Guild Wars 2

Westibone.3985:

I tried this in sPvP and it was ridiculous. Here is what I used:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW7cl4zyoHRTlGZ9IhZG9G5nZAdnjSx2zOA;TsAg2Crouxcj4G7Nubk3saYsxuBA

If you practice “twisting” your mantras, casting one while channeling another, you can achieve insane survivability. At first I used Illusionary Defender, Mantra of Pain, and Mantra of Concentration, but then I dropped Defender for Mantra of Distraction for extra trolling. I am not lying, I was tanking 3 and 4 people at a time with this. Not to mention, every time you heal you lose a condition, and you are getting regen (and protection) like a mother from the Dwayna runes. With Cry of Frustration giving you a pretty good retaliation uptime, it’s awesome. I would start with Scepter/Sword, get out the swordsman, use both blocks, Cry of Frustration, then go to staff and start chanting like a mofo.

I was very surprised at how fun this was. People could not understand how I was healing so much and wasn’t going down. You can lol at backstab thieves all day with this, as well.

Here’s my advice for your build. Ditch scepter/sword and pick up sword/focus. There are a few advantages here. This build is not designed to do high damage, but to be defensive and trolly. Sword 2 is infinitely more effective than scepter for blocking, and sword 3 is a DOUBLE leap combo, as well as a stunbreaker if you use the summon before the stun.

Untraited focus is already defensive and trolly, and if you trait it, it becomes even better. I highly recommend removing the 5 points from chaos and putting them into inspiration. With your current toughness, it only grants 50ish condition damage, which is useless. Putting another 5 points into inspiration allows you to pick up the focus trait, causing temporal curtain and the iwarden to reflect projectiles.

Additionally, you mentioned cry of frustration giving high uptime on retaliation. Well, you can change that to 100% uptime very easily by simply using your double leap combo from sword 3 on top of temporal curtain. Each leap combo grants ~6-7 seconds of retaliation, so thats 14 seconds instantly, followed by a 3 clones shatter for some more. Chaos storm will also grant retaliation.

Also, the skill creates a sphere of projectile reflecting space. An enemy inside the skill attacking someone else who is also inside the skill will have their projectiles reflected. Projectiles don’t have to actually cross the border of the shell to get reflected.

@ Alberel: Having Quip DEFINITELY has no effect on clones. Clones don’t have offhand weapons at all, which is a problem, and quip will most certainly not change that.

As far as phantasms go, having a legendary greatsword will not change the weapons that a iberserker uses, and I see no reason for quip to be any different.

@Fay: Sunrise and Twilight definitely are less flashy on a mesmer than on a warrior or a guardian, because there isn’t as much slashing. Mirror blade is changed, but thats the only one. That being said, having 3 clones all running around with twilight, and leaving their own tracks of footprints would be really awesome, in my opinion.

Clones do not have offhand weapons. Additionally, phantasms use their own pistols, using the model called “Ilya”. Do not get quip.

This is not true. I just went into sPvP and tested temporal curtain pull against dagger storm, and I got the normal red letter “immune” reaction.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

Thanks for the advice and whatnot, I’ll make a video in the future if I change my build at all.
:)

The main reason I dont make use of iDuelist is because I like to have up 2 Staff clones and an iWarlock. In a long fight, I’ll pop the Duelist to help wear down the enemy, but for the most part I swap to Scepter/Pistol for the stun followed by Confusing Images.

2 staff clones are all well and good, but a duelist is better than a staff clone in every way other than looking like you. Staff clones attack really slowly, and are not going to be in the world for more than 2 attacks at the most. These two attacks will at the most add 20% to the damage from the warlock, but since your build isn’t geared for power, the warlock won’t be doing significant damage anyway. Also, best case scenario is that the 2 attacks add some mix of the 2 conditions. From the time you spawn the clone to the time it uses the second attack is a total of slightly over 2 seconds.

Now, compare it to the duelist. Time from spawning to finishing its first burst is ~2 seconds, slightly less than in some cases. In these 2 seconds, it will do ok damage, provide 8 projectile finishers, and add an average of 6 stacks of bleeding. You can then shatter it immediately without worrying about having lost any damage, making it fit into the pistol 4—> pistol 5 —> shatter + confusing images chain very nicely. There is absolutely 0 reason to not spawn a duelist before using the stun/confusing images and shatter combo.

Ok, I did some testing as well.

First off, the pistol phantasms are definitely the only ones that can keep up the retaliation buff. All the other phantasms lose that buff after the first 10 seconds. If you are using dueling 2, then the same thing applies, except with fury (note that this only is when using phantasmal healing, otherwise the buffs work fine). Fury overwrites retaliation in all cases.

