Off the top of my head:
Ether feast main heal scales 1:1 with hp. The additional heals scale at .1 hp.
Regeneration scales at .125 hp per second. Since regeneration ticks continually, this is effectively the same as scaling at 2.5 hp for one large heal every 20 seconds.
The other heals I can’t remember unfortunately.
@MLieBennet: Your analysis, while in-depth, is unfortunately almost entirely useless. You base your analysis off of % total change. However, this % includes the base healing values of the skills, which means that % change is not representative of how healing power actuall affects the skills. If you want your analysis to have value, simply subtract the number for 0 healing power from all values to isolate the change from healing power.
(edited by Pyroatheist.9031)
@Loseridoit: You have less than no clue as to what is going on.
First off, anet acknowledged that the zerker change was a bug. Secondly, the skill changed was the sword autoattack third chain. If you had actually thought about the patch notes, you’d have realized that the gs skill already hits 5 targets, due to being and aoe attack. The sword attack is simply being changed to a cleave like the other two attacks in the chain.
That being said, mesmers seem to be the Irelia of gw2 atm… If the debs aren’t sure what to do, they nerf mesmers. However, I think that change to the signet would be perfect. Remove the random boon component that is completely useless and add 25% movement speed, keeping the active the same. This would make a lot of sense and be a great change.
Actually, this is torch 1.0. The torch worked exactly like it does now way back in the beta weekends, and they changed it to have the ridiculous channel with the release of the game.
I have made a post in the bug forums with regards to our bugs this patch. Please go and take a look at it.
This most recent patch introduced 4 massive bugs for Mesmer.
1. Clones and phantasms no longer display weapons in wvw. This is rather absurd, and a hugely obvious bug that should have been caught in patch testing.
2. Mesmer underwater spear autoattack no longer works. You will miss your attacks no matter how close you are to the target, or where your target is in relation to you. Completely breaking the main attack of a weapon is NOT ok anet. This would have been noticed in 30 seconds of patch testing, if you tested the patches at all, which you obviously don’t. This needs to be fixed immediately, and is absurd that it made it into the game in the first place.
3. Illusionary Berserker now does less damage and is no longer a combo finisher. This might be an intended stealth nerf, but given the number of bugs and number of times you have ALREADY broken this skill, it seems most likely that this is just more of the same.
4. The Prestige can be canceled and put into the interrupt 4 second recharge without losing any of the skills effects, effectively giving it a 4 second cooldown. This is the only bug that has had an anet response so far.
The fact that these 4 massive bugs made it into this patch is inexcusable, and the fact that the three biggest ones have still received no anet response is unforgivable. These need to be acknowledged immediately, and fixed as soon as humanly possible.
In the future, us mesmers would greatly appreciate it if you actually tested your patches before you released them, seeing as you have broken one or more important skills or mechanics for Mesmer in over half of your major content releases, and that is simply not ok.
I’d really like to use the torch, but it’s just not worth it. It’s not usually viable to trait it, and even traited, the cooldowns on it are unreasonably massive, particularly the Mage. Add that to the fact that the Mage is completely worthless, applying a measly 3 stacks if confusion for a short duration unaffected by condition duration, and you have a weapon that I simply can’t stand to use.
I will test this as soon as I get home. If someone else wants to test, drop time warp and have the zerker spin at a mob in the center of the field. The field is big enough that if the whirl finisher exists in any way, it will activate.
Come on anet, this is ridiculous. We need dev responses and a timeframe on when you will fix all the really important things you broke!
Yep, definitely broken. Lets make this post stay at the top until the masters of mmo quality assurance testing manage to notice they broke us…again.
Yeah, this is bugged really badly. Make sure this post stays at the top until the numbskulls that break our skills every patch waddle around to see it.
Best part is that invulnerability already exists in the game and seems to work quite reliably (e.g. the blue icon invuln buff for logging in or event scripted mobs, or even copying a kitten Distortion or Evade or Dodge from players).
Ohwell.
Oh yeah, I didn’t even think of the determined buff, or distortion/blur. Determined is the obvious solution, since distortion and blur are a bit mesmer specific, but any of those would work quite fine, since distortion and blur prevent even retaliation damage.
