Guild Wars 2

Be careful with mashing illusionary swap. Many many many times the clone derps around for a few seconds before deciding to actually leap. This happens really often on uneven surfaces, or when it is trying to go around corners. Always try and watch the clone itself, and leap as soon as you see it get close to the target.

Clone placement is very important after your first shatter burst is done. Generally, I save the combo you described until I know it will instakill them, preferring to initiate with the daze shatter for the MASSIVE vulnerability stacking, and then following up with cry of frustration, and a few autoattacks. Once they’ve lost a bit of health is when I do that combo, because having no or fewer evasions gives a much higher chance of that illusionary leap landing properly, and allows you to just completely finish a fight unexpectedly, with no chance of a heal to counteract the damage.

Null field without a doubt has the best group utility, which is why I almost always run with it in s/tPvP. In my glassier builds, I actually don’t run with condition removal at all. Risky, but I don’t want to give up the three stunbreakers I take (blink, mirror images, decoy). For group utility, or all around best utility pick in wvw, feedback has to take the prize, with portal getting the honorable mention in niche situations.

The only time I regularly run with null field is when I’m in my confusion stacking build, and I use it as an opener for my pistol phant to shoot through for 8 stacks of instant confusion. Other than that, I find that it has a similar effect to shadow refuge, as either run out of it, or pile aoes into it where it becomes impossible to stay there.

As far as staff clones for shatter, trying to use the staff at long range is an exercise in utility. The little balls move so slowly that you can sorta outrun them, and so you have be well within 900 range to have autoattacks hit a runner. On the other hand, at close range, the clones shatter just as well as sword clones. You actually get a bit more control over the staff clones, because they won’t chase the target as much, so you can try to place them in safer areas or more beneficial areas than simply chasing the target.

Embolism.8106:

If you take Shattered Conditions you don’t need any other condition removal really. IIRC it’s one condition removed per Clone Shattered, you’re basically immune to conditions then if you Shatter often. The problem of course is it’s too deep in Inspiration for Shatter builds to take without sacrificing a more important trait.

I don’t really see how Mender’s Purity can give a “large amount” of condition removal considering it’s one condition per heal and MoRec is rarely worth using. Almost any of the Mesmer’s other condition removal options are better IMO, without making you either waste your heal on condition removal or lose your condition removal when you need to heal.

Generally, if you need to remove conditions, you also need to heal, and vice versa. The trait simply allows you to double-load a single skill into these two actions.

I’ve actually moved away from using null field for almost all situations. Its an immensely powerful tool, but the problem is that if you have a lot of conditions on you, it is simply inadequate to remove them. The field pulses, and removes a significant number of conditions over time, but if you need conditions off you NOW, there’s no guarantee it’ll remove the right one first. Arcane thievery is quite a bit more fun, since you can use it highly offensively as well, such as stealing the 30 second stability from lich form (or the one from dagger storm). Unfortunately, arcane thievery can be borked by line of sight, dodges, facing the wrong direction (I think), so it’s not a perfect tool either. In my tank build, I take the condition removal mantra. However, that only works well because I can easily take the 3 seconds to recharge it without taking much damage, and that’s not as true in a glassier build.

Also, I’m not sure you’ve played a shatter build much in wvw, but in all but the largest fights (where greatsword wins handily, I’ve acknowledged) landing your shatters is quite easy, with a little bit of effort. By far the largest number of raw hits is going to be coming from shattering all the time. The way I play with staff really doesn’t involve leaving clones sitting around. You swap over, phase retreat, phantasm, dodge, and shatter. If you were swapping to it because you were in a bad spot, then chaos storm on top of you for aoe denial and aegis. The staff just does a better job of close range fighting, while still allowing you to keep up a high hitrate through the use of shatters.

One other problem with the greatsword is that a few of its mechanics are sorta clunky in terms of directional usage, mirror blade in particular. I find that mirror blade often fails and goes into (reduced) cooldown extremely often vs a highly mobile enemy, unless I actually stop moving and allow my char to throw the blade while stationary. A similar problem occurs with the wave, where if you aren’t really careful, you can toss it in entirely the wrong direction. Those two issues just make greatsword a bit more annoying to play, combined with the fact that mind stab is sorta useless in any kind of active fight.

If you’re purely going to be doing dungeons or long range zerg battles, then greatsword definitely wins, with the caveat that in long range zerg battles you will be massively better off with a max crit setup without fury on interrupt, because you won’t be getting any interrupts from that range.

At close range however, greatsword simply doesn’t measure up to staff. As you said yourself, at close range you want to be sitting in sword/offhand, only swapping to the other weapon when necessary. Since this build, when push come to shove, is a defensively focused build, you want the extra defense from chaos storm, chaos armor (instant 5 seconds of protection), and phase retreat. The fury from autoattacks is simply a bonus. You don’t want to swap to staff unless you know you’ll need that burst healing + aegis + regen from chaos storm/armor, but when you DO need it, you want to have that defensive capability instead of swapping over and realizing you are worse off than before.

AnemoneMeer.7182:

Osicat, part of the reason I posted it is precisely because I know I’m not going to be able to build a ideal build or setup for this. It’s still experimental, and quite frankly, I want to see others try and refine the idea as well. I’m a pretty good mesmer, but I don’t play nearly enough to see this through to perfection. Also lack the gold to go testing things like full divinity runes and such with it.

I’d love to see lifesteal attrition mesmer turn into a viable WvW/PvE build, but I simply don’t do enough to accomplish that myself.

What I did test though had a very constant influx of health to match the extremely high vigor uptime.

…Can someone test if food procs off of feedback damage?