As far as protection stacking goes, if you run the numbers exactly, you’ll find that it’s actually working as it would seem to. With your 30 points in chaos, you have 30% increased boon duration. This means every tick of regen will add 2.6 seconds of protection. Duelists add 3 seconds of regen every 3 seconds, so in 60 seconds, that totals to 20 ticks, or 52 seconds of protection. All other phantasms give 5 seconds of regen every 10 seconds. In 60 seconds, that is 5 ticks, or 13 seconds or protection. With 1 of each, you get a total of 65 seconds of protection every 60 seconds.

Another thing to note is how the regen is applied. On the duelist, the first tick of regen is applied 3 seconds after it spawns. On all other phantasms, the 10 second retaliation buff runs out first, and THEN the first 5 second tick of regen is applied, being reapplied every 10 seconds, but the retaliation is gone for good after those first 10 seconds.

Treplos.5182:

Hi,

I have always liked statistics and spreadsheets. Most recently I did similar work for Rift (Mage Gear List) and SWToR (Slicing Table).

So, yesterday I started a simple spreadsheet to keep track of my Ecto salvaging stats as a small personal project, but I thought I may as well share it and see how that works. The sample is obviously quite small so far, but I intend to log everything from now on.

- I wonder if people are interested in something like this. If so, I can try to open up the sheet to gather public data.

- Are there other stats of interest that players would like to see?

- Also, has anyone else already done something similar?

Here is a pic so far:
http://i.imgur.com/FQtVy.jpg

Any feedback is welcome.

You should also record the type of item salvaged. In my spreadsheet, I record the level, quality, and equipment slot it goes into, because it would not be unlikely for weapons and armor to have different average salvage rates.

Treplos.5182:

Articluna.4509:

To point out someones err; Master is 25% for rarers.

Yeah you are right, sorry about the confusion.

So, what some are saying here is that “Crude SK” and “Master/Mystic SK” have the same chance of getting Ori/Goss, as those are not considered “rarer mats”? And that only Ectos are actually the “rarer mats” listed on the SKs?

Can we get any sort of clarification or confirmation from ANET please?

Clarification and confirmation from ANet is not really needed. There have been extensive tests done that demonstrated the lack of correlation between salvage kits and ecto rates to a very precise degree. There is absolutely no benefit to using a high level salvage kit to get an ecto unless you want a higher chance at gossamer/oric as well.

You should strongly consider using pistol phantasms because they are the only ones that are not bugged with the aoe regen from phantasms trait. Since your Plan is go get them out, and leave them out, having the only phantasms that don’t bug is greatly beneficial. Additionally, with illusionary membrane and 2+ pistol Phantasms, you will have 100% uptime of protection.

Ecto salvage rates are not affected by the type of kit used, nor by any magic find equipment. This has been tested quite extensively, and the results are in some thread on the gw2 subreddit, that you could look up if you want. Knowing this, you can save a lot of cash by using lower quality salvage kits for ecto salvaging.

Embolism.8106:

Mender’s Purity hardly replaces a proper condition removal even with MoR, cleansing a single condition is risky (there’s a good chance the Cripple or Vulnerability will be cleansed instead of the 20 stacks of Bleeding, for example) and tying it to your heal is awkward (sometimes you want condition removal to break an immobilise).

Having used that trait extensively, I’m pretty sure that there is some sort of order in how conditions are cleansed, and more deadly ones are removed first, but I’m not positive what the order is. It can be awkward sometimes with it being tied to my heal, but overall since usually the heal is getting spammed anyway, its a great choice.

Ah, one more thing I forgot to mention. You don’t seem to make use of your pistol phantasm very often, and this is a huge mistake. I would recommend getting the fury buff for phantasms in dueling, and before you initiate with the pistol 5, you should ALWAYS drop a pistol phantasm. Your build has a very high critrate, even though that was not the base intention of your design. Because you have sharper images, the pistol phantasm will add on average 6 stacks of bleed to your target. Not only is this hefty damage by itself, it also provides something else for them to try and cleanse, other than confusion.

As much as crippling dissipation is nice, you may want to consider taking those 10 points and putting them into the inspiration line, so that you can get menders purity, removing a condition every time you heal. That allows you to drop the null field utility, and grab something more useful, such as feedback in wvw, mirror images, or possibly mantra of distraction, for a bit more daze locking.

Nretep.2564:

I’d also like to see a 2 attack combo instead of 3. Inflicting a short duration, non stackable status (weakness, poison, burn) with the first attack and spawn a clone (with at least the current casttime of the third hit) with the second.
This might turn the scepter into a used weapon again.