-Sig of Midnight is an instant stunbreak, aoe blind + distortion. I’ve used it to save many people from stomps
No you haven’t. A stomp can only be stopped by some sort of interrupt, or a full-blown stealth. A blind will not stop a stomp. It will stop a stomp stopper (downed skill 2 from some classes) but a stomp is not a normal attack, and will not be stopped by a blind.
That being said, midnight still isn’t all that great. The problem here is that you’re loading up multiple utilities onto single utility skills, which is good sometimes, but bad here. Signet of midnight is a stunbreaker, which makes it really important to have if you get clipped with some cc. The problem is, you also could want to pop it to preempt a stun or something, because that’s the whole reason you have the distortion trait. However, if the stun doesn’t come at the exact right time to get hit by the distortion, you’re now out of luck, having burnt your distortion and stunbreak.
Same problem with signet of illusions. You want to keep it for the shatter recharge, and additionally in a phantasm build, you gain massive bonuses from keeping it unused. The problem is if you burn it for the distortion, you’ve now lost your shatter recharges, AND you’ve lost the increased illusion health.
Ultimately, there’s a reason you use mirror images and decoy a lot: They’re simply the best (and no-one had better start talking about feedback and null field and w/e, those 2 aren’t the best in all situations, but they are some of the most powerful all-around utility skills in the game). The signets soak up 2 utility slots for questionable utility, and they soak up 2 trait slots that happen to be really important. Deceptive evasion is really important in any pvp build that doesn’t actually intend on tanking things because otherwise your clones die to fast to have reliable shatters. However, with that being said, if you are taking mirror images and decoy, you’ll have strong clone generation from those 2, and could double down on your phantasm power by taking phantasmal fury to add to the blade training.
As far as the domination trait goes, clones crippling nearby foes when killed can be really strong when trying to kite around with swords while letting your swordsmen do the work. However, this trait only synergizes really well with deceptive evasion. If you opt for phantasmal fury instead, I’d definitely go for the boon stripping on shatters. What that would do is give your shatters massive offensive utility without needing to actually need to them to provide the massive damage, allowing you to focus on the phantasms.
As far as survival you are apparently losing by ditching the signets…you’re not really losing anything. Not only do decoy and mirror images have massively lower cooldowns than the signets (signet of illusions anyway, signet of midnight has a reasonable cooldown), they also provide an effective 2 extra seconds of distortion and a target drop, respectively. Those are much more valuable than 1 second of distortion, and 1 stunbreaker. Your in combat survivability comes from blurred frenzy, blocks, and kiting. Since this is a phantasm build, you can only juke in with leap/swap to do a blurred frenzy, then simply back out and run around for another 8 seconds until it’s ready again. If you get pressured too hard, you can use the block as both a counter, and a strong deterrent to come closer, as that block can hit in excess of 4k on a crit. If you REALLY get pressured, you swap to staff, phase retreat, chaos armor (protection) and chaos storm for aegis and interrupts. You have plenty of active defense without needing those signets.
Hehe. It’s pretty funny to consider how ANet can’t make invulnerable supervisors invulnerable for a set duration.
Seems shoddy.
It does. If I were in charge of the coding (which I’m not) I would just set a flag to the buff they have that every type of damage in the game checks against. Simply if flag is 1, then damage is null, it’s not really a tough thing to code usually. The fact that they have so much trouble doing so either means they have the worst coders on the planet (possible) or they just complicated it way more than necessary (more likely).
My opinion is that taking signets purely for the 1 second of distortion is such a massive waste if utilities and traits. The only bonus they give is a tiny tiny honor active defense that can’t even be activated while stunned. To get that, you waste 2 traits that happen to occupy the slots of other extremely powerful traits.
To have shatter traits, yet you have abysmal clone generation. You also have the 15% illusion damage trait which suits a phantasm damage build. Your build is crazy and all over the place.
First, ditch all the signets. You seem to be doing a hybrid shatter/phantasm build. As such, you need some different utilities. Taking mirror images and/or decoy allows you to have stunbreakers that double as an active defense through distortion. Additionally, they have their cd trait at 5 in illusions, which you always already take.