That would be an interesting thing to do, but really situational, feedback food. For pvp though, this build really needs 30 in illusions. I can’t see doing any sort of shattery attrition based build without illusionary persona. Ideally, you max out crit so that you don’t need the fury from the interrupts, but if absolutely necessary, you could go 10/30/0/0/30 I suppose. Another advantage to the staff is that it is a far more defensive weapon that the greatsword, which synergizes far better with this build.

Also, even if you don’t want to take illusionary persona, the aoe diversion from 30 in illusions would be unbelievable with the fury on interrupt, since you can potentially do interrupts on upwards of 15 targets in a decent size aoe with a 3 clone diversion shatter.

Edit: One more thing. You seem to be under the impression that in a pvp environment, normal attack speeds on the staff and greatsword are going to matter at all. As I mentioned before, if you are simply chewing on people from max range, then you don’t need lifesteal stuff, and feel free to swap that greatsword you have in your inventory for that very purpose.

Once you actually get into fights, however, you will be doing massive amounts of shattering, staying mostly in sword/sword and going into staff only for defensive purposes. In a close range fight like that, going into greatsword isn’t immensely helpful, as the only interrupt you have (for your fury) is greatsword 5, whereas when you go into staff at close range, you will have permafury from the bouncing autos from both you and your clones.

The vast majority of your lifesteal procs, however, will be achieved from mind wrack, cry, and blurred frenzy. Each one of those attacks do a very high number of individual hits, assuming 3 clones out, and are going to be doing a far better job of getting lifesteal procs than either the greatsword or staff.

Your only arguments for greatsword is that it has an interrupt, ignores projectile shields (legitimate argument), and has a higher attack rate, but you are completely forgetting that none of these three things outclass the staff in a short range nasty attrition fight, which is what this build is created from the ground up specifically for.

Mantra of recovery procs all “on healing use” items the same way. Once on the charge, and once on each discharge. Tested extensively.

In my experience, menders purity gives a very large amount of condition removal. If you really need more, you can take mantra of (w/e) that removes 2 conditions per discharge. Alternatively, take arcane thievery or null field, both of which are great at messing with conditions/boons. If you really REALLY need more condition removal, you can also take removal of condition on shatter, which is 30 points deep in inspiration.

Depending on how you play this build, you may want to tale only 10 points in domination and 30 in illusions. While you lose the 20% gs trait, and the vulnerability on daze trait, you would gain illusionary persona, which would allow short range instant fury buffing without needing clones.

As a side note, if you hit a boss with a full 3(4) clone daze, does it give the fury for each clone that dazes? It seems like if the game is counting an interrupt as any cc landing during an attack, a 3 clone shatter into high stacks of defiant could produce massive fury uptime.

Another option would be 20 Dom, 20 dueling, 30 illusions, ditching greatsword for staff. This would be more optimal in pvp than pve, because if you are walking around nuking with a greatsword in pvp, you’re probably at high hp anyway. You’ll have decent fury uptime from the staff autos, you can take a more interesting Dom trait (remove boon on shatter is my favorite), and you’ll still get decent healing procs from burst combos with shatters and blurred frenzy.

Edit: for the crit stacking sigil, don’t put that on your main sword. Get 2 random green swords, drop the sigil on both of them. That way, you can equip both, stack up very fast, then put on normal weapons to maximize your build’s effectiveness. I highly recommend using the sigil of leeching, which is steal health on first attack after a weaponswap.

sigh Edit 2: consider dropping knights gear for precision major/ power and toughness minor gear. I believe you can get that in several dungeons. This would lower your toughness of course, but could buff your crit chance to the extent that fury is not necessary. Also remember to always use the master maintenance oil for more crit chance. If you can get your crit really high without additional fury, it really opens up your build to more variations. I really like this thing though. I may have to make a modified bunker build focusing on crit healing with this basic form.

Dem edits: I just calced the full build with all precision/tough/power gear, emerald accessories in full. Also using master maintenance oil, the omnomberry pie, and including the 50 precision from having a sword equipped. I calced it assuming only 20 points in dueling. You come out to a 74% crit chance with no crit stacking sigil, and an 85% chance with a fully stacked sigil. For me, that would be high enough to sacrifice fury on interrupt for more interesting traits, but that is my personal opinion.

Has anyone tried to trigger the exploit after the patch? To my knowledge, the way it worked was by triggering mind wrack while the distortion clones were still in transit to their targets. Adding the .25 second global cooldown makes it more difficult for that bug to occur, but it should not make it impossible.

I never actually tested the bug prior to this patch, so I don’t know precisely how to trigger it. What I can say is that in testing right now in the heart of the mists, I was unable to produce the high damage. I got out 3 clones, shattered with diversion, hit mirror images, shattered with mind wrack, and had 5 clones running to the target, with only 2 hits from mind wrack occurring.

kenshinakh.3672:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Ah, it seems like you are slightly mistaken on how this mechanic works. Allow me to explain it more precisely.

If you have 3 clones out, and use a shatter, these clones effectively no longer exist. The three dots on the gui will still be filled, but you can spawn more clones immediately without causing the older clones to be overwritten (they would immediately die in that case). Basically what it does is that when you use a shatter, your clones become a living projectile attack, no longer permanent creations on the battlefield, but another guided attack heading your way, freeing up the slots for more clones to be created.

With the bug, this transformation of current clones into guided missiles was not done completely, and so the guided missiles got double-loaded when mind wrack was used immediately after the first shatter, as if someone reached into the missile, and added an extra stack of C4 to the payload. The only thing that needed fixing was preventing this extra loading from occurring. Everything else about this mechanic worked perfectly.

Ohh, I see now. That makes sense.

I can’t really say much more about it then. Hopefully devs can explain what was the intention of the .25s cooldown (maybe having the possibility of too many clones exploding nearly at once was too much and needed a short cooldown?).