This is a good idea, though I’d like to see the first condition have a bit more kick to it.

shenhua.2186:

Elite mantra sounds awesome. Imagine having an Elite that isn’t incredibly situational and one that’s actually useful when soloing.

As much as our elites aren’t fantastic soloing tools, we have absolutely 0 room to complain. Every one of our elites is a powerful and fantastic took in a variety of situations, and that’s far, far more than most other classes have.

Nuka Cola.8520:

How many more years will it take them to fix illusions condition damage glitch? Is this even known? Because when you stack 15 stacks of bleed then all your illusions die/shattered and their condition stop dealing damage is a complete mess… Right now shattering on a condition mes is awful.

That’s….not a thing that I’ve ever seen, heard of, or experienced. Ever.

Twistdsoul.9504:

Limiting the number who can go through a portal isn’t going to do anything. The only thing that will change is now, the max number of people allowed to go through will be mesmers and then they will drop their portals.

BOOM same thing, just it’ll take more mesmers and more coordination.

Well, its not the same thing at all. As you said yourself, it’ll take more mesmers, and more coordination. Most wvw groups hardly have the coordination to build a flame ram, let alone get multiple mesmers to set up multiple portals, to all come through them at the same time.

Cerise.9045:

The reason off-hand weapons don’t have an aura or footprints is… well imagine what happens if you have 2 different legendaries.

But they have other effects to compensate for it, some legendaries without auras/footprints have changed skill animations(think the dreamer shooting rainbows)

This is dumb, and you obviously have no idea what these legendaries look like. The minstrel and meteorlogicus both have absolutely no special effects, with the exception of meteorlogicus being really big. The moot, the predator, and quip all have no footprints, and they additionally all have extremely lackluster particle/sound effects. Kudzu and frostfang both have footprints, but are extremely ordinary other than that, with frostfang being worse than kudzu. They look nice, but they don’t shout “legendary.” The incinerator looks nice, and has footprints, but unfortunately, the daggers are so tiny, they are not even noticable unless you are really really looking for them.

Basically, the vast majority of “legendary” weapons in this game are pathetic, and not worth the title. Anet needs to revamp a massive amount of these, adding footprints, sound effects, particle effects, and other interesting effects, because right now the only fantastic legendary weapons are the greatswords, and theres only 3 or so other than the greatswords that are even worth looking at.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to obtain accessories with the rabid skill set (condition damage/precision/toughness)? I haven’t been able to hunt down that particular set of stats, but I’ve found every single other type in the game.

In an unrelated note, does anyone have pictures of the particle effects on the whispers weapons when they are actually being used?

Seren.6850:

Steal 5k, cloak and Dagger 5k, back stab 10k and im dead before I know I’m being hit. It’s hard to get used to after playing a tank spec warrior

To counter that you have to be really really fast, and really really good. In you have to hear the steal and cloak and dagger hit, and immediately blink/decoy away, then find the thief and gank him before he can finish the job. Irritatingly enough, necros have some sort of skill that sounds exactly like a thief starting that combo, and I’ve flipped out and burnt evasive cooldowns on necros because of it.

Xolo.3580:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Xolo.3580:

After reading this thread I played around a bit with Torch, because I haven’t used it in ages. I find it still to be the worst Offhand, but I discovered that Prestige is a DOUBLE combo finisher, which is pretty cool. The not so cool part is, that any combo field mesmer has will only give you Chaos Armor, so the double proc does nothing here. It should be interesting with other combo fields though, like Fire for Might or the Guardian one for retaliation.

Temporal curtain is a light field, giving retaliation in leap and blast finishers, and condition removal for projectile and whirl finishers. That field is how I retain permanent retaliation in my tank setup as mesmer, with the double leap combo finisher from sword 3, and then retaliation from cry of frustration.

That being said, you shouldn’t be relying on retaliation damage in a squishy shatter/confusion build, and the buff time from the blast finisher is really low….and you’d be taking 2 sets of 1handed weapons that way.

Actually, you’re right with how Light field combos work. I tested Torch with Veil which is supposedly a Light field, but will give Chaos Armor instead of Retaliation, so that’s probably a bug.

Veil is an ethereal combo field. I know it says light on the tooltip, but its actually ethereal.

SoggyFrog.4170:

Esorono.1039:

Master Bei Shun.1267:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Shinigami.5932:

Master Bei Shun.1267:

Wait, why not roll behind them when they’re using Flurry… :/

I was wondering why no one mentioned this. Blurred frenzy is canceled by any movement and does nothing to prevent the tarhet from moving.

If the mesmer attempts to use blurred frenzy without using some sort of disable, usually sword 3, then they have no idea how to use that skill.

