Guild Wars 2

You’re absolutely right. That being said, that sort of play is really high level, and you’ll need to expect high level play in return.

When I do a mirror duel, I’ll take mantra of distraction. This allows me to interrupt the first few casts and get the upper hand, followed by blurred frenzy for an additional cast block. When I’m fighting someone like a Mesmer or a pistol offhand thief though, I’m extremely aware of the blind/invuln potential, and I’m very good at interrupting the cast.

So while extremely skillful play can stop the build for a bit, it can of course be countered by equally skillful play.

FinalPatriot.8034:

@Pyroatheist:

I’ve tried this build of yours now for the last two days and so far, I’d have to admit that it’s pretty darn impressive once you get used to it. My most difficult class to defeat as a D/D Ele (SB/GS Ranger) seams to just melt under this kind of pressure. I still have lots to learn but so far, it’s really been fun.

Just wondering though, is there ANYTHING I can do to make my Mesmer not so darn slow in WvW roaming? That is the one thing I miss about my Ele.

Always have a focus in your inventory. Swap that sucker in constantly to get the temporal curtain speed boost. If you’re really feeling into it, trait the focus just before you swap it in for the cooldown reduction, then untrait it as you swap it out.

You can also use centaur runes or runes of air for the speed boost on healing. For these, just get an endless tonic of some kind, and use your normal keybind to hit the healing skill while in the tonic, then exit the tonic. This will proc the on-heal effect of the runes without wasting your heal skill.

Honestly, this was rather underwhelming. The bar on the bottom was unnecessary and obtrusive. The music was horrific. The mantras were not even charged half of the time (as you could see through the bar). The gameplay consisted of large amounts of greatsword autoattacking interspersed with a couple random illusionary waves that didn’t really seem to serve a purpose.

You’re running the full glass cannon (I noticed 15k hp) 4 mantra greatsword nuker build that gets knocked over if something so much as sneezes at it. Sure, you’ll do decent autoattack damage….but I don’t really see the point of the build.

Nretep.2564:

@OP
since this build is 2 months old, commenting it seems odd.

You’re right. Also, since the shattercat buildset is about 5 months old, we should probably stop commenting on that one too.

…

SuburbanLion.8095:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Deceptive evasion is of questionable utility in any zerg, and even more so for a low level. This is a bad idea.

I disagree with this assessment. The main reason for taking DE at level 40 is not about group utility, but about personal survival. A double dodge followed by Distortion can get you out of many sticky situations in WvW.

For the type of playstyle I would advise for a low level Mesmer in wvw (lightweight glamour) extremely careful play is rewarded, and so that shouldn’t be necessary.

One thing interesting to mention. Make sure that all of your gear is level appropriate and has stats you want. This is really important because of how the upleveling algorithm works. Also make sure you are using level appropriate foods with the proper stats. That will make an enourmous difference in your performance.

Xavi.6591:

5 in illusions then 20 in dueling for deceptive evasion imo.

Deceptive evasion is of questionable utility in any zerg, and even more so for a low level. This is a bad idea.

@Ekstra: You have the right of it. Try to get veil before portal though. As a low level without being in an organized wvw group, you’ll get more mileage out of veil.

Annette.7913:

thank you Pyroatheist for the reply. So ultimately it is necessary I have all the weapons for different situations is what you are saying, makes sense.

That’s correct. The only 2 weapons I never use in pve are scepter and torch.

@Reesha: Elidath is correct to an extent. However, there are a couple other things you can do. Firstly, you can tank the wells. Make sure you have retaliation and a defender out, as well as chaos armor if possible. The wells are weakly ticking aoe attacks, and that will return a ton of retal damage, as well as buff you up nicely with chaos armor.

Necro fears don’t last very long, and Melandru runes make them even shorter. It is unlikely they will actually get you off the point with a fear, especially if you stunbreak it. As for conditions, remember to use the warden + temporal curtain whirl combo for a lot of cleansing as often as possible.

Also remember that you have a knockback/pull as well. You can prevent the necro from entering your point as he can knock you off of it.

Ekstra.5264:

Thank you for the tips, I’ll take a look at some of these ideas.

“First 5 points in illusions” Oops, and thank you for the tip, I’ll start saving 5 up again.

“Once you can spend 20 points in a line…” Does this mean a total of 20 points, or 20 points in a line after 5 points in illusions?

