Guild Wars 2

Good to see you’re realizing how underwhelming MI + lyssa runes is.

Aside from that, that’s really fascinating information you got about regeneration there. If you could update the gw2 wiki with regards to that, many people would be thankful. Do you know how it would work if the first person’s regen gets reapplied after the 2nd person’s regen is put on? Would the ticks go from the lower, then higher, then back to lower? (I’ll need to do some testing of this myself).

Removing Mantra of pain is definitely a viable tactic. In my phantasm build, I use mantra heals simply because it is not a support focused build, but a damage focused build that happens to be able to give aoe regen and strong heals. That way I can just let my phantasms do their thing, and my only other job is to spam MoP. In this build that you are creating, you have a much more active role, and spamming MoP for the aoe heals may not be the best use of your time.

However, don’t limit yourself to just feedback and null field. Ethereal combo fields are very nice, but in other situations different utilities could be better, specifically in place of null field. For example, in situations of significantly reapplied conditions (such as the spider queen at the start of AC) the phantasmal disenchanter does a much better job than null field because the cooldown on it is really short. You will probably want to keep at least 1 ethereal combo field on your utilities at all times, but don’t be afraid to mess with them to suit each particular encounter.

EasymodeX.4062:

You’re dissing / hyping abilities without considering all gameplay segments. Basically Time Warp is unimpressive in WvW due to its 5 player cap and the mobility of battles in general. TW is good, but not great. Its greatest value is the part where it’s a combo field. MI isn’t particularly better in WvW, but the lower cd makes it more flexible for use.

Unfortunately, if you want to use wvw as an example, you need to apply it to everything.

Time warp is perhaps unimpressive due to the 5 target cap. However, it provides a combo field and does haste 5 people. Mass invisibility does absolutely nothing in a zerg situation, and the lyssa runes also have a 5 player cap.

Any situation where a target cap causes time warp to underperform, the same cap causes mass invisibility to be completely useless and causes lyssa runes to suffer from the same problem as well.

Additionally, as I said before, Mesmer has very powerful elite skills, given the right situations. Having lyssa runes double-loads the elite skills with a large buffing ability as well. Unfortunately, due to the cooldowns on the elite skills, you need to refrain from using them until the situation calls for it, making the boons from lyssa runes almost completely useless. Lyssa runes are more appropriate for something like a venom thief, with an almost spammable elite that has no particular situations where it is vital for group utility.

Edit: According to the wiki, the lyssa boons last 5 seconds. This is perhaps false, but if that information is accurate, then the runes are easily the worse choice, no discussion even needed. The 70% boon duration would barely scrape you past 8 seconds of boons.

EasymodeX.4062:

Katanasama.9702:

Tips to kill a mesmer/ not die to a mesmer:

1: Do not travel alone… that’s asking to get jumped.

Mesmers are mostly trash for chasedown. Best tip to not die to a Mesmer is to walk away.

A greatsword +pistol offhand spec can actually be very difficult to get away from, especially if they have blink. The greatsword gives a 1200 range cripple, pistol give a 900(1200) range stun, and then blink provides the gap closer to illusionary swap/leap.

Unfortunately, that’s about it. You could run away from a staff Mesmer as a chilled and crippled moa, and the focus pull is short range and on a long cooldown.

Katanasama.9702:

If I want a tank I’d get my warrior. There’s plenty of good builds for Mesmer without resorting to tank gear for survival. I also think people too often look at a class as being by itself. But this game’s mechanics make teamwork an extremely strong and often under utilized aspect of the game. And while class “A” might destroy class “B” in a 1 v 1… those encounters are seldom. And if you know your own weakness, bring a friend to get your back. I have a buddy that rolls Engi and he’s built to kill thieves. He’s 1 v3’d thieves and won, so I bring him when I go on my Mesmer… I kill warriors and he kills thieves and we’re all good… 2 man roamer team.