Sword 3 cripples, but the enemy can still roll.

Sword 3’s second chain, swap, immobilizes.

If you’ve managed to get both parts of sword 3 chain on you, you deserve a face full of BF. Usually hard to lock down a decently competent enemy for the whole sequence, swap can’t be done instantly so you should be able to dodge.

OP sounds like he attacked a MH sword mesmer with 100b, the mesmer fired BF, and then instead of canceling the OP continued trying to use 100b despite knowing that the mesmer was invulnerable and got a fully deserved stack of damage from BF.

Actually, the proper combo is pistol 4 to start off with some nice ranged damage + bleeds, then pistol 5 for the stun. You run close to your target during the stun, and at close range, you can pretty much doubletap the 3 skill to get an instant immobilize, and then of course blurred frenzy with mind wrack. When executed properly, the swap has a very very high success rate.

First of all, lets quote what JP actually said: “Portal is a cool ability that’s important to the game but has some problems”

To me, this doesn’t say “changes are coming in the next patch.” To me, that says “we’re looking at the skill, and it will be changed eventually.”

However, with that said, portal has some issues. First issue is carrying equipment (repair kit on kylo) through it. This is a pretty straightforward fix, causing carried items to be dropped when using the portal. The other major problem is the potential it has for MASS character movement, and the corresponding huge culling problems with that. This is also easily fixed, simply by adding a limiter on the number of people able to use the portal. Set it to go away after 10 uses, or something like that, and the problem is fixed.

The utility of portal as far as base manouverability in tPVP goes is fine. Yes, it’s powerful, but the mesmer is also giving up a valuable utility slot for this, and will be weaker in an actual fight because of it.

Shinigami.5932:

Master Bei Shun.1267:

Wait, why not roll behind them when they’re using Flurry… :/

I was wondering why no one mentioned this. Blurred frenzy is canceled by any movement and does nothing to prevent the tarhet from moving.

If the mesmer attempts to use blurred frenzy without using some sort of disable, usually sword 3, then they have no idea how to use that skill.

Welp…seems like this is simply another case of…http://i.imgur.com/DjPRI.jpg

Xolo.3580:

After reading this thread I played around a bit with Torch, because I haven’t used it in ages. I find it still to be the worst Offhand, but I discovered that Prestige is a DOUBLE combo finisher, which is pretty cool. The not so cool part is, that any combo field mesmer has will only give you Chaos Armor, so the double proc does nothing here. It should be interesting with other combo fields though, like Fire for Might or the Guardian one for retaliation.

Temporal curtain is a light field, giving retaliation in leap and blast finishers, and condition removal for projectile and whirl finishers. That field is how I retain permanent retaliation in my tank setup as mesmer, with the double leap combo finisher from sword 3, and then retaliation from cry of frustration.

That being said, you shouldn’t be relying on retaliation damage in a squishy shatter/confusion build, and the buff time from the blast finisher is really low….and you’d be taking 2 sets of 1handed weapons that way.

Ryuujin.8236:

I was actually discussing this with one of my thief friends earlier, I myself had noticed it was odd we have so much defensive stuff and hitpoints yet i still pack enough spike damage to blast an ele or thief into downed in a single unblockable alpha strike.

What we concluded though is that nerfing mesmer’s hitpoints would basically render them completely unplayable in PvE, especially given mobs tendancy to ignore their clones

Among other things, the alpha that a mesmer can pour onto someone has no relation to their hit points, due to blurred frenzy. Because the combo starts with 3 illusions already out, usually with izerker from 1200 range, then closing from there, finishing with the sword swap 3 into blurred frenzy + mind wrack, lowering hp actually has 0 effect on the abilities of this combo. The problem isn’t the survivability of the mesmer, it’s the damage from the combo itself.

alanis.6094:

iMage casts quicker than 9s — its more in the 6s range, and the confusion will obviously stack so its not appropriate to count the damage out as you did. Additionally, ignoring 500-600 damage (an extra 25-35%) from retaliation seems silly.

In a confusion bomb shatter build, neither the mage, nor the swordsman, or more realistcally, the duelist, will be out for more than 1 attack. While this does someone invalidate the multiple attacks point, it emphasizes the long cooldown on the image.

As far as the retaliation damage goes, I ignored it mainly for 2 reasons. The first is that the bounce range on the mage is very small, and so unless you are right next to the target when it uses the attack, you wont get retaliation. Secondly, the point is to NOT have people hit you, throw clones, or blurred frenzy, or invisibility, etc. While getting hit 2 times is the MAXIMUM you’re going to see in 3 seconds, much MUCH more likely is getting hit 0 times at all.