Having ditched the signets, you can actually take some useable traits. Take deceptive evasion in the dueling line, this will be the source of most of your clone generation. In domination, you have a few options. You could take cripple on clone death, which is never bad in a melee build. You could also go for the 20% enhanced mind wrack damage to give your shatter burst some more oomph. You could also take my personal favorite, the boon strip on shatter (strips 1 boon per illusions shattered that hits the target). The choice is yours.
Edit: noticed that dumb torch comment. While the glitch is fun, and I’ve had fun running a dungeon providing nothing but continuous blast finishers, it’s also still mostl useless in pvp. You can’t hit anyone with the flames or you take the revealed debuff. Sure, it’s decent for getting away from people in wvw, or letting your phantasms chunk the target. Shame the torch phantasm doesn’t chunk the target then…or do anything to the target really.
(edited by Pyroatheist.9031)
Do siege still take retaliation damage or did they remove that? Back a month or so ago I recall that stacking + ret was the best way to take out trebs.
I don’t know for sure, but I think not, from the number of acs I’ve danced around in, I don’t remember any numbers.
Yeah, its a bug that has been occurring. On an unrelated note, that first picture is absolutely gorgeous.
It is a double blast finisher now. It blasts when you activate, and blasts when the fire goes. Wow.
Actually, it just became the 2nd most spammable blast finisher in game.
I predict emergency patch fix within 48 hours.
@Esplen: That interaction with the trait isn’t a bug, it’s by design. The debs said that since the 1 second increase hurts the utility of the skill (not necessarily true now that you don’t have to channel it) they made that trait add boons but not increase the duration.
That being said, 1s is far larger than the normal time it takes to render someone in wvw. I’m thinking combining an on clone death build utilizing deceptive evasion with permanent stealth from the prestige will be…interesting.
The prestige has an effective cd of 4 seconds when interrupted by any skill with a cast time right after it’s cast. The stealth, blind, and aoe burn still apply like normal.
Are you saying you can recast it 4 seconds after stealth drops?
If anything, its been working worse for me. Its been having a lot of trouble going up ramps.
Ok, I just tested out the retaliation. There are no noticeable differences from the patch. It applies exactly the same. It deals damage exactly the same. Having defender and other phantasms up still results in multiple hits of retaliation. Application duration is still the same, and I successfully stacked it up to a visible 28 seconds of duration from the leap combo and an immediate cry of frustration. This patch will have absolutely 0 impact on this build.
There was speculation in a WvW post regarding the stacks of retaliation that I think makes sense of it.
When attacking the number of proc’s of retaliation is capped at 5 for any one attack. (maybe in the same way that confusion only proc’s at the start of a channel versus for each tick of the channel). Duration isn’t changed, just the number of times people or bosses are punished for any one attack.
You’d have to test this against a channeled attack aka your friendly FT engi.
FT engies take so many hits of retaliation anyway, this won’t change a thing other than they die in 20 seconds as opposed to 5 seconds, heheh. However, I will try to test that out when I can.
Ok, I just tested out the retaliation. There are no noticeable differences from the patch. It applies exactly the same. It deals damage exactly the same. Having defender and other phantasms up still results in multiple hits of retaliation. Application duration is still the same, and I successfully stacked it up to a visible 28 seconds of duration from the leap combo and an immediate cry of frustration. This patch will have absolutely 0 impact on this build.
The fact that there are any updates/fixes that don’t make it into the notes shows a severe lack of organization and communication. I mean honestly how hard is it to keep track of these things?!
It’s very easy, but there hasn’t been a single (literally not a single one) patch that hasn’t had stealth changes that were not announced in the notes. This is nothing new, but no less disappointing for being a regular occurrence.
You’ll almost never get more than 25 seconds of retaliation at any given time anyway. In order to hit more than 25 seconds, you’d need to do the leap/swap + cry simultanously, and it would only get you to 29 seconds anyway.
However, I’m not convinced that’s what it means. That other post you linked to seems like it would make sense.
Ultimately, this patch note makes absolutely no sense on its own, and we the players are going to have to figure it out by ourselves through testing, since we can’t trust the devs to know jack kitten about what they change in this game.
I don’t know. Retaliation stacks duration, not intensity. I have no idea what this change means. Once I get home I’ll immediately do some testing to find out, but right now that patch note looks like it was written by someone with absolutely 0 knowledge of how that boon functions.
