Guild Wars 2

crunkfresh.9025:

okay thank you for the tips ill read your guide and drop a couple gold on some new gears

Since you are angling to do dungeons, try to do dungeons that get you the right gear stats, that way you don’t have to spend any money to get your exotics.

Delofakitten.4231:

. . . you walk through the door at work and try to ‘Blink’ past the time clock to get ahead of the line.

LoS required, tried to use it to past the line of coworkers at the bar the other day too. Even hit my hotkey. . . if the keyboard had been in my hand. = /

I’m honestly concerned for you.

Shades of purple?

Yes Terrahero, that is ok.

If you have a build that does lots of small and fast hits and you neglect to take boon removal, you deserve to be punished.

That being said, you can’t effectively remove retaliation from my build for more than a couple seconds, but that’s another issue.

Also, the devs have said many times they won’t balance around wvw, and for a great reason. There are a lot of mechanics that start acting funky in situations with massive numbers of people, and retaliation is only one of them. You just have to learn to deal with it. When I drop feedback into a zerg, I know that I need to be at full hp or accept the risk of dying to retaliation, it’s just another consideration you need to make.

This thread is equal parts amusing and disturbing.

wat

/15characters

Just one thing to say first. Aggro in gw2 is really, really complicated. It factors in things like current hp, armor class, damage, current toughness, and some mobs are definitely attracted by attempted revivals. Drawing aggro doesn’t mean something clear like it does in most games.

Also, I hate to say this, but condition Mesmer is just not very good in pve. The problem is that you have no effective way of stacking conditions. In pvp, it works fine because you can play defensively and whittle someone down. In pve, condition classes will stack up 5-10 bleeds on mobs in the first few seconds and keep them there. Mesmers simply can’t do that.

Now, you won’t suck horribly. That team comp can easily complete any dungeon and high level fractals as long as you all are competent. You just won’t be helping your team as much as you could with a direct damage (not necessarily full gc) build.

Edit: Just realized I basically said your build is bad and gave you no tips for it. Mesmers excel in dungeons because of massive utility and flexibility. To get this, you need a lot of weapons. You need a focus. You need a sword. You also need a staff and greatsword. By using different weapons in different situations, you optimize your build to the encounter.

Your trait setup actually is leaning towards a power/crit phantasm build, though those 5 random points in chaos serve no purpose. Your build link also doesn’t work ( on a mobile anyway).

Given that you all are newish, your playstyle and build seem to point towards a phantasm power build, and you seem to be taking a somewhat supporty role in your dungeons, I’ll point you towards my phantasmal support build that I use for all things pve.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Supporting-Phantasm-Build/

Edit 2: For small bits of technical information like how condition damage is calculated, you could ask in the forums, but the responses will simply point you towards the official gw2 wiki. It has a lot of great information, especially for technical information like that.

Prob should l2p.

…and here’s how. Your build looks fine. I would drop mirror images for blink, because you won’t use mirror images ever. Mirror is fine as a heal, though I prefer ether feast. What I did was put 2 corruption sigils in my scepter and focus, that way I can stack back up twice as fast after I get downed.

Also, you won’t cap confusion duration with that build. For that reason Kylia recommends 5 runes of nightmare.

Playstyle is ultra simple. Drop your glamours in the middle of a zerg and watch the purple numbers. However, there is a bit of strategy to it, which works around how glamours apply confusion.

Glamours apply confusion in 3 ways. First, they blind on placement, causing confusion. This only hits 5 people. Next, they confuse on entry or exit. This is a boundary condition, and requires group movement to be effective. Lastly, feedback confuses as any combo finishers will apply confusion as they reflect.

On a large stationary group, null field won’t do much, but feedback could do a lot. On a moving group, or even one just milling around, feedback and null field will work well. Try to place the glamours at choke points to maximize their effectiveness. In some really tight choke points, you can equip portal as it provides 2 separate glamour fields to really stack up confusion, but that only works well on an extremely tight choke.

Other than the glamours, try to hit as many people with confusing images as possible. You can also drop chaos storm into large groups for nice damage.