Unpredictability.4086:

Maybe you forgot, but when you summon a clone, every enemy automatically deselects you. The auto attack would effectively spam “do not target me”. That’s troubling.

That’s not entirely true, that’s not how it works at all. Enemy AI is far from that straightforward.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Why not just have each attack cause 3sec confusion, like ele earth dagger 1 causes bleeds?

I mentioned this in my explanation, but you may not be familiar with what happened. The original form of the scepter, in the press beta weekend event, iirc, and the trident as well, through BWE2, applied confusion on the first skill of the chain of autoattacks. This is why that is described on the tooltip still. However, it turns out that spawning 3 clones and letting them autoattack, combining with the extra confusion spikes from shattering, caused a mesmer to be able to keep ~10 stacks of confusion on the target at all times. In a condition damage build, this is 3k damage per skill use. Note that cleansing this confusion does nothing, as it will simply be reapplied in <3 seconds. This was nerfed, both on scepter and trident, although trident clones still apply confusion (and it’s buggy, as the confusion will actually be applied to friendlies sometimes). This is why the scepter autoattack can’t apply confusion on all attacks.

Additionally, confusion is a much more powerful condition than bleed, with the potential to do far more damage, and so needs to be less stackable accordingly.

Your post is disjointed and makes no recognizable points. Your title refers to the scepter, while the post refers to the staff. You mention “spec into it to do damage” but you don’t spec into an autoattack, and condition stacking that you mention afterwards would be from staff autoattacks. Figure out what you’re trying to say, and what weapon you’re trying to say it for, and then you might get a response.

@alanis
The comparison to iWarden is pointless, that phantasm is more for utility for damage, but if you truly want to compare the equivalent damage, you need to think about the iWarden in an aoe situation with multiple enemies around…I wouldn’t do that, but theoretically that’s how it would be used.

You may get less than 1700 damage from the iSwordsman per attack…I somehow doubt it, but assuming you do, it still does more damage. Heres why: 1700 damage is over a period of ~9 seconds, counting multiple skill uses. Over that same 9 seconds, iSwordsman will attack ~2 times, meaning it would have to do less than 850 damage per strike to actually do less damage than the mage. Additionally, iSwordsman is on a base 20 second cooldown, compared to 30 seconds for the mage, meaning it will have much higher uptime than the mage…and going 20 points into domination for a shatter build is bad planning, while getting the sword cooldown trait for a shatter build is common, so there will be an additional 20% cooldown disparity between the 2.

I didn’t count retaliation damage because it is inconsequential. Assuming the skill actually bounces to you, and not something else, you will get 3 seconds of retaliation, which will end up doing ~270-280 damage per hit on yourself. Assuming 2 hits in those 3 seconds, thats <600 damage, that probably won’t happen in the first place, and if it does happen, probably wont even reach 600 due to the short buff time. A mesmer can easily have 100% up time on retaliation, and using the iMage is NOT the way to do it.

As far as scepter goes, the only thing it has going for it is range…and that I will concede. Having your mainhand be a melee weapon can be extremely inconvenient at times, but I deal with it simply because scepter is so underwhelming. I would give anything to have scepter be useful, or a pistol mainhand (please please please please please!). The fix for scepter is very very simple, there only need to be 2 changes done: 1. Autoattack speed is dependent on a fixed timer, and has no relation to when your attacks reach your target. This should result in an autoattack speed that is somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5x as fast as it is now. 2. Autoattack chain 2 on scepter causes 1 stack of confusion for 4 seconds on the target. Having it on 2 avoids the confusion clone stacking that it was originally nerfed from, and allows the scepter to ACTUALLY do what it is supposed to do, namely be a condition damage weapon focusing on confusion.

alanis.6094:

Nuka Cola.8520:

all you used is a staff and you call torch/scepter viable lol. THEY BOTH SUCK! there’s no learn how to play it because its bad, baaaad. iMage is one of the worst phantasms in the game. Prestige is awesome but do you want a skill that takes half a year to recharge while your 2nd skill (iMage) is only good at shattering? I made a thread about how of a joke scepter is compared to any main hand weapons so i won’t write what i think of it. What you’ve done in this video could’ve been done better/kill faster with any weapons but torch/scepter.

The main issue with iMage is that the confusion and retaliation aren’t affected by condition/boon duration affects, so they are always 9/3.

I am condition damage specced, and right now the iMage will end up doing as much damage as other phantasms — though with an unnecessary cooldown. However, Prestige is a much better skill than the offhand sword block and the pistol stun (IMHO).

I often swap between the scepter and mainhand sword, depending on the situation. If I expect to be outnumbered, I really like the sword — but for even-ish fights, the scepter is stronger for how I play.