There is no need for the devs to explain what the .25s cooldown is. Anyone who has ever done coding in their life instantly recognized what they did. There was no ulterior motive or other mechanic identified that needed change, the devs were simply lazy. The .25s cooldown was a lazy way of making the fix, and that is exactly what they did.

kenshinakh.3672:

I see what you mean, but there’s also a catch to doing it as I described.

Mind Wrack, your f1 ability, gets weaker for each clone you have out. If they did it as I described, you’ll be getting less damage from your f1 ability upon using f2-f4 immediately after a clone explodes on contact.

I’m not entirely sure what Anet meant for mesmers to do with illusions, but when I play that class, I always understood that f1-f4 consumes all your clones in order to create the spell effect. The tooltip sounds like it means for us to use all our clones on one ability at a time too. Using it to explode different abilities one at a time would seem like using mesmers a way the designers never meant them to be (though if you can, all the more power to you because it requires some skill to do so). That’s why I saw the fix as making it pretty clear that f1-f4 uses all your current clones regardless and you have to spawn new clones to use the others.

Ah, it seems like you are slightly mistaken on how this mechanic works. Allow me to explain it more precisely.

If you have 3 clones out, and use a shatter, these clones effectively no longer exist. The three dots on the gui will still be filled, but you can spawn more clones immediately without causing the older clones to be overwritten (they would immediately die in that case). Basically what it does is that when you use a shatter, your clones become a living projectile attack, no longer permanent creations on the battlefield, but another guided attack heading your way, freeing up the slots for more clones to be created.

With the bug, this transformation of current clones into guided missiles was not done completely, and so the guided missiles got double-loaded when mind wrack was used immediately after the first shatter, as if someone reached into the missile, and added an extra stack of C4 to the payload. The only thing that needed fixing was preventing this extra loading from occurring. Everything else about this mechanic worked perfectly.

kenshinakh.3672:

Pyroatheist.9031:

For the people who insist on saying that the global cooldown is a fix, and not a nerf, understand that you are wrong. It is entirely possible for a change to be both a fix AND a nerf, and this is most certainly the case with this change.

What Anet should have done, was actually fix the exploit, without nerfing the rest of the mesmer playstyle. What they ended up doing was fixing the exploit by changing something not directly related to the exploit itself, simply because it was easier to code. This is just pure laziness on the part of the devs, and completely unacceptable.

So you’re saying using mesmer shatters the way I described correct?

kenshinakh.3672:

The .25 GCD on shattering sounds more like a bug fix to prevent unintended usage of the mesmer illusions.

I asked my mesmer friend what it was because I never knew this bug, and he told me it makes sense to fix it. Why? Well, remember that the f1-f4 abilities do damage/whatever amount it says based on the number of clones? So using f1 SHOULD consume your CURRENT clones. However, with the bug, you could use f1-f4 or use them in a combo, effectively getting the effects of all your clones on different abilities. That’s totally not how mesmer was meant to be played… F1 should just be used for your current clones, and f2-f4 shouldn’t benefit for those clones your f1 is using. That’s my 2 cents.

As far as I know, the f1-f4 shatter abilities are meant for your current clones up, and if you use f1, your current clones should be marked for f1, and f2-f4 shouldn’t affect or count them at all.
So, let’s say they implemented the way I described instead, where your current clones get flagged for f1 and will not be affected by f2-f4. Won’t that confuse the player? Maybe they’ll activate f1 and f2 at the same time, and then notice that f2 did absolutely nothing because the clones are all marked for f1. Wouldn’t a .25 gcd prevent that instead?

Please expand and explain why you think otherwise o.O.

That implementation will not confuse the player, because we are assuming that they are halfway competent at playing the mesmer class. Part of playing a shatter mesmer is being able to shatter, pop out more clones, and do a second shatter while the first clones are still running to the target to shatter. This should be possible without causing some sort of exploit that makes mind wrack count clones from another shatter into its damage calculation.

The way the exploit worked was as such: Clones were produced for f3, then shattered. While the clones were in transit to the target, clones were produced, and shattered with f1. The f1 shatter counted both sets of clones into its damage calculation, causing extremely high damage.

The fix to this is obvious, you simply prevent one shatter from mistakenly counting clones that have already been earmarked for another shatter, just like you said. What Anet did is a common enough fix in coding that is used if you want to be lazy, and if it won’t affect the rest of the program. Instead of actually fixing the problem, they changed something else that allowed the problem to be resolved. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to consider that this change has a very bad effect that is completely unrelated to the bug, and has never existed in the mesmer class, namely needing cooldowns between using shatters.

Overall, while Anet could have simply fixed the bug, they didn’t. They took the lazy coder’s way out by changing something else that happened to affect the bug, and gave mesmers a good strong kick in the family jewels at the same time.

For the people who insist on saying that the global cooldown is a fix, and not a nerf, understand that you are wrong. It is entirely possible for a change to be both a fix AND a nerf, and this is most certainly the case with this change.

What Anet should have done, was actually fix the exploit, without nerfing the rest of the mesmer playstyle. What they ended up doing was fixing the exploit by changing something not directly related to the exploit itself, simply because it was easier to code. This is just pure laziness on the part of the devs, and completely unacceptable.

Honestly, there is not a ton you can to do counter a really well played mesmer. I have 3 different builds on my mesmer: Glass cannon, full condition damage, and full tank.

The full tank build will beat you every time. You won’t get the mesmer under 75% hp. Your pet will do nothing to the mesmer, and you will deal more damage to yourself every time you hit them than they are taking due to retaliation and a phantasmal defender.

Full condition damage build is a little bit more touch and go, especially with a shortbow. If you get loaded up with confusion over around 10 stacks, your shortbow spam will kill you very VERY fast, as 10 stacks of confusion will do ~3k damage per skill usage. Even a lesser number of stacks will hurt badly with shortbow spam. Fighting this build, the single most important thing is to avoid attacking with confusion. Unfortunately, a good mesmer will keep at least 5 stacks on you at all times. The best way to avoid this is to dodge every shatter you can, by dodging INTO the clones running at you, as was previously mentioned in this thread. Other than that, just chew them down as much as you can. Be careful of feedback, and be especially careful if they are using a focus, as a traited focus will reflect projectiles with both temporal curtain and the illusionary warden.

