, they’ll probably last long enough for help to arrive, but that really depends on the guardian. A lot of guardians will melt to this build because they focus on me, instead of realizing that my phantasms are doing most of the damage.

Tek.4083:

That trait though, i guess is unrelated, since its not in his build. If he has no spike, the guard will never die. When i say this, i keep skilled players in mind, If you have stomped a guardian, thats really awesome,but i have never seen a phant build ever stomp a good guard.

The swordsman hit very VERY hard. The guardian will die, especially since it can’t really kill the swordsmen, just try to bunker up. It might take a little while, but it will die.

Toughness in a phantasm build really depends on what you want to use it for. This build looks designed to do a bit more skirmishing, and so does well with some toughness. It’s obviously not a full shatter build, but it’s got deceptive evasion and staff, both of which work better for a skirmishing build than for a phantasm build

I rather like the concept. Consider swapping that first chaos trait for the 3% less damage per illusion depending on the situation. You’ll have to tell me how it plays though, it’s definitely an interesting design.

Elidath.5679:

I didn’t mention the cleansing combo because it can be very situationnal. I already use my temporal curtain a lot to get retaliation going, I found I hardly had it ready for on-demand condition cleanse, and even more rarerely the opponent is close enough for the combo to reach me.
It can happen, but I can’t really say I can count on it :/

In the case of a well necro, they’ll be close enough for that combo, or they won’t be on the point, in which case it won’t really matter.

A skeleton glamour build requires 20 points into any given line, and so requires level 40 minimum.

The staff is a great weapon. It also sucks for long range fighting because the autoattack moves pretty slow. Stick to your greatsword for now, and have a sword/focus swap for the swiftness.