I don’t care how much condition damage you have, the damage from the iMage will NOT even get close to the damage from ANY other phantasm. End of story. 1 stack of confusion is about 350 damage per skill use. Assuming they use skills 5 times before it is cleansed or runs out, then that’s a total of 1700 damage, which is far, far below the damage that any other phantasm could do, and particularly far below the pistol phantasm stacking bleeds in a good condition damage build. 6 stacks of bleeds from the phant = 3300 damage alone.

@alanis: The argument shouldn’t be between greatsword and scepter, although the point he makes about the speed at which the gs can create clones compared to the scepter is valid, and goes to show how bad the scepter is at what it is designed to do. The argument is between scepter and mainhand sword, and in this comparsion, sword does everything better than scepter with the exception of confusing images, which is near useless against a decent opponent anyway.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Pyroatheist.9031:

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

I’m going to post my confusion bomb build soon so all of these “confusion isn’t good” and “scepter isn’t good” guys can go suck an egg.

Scepter is amazing, the stacking confusion is amazing, dropping 13 stacks of confusion on a berserker geared level 80 is amazing to watch as they melt their own faces off.

And no. Torch is only technically feasible, but I would never give up a staff or gs (I prefer staff) for anything torch, and my swap is scepter/focus and focus in wvw is almost definetly superior in every way to torch.

While The Prestige is nice and gimmicky, the phantasm is meh at best. Warden by far superior.

Scepter is great for stacking confusion fast on someone who has no clue what they’re doing, but vs anyone competent, confusing images just won’t do a kitten thing, and as I covered in my previous post, the clone generation utility of scepter is nearly useless when specced into a clone factory/shatter trait build.

You’re good on the torch though, its several times worse than every other offhand in the game.

Well with over 800+ hours played most all of them on mesmer, most all of them in wvw (and this is only on live). I kindly disagree with your analysis. Perhaps at top level spvp confusion doesn’t work, but in wvw it’s amazing.

I think you may have misunderstood me. First off, confusion is horrible in spvp/tpvp, because for some reason it scales only 50% of what it does normally there. However, confusion is fantastic in wvw, and its an awesome condition to use. Unfortunately, it has weaknesses, in that the counter to it is not attacking, or a quick condition removal, which is why you generally want to combine it with bleed stacking and/or some straight in-your-face damage to cause your target to use skills to escape.

My point, however, was purely about the scepter, not confusion. Confusing images is a highly unreliable method of confusion stacking for a few reasons. First, a single dodge roll will take it down to 2 stacks from 5, and 2 dodge rolls will nullify it altogether. Secondly, its a really long and noisy prechannel, and a really long and noisy channel. This means it’s really easy to interrupt the skill. Also, if they dodge behind you, or out of LoS, or you are forced to turn around, you lose whatever is left on the channel. For these reasons, scepter is not great for stacking confusion with that skill.

The other main use of scepter is for clone factorying. However, the autoattack chain is SOOO SLOWW. There was a recent tweak bumping up the speed of the scepter autoattack chain, but it still is far, FAR too slow. Because of how slow it is, the clone generation on the third attack is simply not meaningful. In a clone factory, shatter build, you will have clones on dodge rolls, reasonably high crit chance, and so getting lots of vigor from your attacks. Additionally, you could have the trait to get vigor on shatter. One way or another, you will be dodging constantly, your mainhand sword pumps out clones 7 or so second timer, and staff on a 5 or so second timer. In short, the extra clone generation from the scepter simply isn’t meaningful. The 2 skill of the scepter is nice…but you have to compare it to blurred frenzy on the sword, which has a very similar cooldown, but complete damage negation for 2 seconds, while dealing a good amount of damage, and proccing vigor on crits.

Overall, scepter is simply worse in every way than mainhand sword.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

I’m going to post my confusion bomb build soon so all of these “confusion isn’t good” and “scepter isn’t good” guys can go suck an egg.

Scepter is amazing, the stacking confusion is amazing, dropping 13 stacks of confusion on a berserker geared level 80 is amazing to watch as they melt their own faces off.

And no. Torch is only technically feasible, but I would never give up a staff or gs (I prefer staff) for anything torch, and my swap is scepter/focus and focus in wvw is almost definetly superior in every way to torch.

While The Prestige is nice and gimmicky, the phantasm is meh at best. Warden by far superior.

Scepter is great for stacking confusion fast on someone who has no clue what they’re doing, but vs anyone competent, confusing images just won’t do a kitten thing, and as I covered in my previous post, the clone generation utility of scepter is nearly useless when specced into a clone factory/shatter trait build.

You’re good on the torch though, its several times worse than every other offhand in the game.