Glass cannon: This is the build that you probably have the best chance against, simply because it has the least defense. Many glass cannon builds do not run with feedback, opting rather for decoy, mirror images, and blink. Without feedback, the mesmer doesn’t have area denial of projectiles, and that means they have to kill you very fast. Unfortunately, if you get a glass cannon mesmer on top of you, you should be dead in under 1 second. They will have 3 clones out already, daze shatter for daze + 23ish stacks of vulnerability, then immediately pop out 3 more clones via a utility and a dodge or skill that will immobilize you, use mind wrack for upwards of 3.5k damage per clone (4 clones), and use blurred frenzy, which will probably hit for around 5-8k.

The way to avoid this is range, and timely use of a stunbreaker. The glass cannon mesmer will have 2 hard disables, the pistol stun and the illusionary leap on the sword. The pistol stun will be very very difficult to dodge, as it is fast moving and a very fast animation. If they set things up properly, the stun leads into the immobilize. Your best bet is to be watching for that stun, and use your stunbreaker + a dodge immediately. Once the stun is gone, the only other gapcloser is a 600 range leap/swap skill, that often bugs out over terrain, and so is only truly effective within about 450 range. Therefore, stay out of that range.

Mesmer autoattacks do very low damage in comparison to other classes, and this holds true even for a greatsword at high range. In order to really take you down, the mesmer needs to hit you with other skills and shatters. By staying at the highest range you can at all times, you allow yourself extra time to kill clones running towards you for a shatter (shatter doesn’t work if clones are killed), and you prevent the mesmer from getting on top of you with their only disabling gap closer and unloading burst. Obviously there are counters to this strategy, such as blinking close than using the illusionary leap. However, that falls into a more specific form of playing that really just needs experience to develop counters for.

What I put up there are general strategies for dealing with mesmers. Don’t mess with bunker mesmers, as you will lose. Condition damage mesmers are largely underwhelming on damage with the exception of confusion, and so be super conscious of avoiding that damage. Lastly, glass cannon mesmers rely on short range burst combos, and staying as far away as possible gives you the time and ability to avoid those.

The duration of stealths and ability to reapply stealth nearly at will is not the problem at all. The problem is partly in the fact that with a 3 second revealed debuff, the thief will be invisible 100% of the time. Anet could do a janky fix that simply increased the debuff time to about 6 seconds, causing the thief to ACTUALLY be revealed for 3 seconds, or they could somehow fix the culling problem so that a thief reveals when it attacks.

The other half of the problem, that would not get solved by setting the revealed debuff to 6 seconds, is that in the 3 seconds after the thief does the opening attack, there is plenty of time for 5-6 additional attacks, more if the thief uses quickness. The lack of rendering causes countering this to be extremely difficult if you are not playing the game with laser-sharp focus, and the ONLY fix to this is to fix the rendering issue, unfortunately.

The thing about good bunker builds, again, is that they force you to deal with them. Calling another target is all well and good, but it doesn’t help if you have a disruptive bunker sitting on top of you.

With regards to mesmer bunker specifically, the mantra healing was a fun thing I tried for about 20 minutes and then ditched cause it is, in fact, horrible. The real tricks of a bunker mesmer is providing 100% uptime of aoe regen to their entire team with the proper use of phantasms, and having 50% uptime on chaos armor, and easily 100% uptime on retaliation on the mesmer itself, as well as retaliation on all phantasms. The utility of the regen is obvious. The retaliation, however, is a bit more interesting in that it means that every time this bunker mesmer puts itself or phantasms in your way, you take damage. Use of phantasmal defender means all damage you deal to any allies in a decent aoe deals retaliation damage to you. Bunker mesmer is amazing at not dying, due to being a mesmer, and excels at damage mitigation (high uptime on protection/regen/distortion/blur effects), and additionally excels at damage return (projectile reflects from focus/feedback, and retaliation spread everywhere). While obviously a massively different playstyle from glass cannon mesmer, the bunker mesmer build played properly will kill any class, any build 1v1 (I have not lost a single 1v1 fight in wvw in this bunker build, ever). It takes a while, and thieves can obviously run away pretty easy, but it is an extremely effective build that can roam safely, take camps quickly from retal and projectile reflects, and easily melds into a team comp to everyone’s benefit.

Pinko.2076:

There’s this problem in WvW where people build to beat 95% of players, but the 95% of players are terrible and you could beat them with any build. I think pure bunker builds fall into this trap. In reality you should be aiming to beat 100% of players, even if it makes your victory against the 95% not as easy as it was before.

I say this because if we’re talking about good squad vs good squad, a pure bunker is pretty ineffective. We will see your profession and weapon set, your food choice, and then test the waters. In about 6-7 seconds we know you’re not worth the trouble and kill your friends, because your pressure is no threat. Balancing survivability vs pressure is basically group PvP in a nutshell, and going too strong toward one or the other is a mistake.

Like any good tank, the hallmark of a well played bunker is that you force the enemy team to kill you first. You can do this in several ways, but I’ll speak from the perspective of the mesmer bunker. Firstly, I will be providing massive uptime on projectile reflects, meaning any ranged classes that I choose to lock down will become completely useless. Additionally, I clog up your screen with clones and phantasms. Phantasmal defender soaks damage from my teammates. If I choose to run with a mantra trait, I can actually spam mantra of pain for 2.5k aoe healing every few seconds. All this is happening while I am immobilizing and crippling targets, and dropping ethereal combo fields for confusion stacking projectile finishers, not to mention shatters adding large stacks of confusion with a large aoe effect.