My build is designed to not have an active weakness in 1v1/2/3s, but you do have good points insofar as teamwork is concerned.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

The thing is,

Chaos Storm recharges every 28 seconds.
Signet of Inspiration recharges every 45 seconds.
Mass Invisibility recharges every 90 secs.

Every 2 Chaos Storms, I can pop Inspiration. Every 4 chaos storms I can pop Lyssa+Inspiration.

…and I prefer Mass Invis anyway.

But are the Lyssa Runes worth the loss of 30% boon duration? Decisions..

If you are doing a support build, or ANY pve team build on a Mesmer and you don’t take time warp, you are severely crippling yourself in terms of the utility you bring to the team. There are situations where mass invisibility is appropriate. However, there are 0 situations EVER where burning one of the mesmer’s powerful elites just to provide boons to your party is even remotely acceptable.

The problem with lyssa runes is that they’re a 1 trick pony on a really long cooldown. The aoe healing from water, fury and might from altruism, or regen from dwayna would all outclass the once in a while big burst from lyssa. Additionally, to even have it on a 90s cooldown, you are losing time warp, which is in and of itself far more useful than the 90s cooldown lyssa boon stacking.

This build is designed primarily for PvE, although I suppose you could use it in PvP to limited effect as well.

Here is the build: http://tinyurl.com/cwgmfqs

My armor is all berserkers stats. My weapons are all soldiers (Power/tough/vit) stats. I use an ascended soldiers backpiece, and exotic berskers earrings and amulet. I have 1 soldiers stat ascended ring, and 1 berserkers stat ascended ring. The runes in my armor are centaur right now, but I feel like runes of air would be a better choice.

My normal utilities are blink/feedback, mantra of pain, and decoy.

My trait distribution is 10/10/0/30/20, focusing almost exclusively on phantasm buffing traits.
I take domination III, for 15% increased phantasm damage.
Dueling II, to give phantasms fury.
Inspiration IV, for condition removal on healing, V for increased phantasm health, and X to cause mantras to do an aoe heal on the charge.
Illusions III for 3% extra damage per illusion, and X for 20% faster phantasm skill usages.

With this build, I have slightly over 20k hp, 2200 power, 32% base crit chance, 54% crit power, and slightly over 2k armor.

This build is based around doing damage via phantasms, and then supporting your team with the aoe regeneration from your phantasms, and the aoe healing from mantras. With all the % damage boosts to your phantasms, they will do pretty massive damage. Berserker hits usually range from between 2k to 5k, with occasional hits of above 8k (I still don’t know why those happen). The warlock will hit for around 2k noncrit, up to 8k crits on a larger boss that has 5-6 conditions on it, with my highest recorded hit being over 14k on the priest of grenth.

Once you have a few phantasms up doing damage, you can turn your focus to healing your team. Every 4 seconds or so, you can complete a charge of mantra of pain, doing an aoe heal for about 2600-2700 hp. By spamming mantra of pain, you can usually keep any decent team at or close to full hp, while not suffering significantly from damage yourself due to your phantasms being the main source of your damage.

Where this build really shines, however, is in the potential utility it can change to. In situations where projectile reflects are necessary, such as the harpy fractal, I will take off the greatsword and put on a sword and focus. You can drop the phantasm hp trait to trait the focus, and drop the condition removal on healing trait to decrease glamour recharges by 20%. With the focus skills and feedback, you become a neverending stream of projectile reflection.
At places like lupicus, you can change the glamour cooldown trait for the feedback bubble upon reviving trait.
In situations of high conditions, you can take phantasmal disenchanter, and even Inspiration XI for more condition removal.

While sacrificing the staff cooldowns, greatsword cooldowns, and deceptive evasion by only going 10 points into domination and dueling, this build picks up a massive amount of utility with the 30 points into inspiration allowing you to modify your build and trait setup to suit any possible situation.

Leveling

This build can easily be adapted as a leveling build. The playstyle remains the same no matter what level you are. The traits should start with 5 points in illusions, then 10 in domination, 10 in dueling, 20 into inspiration, 5 more into illusions, 5 into inspiration, 10 into illusions, and lastly 5 more into inspiration.