Delusion.9543:

I apologize, did not mean to come off as the owner of the video. I just think his channel deserves more views and will help others to see that Sceptor/Torch is very viable. :P

The problem is that Scepter/torch is NOT viable. If your definition of “viable” is to be able to kill people in wvw with it, then I can introduce you to the 0 weapon pure utility shatter build, which will kill people in wvw…but if you argue it to be viable, you’d be insane.

The scepter and torch are both quantitatively worse in EVERY way than their counterparts. The scepter is the condition damage/clone factory build..except it only has 1 condition damage skill, on a long cooldown, with a long channel, that can be mostly nullified with a dodge roll. The scepter autoattack chain is SO slow, the traited greatsword 2 skill spawns clones almost as fast as the scepter auto chain. The scepter literally does nothing well.

The torch, on the other hand, has a phantasm that is 100% useless, in all ways, shapes, and forms. It does negligible damage, the retaliation buff is super short duration, and rarely gets applied anyway, and it has such a long cooldown that it is nearly useless kittenter fodder. The torch 4 skill is, fairly enough, decent. However, it suffers from a removal of the damage component and shortened stealth if you dodge roll, and is also on a very long cooldown, and so is significantly lower in utility than any of the other non-phantasm summoning skills that offhand weapons have.

A confusion based build is far, FAR more viable in w3 than in spvp, for the simple reason that confusion damage scales twice as powerfully in w3 than in spvp. In spvp, even with ultra high stacks, it does minimal damage, whereas in w3 it will hurt, a lot.

That being said, torch is still a horrific choice for an offhand, and scepter is still a subpar mainhand. Torch gets you the stealth, which is great, and a phantasm that almost literally does nothing, and is on an extremely long cooldown. The single skill that provides stealth, which is ALSO on a super long cooldown, is not nearly worth what you lose from taking a pistol or a sword.

In a well-made condition damage build for a mesmer, you’ll be splitting your damage between bleeds from the pistol phantasms, and the confusion bursting, and you can choose to go either greatsword or staff, depending on your style of play. Splitting your condition damage into two main types means that simple condition removal does not hurt you as much, and your damage is no longer completely worthless if the enemy simply doesn’t attack for 4 seconds. In addition, the pistol 5 will grant you a fantastic stun, and a stack of confusion when shot through an ethereal combo field, and your sword 3 will grant you chaos armor when leaping through an ethereal combo field. This allows you to play a bit more with glamours as well, which is a powerful way to stack confusion.

As far as scepter goes, yes it has confusing images. However, anyone that knows how to pvp in this game will dodge roll it, removing 3 stacks, or double dodge roll, endurance permitting, completely mitigating the use of the skill. Additionally, its a long cast, and if you are forced to turn, or they dash around you, the skill channel will break. The block on scepter 2 is inferior to the sword 2 in almost every way, and they have nearly identical recharge times. The ONLY bonus of the scepter autoattack is that it is ranged. The clone generation is useless, because you should be pumping out clones constantly from dodge rolls, staff 2, staff 3, sword 3, and pistol 4, all of which have extremely low cooldowns, especially staff 2 and sword 3. You should have nearly constant vigor uptime from a good crit chance (assuming you use the power/precision/condition damage gear).

Overall, while a scepter/torch build “works,” it is extremely underperforming compared to a sword/pistol build in every way: raw damage, clone generation(especially since sword clones remove boons too), total condition damage, difficulty with which your condition damage is mitigated, defense, and crowd control.

In theory, an ele could burst me down on my mesmer, but only in my glass cannon build, definitely not in my bunker build. The problem is that in order for an ele to burst me down, they have to catch me unprepared and not paying attention, and there is no such thing as a stealthy attack from an ele.

In my bunker build, a well built bunker ele would be a massive pain to kill, but theoretically killable. In glass cannon, its simply a matter of time before my burst takes them down. An ele can be a good dueling class, but vs the kings of dueling, they simply have no way to keep up.

Another consideration is that sword/sword shares a single trait for all the cooldowns. Sword/pistol means that the recharge on your phantasm will be significantly longer unless you choose to use 2 traits decreasing the cooldowns on both weapons, which is generally ill advised.

I am a full bunker specced level 80 mesmer, fully traited for all sorts of projectile reflects. However, fighting large groups of the archer skeletons is nearly impossible for me, because of a very strange bug that keeps happening constantly. When I fight these archers, I lay down projectile reflects constantly, and I think they might be why this is happening. My character constantly interrupts motions to try to shoot an imaginary bow, with a ~2 second channel time. This will happen while moving, during actions, even during invulnerability frames such as blurred frenzy. Combined with the ability of the archers to do chain knockbacks, this completely breaks any ability to solo these mobs that could exist. Has anyone else experienced this strange bug?