The playstyle Chris outlined is pve only. Only in pve will you have 2 duelists up and be happily spamming scepter autos.
In pvp, that tactic won’t even remotely work. You have to play a close staff or swords with DE to get this build working well.
@Gaiawolf: I actually don’t think it should reach 100% uptime on confusion and retal. No other phantasm actually applies buffs, and that could end up overpowered.
What it does need is it needs the confusion to have the condition and confusion duration traits apply to it, or simply last a base of 5 seconds. It needs to be affected by illusionary elasticity, and lastly the cooldown time needs to be brought in line with all the other phantasms, instead of the ungodly thing it is right now.
Eh, S/D isn’t quite that exposed, but yeah I noted the RNG of stripping ret.
Well, being exposed has nothing to do with S/D in particular, but just the general thief out of initiative exposed. If a thief is trying to strip my boons, he will need to burn most of his initiative to do it, and I’ll simply follow with a full confusion burst, putting back 15 more seconds of retaliation and smacking 12 stacks of confusion up. If they don’t have enough init to stealth and remove the confusion, that can be the end of a fight.
The Prestige is not the only reason i run torch. Well not the stealth part anyway. An Aoe blind, when im in my condition build, is an aoe confusion. Add to that a phantasm thats spamming confusion and it adds up nicely. I put out the phatasm especially on thieves. Phantasm, decoy and wait till my phatasm tells me where the stealther is. Most of the time he will show me, before the thief is even visible to me. Hes durable enough and hes ready for a shatter when i need him to be. The extra stealth is just an awesome bonus.
BTW Pyro i love how you shill your spec everywhere. It shows how much you love your class, and your character. There could be a post about the best food for a gaurdian, and you will post a link to your spec. Its just awesome!
Firstly, my build is in my signature. …thanks for noticing?
As far as the iMage goes, the problem is that any other phantasm could do the job better. Particularly in a confusion build, you’d be better off running with a traited pistol, and then simply dropping an eth combo field for the duelist to provide a full 2.5x more confusion stacks, bleeds, and much more base damage.
I do understand the dual (triple?) utility of the prestige, the problem is that the useless phantasm just is too much of a demotivator for me to use the weapon.
Torch definitely takes a certain kind of build, and more than that a certain playstyle, to make it good, but its key for that playstyle due to the target drop. But I’m finding new ways to use it all the time, including the synergies with scepter I listed in the build. Understandibly its not for most and takes some of practice. But hey, so did focus for me.
The problem for me with the torch is that you take it for one skill. The prestige is awesome. I wish I could have that skill. Unfortunately, I’m not willing to get saddled with a phantasm that simultaneously does objectively the least of any phantasm while having the longest cooldown.
Great build Gaiawolf! This build covers a ton of ground and is really versatile. I love it. I’ll have to check out the life-steal food as I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet. Good stuff man.
Lifesteal food can be pretty crazy in a high crit build, especially with the greatsword. I always have a stack on me in wvw, because the damage ignores defense. With high crit (and no cooldown on the proc) the greatsword autoattack can do really hefty damage to a supervisor with flames still up.
@pyro:
Thanks. Sometimes I do change up a bit for PVE, but I was going for something could just hop from game mode to game mode here. Your suggestions definitely look good for most of the PVE content, and I’ll give them a whirl for times when I’m not to lazy to visit the trainer after a romp in wvw. Don’t want to go too far into phantasms while I’m running the torch, tho. Just doesn’t scale well with the mage, but CI is awesome with the +9% from Comp Power.@Jalliel: Cool build. I like how you got the CD trait for torch in there. I was looking for a way to add it in mine w/o giving up too much defense and mobility.
Ah, yeah. I avoid the torch like the plague, simply because it is soooooo much worse than every single other offhand I use in all of my builds, so that is never really a consideration for me.
Side question to anyone reading this. How amazing is boon strip per shatter? I’m using 20% GS CD reduction because I go S/F + GS but constant passive boon strips looks too nice…
Boon strip per shatter is unbelievable. It absolutely melts classes like guardians and elementalists that rely on tons of boons. However, there are a lot of other classes that have on-demand boons, or at least have the ability to apply them a lot. What the boon strip does is it practically ensures that during your burst, you will be taking no retaliation damage, and they will have no damage mitigation from protection, while limiting their fighting potential by removing fury and might.