I use this build in any dungeons, any level fractals, and any other PvE situations, although I wouldn’t recommend it for mob tagging during DEs in orr. It is a substandard PvP build for a lot of reasons, but as long as you stay with PvE, this build will get you through almost any conceivable problem.

Phase retreat isn’t a double leap combo like leap/swap. You will get maybe 25 seconds from those 3.

Bounce attacks will never bounce to clones, even if they are the only friendly targets in range of the bounce.

Swap between midnight and feedback as necessary based on the need for additional reflects.

Unless I am greatly mistaken, applying regeneration to someone uses their healing power, otherwise regeneration stacking from multiple sources would be a coding nightmare.

6x dwayna is no good. If your team really needs that regen, tell them to stand by your phantasms.

Oh boy. ITT: kittenololololol

The part about doing low dps only really applies to staff autoattacks, and it is true. While I would love to get up 3 warlocks to just pound on lupi, they really do have a tendency to run close to him. He doesn’t spawn grubs on them every time, nor does he even spawn grubs on them most of the time, or half the time. The problem is that a single grub spawn is a risk you can’t take, ESPECIALLY in an unorganized pug. To that end, I stay in sword/focus so that I can shut down, immobilize, or pull any grubs that start running.

As far as phase 2 goes, blurred frenzy, phase retreat, and distortion are your friends. One more trick you can do is take the trait that pops up a feedback bubble when you revive, and go stand by the dead npc. Every time lupi does his ground aoe attacks, you just pop up feedback by reviving the npc a little, and you are completely safe from his attacks, every time.

Manditory.7934:

Why can’t you use illusions?
In phase 1 I get 3 warlocks up, with traits they heal the entire group really nicely as we all stack and kill adds and damage the boss. Quite easy.
Phase 2 is just a kitten because your entire team needs to know how to survive on their own, which is rarely the case in pugs.
I would actually suggest running time warp for fast resurections or panic mode, tho I am asura.
I run gs/staff, works great.

Glhf

Both warlocks and duelists have a tendency to run far closer than necessary to their target. This causes them to get uncomfortably close to lupicus.

In phase one, I sit in sword/ focus. As you said, my damage is abysmal in staff. With sword/ focus, I have an immobilize and a pull, perfect for grubs.

plasmacutter.2709:

Why Is temporal curtain not considered a glamour skill?

Because it is not a glamour skill. Glamours are utilities, temporal curtain is a weapon skill that is also a light combo field. Nothing about it has anything to do with glamours.

Moxic.5892:

Runes of Lyssa + Timewarp + Activate Signet of Inspiration makes for a nice crowd pleaser, but Altruism runes do seem really worthwhile too, as others have pointed out.

Unfortunately, it’s a crowd pleaser on a 3 minute cooldown. Compared to the constant buff uptime with altruism runes, there is really no comparison.

Overall, the gs and staff clones will probably have similar damage, since the staff can also apply vuln. The major difference is the might and fury, but remember that mirror blade will give you significant might stacks very quickly.

I have another 1 vs many video up, found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T--u3A25GI&feature=youtu.be

exilio.5640:

Great responses and much appreciated. I have been happy with my build, but I see some merit to what Pyroatheist was talking about—so I am going to try that and see how it works. My only concern is the generation of clones/phantasms…I have been spoiled by dodging to make them if I needed to.

Thanks again!

Since my build isn’t dependent on shatters for pretty much anything, rapid clone generation isn’t a problem due to clones being more or less useless. The only things you really care about are your phantasms, and those can’t be hurried of course.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Pyroatheist.9031:

You don’t need dwayna runes or water runes. In this build, both are superfluous. Dwayna runes are completely pointless because your group should have permanent regen from your phantasms anyway. Water runes actually do something, but have a worthless 4 set bonus.