It takes very little damage to actually tag someone, often as little as 500-700. A reason for your lack of stacks could be you were using the wrong weaponset while acquiring kills.

Note: If you have the opportunity to get on a ballista or ac, do it. Seige weapons inherit your condition damage, so you’ll be able to apply mass bleeds for a long duration that will do a ton of damage.

Also, some of us still remember the original zerker, before they really screwed it up the first time. They still haven’t gotten it back to its initial form.

The problem with sPvP and tPvP is that they are both so dull. Simple and boring game types, anet screwed up countless things with implementation, the vast majority of people who were serious about it quit. Wvw is interesting, dynamic, and engaging. It’s not a big mystery why it is very difficult to find serious mesmers that do t/sPvP.

Folks, be careful, we don’t want to disturb it. Here we have a fine specimen of the unique Ferrous Cranus, renowned for its unwavering stubbornness and inability to form coherent arguments. While we may all wish it to truly act on its threats to leave the game, the Ferrous Cranus rarely is able to resist the lure of continued obstruction in the forums.

http://tinyurl.com/dhxf3

Mere Image.8376:

The thing is though, Anet said they nerfed quickess to 50% speed and extended the duration. Unfortunately that extended duration does not apply to Time Warp; it remains 10 seconds long, creating the illusion (or reality) that Mesmers were singled out. I wouldn’t have minded the nerf if they had given us some compensation: a shorter cool down, slightly longer duration (13 seconds instead of 10), etc. Actually I’ve always entertained the idea of time warp serving a two way effect, and with the nerf it would be really cool if they added this feature.

My thoughts: Time warp – increases attack speed for ALLIES by 50% and decreases the attack speed of enemies by 50%.

While I think time warp is quite fine as is….that would be a REALLY REALLY cool idea.

@Mice: Did not realize that about the guardian book elites. As far as prismatic understanding, that trait indirectly interacts with MI, but it doesn’t truly affect the skill. Most other classes have traits that reduce cooldowns of elites, or make them last longer, or increasing damage from them, etc.

Kazhiel.8194:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Kazhiel.8194:

The cannon boost looks great if you do a lot of defending, when YB is red you’ll generally find BS at Ogrewatch (Badgerwatch!) defending during NA prime time if we’re on EBG and we always start there on reset nights, there’s a couple of our guys gonna get cannon mastery.

If the ogrewatch cannons…or any cannons for that matter… aren’t dead before the zerg approaches, or they aren’t focused as soon as they approach, then the commander is not fit to command. There are really only a couple good uses for cannons, and they all occur at hills, particularly north gate defense.

People have to make it thru the massive amounts of siege we have there to get close enough to kill our cannons, besides the cannons themselves, ask tsym how many times their zerg wiped against our siege at ogre and pang during their little showing off thing they thought they were going to do coming back in wvw the other night.

For ogre, just build a treb and/or ballistas up on top of the hill in the camp. You’ll get the cannons and any other siege you have down soon enough.

@Op: Quit whining.

@Dahkeus: Seems to me that you’re looking for something akin to the warrior signet elite; a powerful self buffing skill on a not absurdly long cooldown, and I would be 110% behind something like that.

Edit: One major thing mesmers are missing is an elite that is affected by traits. Every single class other than Mesmer and guardian have one or more elites that are affected sometimes by multiple traits.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Pyroatheist.9031:

It affects wvw, which retains the same stats as pve. For this reason, it was nerfed everywhere. The key is that the nerf is 100% inconsequential in pve, while having massive positive implications in pvp.

I could say the same for shatter CD which brings me back to my example. And its not “inconsequential” if you ever been in clutch situations.

You couldn’t say the same for shatter CD, because that would have massive negative implications in all parts of the game, uniquely for Mesmer. The two situations are completely different, and now I’m done taking this bait. I’ve said my part, and you’ve wallowed through whatever point it is you think you’re making, and further discussion will not be productive.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Pyroatheist.9031:

As for pve…well, it’s rather simple. Pve is really easy. Really easy. The only challenging things are vey high level fractals, and Arah (sorta). I’ll be very blunt here and say that if you require time warp to finish a pve encounter, no matter how pathetic your team is, you are a bad Mesmer. Time warp makes things faster, it makes things more convenient. But to make the statement that it is necessary is the height of idiocy. Not every party has a Mesmer, and they do quite fine.