Ok, a few things.
First, sigils of generosity do work, and work very well. The shattercat builds use them iirc.
Veil is an ethereal combo field, not a light field. All glamours are ethereal. The tooltip is wrong.
Full runes of Melandru and the -40% food make conditions no longer even something to consider. Unfortunately, using those 2 things wouldn’t be smart in a shatter build. You want to go with runes of air or centaur for wvw, withou a doubt.
Not having mirror images in a shatter build is sorta surprising. If you can play without it, then take mantra of resolve for some good condition removal.
You use a focus. Drop the warden, then drop temporal curtain on top of it and stand in the warden. The whirl finisher will cleanse something like 4-5 conditions from you with proper positioning.
I can only speak from the perspective of a Mesmer here, so remember that in my post.
An offensive shatter Mesmer or a phantasm Mesmer can take out a bunker d/d ele in about 15 seconds. Unfortunately, this is due to instantaneous massive burst damage combined with prior instantaneous vuln stacking combined with daze and massive boon stripping. No other classes or builds can replicate that trick unfortunately.
From the perspective of my tank Mesmer, it’s a little more interesting. I do most of my damage with retaliation, and then finish them off with confusion. What I generally try to do is get them low enough to swap to water for the heals. Sometimes I can interrupt some channels, but not always.
After water, they usually go fire then earth in a full burst combo. I will face tank that entire thing, while bursting 12 stacks of confusion the instant they come in with burning speed. The retaliation damage from face-tanking their full combo will bring them at least to 50%. The 12 stacks of confusion hit for around 2000 per action. If they don’t notice that confusion and stop mid-combo, they die instantly. If they do notice it, you go back to square 1, and repeat the entire thing over again ad infinitum until they make that 1 fatal error.
Edit: A really good bunker ele won’t make that mistake, of course, especially if they are experienced with fighting mesmers, leading to sever 10+ minute long duels I’ve had with eles.
(edited by Pyroatheist.9031)
Why build a car that turns left when you steer right? to have funny driving.
Motorcycles turn their handlebars left to go right.
Wat
At any rate, you all seem to be forgetting that this skill Is Not a normal dodge roll. It goes much much farther than a normal dodge roll, it cures multie conditions, and has a healing component. It is a very different skill, and functions differently as a result. Your arguments make less than no sense. Anet obviously didn’t want this skill to be a normal dodge roll, and so it isn’t. It makes no sense to go complaining that you can’t use this non-dodge roll skill as a normal dodge roll, it’s simply ridiculous.
7. Thief
S/D thiefA canny S/D could strip ret 100% of the time. With some heals /halftank setup they could probably win consistently if they know you’re using a ret tank build.
They’d have to be pretty sharp though to avoid attacking into chaos armor. Man that would be a longass grindy fight. The boon strip wouldn’t hit the iDefender though. Also it’s only RNG to strip the Ret itself. They’d probably still be at a disadvantage.
Flanking strike only removes 1 boon, has funky targeting insofar as it’ll miss if the target is moving too fast, and takes a good chunk of initiative (4). It will often remove regen or something else instead of retaliation, and just 2 uses will leave the thief unable to even use CnD. If they really try to focus on stripping ret, they’ll be so exposed afterward that killing them with confusion burst will be simple.
Actually, blade training is bugged not to work on sword 3, which is very annoying. It does, however, work on all 3 other skills that you can have from swords.
I tried this build with our group, and I was asking my groupmates how much I was healing them for – I was healing myself np, and DPS np, but my teammates were not seeing the 2k+ heals everytime… or even any time. What am I missing here?? Thanks!
If you are healing successfully, you will see green numbers on your own screen, no need to as teammates. The range on the mantra heal isn’t huge, so be sure you are reasonably near to them before charging the mantra.
In a large-scale fight, you have 3 viable options: glamour confusion, 30/30 glass cannon range nuker, and my personal favorite of course, the full tank. A shatter build is of very limited use, with the exception of in a coordinated group that can make use of large aoe disruption and simultaneous burst.
Each one of these fulfills a different purpose in the fights. In my opinion, however, the tank is the most helpful, and here’s why.