Use runes of altruism instead. Now, instead of tacking on a tiny heal, you will be stacking might and fury for your entire party, much more useful in a team setting.

Omfg. I’ve never even seen those runes! Yeah, I completely agree.

Edit: I sorta agree. I’ve had a lot of success spreading regen with the Dwayna runes since not all allies are near phantasms and their regen is only 3 secs.

Simply give your party the support Mesmer disclaimer before doing anything.

“My phantasms give aoe regen, I give aoe healing and aoe fury and aoe might, so stand by me or my phantasms for healing and buffs”

That usually gets people where they need to be.

The runes of altruism are new with the wintersday patch, which is probably why you’ve never seen them before.

You don’t need dwayna runes or water runes. In this build, both are superfluous. Dwayna runes are completely pointless because your group should have permanent regen from your phantasms anyway. Water runes actually do something, but have a worthless 4 set bonus.

Use runes of altruism instead. Now, instead of tacking on a tiny heal, you will be stacking might and fury for your entire party, much more useful in a team setting.

jportell.2197:

Pyroatheist.9031:

cheeseonbike.5607:

Jofu.9637:

Hi you mentioned that when using illusionary leap and switch position + temporal curtain will give about 14 sec of retaliation but it didn’t happen to me? Could you point out what could possible went wrong?

Edit: tried it again, ahaha i needed to stand on the actual line for that to work

I got retaliation but not 14 seconds. Am i doing something wrong?

If you got something around 12 seconds, that is just a difference in buff duration increase stat.

However, if you got between 6 and 7, you are only activating one part of the leap combo. To get both parts, you must stand on the temporal curtain line, activate illusionary leap (combo 1), and then activate illusionary swap (combo 2). Swap must be activated while you are still on the temporal curtain line in order for the combo to work.

Don’t need to be on the line in my experience your leap and swap just have to cross it.

That may be true, but if your target moves from one side of the line to the other, you now suddenly lose one or both of your leap combos. The only way to ensure the combo finisher is by standing on the line itself.

The staff/gs combo is my personal favorite for PvE. Here is how I play it.

I always have a staff, greatsword, sword, and focus with me at all time, swapping them out as necessary.

I make the build into a tanky/dps build focused on phantasms. I take the traits 10/10/0/30/20. Domiation for 15% increased illusion damage, dueling for fury on phantasms, 20 illusions for 3% increased damage per illusion and faster phantasm recharges.
30 inspiration has multiple uses. I almost always have inspiration IV for condition removal on healing. If I am just nuking with staff and greatsword, I will also have V for increased phantasm hp, and then lastly I take X, mantra heals. In cases where projectile reflects are necessary, I will take off gs, put on sword and focus, trait the focus, take feedback, trait glamours, and be in super duper projectile reflection mode.

For gear, my armor is all berserkers. My accessories are all berserkers with the exception of an ascended soldiers ring. Weapons are all soldiers except the greatsword which is berserkers.

The way this build works is a hybrid high dps through phantasms, tankyish, and lots of aoe healing. With the fury and all the %damage buffs to phantasms, your phantasms will do tons of damage, even without a lot of traits into domination or dueling. In a team situation, I generally will see my warlock hit for 7K+ crits on targets, with my highest crit ever seen a 14k crit at grenth. The berserker is still a bit buggy, and has variable damage between 1k and 5k (every now and then it hits for 8k+ and I don’t know why).

So, phantasms are how you deal damage. You stay alive because in this build you have 20k hp, and about 2000 armor. Lastly, you are also the group healer. Due to the inspiration traitline, your phantasms pulse aoe regen, meaning your whole group should more or less permanently have regen. Additionally, your charging mantras does an aoe heal for about 2200 with just the 300 healing power you get from inspiration. Taking mantra of pain allows this 2200 to be massively spammable, producing one of the highest aoe healing rates in the game.

The utilities I take are x, mantra of pain, and decoy. X can be anything necessary, between feedback, blink, arcana thievery, disenchanter null field, etc. This allows you to have some defense, the heal spam, and one group utility pick. I also use ether feast for healing.