“No matter how pathetic your party is” and PVE is stupidly “easy outside of Arah and high level fracts” would indicate you can actually solo content. Without TW. I marvel at ur godly skillz.

I repeat no big deal in PvE then no nerf in PvE. Blanket nerf because dev doesnt want to code for separate cases then just say so.

Not all content is soloable. Many dungeons have mechanics that make them effectively impossible to solo.

That being said, there are many bosses I can solo. The thing is, my solo ability against those bosses doesn’t rely on time warp. It can’t. The duration is too low and the cooldown is too high for relying on it as a boss soloig tool to make any sense.

As I mentioned in the other thread that you’re clogging up, pve and wvw are connected, and so code that affects wvw necessarily catches pve as well.

Kazhiel.8194:

Pyroatheist.9031:

@EnRohbi: Cannons man. Not catapults. That line is useless because of how useless cannons are in the vast majority of situations.

@Op: Nothing is particularly Mesmer specific. The skills are the same for Mesmer as for any other class, supply is highly desirable, siege buffs are also very good, and damage vs pve mobs is useless.

The cannon boost looks great if you do a lot of defending, when YB is red you’ll generally find BS at Ogrewatch (Badgerwatch!) defending during NA prime time if we’re on EBG and we always start there on reset nights, there’s a couple of our guys gonna get cannon mastery.

If the ogrewatch cannons…or any cannons for that matter… aren’t dead before the zerg approaches, or they aren’t focused as soon as they approach, then the commander is not fit to command. There are really only a couple good uses for cannons, and they all occur at hills, particularly north gate defense.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Pyroatheist.9031:

You seem to be willfully ignoring the fact that quickness is not a mechanic unique to mesmers. Every source of quickness in the game was nerfed; sources that have a downside were extended slightly, along with duration of the downside. This is not a Mesmer nerf, this is a much needed nerf to quickness that players of all classes have been asking for since the first week this game was released.

Well this is a mesmer forum so. “Players of all classes have been asking for since the first week” doesnt seem to include the other players of other professions who use quickness QQing in their respective forums. I find it strange why people would find it needed outside of PVP. I have been asking quite a few times on the forums which specific PVE content does it trivialize outside of COF. Apparently no one is able to answer.

I was giving a hypothetical scenario: if shatters CD was increased by 5s, would u guys be saying the same things? I dont use shatter builds or PVP so it doesnt affect me and I think all the other professions would like to see the above-mentioned nerf take place.

It affects wvw, which retains the same stats as pve. For this reason, it was nerfed everywhere. The key is that the nerf is 100% inconsequential in pve, while having massive positive implications in pvp.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Khal Drogo.9631:

ComeAndSee.1356:

]
50% faster attack/skill speed is still very good considering Time Warp effects 5 people total and its just one of our tools. We have friendly/enemy boon removals, a reflect, portal, a pull/push, Veil, and other goodies.

The reason they nerfed it in PvE as well is because you should bring players to a dungeon based on skill more than utility and you shouldn’t need it to beat certain fights.

PvP it was just dumb. I’ve been calling for a nerf on it months ago.

Better a half loaf than the full loaf you used to enjoy eh? At the rate we are going, people are going to say at least they didnt nerf it 75% or 100%.

You mean every party you were in, guild or PUG, everything always ran smoothly without a hitch, all your teammates are always skilled players and u wont need it to rez ppl, do a desperate burst to survive. And if you dont need it to beat encounters, then u can always swap to something else like Moa for example for giggles. Just be sure u do it in a party of guildies.

Well, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m actually good at this game, so I can happily say that not once have I ever needed time warp to successfully complete a pve encounter.