I’ll look for port, I assume that is in the blue chevron skill tree somewhere down the line.

I’ll look for Pyro’s posts.

Again, thanks for the tips, and add any others you might think I’ll find useful :-)

You can reset traits, it costs only a couple silver at your class traitmaster.

I meant once you can spend 20 in one single line, i.e. level 40.

Portal is a bit farther down. Make sure you have blink, feedback, and nullfield before you get portal though. Honestly, you might even want to get veil before portal.

@Aberrant: Actually, it’s not a 100% counter, due to how the mechanic works.

If you apply a 10 second bleed with +40% condition duration, your bleed will now have a duration of 14 seconds.

Now, that bleed is applied to someone that has -40% condition duration. The calculation takes 40% of the new 14 second duration, or 5.6 seconds, and lowers it by that much, ultimately resulting in a net reduction in duration.

Additionally, remember that all conditions are affected by this. Immobilize, chill, cripple, traditionally extremely dangerous wvw disables can be vastly reduced in power with the soup.

That being said, one can easily switch foods mid-fight. Carry both, and if you run into a condition heavy situation, simply use the -40% food, and use the +40% food otherwise.

@Annette: Ok, now you’ve got yourself a phantasm build. A few things.

First, the traits are unfocused. You’re somewhere between shatter and phantasm, leaning towards phantasm. Take 5 points out of illusions, put it into inspiration for the other +15% phantasm damage. You’ll also want to swap out deceptive evasion for duelist’s discipline. Alternatively, take an offhand sword (you should have an offhand sword anyway, just for variety, along with an offhand focus, and a staff), and trait phantasmal fury instead.

You’ll want a focus for situations where projectile reflects are important, and you’ll trait warden’s feedback in the inspiration line when you do. In some situations (large boss fights) you’ll be able to set up 3 warlocks (staff phantasms) and they will do massively more damage than anything else due to the large number of conditions that get applied to big bosses, so you’ll want the staff as well.

First 5 go into illusions.

After that, spending them in domination isn’t a bad idea. Leveling a Mesmer in wvw is gonna be tough, and you’ll want to stick with staff and/or greatsword mostly for your ranged damage, so domination and dueling are the lines for you.

Blink is pretty important as a first utility. You’ll also want to pick up feedback and keep that on your bar.

Once you can spend 20 points in a line, you can modify your build into a lightweight version of a glamour build, taking feedback, null field, and blink/portal/veil. This will allow you to get a lot of good tagging while remaining safe.

Normally I would say that portal is super important to have on your bar, but you will be far too fragile to effectively utilize it, so that’s of lower importance.

What you’ve got there is a pretty standard shatter build. 30 in illusions by taking out 5 from dueling is a must, especially since the duelin 25 point trait isn’t very good, especially in pve.

Now, personally I prefer a phantasm build for pve, you can find the build I use under the name of supporting phantasm build. I think it has more versatility and provides a lot more team utility than a shatter build can. That being said, pve in this game is really easy, and you’ll do quite alright with shatter.

The condi removal mantra really won’t give you much the vast majority of the time, though there are a few certain fights where it can really help. I’d swap it out for mirror images for general play.

As far as stats go, full pvt is a horrible idea for a pve focused build, as it has very very low damage potential. I usually use mostly berserker with a few pieces of pvt to bring me up to 20k hp, which is the benchmark I like to stay above for my builds.

Sprawl.3891:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Also, I view this build as a dueling build, and that’s pretty much it. I would never roam with it over my immortal build, so I swap out skills for dueling.

by roam i meant spvp, being the 2nd or 3rd person to come help out on a point. your immortal build is very bad for tournament. wvw is mindless and many undergeared bad players who can’t take the heat in spvp.

By roaming I was referring to wvw roaming, which this build is rather less effective at.

As far as tournaments go, the immortal build is rather effective at close point defense, as it generally take 2-3 people to actually push me off of a point, and it takes them at least 20-30 seconds to do it.

@Cube: I think I may have triggerless just the other day, though I can’t remember for sure. It was a long fight, but careful play meant I never really came close to dying, so it was only a matter of time.

Also, I view this build as a dueling build, and that’s pretty much it. I would never roam with it over my immortal build, so I swap out skills for dueling.

@FinalPatriot: This build tears apart bunker d/d eles. They are very predictable, and they don’t do enough damage to really hurt you. Also, they have a lot of multihits that will hurt from the retaliation on the phantasms.