This build allows you to set up a couple phantasms for damage and then transition into healing mode, running around spamming mantra of pain to keep everyone in your group healthy and happy. You have the versatility through traits and weapon swaps to become a massive reflection powerhouse, such as in the harpy fractal. This is my favorite PvE build due to its versatility, raw damage, and group healing utility that makes it amazingly successful both in solo PvE (though other builds are more effective here) and group PvE. I would not recommend this build for PvP, go take a look at my immortal mesmer build or osi’s shattercat build for that.

@Skyro: You are right, in tPvP the situation is vastly different. Turtling on a point does make the whirl finisher very reliable, and that one combo alone removes 4-5 conditions. Another point is that null field is a big team utility item, and a very very strong choice in a tpvp situation, depending on the map and your role.

As far as damage goes, if you build for phantasms, you can do scary damage while staying tanky. In my fractal build, 10/10/0/30/20, I have 20k hp and around 2500 armor iirc, and my phantasms still do massive damage. The warlock has the potential to do unbelievable damage due to the 10% scaling. I have seen 8k+ crits from that thing, and I don’t even have really high crit damage. Berserker usually does between 2.5k and 5k per whirl. If I swap on a focus, the warden will usually end up doing around 7-k damage for a full spin.

Yes it does. Also take illusionary persona for the distortion shatter to provide you with another second of invulnerability.

Check your link, it is not working properly.

No.

/15characters

cheeseonbike.5607:

Jofu.9637:

Hi you mentioned that when using illusionary leap and switch position + temporal curtain will give about 14 sec of retaliation but it didn’t happen to me? Could you point out what could possible went wrong?

Edit: tried it again, ahaha i needed to stand on the actual line for that to work

I got retaliation but not 14 seconds. Am i doing something wrong?

If you got something around 12 seconds, that is just a difference in buff duration increase stat.

However, if you got between 6 and 7, you are only activating one part of the leap combo. To get both parts, you must stand on the temporal curtain line, activate illusionary leap (combo 1), and then activate illusionary swap (combo 2). Swap must be activated while you are still on the temporal curtain line in order for the combo to work.

Skyro.3108:

I feel the remove condition on heal trait is really underwhelming unless combined with mantra of recovery. The vigor on shatter trait IMO is much better as it gives you vigor even with 0 clone shatters with Illusionary Persona and increases your survivability much more with the extra dodges.

While condition removal isn’t abundant in this build, you do have a built in condition removal via combo’ing Focus 5 (whirl finisher) with Focus 4 (light field). Supplemented with Null Field gives you adequate condition removal IMO.

Null field really has no place in this build. All three of my utilities are extremely important, and that is one of the reasons that I take as much condition removal as possible. In another post I discussed what food I use, and my food has a condition removal effect on healing every 10 seconds. When you stack up that effect with the trait of removal, it becomes very difficult to get conditions to stick to me. The whirl finisher in temporal curtain is amazing, but not always reliable to do.

Condition removal is of absolute highest priority in this build, simply because it is a bunker build. There is no innate defense against damaging conditions other than removal, necessitating as much removal as possible. Additionally, cripple and chill both severely impeded my mobility and ability to disengage from a fight at will, becoming extremely dangerous. Lastly, poison interferes with my healing, which is a very important component of how this build works.

Without every last shred of condition removal I can throw together, conditions start to eat this build. Remember that this build is based on actually getting hit and not dodging every attack. Many condition applying attacks have a lot of small hits, making them the ideal situation for retaliation damage. In this build, I want to tank those attacks for my retaliation damage output, and then simply be able to remove the conditions applied after the attack is finished.

cheeseonbike.5607:

Hey Pyroatheist i was really amazed to see how long u could manage against multiple opponents so that’s why i really want to try it out.