Now, time warp happens to be our elite with the best utility in most situations, which is why I use it for most situations. Having it nerfed, however, does not impact our pve ability more than a minimal amount, and impacts our total team utility an even smaller amount.

If you really think that time warp is the only thing we bring to a party; you are very, very bad at this class.

No its not the only thing we bring to a party. And no, its not that you are so good, its because you dont pug with average players in very difficult dungeons or bad players in normal ones. As to how good I am as a mesmer in PVE EX COF, well u have to ask my teammates whether I am very bad or not. Unlike you, I dont toot my own horn.

I find it strange that mesmers are so vociferously defending a nerf especially by irrationally saying that its no big deal. If its no big deal, then there is no necessity for a nerf in the first place. Clearly its a big deal in PVP but not so much in PvE that it “trivialises” content.

Let me explain to you exactly why it is a big deal in pvp and is not a big deal in pve.

In pvp, quickness has been regarded as overpowered for a long time. A doubling of action speed is simply too good, and everyone knows it. The nerf means a lot less silly burst from warriors and thieves, while the overall group utility of time war kitten till fantastic.

As for pve…well, it’s rather simple. Pve is really easy. Really easy. The only challenging things are vey high level fractals, and Arah (sorta). I’ll be very blunt here and say that if you require time warp to finish a pve encounter, no matter how pathetic your team is, you are a bad Mesmer. Time warp makes things faster, it makes things more convenient. But to make the statement that it is necessary is the height of idiocy. Not every party has a Mesmer, and they do quite fine.

@EnRohbi: Cannons man. Not catapults. That line is useless because of how useless cannons are in the vast majority of situations.

@Op: Nothing is particularly Mesmer specific. The skills are the same for Mesmer as for any other class, supply is highly desirable, siege buffs are also very good, and damage vs pve mobs is useless.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Kazhiel.8194:

Hi troll, you make no sense, try again? What do shatter builds have to do with anything? I don’t play one lol.

Why am I a troll? Please explain. I was simply quoting an example of a very popular build which u nerf a component by say blanket increasing the CD by 5s which should not be a big deal in order to placate other professions complaining of balance issues in PVP, which quickness was apparently nerfed for.

Shatter CD increase by 5s is truly no big deal, so no QQ pls. If you dont play shatter build, then you should have 0 objections watsover.

You seem to be willfully ignoring the fact that quickness is not a mechanic unique to mesmers. Every source of quickness in the game was nerfed; sources that have a downside were extended slightly, along with duration of the downside. This is not a Mesmer nerf, this is a much needed nerf to quickness that players of all classes have been asking for since the first week this game was released.

Khal Drogo.9631:

ComeAndSee.1356:

]
50% faster attack/skill speed is still very good considering Time Warp effects 5 people total and its just one of our tools. We have friendly/enemy boon removals, a reflect, portal, a pull/push, Veil, and other goodies.

The reason they nerfed it in PvE as well is because you should bring players to a dungeon based on skill more than utility and you shouldn’t need it to beat certain fights.

PvP it was just dumb. I’ve been calling for a nerf on it months ago.

Better a half loaf than the full loaf you used to enjoy eh? At the rate we are going, people are going to say at least they didnt nerf it 75% or 100%.

You mean every party you were in, guild or PUG, everything always ran smoothly without a hitch, all your teammates are always skilled players and u wont need it to rez ppl, do a desperate burst to survive. And if you dont need it to beat encounters, then u can always swap to something else like Moa for example for giggles. Just be sure u do it in a party of guildies.

Well, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m actually good at this game, so I can happily say that not once have I ever needed time warp to successfully complete a pve encounter.

Now, time warp happens to be our elite with the best utility in most situations, which is why I use it for most situations. Having it nerfed, however, does not impact our pve ability more than a minimal amount, and impacts our total team utility an even smaller amount.

If you really think that time warp is the only thing we bring to a party; you are very, very bad at this class.

leungclj.4915:

zaxon.6819:

heh im going all over to help our class out…. stop making videos.. all you will do is get us nerfed. the devs cant play our class as well as the players can.. and they will not nerf us without some kind of proof. stop giving it to them .. “look at me kill 4 guys bro” no. stop it. it will only make things worse.

if that logic is true, then we need to make video of really bad gameplay.