@naphack: You may have something with sigil of hydromancy, I’ll have to give it a shot.

Cube.4905:

Love seeing my build on here after I fought you with it at fight club, except i don’t use sep, overwriting phants with auto attack clones blows, plus NEED to have BF on both weapon sets.

So what tweaks did you add except for swapping out Sw/Sw with Sep/Sw? Also, this build is so/so for sPvP because it relies on overwhelming offense, i run around 130% crit dmg and you can’t get anywhere near that in sPvP

Also, the counter to this is a well played P/D thief, or a very good PVT engineer with grenades, I have lost to both consistently, although all the engineer fights were really close. However, i could probably duel trigerless 20 times and maybe win 1 or 2 just from luck.

Well, the major change was the scepter. It provides a good chunk of additional damage and defense that is really nice. I turn off the autoattack, so that’s not a problem. Also, in wvw (and to a lesser extent sPvP) confusing images can be really strong if you have time to channel it.

I also made it a bit more durable than your build, by adding a few soldiers pieces to boost my hp a bit. One more thing is that I really leave the sigil open to swapping. Since this is really a duel build, change that util around to counter your current opponent.

P/d thieves are pretty easy. Swap out ether feast for the heal mantra, and now you have plenty of condition removal to deal with them. Make sure you don’t summon the phantasms on a caltrops. Also, be fast with blurred frenzy or a dodge after their stealth attack. If you do it right, you’ll only get 1 stack of bleeding from the whole thing. Another change is you can take mirror to really screw with them on a rather low cooldown.

I’ve run into a few grenade engies, but none that really posed a problem. Feedback will screw with them, especially with the traited pistol. Just try to spread out the phantasms enough so they don’t kill all of them in one go. A glassy HGH grenadier will die really fast, and a tanky pvt one just won’t do anywhere near the damage necessary to kill you.

Retaliation on zergs is the reason they have to be careful about increasing the aoe limit. Currently, really only engineers with grenade kit and mesmers with feedback really feel the fury of a zerg with retaliation. It is nasty though, I’ll drop feedback and instantly lost about 12-15k hp from retaliation. When aoe caps are raised, retaliation becomes a very real threat to any aoe classes.

fadeaway.2807:

Desolation EU [:

Ah, k. I ask because the inspiration for making this build was a sword/pistol sword/sword phantasm build that dismantled my immortal build, so I worked with it and added a few tweaks to make this one, and the guy that ran that I bumped into on maguuma.

All phantasms behave the same way with stealth.

If you stealth during the summon, the phantasm will be placed on top of the stealthed person, and will attack immediately when they leave stealth.

If stealthing during the attack animation, the attack will continue as usual.

If stealthing between phantasm attacks, the phantasm will wait and attack immediately upon the target leaving stealth.

@fadeaway: Are you on Maguuma?

Without a doubt, dragonbrand is the best one in NA servers. You have to run at the right time though, usually around 5ish am EST is when NNK and TFV start really steamrolling everything.

Kazhiel is correct. This build works fine in a small skirmish situation, although if you get too large, the phantasms just die. It is abysmal in a 1 vs many.

Crossplay.2067:

Remember when the tooltips for our skills WERE ACTUALLY CORRECT?!

Can’t say that I do…

Madisonlee.9641:

Any ideas for tPvp optimization? I’m still relatively new so I’m not sure if what I’m doing is kitten or not, but I’ve traded off mirror images with the condition removing mantra to help with the conditions in tPvP since melandru’s alone isn’t shining without your WvW other buffs.

I’ve also thought about replacing melandru’s altogether, but I don’t know. That’s all I could come up with, any ideas Pyro? Or would you say the WvW build you posted is still optimized for tPvp?

The melandru runes aren’t quite as potent in sPvP without the food that goes with them, but they’re still far and away the best defensive rune choice you can take. In sPvP for condition removal, I do have to be a bit more careful with landing the whirl finisher properly. Drop the warden, and put temporal curtain right on top of it for a bunch of condition removal. Doing that effectively generally means I don’t need to take additional condition removal.

Other than that, nothing much really changes in tPvP. Some groups will want you to take portal, so drop mirror images for that, but in general you just bunker down on that point and don’t die.

I’d be fine of course…but there would be a lot of very kitten off shatter mesmers.