I don’t play a bunker to simply not get killed. I play a bunker in a way that absolutely forces an enemy group to kill me. Being extremely difficult to actually pin down, focus, and kill is just the icing on the cake that makes the build extremely effective. If glass cannon thieves or mesmers or whatever try to bypass me and jump onto the glass cannons I run with, then I simply jump onto whatever character tried to pull that stunt, call target, and lock them down until they die with immobilize and continual dazes.

Other classes can do similar things, with guardians being able to do massive healing, as well as projectile disruption and knockbacks, and elementalists having REALLY massive aoe healing, along with (assuming staff) huge numbers of persistent combo fields. Underestimating and ignoring a well played bunker is a fantastic way to lose every fight you get into.

This is hilarious. Literally every single post past the OP is people explaining in a multitude of ways how wrong they are. It is utterly fantastic.

To OP: Grow a pair and fight back.

While it’s possible they may be just addressing the f3→f1, I highly doubt it. It seems much more likely that they will completely overstep what is necessary to bring the power shatter build in line with everything else, and totally nerf it into the ground.

This may be a pessimistic view, but it seems the most likely one based on their past actions.

I’m thinking this is caused by the duelist’s discipline being linked to an older version of the duelist’s skills. They said they modified the damage this patch, so I bet that they simply forgot to modify the version that duelist’s discipline calls.

Hockmed.9417:

Pyroatheist.9031:

From the patch notes: Phantasmal Mariner: This phantasm now attacks more often, but does damage in line with its attack rate.

I do not have a record of the damage it did before the patch, so I am unable to say whether or not the damage was affected. However, I extensively tested the recharge times, and I can say with 100% accuracy that it does NOT attack faster. Prior to the patch, the skill recharge was at 10.4 seconds, both with and without phantasmal haste. After the patch, this is exactly the same. Not only did they fail to make it work with phantasmal haste, they also failed to even change the basic skill attack timer.

Cooldown and attack rate are not the same thing. Saying the cooldown did not change, while saying that you have no idea how fast the actual attacks were or how much damage they did makes you look like you have no idea how to construct an argument.

I did as little water combat as I could, so I cant comment about the damage. The Phantasmal Haste is a valid note – but has it ever worked with mariner? Most underwater skills seem to work differently than on land, and that’s been across most classes.

I don’t think you understand how this is calculated. The skill recharge is the time from the beginning of the skill animation, to the beginning of the next skill animation. This time period remained exactly the same from before the patch to after the patch. By definition, the phantasmal mariner does NOT “attack more often”. Additionally, it has never worked with phantasmal haste, along with several other phantasms, and that is simply another bug that needs to be fixed.

The trait allowed me to have ~80% uptime of protection in my tank build, along with 100% uptime of regen, 100% uptime of retaliation, and high uptime of chaos armor, so it was a strong trait. However, I think the nerf is unnecessary.

Osicat.4139:

@Possante, I cant realy understand the philosophy to ask for nerf on your own class to make your specc in compare more valid. Dont you agree its would bee better for you if whatever spec/class you want to run got a buff?

we got other minor traits that also is extremly strong, bleed on crit for once, and now vigour 5 sec on crit with 5 sec cd is kinda a insanly strong for a spec who get clones on dodge.

Btw you underrestimate the impact on the might thu, we have 4 shatters so its 12 stacks, unless you play a spec who reset shatters at 50% hp then its another 12, and if you use sigil of reset shatters its 12 again. See I can also play this forums game

<3

@Carighan, well the most common stack you had before was 8 in a burst but for 5 sec, now its 9 for 10sec unless you use shatter nr 4 who should give 3 more stacks. I will tets this soon.

/Osicat

As much as I hate to admit it, the trait is insanely overpowered now. It is 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds PER CLONE SHATTERED. This means that any shatter mesmer is going to be bursting with between 9 and 18 stacks of might at ALL TIMES. It does not take illusionary persona into account, or it would be even more overpowered. Even on my tank build, which is only slightly based around shattering, I have around 10 stacks of might permanently in my test fights with the HoM npcs. This trait just went from being in a good place, providing decent might stacks that complement a build, to allowing mesmers to instantly burst 18 stacks of might, and even capping at 25 stacks in about 5 seconds if specced properly. It is unbelievably insane, and is not going to last the way it is.

This skill now provides 3 seconds of protection every time you gain regeneration, but with a 15 second cooldown. This cooldown was added, but not noted in the patch notes. Just figured I would alert everyone to this change.

From the patch notes: Phantasmal Mariner: This phantasm now attacks more often, but does damage in line with its attack rate.

I do not have a record of the damage it did before the patch, so I am unable to say whether or not the damage was affected. However, I extensively tested the recharge times, and I can say with 100% accuracy that it does NOT attack faster. Prior to the patch, the skill recharge was at 10.4 seconds, both with and without phantasmal haste. After the patch, this is exactly the same. Not only did they fail to make it work with phantasmal haste, they also failed to even change the basic skill attack timer.

Ok, I’m back, and I just did some very extensive testing with the greatsword.

I was able to count the number of hits done by the phantasm by going into full crit gear and using phantasmal fury, as well as swapping to sword as soon as I summoned the phantasm to give it a critical chance of 94%.

The way the skill works is it summons the phantasm next to the target, it then uses the skill and ends up far from the target. Another skill use puts it close to the target, and starts the cycle over again.

With 100% accuracy over a sample size of around 50 skill uses, the attack when used close to the target produced 4 hits, while the attack used far from the target produced 2. Whether this is by design or a bug, I can’t say.

This has several ramifications. First of all, on a lot of targets, the first attack by the berserker will work properly, which is good to know. However, when summoned on a moving target, the .25 second delay in skill use may allow the target to move far enough away that they will not get hit by all 4 attacks (not tested). Additionally, it also means that the berserker is not really worth keeping after the first attack, as it places itself into a position where it is better to shatter it than wait for the third attack to deal decent damage.