Look at me bro, I get killed all the time.

I am sure Anet will buff us up

I like this idea, I’ll get right on it.

I’m fine with this bug spreading like that. As much as it will be fun to mess with people, its a bug and an exploit, and needs fixing.

More testing: Unable to reproduce with ele’s fire wall.

Edit: More testing. Unable to reproduce using escape as the interrupt. It seems you must use weapon swap as the interrupt.

More testing: Seems to affect all line-type skills. I have succesfully reproduced the bug with guardian’s line of warding, and will test with the ele fire wall shortly.

I’m glad you mentioned the skill activation immediately before the pull. I rewatched the video, and now I’ll do a bit of analysis.

First: You are definitely farther than 1200 range away. Your iWarden has the red bar, so you are beyond 1200 range.

Second: The skill they cast before the curtain is definitely a phantasm summon.

Third: They do the same phantasm summon interrupt multiple times before they pull you.

EDIT: SOLVED!!!! I successfully reproduced the glitch. Basically, start with sword pistol. Start the iDuelist cast, then switch to sword/focus midcast and spam the temporal curtain key (must have fast cast enabled). The curtain will flash an out of range error, and then spawn anyway.

Edit: More testing. The position of your cursor does not matter. The curtain will spawn directly on top of the target.

Edit: More testing. There seems to be no maximum range. If you can target it, you can put a curtain on it.

Edit: More testing. Casting the curtain requires line of sight.

Edit: More testing. Only works with temporal curtain. Does not work with any utilities, or any other gtaoe skills.

Majora.6028:

See, that’s one of the reasons I kind of dislike asking questions that go against the norm. I get rude “in your face” answers.

There are viable builds that do not require swaping. My Condition Staff is one of them. I’ve done perfectly fine getting to where I am and not needing to swap. It does what I need it to. There is no way that there is not a single build, other than my current one, that doesn’t use both weapons.

This is also written from a PvE point of view. I’ve got my PvP stuff down perfectly fine. I would like to find something else for PvE, because, honestly, the Bifrost isn’t tickling me the way a Legendary should, and I have no urge to get it. I’d like to have something that doesn’t use staff, so I can get a nice looking Legendary.

There’s a few problems.

First: Condition staff is generally regarded as pretty horrific in PvE. The problem is that you don’t reliably stack any condition well enough. Vulnerability on WoC vastly decreases its damage potential, clones don’t gain condition duration, and attack really slowly. It’s just not suitable for PvE

That leaves some incarnation of a power build. In most challenging PvE situations, you will need the option of going either ranged or close combat. Unfortunately, greatsword blows chunks at close range, and for obvious reasons, sword doesn’t work at long range. There’s also the scepter, but we can just sorta ignore that one.

The key here is flexibility. Using only one weaponset locks you into a specific range and style of fighting, and in challenging PvE encounters that simply won’t fly. You need to be able to adapt and change rapidly or you will be a burden to your team half of the time.

Anyone who has gotten this skill, care to enlighten the rest of us on what it is and how it works?

Short answer: Get used to it. Playing without weapon swapping effectively means you are crippling yourself by completely losing half of your utility. There are some builds that will primarily use staff (condition builds) but they will always have viable offhands, because that is absolutely necessary.

That being said, I just wrote that from a pvp point of view. If you want to just afk autoattack things in pve with a greatsword, go for it. You won’t be very good, but pve isn’t exactly difficult.

Was this mesmer doing it often? You seemed to be recording this with the exact purpose of highlighting the range of temporal curtain.

Regardless, something is wrong there. I would have reported them, because they clearly are doing something less than kosher.

Edit: Just hopped on my mesmer to take a look at the curtain casting animation. That mesmer definitely cast a curtain. They also cast a curtain that would have appeared at the exact moment the curtain that pulled you appeared. While it is technically possible they had an accomplice closer to accomplish that trick, it would be very VERY difficult to pull of that sort of split second timing. Something is definitely very wrong here.