I was wondering what gear/runes/sigils and jewelry u are wearing?
I have about 17 stacks of AC tokens do it’s no problem to get a new Power/Toughness/Vitality set + weapons, but what about the rest?
Because u lack a little bit of high damage output would a superior sigil of with +250 power @ 25 stacks be a good option?
And what about rune’s? are u wearing runes of the soldier to get more Vitality and Toughness?

Are your weapons also P/T/V ?

Everything I am wearing is soldier’s stats. My amulet and earrings are only rare, bought from the wvw karma vendor, the rings are ascended. The jewelry has crests of the soldier in them, and the armor has 5 runes of the soldier and 1 rune of the svanir.

A superior sigil of power with 25 sacks would do almost nothing for my normal damage, but because retaliation scales off of power, it would be a fantastic boost to the retaliation damage.

Kazhiel.8194:

ExZee.8109:

Pyroatheist.9031:

I know what the thread is called, but having the name nerf/change doesn’t make the change any less of a buff. It took a useless weapon with horrible damage, and wimpy boon stacking and turned it into a potent condition damage weapon capable of stacking a condition that isn’t nearly useless.

Read the actual content of the thread before you talk any more nonsense. You’re making yourself look like a fool.

Maybe you should actually read the content of the thread before you talk nonsense because despite the title of the thread the majority of the posters in there think the changes were good lmao

Don’t bother, look at his post history. There’s a reason I didn’t respond to him.

jportell.2197:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Macha.9160:

@ Pyroatheist

I don’t now… but do you use music for your videos? Because in germany you can only watch your first video… (for example i can’t watch your newest)
Don’t know if you can do something about it, but if you upload your next video could you (if possible) confirm everyone can look at it? I would like to see you 1vs many parts^^

I do use music for the videos. Youtube gives me the little “you are using copyrighted music in your videos” warning, but that obviously has different affects in different parts of the world. I am unfamiliar with the ins and outs of this, but if someone could give me some tips on how to make my videos available to everyone, it would be much appreciated.

@Pyro I have been running fractals with the iDefender and I use to scoff this little guy off (I’m asura). But If I have an iWarden on the boss as well with a Chaos Storm on top of them they last a lot longer because the phantasms regen each other along with boons from the cS and the defender is one of the few reasons I feel tanky. Using this build I was able to solo the last half of the boss in the ascalonian fractal. The utility here is just amazing.

If you manage to get fully set up on a boss, then a phantasmal defender can truly be a defensive force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, in a team situation the defender usually gets killed extremely quickly just from the quantity of damage that everyone around it is taking.

As far as soloing that boss goes, just kite your heart out with staff and you should be fine. Make sure you take feedback into that fight, as his attack with the flaming greatsword is all projectiles, and will add up easily to over 20k damage if you hit him with feedback at the right time.

knight.8926:

how well do you do against burst bs thieves that disappear alot? The ones that attack, then disappear, attack and so on. mind posting vids? thx and nice vids btw

The first thief in my first video attempted to do that sort of attack pattern, although they were not too good at it. In general, burst bs thieves are extremely weak against this build. They are highly dependent on raw damage, and this build has very high armor alongside high uptime on protection. Having the iDefender out is just icing on the cake. They can’t possibly hope to do more damage than I can outheal through the phantasm regeneration procs and my normal ether feast, and any sustained attack they make on you will kill them extremely quickly from retaliation.

As long as you remember to not shatter your clones/phantasms when they stealth, you should do fine from the regen procs and 3% less damage per illusion. Additionally, all the illusions will immediately attack a thief once they are unstealthed, making culling a non-issue.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Its an okay change but why it applies bleeding for 3sec? Should be 5sec to compensate confusion. Mesmer is still great underwater but i feel like its much much weaker 1v1 now.

Bleeding is generally shorter stacks when it is massively stackable, this follows with the pattern that most skills applying bleeds use.