It doesn’t fully miss on the second attack for me. A completely miss is very rare in my testing. However, at least 70% of the time, it only lands 2 ticks of its attack, and at least 30% of the time, it lands only 1 tick. This is completely unacceptable, and just goes to show how horrific anet is at bugfixing.

So much for thinking that greatsword might be a viable weapon again….

Phantasms now produce an aoe regen pulse immediately upon being summoned since the latest patch. This allows you to spam phantasms for additional aoe regen and not worry about shattering after the pulse has occurred.

@Okuza: You are completely wrong. The repulse times are still exactly the same, namely duelist at 3 seconds regen every 3 seconds, and everything else 5 seconds regen every 10 seconds.

I’m not going to retype this, but read this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Objectively-there-s-not-reason/first#post948193

Read the whole thing, the TL;DR is mesmers are op. Keep in mind, most of the techniques and abilities referenced in that post require high amounts of skill and/or coordination. This is most certainly not a FOO strategy situation.

Voodoo Tina.4180:

@OP

So don’t play Mesmer.

I don’t think objectively means what you think it means. The word you were looking for is subjectively.

Objectively means what he thinks it means, he simply is objectively wrong, as mesmer is objectively the best class in the game in many situations.

Carighan.6758:

Dante.3754:

Support? Some of the best. You know all that drama about mesmer being neccassary to WvW? You just can’t beat portal, null field, feedback, and time warp.

Correct, and these skills get nerfed for sPvP instead of WvW reasons, leaving them just as overpowered in WvW as before.

D:

None of those got nerfed except portal, and that was hardly a nerf.

This thread makes me laugh. It is so unbelievably wrong, I don’t even know where to begin.

Lets start with open world pve.

Orr DE Farming: Mesmers suck. Starting at the worst point of our class. The best we can do is go full glass cannon, drop mirror blade and izerker and shatter immediately, though izerker is messed up now, so it is less effective. Sorry, but if you want to be a beast at farming Orr DEs, you’re going to have to go to another class.

EVERYTHING ELSE: This includes normal single target mob burst, multiple mob killing, veteran soloing, and champion soloing. A well played mesmer is one of the best classes in the game for every one of these categories, and without a doubt the best for chamion soloing. Single and multiple normal mobs will be destroyed in seconds with a 4 clone shatter + blurred frenzy, and maybe a few autoattacks. Veterans are soloed easily with a bit of kiting, continual cripples and decent bleed stacking from izerker, and burst shatter damage with blurred frenzy. Champions are similar to veterans, except it takes longer, and sometimes you have to abuse the rest of your toolset, such as projectile reflects, stealth skills, knockbacks, and dazes.

Dungeons: As a general rule of thumb, the single BEST thing a group can do to make a dungeon run easier and less painful is take along a good mesmer. The group utility of a mesmer is far higher than any other class, hands down. Not only do we have time warp for group killing, we also have mass invisibility for sticky situations, or running past mobs. We have veil for additional stealth, we can take pdisenchanter for condition heavy areas, or null field, to accomplish the same thing. If the bosses buff themselves, we can take arcane thievery, along with signet of inspiration to pass these strong buffs to the rest of the team. We can provide aegis with chaos storm, interrupts with chaos storm, mobility and mob bypassing with portal. We can provide endless projectile reflects with a traited focus and feedback (this trivializes risen hunters and elementalists, try it), we can strip boons in 6 different ways from nearly anything. We can provide projectile reflects upon reviving (this trivializes stage 2 lupicus if you get a teammate to just sit there dead for a free feedback every time he aoe nukes). On top of all this, we can provide significant amounts of buffs to teammates from shatters, and still pump out reasonable damage while doing it.

sPVP/tPVP: If anyone argues that mesmers are not competitive, or are even not one of the very best classes for sPVP and tPVP, slap them hard, slap them fast, and slap them multiple times, because they deserve it. ’Nuff said.

WvW: Mesmers are absolutely essential in WvW. Time warp and portal are the bread and butter of mass combat, and spammable projectile reflects (note, not projectile absorbs like guardians) can be used to creatively cause a zerg to move around, or if they refuse to move, to kill themselves. When put in an offensive glass cannon shatter build, mesmers can tear through any class and any build like it is made of tissue paper. When put into a full tank survival build, it takes 3 people doing their best to have a chance of killing you (more on this soon, I’m making a guide for that playstyle). Overall, mesmers are unbelievably helpful, and even essential, in WvW.

If you choose to play WvW in a smaller kill team, there are few better choices you can make than simply stacking mesmers in different builds. The power and confusion (not the condition) of mesmers stacks multiplicitively when they are working together effectively, and there is nothing more disorienting than continually having 12 different players moving around you, shattering, debuffing, and doing damage. It is nearly impossible to figure out how many people are actually attacking you, let alone which ones are the real mesmers (note that adding in a nice HB warrior or backstab thief to this base combo will always enhance a kill team).

Overall, you can see that mesmers are one of the best classes in the game to play if played right, despite the continual nerfs we have been receiving. Anyone who believes otherwise simply does not know how to play mesmer effectively, and should learn. I don’t play mesmer simply because it is more fun than other classes (it is), or because it has a higher skill cap to be great at it (it does, for the most part). I play mesmer because it is the best, because I can run a build that is literally impossible to kill in a 1v1, and yet still pull out damage. Because I can swap to a facemelting glass cannon build that takes apart anything I see in under 5 seconds, and because I am a veritable swiss army knife of utility that can be applied to any situation in the game, and make the experience easier, faster, and more enjoyable for the rest of your fellow players.