That’s a little disturbing.. =_=

Gonna have to agree.

Osicat.4139:

Then deleted it as it was using referenses to how kidds argue about lemonade in two similar glass and cry howmatter you pour.

Yes, sometimes you have to use smaller words to explain these sort of things…

I think an elite signet would be a great idea. That being said, your ideas are unbelievably weak.

I’m a bit too tired to come up with anything better right now, but the passive shouldn’t be a random effect on crit like that, and the active needs to actually have significant effects other than a weak swiftness buff that we can already approximate with temporal curtain.

Just general playstyle…unless you really need the reflects, ether feast is a significantly better heal than mirror, as it outputs FAR more healing.

I couldn’t help but notice that you did the malrona fight absolutely and horrificaly wrong. You take feedback, a focus offhand, and warden’s feedback trait. Every time the spider does the spit for all the aoes, every single one of those is reflectable. Played properly, that means you do an extra 20k-30k (not exaggerating) damage to the boss every ~10 seconds.

Edit 1: Wow, oy. Ok, for the boss fight with Fyonna. You need to use focus there as well. When she is in human form, she uses a bouncing projectile that when reflected will do upwards of 5k damage for each shot. I usually use sword/focus and sword/pistol for that fight, so I can swap to the pistol for the higher damage during the spider phase.

Gaiawolf.8261:

325 isn’t much until you realize that you dish out 70+ attacks during the fight.

Exactly that. You obviously don’t have a damage log in wvw, but way back when I was still figuring out exactly how my build worked, a guy that had tried to kill me a few times challenged me to duels. After he died a few times, he informed me that every kill, I was dealing over 13k damage to him from retal, and that’s what really got me thinking about the retal tank portion of this build.

What happened to your other weaponset?

Warrior has more damage than a Mesmer in pve, but makes up for it by having somewhere between 0 and 0 utility.

Guardians have great utility, and make up for it by having low damage.

Mesmers have almost the same utility as guardians, while still doing fantastic damage.

Note that the above is all pve. In pvp, warriors are laughable, though guardians are still strong, but mesmers are turbocharged.

skcamow.3527:

Question – how much retaliation damage do you inflict on average? I know with the defender it’s doubled but am wondering approximately how much of your damage is done via retaliation (like 25% etc) with this build?

It really varies greatly based on the class and build. However, the only situation where it would be under ~60% of my damage is a thief suiciding on confusion after a 4 clone cry.

Against a greatsword guardian, it will generally be over 90% of my damage. Same for a p/d or d/d death blossom thief, and even more so for a s/p thief.

Rangers and engies are usually more split between retal and confusion. Warriors can swing either way, either towards tons of retal or tons of confusion. Eles are usually split pretty evenly.

Time warp remains possibly the best utility elite in the game. It was nerfed along with every other quickness skill in the game.

Quit whining. This isn’t the end of the world. If you care so much that you will now go back to your guardian or warrior or w/e, go right ahead, we don’t want you.

Signets, normal boons, and food buffs will not appear on your clones.

The change to the star is several months old. There was notification in these forums when that happened.

In my phantasm build for pve, I avoid offhand sword because it doesn’t work with pHaste.

My build is used mainly in fractals and dungeons, where mobs have plenty of hp to survive multiple attacks from phantasms, and bosses many hits.

Additionally, having the massive utility of a hasted warden in my pocket for when I need it is absolutely invaluable.

The chart in the wiki is correct…I spent a few hours counting frames of video to get those numbers. The skill recharge is calculated from the END of one skill to the beginning of the next. Those numbers in the chart are not good for discovering overall dps, they simply show exactly how much pHaste affects the recharge.

The staff is an amazing weapon.

That bein said, it’s pretty horrible for doing damage in large wvw fights other than dropping chaos storm. The autoattack moves too slowly to be effective the vast majority of the time. It is significantly more effective in smaller skirmishes and 1v1s.

wabashcannonball.8391:

Love this build and the play style. Thanks for sharing all of it.