Ultimately, wvw is a game of siege. Skirmishes and what-not happen, and can decide the fate of supply camps, but ultimately the only way to break a tower or keep is through siege. There are a few ways to counter siege. You can build your own long range siege to hit it, but this can be stopped if they have too much of a head start on you or if they have too many eles defending.
In the case where counter siege doesn’t work, you have to actually go out and whack their siege apart. By far the best method of doing this is a portal bomb. The tank build is the only build that can 100% guarantee getting you a portal right on top of the seige, no matter how many defenders they have; or how built up that seige nest is, and that is really important.
Other than that, the tank build also has a lot of stopping power. You can easily soak up 20 seconds of 15 people trying to kill you, and in that time the seige can be killed.
In skirmishes, you play a front line attack, moving in first, stomping downed enemies with your invulnerability or time warp, and generally punishing people that attack you. It is a massively disruptive and high-visibility role that allows the damage dealers to do what they do best.
I like it. Just a few tips though. You would do well to separate this build into pve and pvp versions. If you take 10 out of chaos and put it into inspiration, you’ll have a variant of my pve phantasm support build (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-PvE-Supporting-Phantasm-Build/first#post1465485) that I run everywhere in pve because it has so much versatility.
However, that modification is less viable in pvp, where tossing on a staff can be necessary, and running around charging mantras isn’t always viable. Alternatively, you could lock yourself a bit stronger into certain weapon sets by taking those 10 from chaos and putting them in domination for the 15% illusion damage, and 5 out of illusions for the 25 insp minor of another 15% phantasm damage. With that modification, your phantasms will hit like heavily loaded trucks, but limit you from using staff, and possibl greatsword.
The class specific fighting guide is now finished. I’ll try to make some videos to highlight these matchups, but collecting the necessary footage could take a while.
I ran the numbers. In order to achieve 4500 hits with 8 stacks, you’d need 2883 condition damage, an unreasonable amount. However, my money is on the mesmer having 3 clones out, and doing an instantaneous cry + mirror images + decoy + mind wrack to stack up 12 stacks. With 12 stacks, only 1600 condition damage (with no might) would be needed, and this makes a lot more sense.
Ultimately, there’s no way to avoid this sort of burst. A really skilled mesmer waits until they see a thief or ele or something commit to an attack, and then does that burst. Shatters happening that fast have no obvious visual effects to warn you that you suddenly have 12 stacks of confusion on you, and you’ll be dead before you realize what happened.
The only true counter is to not get hit with it. If you engage a mesmer, they shouldn’t see you engage. If you actually engage out of stealth, its child’s play to do that burst at the proper time. If you engage from stealth (especially with sword main-hand) it can be far more difficult to do the burst in time.
I was bumping the thread lol
It’s stickied….
Okay, so while doing some runs on AC on my level 40 Mesmer, I was casting Time-warp from afar to help them kill one of the bosses and I saw that the zone where Time-warp is cast, has a massive bubble around it. Now I know this isn’t new to other, I just realised though. So I was thinking that Mesmers could have a Utility spell – similar to the Sanctuary spell that Guardians have – that creates a moderately sized dome that reflect enemy projectiles (or perhaps turns the projectiles into butterflies) , but /still/ allows enemies to enter the bubble and attack. I think this spell would be useful when surrounded by rangers in a story quest or even out in the open world ecetera. I have been dying for a skill like this in any game ever since I saw it in a trailer for the The Witcher 2.
We do. It’s called feedback.
/thread
Would you run focus over pistol in spvp? I won’t… When you’ve played on mez for over 1.5k hours i think you go over the ‘did not have success with X weapon’ with all this time i tried them enough to know what it can and can’t do (in pve/spvp/wvw). Focus is good in wvw because 1. Swiftness and 2. Pulling people off walls but that doesn’t mean i will ever run focus over a pistol during a roam and i spotted another player to 1v1. iWarden isn’t ‘that useful’ but completely worthless. Not only not able to follow target is lol but look at its CD… About staff. A mesmer relies mainly on illusions to spread condis. When your auto’s have a chance of applying useless 1 stack of vulnerability 1/3 of the times this kills a so called condi wep. No point of using torch in any kind of builds. When both of your skills have 1 week CD and most importantly far from being powerful there’s no point of taking it over pistol with its useful stun and Duelist which rocks for condi or power builds. Not to mention iDuelist doesn’t take half a century to CD like iWarden does so if you’re spamming shatter its much better illusion generation.