Edit: And a whole lot of new immortals

randomfightfan.4091:

Can we have the beam be affected my projectile blocks/reflects??

Bolded for emphasis. This idea is worthless and makes 0 sense.

nirvana.8245:

What is being elaborated to here is pretty clear. The thief was hacking, plain and simple. Its not a balance discussion in any way.

Haha, please, o wise one, enlighten us with your wisdom!

jportell.2197:

MrForz.1953:

jportell.2197:

Mesmer sucks at it worse than anyone.. by far… Necros hand my rear to me with conditions… We have the least amount of cleanses in the game… Which means that unless we trait for it or use a slot skill we get NONE.

Just like most of classes.

Thief-2 heal skills remove conditions, Guard-Passive condition removal with heal signet, Necro-Consume conditions, Ele-Ether Renewal-Engi gets a trait in one of their strongest (strongest) Trait line that removes conditions with elixirs, Ranger can passively send it to its pet . Mesmer-Menders purity (ONLY way we can get it in a heal skill) and its just one…. SO yes we are the worst class in this game when it comes to condition removal… This is intended… Stop trying to get us nerfed based off of something that is false (condition removal lol). And when I said slot skill I meant the utility slots outside of healing skill.

I’m gonna have to rate this as slightly misleading.

Mesmers do have a quite low baseline for condition removal. However, like everything else we do, we can choose to specialize into it and never have a condition touch us again. Between mender’s purity and shattered conditions, that’s already more removal than a lot of classes can get. Taking focus for the light field whirl finisher provides a lot more, and you can even take the mantra, thievery, or null field.

Condition removal on Mesmer is only bad if you let it be. Specializing into it makes us extremely effective at dumping conditions.

It’s underused because it’s bad.

At any rate, the autoattack chain advances if you swing it at air, so use that to get an instant clone before attacking. The line block is clunky, but it does a lot of damage in a power setup, and will apply confusion if you have the confusion on blind trait. Confusing images is slow and clunky. The best way to make sure it hits is to stand completely still and not move your character at all so that it auto faces.

That’s about it. It’s slow, not great at applying confusion, and has no access to conditions other than confusion. It desperately needs a rework.

alexparris.3754:

Would this work with Rares, until I get the PVT Exotic gear, or should I use something else for now?

I did use the phantasm build the other night and jumped into WvW for a few minutes. I think I downed 2 players in around 10 seconds- it was madness, but then a couple of mates came along and blew me up!

Like any build, it won’t operate at maximum effectiveness with rares, but there’s nothing in particular that requires exotics more than any other build.

Xirin.8593:

Strippling.3524:

[10,000,000,000,000 × 10]^10 times sorry

Why are you multiplying 10 trillion (10 billion in the long scale) by 10, before raising it to the power of 10?

Why didn’t you just write 100,000,000,000,000 ^ 10 ? Or why not just 1×10^140 ? I’m just curious, not trolling…I am bored at work this morning.

I’ve seen you DD guys roaming around, nice to see other roamers

Because he wasn’t interesting in numerical accuracy or efficiency, just mashing 1s and 0s and finding a biggish number to exaggerate with.

Svarty.8019:

Invisibility causing problem for ya? Haha, same old.

Rule #1. DO NOT PUT INVISIBILITY IN MULTIPLAYER GAMES.

The base problem here isn’t the stealth though. Pretty much any class can do what that thief did, albeit with a tad more effort. Sneezing at a gate shouldn’t contest a keep.

/signed.

This would be amazing.

Shinjusuke.9156:

1)the fact that a Mesmer can repeatedly and forcibly unlock a Necro + force them to cycle through 2-3 clones EVERY time they’re forcibly unlocked ruins all Necro condition builds

What are you even talking about?

2) the fact that Mesmer Condition builds outclass Necro Condition by a mile right now when built for it (in damage, condition variety, and utility)

This is so patently false. Necro condition builds are the best in the game, no contest. You have more abilities to play with, apply, and remove conditions than anyone else. Your damaging conditions are bleed and poison, which you can stack massive amounts of continually, along with large amounts of other disabling conditions. Mesmers do confusion, bleeding, and burning, and the only one we’re actually good at stacking is confusion.

3) the fact that Mesmers are better Minion Masters due to their inexhaustible supply of minions + their ability to cause those minions to do cool, debilitating effects. Not to mention Minions on a necro take up utility skill slots, whereas Mesmers get them for free

No argument here.