Lupi and kohler are the only 2 interesting bosses in the entire game. They have interesting mechanics that can easily cause a party to wipe, and they have a lot of different varied mechanics (more lupi here than kohler). Every single boss should be interesting like these 2.

Even outside of dungeons, the world dragon bosses are unbelievably boring, no interesting mechanics at all. Every single boss needs to be looked at, reworked, and made harder and more interesting.

Note that harder is not equal to more hp, which is what you designers seem to think. Just because it takes a long time to kill a boss doesn’t mean it is a hard fight. Interesting mechanics like lupi’s grub eating can result in a longer and harder fight, but simply increasing base hp does not make a boss harder.

If you want to see multiple examples of how bosses SHOULD be made, go to dragon’s nest, and look at the nest bosses in that game. Every single one, from the lowest levels to the highest levels have a minimum of 5-8 unique attacks/abilities, with several having even more. Only lupi has this many different attacks, and most bosses only have 2. This is not enough to remain interesting and challenging, and needs to be fixed.

STRanger.5120:

MaXi.3642:

at first, they dont glow in the day they glow only in the night

I think that it´s more like they glow in the dark, then in the night (from my experience).
When I go to the dungeon for example, they usually glow, when I go out, they don´t, so I seems that the effect is bound to the light, not the time

If you are referring to AC weapons, the glow is bound to the night, not the ambient light. However, they also glow 100% of the time in AC. Sylvari will also glow 100% of the time in AC, which simply means the dungeon is in a permanent state of night.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Updated the guide, after the last patch made the iZerker more or less as useless as a clone in PvE (low damage and about 1.5 sec till he starts his attack). This feels more and more like a feature and not a bug…
As he is still OK for tagging mobs in events, I placed him earlier in the rotation.

Hope you like it.

Can still combo mirror blade + zerker to get 2 illusions on target at roughly the same time, then immediate shatter for a bit of burst aoe.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Genereal GS playstyle:
Attack 1: get aggro so the mob does not kill clones
Attack 2: clone (and tagging event mobs)
Attack 4: iZerker (and tagging more event mobs
Dodge to target: clone (and closing gap for max shatter dmg)
F1: shatter

I thought this was my plan anyway. Attack 2 on your hotbar = Mirror Blade. Then Attack 4 which is iZerker.
Dodge to the target, so that the iZerker has enough time for one attack sequenz and generating a clone, do a full 4 shatter on the mob.

My combo was more for instantaneous 1200 range burst damage. In Orr events, and other situations, you don’t necessarily have time/want to close that 1200 range, and 2+4+ shatter provides you with a fast burst from 1200 range. It’s obviously not optimal damage, but it is 1200 range.

Qelris.6901:

Okuza.5210:

Celerity and CD-20% skills stack for all weapon skills except sword/3. Sword/3 will reduce by 20% for either Celerity or Sword-20%, but not both. In all cases, the tool-tip will only show the 20% reduction.

If you watch the CD timer after summons, though, you can easily see that the full 40% from both traits is in effect.

Sword #4 and I believe Scepter #2 are only reduced once too. Celebrity doesn’t work on these.

That’s because they are not strictly illusion summoning spells. They are a block, with a side effect.

Osicat.4139:

@Pyro, thanks alot for clear that out. As both me and my fellow mesmer use shatter cat and that five pistol trait by default I forgot to point its nessesery for the combofinnisher setup. Well I guess I need to say that untill something changed its another thing making this build wery strong in compare to other setups.

/Osicat.

Apparently Anet noticed the hubub on the forums, and it has already been nerfed. Oh well, was fun for the 3 days it lasted. At least now duelist’s discipline isn’t a required trait anymore.

Sabyne.6329:

Oh well, tried both ways (etheral field first and duelist first) in HotM and open world mobs and doesn’t get more than 4 stacks, sometimes 0, most of the time 2. I don’t know, weird buggy stuff I guess. xD

You need the pistol trait to get 8 stacks of confusion from every pistol salvo. With the trait, however, that happens 100% of the time.

As far as bleed go, with a normal glass cannon build, and with phantasmal fury, my duelists usually produce about 6 bleed stacks per salvo.

Okuza.5210:

Cry is 3 or 6 stacks depending on build. Say 6 for 2x mesmers. Two duelists should put 2 stacks each (roughly) per salvo for a total of 10 stacks. If you’re both using scepter, that’s another 10 stacks for a total of 20 stacks. If one of you used a staff for chaos and then swapped, that could put you up near 25 stacks with just the documented 20% combo chance. If both of you have Illusionary Retribution, that’s 26.

So, depending on your builds, the stacking you saw isn’t terribly surprising. Next time bring a necromancer with Epidemic. He can copy those stacks to everyone nearby every 8s; you now have a 3-man zerg killing machine. You can only kill zergs too dumb to notice they have confusion and not use a skill for a little bit, but zergs are not skrit. They get dumber as they grow.

BTW, I’ve long suspected that some other stat will increase combo chance; my suspicion is that critical rate improves it. No tests, just a hunch.

No. That is not what is occurring at all. If you actually go and test it, you will see that by using that trait, the duelists apply confusion at a 100% rate through an ethereal combo field. This should not occur for 2 reasons:
1. The skill is supposed to be a 20% combo finisher.
2. 100% combo finishers are not supposed to have a 100% chance to apply confusion.

When traited, the salvo of bullets do both of those things, meaning each attack sequence applies 8 stacks of confusion, by itself. Osicat does not use the scepter (with good reason), and I will assume that his friend does not either. 2 duelists provide an instant 16 stacks of confusion. Cry of frustration, when traited with illusionary persona, will apply 8 stacks by itself. That small combo, with only shatters incoming from 1 of the 2 mesmers, will provide a ~3 second buildup to 24 stacks of confusion.