Yeah i got it but clones attack slower than we’re and base damage from trident autos is kitten poor. Five sec is what i should be me think

It seems to me that you haven’t actually gone and tested this out yet. Underwater clones, like everything else, attack a far sight faster than land clones. Due to this effect, 2 clones and yourself autoattacking a target will stack up 13+ bleeds in just a couple seconds. That is not underpowered by any stretch of the imagination, especially given the ease with which we can maintain clones at all times.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Its an okay change but why it applies bleeding for 3sec? Should be 5sec to compensate confusion. Mesmer is still great underwater but i feel like its much much weaker 1v1 now.

Bleeding is generally shorter stacks when it is massively stackable, this follows with the pattern that most skills applying bleeds use.

Drawing Guy.3701:

For a non-condition build, it’s a big nerf. However considering I could keep 12-20 stacks of confusion on someone solo with the trident, anything that dared attacked me was toast. Soloing champs in less than a minute? A veteran dying instantly if it has a rapid attack (poor spinning jellyfish)? It was an expected nerf, though I wish it was posted.

Now with clones having standard trident attack (weak attack + bleed), my trident has been regulated to Whaler. My shatter combos and standard spear attacks do more than my bleed stacks ever could (which is why I never bothered with trident attack unless nothing was touching my clones), but I’m glad the whaler was changed from bleed to confuse. I now have a reason to use him instead of just spear phantasms beyond the swimming up to a fight move.

I don’t see how its a nerf to a non-condition build. Even non condition builds benefit from bleed stacking, and it takes the autoattacks of the scepter from something completely useless to something that actually has an effect. Obviously condition builds will benefit more from this change than power builds, but power builds were already in a horrible place with the scepter because the damage was so abysmal on it.

It should be mentioned that the whaler still does a quite appreciable amount of damage, on top of adding confusion stacks.

Macha.9160:

@ Pyroatheist

I don’t now… but do you use music for your videos? Because in germany you can only watch your first video… (for example i can’t watch your newest)
Don’t know if you can do something about it, but if you upload your next video could you (if possible) confirm everyone can look at it? I would like to see you 1vs many parts^^

I do use music for the videos. Youtube gives me the little “you are using copyrighted music in your videos” warning, but that obviously has different affects in different parts of the world. I am unfamiliar with the ins and outs of this, but if someone could give me some tips on how to make my videos available to everyone, it would be much appreciated.

Deceptive evasion is only necessary in a fast paced shatter build. I find that phantasm based builds are generally safer and more effective in pve, especially for leveling. This makes deceptive evasion an optional pick, and frees you to go 20 points into dueling to take fury for phantasms, and pistol cooldowns.

ExZee.8109:

Missing FLIMP’s build.

And underwater Trident wasn’t buffed, it was nerfed. There’s even a thread that’s titled “Underwater Nerf/Change”

I know what the thread is called, but having the name nerf/change doesn’t make the change any less of a buff. It took a useless weapon with horrible damage, and wimpy boon stacking and turned it into a potent condition damage weapon capable of stacking a condition that isn’t nearly useless.

One other thing to note is that illusions 5 is mandatory in every build, and should be the first trait you get.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Yeah, nothing of matter changed (officially) for my build, and I couldn’t find any stealth nerfs yet.
Was worried about the patch, after I added a complete leveling guide to my thread yesterday, but kitten, I was bored… ^^

Stealth change, underwater was massively buffed, adding bleeds to the trident autoattack.

Soyboy.3548:

It says it is a light field…yup checked in game. The only ethereals we have are chaos storm, feedback, null field, and time warp. Lights are temporal curtain and veil.

Anyhow, I haven’t read this whole thread and the ins-and outs because it is so lengthy, but I am wondering why the OP doesn’t value the blocks grant retaliation perk. You just equip Mimic and you get a ton of retaliation that way regardless of whether you use a scepter 2 or OH sword 4 (or chaos storm also gives a block) especially if someone is rapid firing at you. Mimic is basically permablock for 4 seconds and the number of blocks depends on number of hits taken…

Next, I was wondering why the Retaliation on Downed trait isn’t taken…It basically means people take damage if they try to finish you off without a stomp. In close fights that usually means you win.