Shinjusuke.9156:

4) The fact that Moa has completely ruined minion-master Necros (nerfed or not, it’s still a forcible destruction of all necro minions + forcing them on CD)

A non-issue. Moa is a crap elite, and any mesmer using it should be ashamed of themselves. Moa may counter minion-master necros….but so does everything else.

Shinjusuke.9156:

5) The fact that they have access to a ton more self-buffs than necros, including the dreaded retaliation, and on top of this have tons of escapes to Necro’s 1 (flesh worm, with a long channel time. DS isn’t an escape against any skilled opponent)

The necro playstyle is different than mesmer. You have a ton of hp, very good access to might stacking, good access to retaliation as well, and even regen. Your class mechanic is a massive amount of health in the form of death shroud. Necros play extremely differently than mesmers. If you hate the necro playstyle so much, then stop playing necro.

Shinjusuke.9156:

6) The amazing synergy to Mesmer kits, as opposed to the current disparity all throughout Necro kits

There’s a ton of necro kits that work very well together. You have the aforementioned might stacking, condition playing utilities along with condition stacking, things that enhance defense…if you think there’s no synergy in necro kits, you need to look harder and play better.

Shinjusuke.9156:

7) the difference in usefulness between Mesmer and Necro class skills (meaning the f1-f4, DS is hated by most all Necros because it’s essentially useless in PvP, most view it as nothing but a crappy shield + a short fear)

Last I checked, DS is an awesome mechanic that provides necros with an additional toolset, large amounts of utility, and a significant durability boost. Good necros know how to use it, but it seems that you aren’t one of them.

Shinjusuke.9156:

8) The obvious difference in ANets attention paid between the two classes (the last post from a red in the Necro forums was months ago), not to mention the obvious interest in design creativity between the two (look at ANY of the weapons comparitively in their range groups: Necro Staff vs Mesmer Staff for example)..

Most of the red posts in the mesmer forums are to acknowledge that they broke yet another skill in the most recent patch. If that’s the sort of attention you want, then by all means you can have it.

There’s your in-depth and detailed analysis of why your arguments are bogus. Now please stop whining and go back to your own forums.

Mr Fancypants.1270:

pyro I love your builds. been using immortal Mesmer for WvW and now started using this for PVE. Not sure if its me, but the mantra healing seems like it does not work at times. From my understanding it should heal after you meditate.

How close do party members have to be? Sometimes I get no green numbers!

I believe the radius is somewhere around 300 range. It isn’t a huge radius, but it is large enough to catch several allies at once if you position yourself properly.

If I recall correctly, it used to provide it on the proc, but was changed so that it was a more consistent source, albeit less total uptime in some circumstances. Don’t quote me on that one though.

Crap, misread that.

Right, sigils. If you’re going for conditions, you’ll probably want bleed duration. Burn duration isn’t helpful because you won’t be able to boost the staff burning enough to make it tick twice, but bleed will help. You also should get at least 1 corruption sigil for the condition damage stacking.

Edit: Things like 5% extra damage or 10% extra damage are straight damage, not condition damage.

Gonna have to rain a bit on your parade I’m afraid.

Protection is only given when chaos armor, the skill, is activated. It will not proc from the on-hits, you can only get regeneration or swiftness. This build is certainly an interesting idea, but it will not have the tankyness of that permanent protection uptime that you were planning it to have.

Shinjusuke.9156:

No, not really. I’m actually here as a Mesmer, trying to help other Mesmers understand why our forum is full of trolls right now.

Yes….it’s because you’re still here, making useless whine threads as usual…

I’m sorry, you’re just wrong. You’re either shooting in the wrong direction, you got blinded, the thief gasp strafed out of your non-targeted attack…..

There are so many ways how the effect you described: Missing attacks on stealthed target, can occur. This is probably one of the stupider whine threads I’ve seen. At least most of them are whining about something that actually happens (thieves actually have burst damage, etc.)

Hexxen.7216:

I use a tweeked immortal i know lol. But I didn’t think guardians had any issues keeping it up full time either. Just thought we had the advantage of a huge stack of time. I have never played guardian though so.