The convoluted combo you described, using a horrible weapon, and inefficient traits will also get you to 25 confusion. However, even if the pistol trait didn’t glitch the way it did, your described combo would still be the absolute worst way to stack up confusion.

deltanium.7543:

deltanium.7543:

Embolism.8106:

Duelist’s Discipline is broken: in the sense that it is too good. It makes every single bullet from iDuelist a 100% projectile finisher, instead of 20%.

Seriously?

equips nullfield and feedback and enslaves a fire elementalist.

Edit: Tested. You are absolutely right, there is no way a 16 stack of confusion should occur with the help of 2 iDuelist shooting a single salvo each through a nullfield… 5 times in a row. That’s essentially one chance out of 5 to the power of 80 or a statistical impossibility.

Wait wait wait wait wait. It stacks CONFUSION with a 100% chance? That is FAR beyond being a 100% combo finisher, because 100% combo finishers don’t have a 100% chance to stack confusion in an ethereal combo field. If that is true…..that is REALLY broken.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Updated the guide, after the last patch made the iZerker more or less as useless as a clone in PvE (low damage and about 1.5 sec till he starts his attack). This feels more and more like a feature and not a bug…
As he is still OK for tagging mobs in events, I placed him earlier in the rotation.

Hope you like it.

H

Can still combo mirror blade + zerker to get 2 illusions on target at roughly the same time, then immediate shatter for a bit of burst aoe.

Sabyne.6329:

I’m glad they fixed these traits but with the state of our phantasms now, I just can’t help but think that they are still useless to be honest which is pretty sad. Is the range of the regen proc as bad as before?

The range is still abysmal: ~200 aoe radius.

Just tested, it works fine, simply not reflected in the tooltip.

Unfortunately, my grandmother could test patches better than the dev team at Anet. The fact that every single patch they put out contains a new bug is astonishing. It seriously implies that they don’t actually do any testing other than a nominal once-over to see if the specific thing they were trying to fix is fixed. This is not the way to debug a game, this is not the way to patch a game, and this is not the way to keep people playing a game.

In other words, ArenaNet, GET YOUR kitten TOGETHER!!

Bubblegum Crisis.6827:

Awesome guide + update Osicat… that is why I like to follow-up on your guide and not read-&-forget like others.

I have a (probably) newbie question that I will appreciate you or othe exp mesmer can answer:

At 2:34 of your “Judge to hold up” video, you created a portal and the exit automatically pops up at the far end, at the side of the road.
I am very sure you did not blink to the exit spot.
Is it a “trick” or a trait?

I have been trying to learn to use Portal, but its hard for me to put them in utilities as it is useful in so many situations, but not as easy to deploy.

He had dropped the exit portal previously. You can tell by the different icon in the bar.

Cayafas.8290:

The ten-second delay until phantasms actually provide regeneration is still weird, especially since there’s no mention of it in the trait description. I’m curious if it’s working as intended with a wrong description (and a really weird pistol phantasm thing), or if the 10-second delay is a long-standing bug. Or maybe the pistol phantasm is the only one that’s working as intended?

As I said in the original post, they’ve actually sorta fixed that too. Prior to the patch, you needed to wait 10 seconds for the first tick. Now, phantasms drop a tick of regen IMMEDIATELY on summon. This means you can spam phantasms for the regen/protection because of that immediate tick.

Whether the 10 second delay on all phantasms except the pistol phantasm is a bug or not, I don’t know. I’m just glad they ACTUALLY fixed this.

Edit: The 10 second/3 second functionality has always worked that way. The pistols actually also kept the other buffs as well, being the only phantasms to work even remotely properly with the traits.

Ok folks, this is some big news. One of the largest sets of bugs in our traits is now fixed.

Phantasmal fury now stacks with vengeful images. They are both 10 second refreshing buffs on all phantasms.

They also fixed the interaction with phantasmal healing. Prior to the patch, the 10 seconds would run out on a buff, then you would get a tick of regen, and the buffs would never come back. Now, the buffs stay on permanently. Additionally, you get a tick of regen immediately when the phantasm is summoned. The refresh rate of the regen tick is still 3 seconds for the pistol phantasm, and 10 seconds for all the others, but this is a massive leap forward.

Just watched your new video. Something to keep in mind is that a necro can be stomped by using shatter 3 to interrupt the cast, without wasting distortion if it is safe to do so. Also, when chasing someone into the water, switch immediately to trident and use the 5 skill, this is one of the best disables in the game, and as an unbelievably massive range.

Depending on the food you are currently using, swapping to the conditions duration food could definitely be worth it. As far as getting the 33% trait….not worth it.

Due to the fact that this is a power based shatter build, and the confusion is used for control, as it should be, 33% extra duration is not necessary at all. The actual burst only takes 1.5-2 seconds, and at the end of it they will have ~12 stacks of confusion on them. By starting the burst combo with cry, it forces them to either take large confusion damage, or stick around for mind wrack…or if comboed with a disable, forces them to take confusion damage AND stick around for mind wrack. However, this happens very fast, and does not require condition duration to make it effective.

Using cry AFTER wrack provides a similar sort of thing, but in the other way. If the wrack is comboed properly, they will eat the damage no matter what, and a quick mirror images → dodge → cry instantly stacks up the confusion and prevents them from counterattacking. It only lasts 3 seconds base duration, but at the speed of a fight, this is plenty. In 3 seconds, your vulnerable state coming out of the blurred frenzy burst attack is over. You will have blurred frenzy back up in 2 seconds or so, and you can switch to staff and start kiting/dropping chaos storm for aegis. None of this requires longer condition duration.

Now that I think of it…even using the 40% condition duration food is nearly pointless. Nothing about this build requires condition duration to work effectively and a different food would be far more helpful.

For a tank build, you will want the staff, not the greatsword. Greatsword is all about damage, staff has much more defense oriented utility, and the traitlines reflect that as well.