Been running it for about a month now and finally getting it figured out.

Question about a major tweak. I have realized that the dexterity of my fingers are not what they use to be and maintaining melee range is frustrating for me. I have found that landing blurred frenzy is almost 50/50.

How much of a synergy hit would this build take if I swapped out sword with scepter? I feel like I won’t miss losing the dps and invulnerably of Sword 3, it’s losing two leap finishers which would be tough.

While it’s no where near as effective as the leap finishers I’m hoping Scepter 3’s confusion makes up enough to warrant the switch when added with the block and blind and a bit better clone generation through ether clone and not having to be in melee range.

Would swapping in scepter wreck this build?

Short answer: Yes, swapping sword for scepter would horribly wreck the build.

Long answer: The most important change is you completely lose 2 leap combo finishers, which are a good 50% of the retaliation generation. In addition to retaliation, the leap combo allows reliable landing of shatters and overall battle control.

You lose a 2 second invulnerability for a block. This is massive. The unvulnerability allows you to stall for cooldowns, allows you to dodge large bursts such as HB or shatters that do more than 1 hit.

You lost vulnerability stacking on the autoattack chain, but more importantly, you lose boon stripping. With sword, you and all your clones can strip a boon with an aoe cleave every few seconds. This can be really important, especially with guardians and elementalists.

Additionally, this is a highly active, highly aggressive build. The mobility and crowd control that sword offers fits perfectly for this build. Scepter literally provides absolutely nothin other than a ranged autoattack, and you don’t want to be at range. You need to be in their faces causing panic and controlling the fight, not kiting around with a scepter.

While there are several flexible aspects of my build, the weaponset is not one of them. All 3 of the weapons are absolutely vital, and the build will absolutely not work without all 3 of them.

On another note, barring random stealth nerfs, the patch changed nothing for this build. Business as usual here.

@Embolism: Normally, I frown upon theorycrafting based on the lowest common denominator. The thing is, as I said, this is a zerg busting tool. Zergs are the very embodiment of the lowest denominator. You can very well assume that they will be spamming buttons like there’s no tomorrow with 0 regard to any confusion on them because that’s exactly what they do.

Habib Loew.6239:

I’m aware you are all posting about public chat but I just wanted to post a reminder that commanders are never suppressed in squad chat.

Problem is, most pugs don’t know how to join the squad of a commander. On top of that, even if you tell them how, they won’t. It would be nice if that solution worked properly, but due to how people act, it doesn’t quite fix it.

Edit: Also causes problems if there are multiple commanders on the map that you want to hear simultaneously.

Edit: Solution: Make a wvw only chat channel for commanders only, that is automatically broadcast to the entire zone. If people abuse this, then they get blocked, so that’s not a problem. You just have to make sure that this chat channel is only found in wvw, to prevent out of wvw abuse.

Embolism.8106:

I would’ve thought that factoring in human unpredictability would make condition damage seem even better than condition duration.

In theory, the best case scenario would be your opponent spamming a low CT attack, which with +10% condition duration is realistically going to give you one extra proc, if that. Factoring in human unpredictability means they might do things other than spamming their low CT attack, so the results can only be worse.

You forget that a glamour build is a generally a zerg busting tool. Ikittenerg, people are doing nothing but spamming attacks and aoes as quickly as they can. That makes the condition duration more potent. Additionally, in non zerg situations, the longer confusion acts as a shutdown tool, which can be very helpful.

Exactly. It doesn’t matter if a 60 man zerg can push through a keep door in 4 minutes. They wont contest the waypoint, and they will trigger orange swords the moment they start attacking. If you see orange swords at your keep, you waypoint there immediately, and that’s it. If no one comes to defend when there’s orange swords at a keep AND an open waypoint, then the defenders are asleep.

You guys got the point of what my idea was…except rednik.

Rednik, I don’t care how big your zerg is, if they can bash their faces against a door long enough to kill it before a defender notices, then they deserve that keep a. for their idiotic perseverence in autoattacking a keep door and b. because the defenders are obviously asleep.