Guardians have to really build for it. We don’t.

samski.5194:

@Rhaps – Glad your enjoying the spec I have swapped sword out for scepter now to add more burst to the build but maintain its survivability as I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that runners will always be a challenge to catch with this build. I’m also testing Mass Invis out instead of Time Warp right now.

Misc – Added the burst damage video to the OP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y0-D_bay64

When solo roaming, I used to swear by MI. However, I’ve actually taken to using time warp a bit more lately. Ultimately, it really depends on what you’re doing. If I’m running with 3 or 4 people, time warp is almost always a great choice…unless you know you need to pull of a surprise attack or something. They’re both great choices, it really depends on the situation.

MLieBennett.9031:

Pyroatheist easily fixes the spots where my rambling completely forgot about, and is definitely someone to listen to on these forums, Azure. Heh, I knew I was forgetting to mention a few things.

Like Pyroatheist, I too carry G.Sword, Staff, 2x Swords, Focus, Pistol, Scepter, and a Torch. Each of them are down right handy to have around and has a place … well maybe not the torch. The different Phantasms each have situations where they survive better then others.
On Condition Dmg (Rampagers)? I’ll admit, I’m just an odd duck on that one. ^^; Its very likely that you’ll like the results if you go with Pyroatheist’s suggestion over my own.

The main reason I don’t do it myself is because instead of getting that extra condition damage, I’m using soldiers gear to get myself over 20k hp. I really don’t like running builds that have me below 20k hp, it’s just sorta a benchmark of survivability that I like staying above.

Azure.8670:

thanks! So far it sounds good, except on illusion IV X doesnt sound right to me… I dont think thats what id use. Well ill give X a shot since now ill try mantras but I think id prefer III over IV

I think you mean inspiration, not illusion. In that build, you’re completely right, it should be VIII and not X. IV is good though, that condition removal is really really nice, but III is also a worthy trait.

generalraccoon.3857:

Crossplay.2067:

I hate how people keep saying, for pve, condition damage on mesmers is horrible. Yes, confusion is but burning, bleeding and vulnerability are not. In nearly full rampager gear (three trinkets are carrion), I’m able to kill faster with my staff than with sword/focus. I thought it was a fluke at first but I tested it a few times around Orr and the results were the same every time. And no, it’s not my runes because they give me 190 vitality and 50 power.

I don’t think conditions are all that bad as a few guildies I ran with have quite good condition-build mesmers. I am however intrigued that you say burning, bleeding are fine but not confusion. When I was on the receiving end of it, they seem to kinda hurt Maybe someone can explain to me?

Also I did ran my new mesmer toon up to lvl 10 recently and I gotta ask, clones doing 0 dmg, that is intended? Phantasms are nice btw

Clones are there to be shatter fodder/to proc illusion # related traits, etc. Phantasms do the damage.

Condition mesmer sucks in pve, is awesome in pvp. Confusion is horrible because mobs attack really slowly, and so you rarely get any damage from it. Conditions in general are bad from mesmer because you rely on the staff autoattack and staff clones (which actually apply conditions). Here’s the problem. The staff autoattack will apply bleeding, or burning, or vulnerability. That means 1/3 of its attacks are useless for your dps. On top of that, the burning is only 1s, and easily overwritten by other classes that will stack much more burning (guardians/eles). That leaves just bleeding, which is ok of course, but you’ll never stack it up like other condition classes can. The dps is just ultimately really subpar in pve.

MlieBennet said it pretty well.

Just a few things I’d change. As much as having some condition damage for illusion bleeds, my personal preference is tossing in soldier’s stats weapons (PVT) for some additional beefyness, and all berserker for the rest.

I find that defender tends to die very fast in most dungeons, although there are some nice spots for him. Signet of illusions isn’t bad, though it would probably be the first utility to drop to take something like feedback or null field.

As far as weapons in general go though, for PvE, I always carry a greatsword, staff, 2 swords, a focus, and a pistol, and I use all of them in different situations. I do a slightly different traitset designed to highlight support and phantasm damage, but the basic concepts remain the same.

Ekemeister.8905:

Geiir.7603:

SubjectZero.6497:

Leticron.7945:

Anyway… the stealth change made PvE terribly awkward… really terrible playstyle wise.
And I’m not even talking about our hampered damage (that if anything was too low already for the supposed kings and queens of single target dps) but about the clumsyness that came for free with revealed “interrupting” auto attack chains.
Simply put – awfull playstyle change!