The fact that you completely miss the use of the focus tells me that you have played this 1.5k hours in a sub-optimal fashion. You seem to be implying that the focus and pistol occupy the same spot in the same build, when nothing could be further from the truth. If you want a highly damaging phantasm on a low cooldown, then you take the pistol. Personally, I have stopped running pistol in favor of sword offhand, but that’s just me.
The focus offhand is defensive utility, with a few other fun tidbits sprinkled in like pulling people off of walls. The focus is not a very good weapon until it is traited, but at that point it becomes borderline overpowered. The traited focus has 2 projectile reflecting skills. These skills can easiliy be cycled for just shy of 100% uptime on projectile reflects with no effort whatsoever. Temporal curtain is a light combo field. This has several ramifications. First, you can use the leap combo finishers on mainhand sword to provide you instantly with 14 seconds of retaliation. Secondly, you can drop a warden, and then drop temporal curtain under the warden for the whirl finisher of cleansing bolts. Standing near or on the warden when you do this will clear 4+ conditions instantly.
In addition to those uses, the curtain can be used to pull people, not just off of walls, but around a battlefield. If someone is running away, pulling them back with the curtain is a simple doubletap. Dropping the curtain behind you while running away from a zerg will reflect all projectiles that they are shooting at you, while providing a line aoe cripple that has no maximum target limit. You can further detonate the curtain at that point to pull people around, all but stopping pursuit.
The warden doesn’t move, but you can use the temporal curtain pull to put people under the warden if they try to get away, and proper use of illusionary leap + swap will ensure that people remain under the warden for a good amount of time.
Additionally, the non-mobile warden will provide a temporary projectile-free zone on the battlefield. This allows you to hop back behind the bubble the warden provides if you need to escape from a hot situation.
The warden is amazing for dropping on top of cannons and burning oil, as the reflects it provides will not only damage people and guards on top of the wall, but will also protect any other pets/phantasms that were sent up top to help kill those structures as well.
And here I’ve gone and written up an essay that you probably won’t read, seeing as you’ve played 1.5k hours as mesmer and think you know everything there is to know about it.
Bunker meser doesn’t have the heals . So if someone get the drop on you you are kind of screwed. Other bunkers like gardian and ele can heal from nothing to full over and over in short amount of time but Mesmers simply doesn’t have the healing to deal with a good player who isn’t fool by your clones.
That’s incorrect. Bunker mesmer has 100% uptime on regeneration, as well as an extremely powerful heal in ether feast, which has very high base healing and scales ~1.3 with healing power.
I play ele as well as mesmer the healing difference between the 2 is not even close. Regen in itself is the weakest form of heal. Ele have 100% regen and access to passive heal on every skill use + another regen that stacks with the perma regen when switch to water and just about every skill in water also heals that’s including the damage dealing skills as well as pure heal skills. And on top of that everytime you dodge in water it also heals and cure condition. And on top of that ele get mist form which also heals when you pop it .
Yes, a fully heal specced ele sitting in water attunement for the entire fight can pump out more healing than a mesmer. It also literally can’t do anything else.
Saying regen is the weakest form of healing is unbelievably wrong. Every 20 seconds, regen is the same as a heal for 2600 + 2.5x healing power. That is not weak. That is not even close to weak.
While a bunker mesmer obviously can’t have the highest heal per second in the game (and I never claimed this), it does have far more than enough healing to deal with and tank any other class in the game when played properly, while at the same time being offensive and mobile. There is no other class that can have the same survivability as a bunker mesmer (not maximum healing, survivability) while additionally being able to easily kill multiple people at the same time.
Bunker meser doesn’t have the heals . So if someone get the drop on you you are kind of screwed. Other bunkers like gardian and ele can heal from nothing to full over and over in short amount of time but Mesmers simply doesn’t have the healing to deal with a good player who isn’t fool by your clones.
That’s incorrect. Bunker mesmer has 100% uptime on regeneration, as well as an extremely powerful heal in ether feast, which has very high base healing and scales ~1.3 with healing power.