I’ll say it again, veil is an ethereal combo field. You may have looked at the skill, but you obviously didn’t test it out, because you would have seen that I was right.

I notice that you said you haven’t read the thread in and out because it is so lengthy, you also obviously have not even read the original post entirely. Go and do that, and then perhaps rethink your opinions. Educated criticism and comments are welcomed, uneducated and uninformed of the same are not.

Soyboy.3548:

Have you tried using Veil of Invis as an extra light curtain to pop off some extra retaliation/cleansing bolts? I was surprised not to see it in the build.

Veil is an ethereal combo field. It also has a cooldown that makes it completely useless for anything other than stealthing massive numbers of people in wvw, or other super niche uses.

Mogar.9216:

Kinda funny. I transferred from t1 to play with friends when Kain was in dead last in rankings. To be honest the zerg v zerg really isn’t all that different from T1 to T9 or whatever it was. It’s just more of it. Kain has so far zerged our way up to T4. I think t3 really won’t be much different. I highly doubt T2 will be that much harder. Kain win because of coverage , we have very very good guilds at off peak hrs. You can’t beat that. In t2 the servers will have better coverage in off peak hrs than lower tiers but I highly doubt any server has the zerg Kain has between 2 and 8 am est.

If you really think the kain early NA morning Zerg is going to outclass the DB oceanic/Asian coverage, you’ve got another thing coming.

Don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure feedback doesn’t work when cast on lupi, due to the fact he releases the projectiles from above the dome.

What does work, however, is the feedback on reviving trait. You can actually have someone stay dead just to provide an on-demand feedback to easily block all the projectiles.

Opacus.4390:

@ Pyroatheist,

Thx for pointing on it, was on the wrong thread
Deleted the post here.

Thanks for responding this quickly, much appreciated.

Opacus, this is a thread dedicated to listing and organizing other builds. Your questions are specific to the shattercat build type, so your question should have been asked in that thread, not this one.

To Osi, please don’t respond to this guy, other than to direct him to the appropriate thread. The last thing I want to see is this thread getting hijacked for another purpose.

@shaktiboi: Interesting findings. Greatsword is without a doubt a better large group skirmishing weapon for exactly the reasons your described, and iDefender is useless in a large group because it simply gets instakilled. If I were going to run front line attack in my full bunker build, I would most likely swap out iDefender for blink as well.

As far as interrupting the illusionary leap/swap, they can only do that if they are very VERY fast on the interrupt, as illusionary swap is a stunbreaker, and if their interrupt is a projectile, it will be reflected by temporal curtain.

So, as the ratings stand right now, kaineng is going up 5 bloody rankings in one week, completely skipping t3 and jumping into t2….where they are going to get smacked down hard by either sea of sorrows or blackgate, hahahah.

Alrighty, got a few things to reply to

@windwalker: if high amounts of conditions are the problem in sPvp, why not take the other grandmaster trait, the one that removes conditions with shatters?

@shaktiboi: you’ve made some really interesting and innovative changes to the build. Here are some solutions for your problems though. Firstly, I never designed this build for normal zvz combat. You can actually do a frontline charge with it really really well, due to the on-demand projectile reflects and massive defense, but this build is definitely not designed for actually killing people in zvz. If you want to do that, I recommend the lolzy nuker build 30/30/0/0/10 full zerker with greatsword and 4x mantras for your 4x unblockable 1200 range attacks.

You have a point about people avoiding curtain, but here’s how you deal with it. Firstly, you can activate illusionary leap with a target out of range, and still get 1 leap finisher out of it.
Here is the big trick though, and requires a ton of battlefield awareness. You can drop the curtain, then detonate it for the pull. However, the combo field still persists on the ground for the normal duration, even though the actual curtain is gone. This means you can yank someone to you with the detonate, and then still get the 14 seconds of retaliation from the invisible combo field.

Fantastic job Fay! This is exactly what we needed. Lets get this stickied ASAP!