This is really the main problem I have with the reveal change. There was absolutely no effect on stealth abuse it just made the D/D, P/D, and S/D sets very awkward to play (especially in PvE). What was wrong with making 3s reveal on any stealth exit? It would’ve actually served a legitimate purpose.

Getting a three second de-buff each time we stealth would really force thieves to think more before stealthing. As it is know it looks like this:

I’m stealthing, positioning for backstab, target dodges out of the way. But hey! I just stealth again and go for another backstab.

If they would have applied the de-buff when I missed and exited stealth my opponent would have been “rewarded” for actually out playing me by dodging right before my backstab landed. My opponent would then have me out in the open for three seconds (which is a lot for the profession with the smallest health pool and toughness). This would force me to be a better player and actually land every backstab. Now it’s just rinse and repeat or get the kitten out.

Please just fix this. Give us three seconds of stealth each time I leave stealth and make it three seconds instead of four. Those four seconds just made all rotations seem awkward. Most of our auto-attack chains take three seconds, so now it just doesn’t feel right.

So this player is skilled enough to dodge the backstab he can’t see coming but can’t dodge/block the CnD? Dodge the CnD and watch the thief get punished with what’s essentially a global cd on all his weapon skills.

CnD can be used on anything: Mesmer clones/phantasms, ranger pets, necro minions, the rock dogs that pop out from runes, random animals lying around, other nearby players….none of that can be controlled by player dodging/blocking skill.

Moonrabbit.1543:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Moonrabbit.1543:

Blackmoon.6837:

Mesmers may have good bursts, however, getting that damage through is a whole other story.

It’s easy to dodge the bursts. Easy to kill the illusions before a burst. Easy to use boons to block or go invul before a burst.

In the long run, we’re not superb.

I am thinking of dungeons where boons and invulnerability are a minimal concern. In this environment, how does a mesmer stack against an ele, necro, eng, or ranger when specced for dps (ST or AoE)? I am aware of the mesmer’s strong utility and weak OOC mobility. However, I have seen mixed assertions regarding damage capabilities.

Mesmer single target damage when specced for phantasm damage is difficult to beat. Aoe is significantly weaker though.

Sorry for more dumb questions… I was under the impression that shatter was the key damage spec and that it was pretty good for AoE, though perhaps this is for PvP/WvW.

Shatter is good for aoe. It’s also very bursty, and reliant on your clones making it to the target. In terms of sustained dps, a phantasm build will definitely outdamgae shatter in PvE. This is especially true on larger bosses that tend to accumulate conditions, and using warlocks, as they scale 10% damage per condition.

Unsurprising. There hasn’t been a single instance where Anet changed an autoattack skill and remembered to change it for the clones as well.

Edit: Or didn’t break it in the changing anyway.

Zikory.6871:

eithinan.9841:

Sarrs.4831:

I did this earlier, on my own. The other team’s guys spread out so I could only pin down one person at a time, but I almost killed them.

It’s a very powerful effect. I can see how it’d be very dangerous in the status quo environment of “lol stack up to avoid the AOE cap”, and it might even be OP outside of that, but it seems like a very strong way to discourage zerging. It’s an AOE; it’s supposed to destroy anything in its area of effect.

Less piddling 5-cap aoes that don’t end up doing squat to that stack of 40 people in one hitbox. More mass murder. Stacking up like that doesn’t encourage good play or make sense with regular world content in mind. Once tools proliferate enough to make this superdense stacks a losing strategy, then nerf it.

dank.3680:

Well I am ok with the whole Leg Specialist working for arrow carts (as well as all the other class interactions that happen with siege). I just want to point out that taking Leg Specialist is not really a “sacrifice” as I consider the trait a good pick for many of my Warrior builds.

Don’t forget to grab Opportunist as well for Fury every time you Immobilise someone with Leg Specialist!

Whether it is a counter to zergs or not is inconsequential, if this is the reason for allowing warriors to be OP on arrow carts over all other classes, then all those other classes should be able to immobilize on AC, not just cripple. It is the OP nature of 1 “profession” over all others when Anet is trying to balance WvW.

Balance doesn’t mean if one class can do it, all classes can do it. Under that logic necros should have a leap finisher and all classes should have stealth skills.

The problem is that this is effecting siege. The point of siege is supposed to be that it is the same no matter who hops onto it, but with traits like leg specialist affecting things, that balance no longer exists.