Sometimes in keeps, some of the upgrades, personnel in particular, are locked for some reason, and are unable to be bought. Does anyone know why this is, or how to fix it?

PopeUrban.2578:

Also, this change completely destroys the pvp utility of several stealth builds that are not glass cannon backstabs.

I run a P/D condition build. I stealth and then immediately unstealth with my sneak attack once every five seconds or so because that is literally how the build is able to kill things. There are several non-burst theif builds like this that rely on the tertiary effects of a sneak attack as a major part of dps, survivability, or both. All of these builds rely on codition duration, which is carefully balanced around how often these builds can stealth to use the sneak to apply said condition again. By increasing the cooldown you are effectively removing all of those builds from play, and writing in stone that glass cannon backstab is the only effective theif build ever.

So now you need to rebalance every other theif skill around the new stealth. Which, honestly, is just silly when the correct response to this issue is fixing the rendering/culling issue that affects every person that has and will ever:

Stand in a shadow refuge or mass invisibility
use a mesmer portal
use swiftness or teleports to close distance to an enemy.

The bug that causes the issue you’re having with stealth affects a lot more than just thieves, and a lot more than just stealth. If we were to take your suggestion we’d have to change the function of every gap closing, stealth, portal, and teleport in the game. Its the equivalent of duct taping the side mirror back on your car in stead of just getting a new one and attaching it properly. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather that sort of thinking not be where balance patches lie, by admitting some bug wins so you just code around it.

I think you may not have read my proposal carefully enough. I’ve played P/D thief, and the bursty bleed stacking from the skill is probably the closest thing to what I’m already proposing. The pistol stealth attack would have the damage boost + 5 or 8 stacks of bleeding or something, that would be the condition set for that skill. Condition durations from the stealth attacks would definitely need to be adjusted, for sure, but thats a minor change.

As far as just fixing the culling/stealth issue, thats far easier said than done. First of all, culling and stealth are 2 separate problems. They have similar results, but different basic causes (as I understand). The culling issue has been said, by anet, to be an unbelievably hard issue to solve, and I have doubt that the stealth one will be solved ever. However, bugs aside, I think the changes to stealth I outlined would overall make thieves, all builds and types, more versatile due to different opportunities to deal massive damage, or different ways to stack conditions, etc.

ddrake.5436:

Stealth isn’t animation enough? did you see him stealth?

Any halfway decent thief will not let his target see him stealth.

ddrake.5436:

I wouldn’t go as far as saying you need to be a bunker to survive, I would counter with

“Study the animations of your opposition and counter attack”.
“Practice the dodge mechanic on the Golem in HoM”
“Get a better ISP”

Not viable advice, because with attacks from stealth, there are no animations to see and counter. That is the whole point of my argument, and why this needs to be changed.

Oh, and one more thing @Coffeebot:

I recognize that this entire discussion is based around the fact that stealth is buggy in terms of the actual unstealthing animation. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, this sort of uncloaking lag is inherent to a stealth design, and extremely difficult to fix, if at all possible. It also can be caused by even small amounts of lag from your isp, and a game needs to function with small lag (100-150 ms ping).

Because of that, it seems to be a better idea to balance the mechanic around how it DOES work, as opposed to how it SHOULD work.

@Coffeebot: Rendering in WvW is actually a different thing entirely. Thats culling, or how the client displays large groups of objects on the screen, and doesn’t have any relation to stealth from thieves. People end up being invisible, especially with mesmer portals, because the client isn’t able to render them properly fast enough.

As far as gutting pve thieves, I think this would do the exact opposite. The massive damage boost quickly reapplyable through stealth is a fantastic utility to bring to a team, and would make thieves much more in demand for dungeons and other PvE areas, due to the stealth attacks giving everyone a massive damage boost, as opposed to just the thief.

With regards to PvP, this also allows a lot of new coordination techniques. A stealthed thief opening up on a target will provide a massive damage boost to everyone attacking that target. This has the potential to melt bunker builds, and especially melt glass cannons with good team coordination.

Additionally, the goal of this change is to take the damage a thief deals to a target over ~3 seconds, and keep it roughly similar, but changing the mechanics of how it is dealt. Instead of being 100% frontload burst in the current backstab incarnation, which is absolutely uncounterable except by a bunker build, it is changed to the same amount of damage, but now over several seconds, and counterable by very fast reactions and condition removal + stunbreaks. Everything must have a counter in balanced PvP, and glass cannon thief burst is no exception. The change still allows thieves to melt squishies, it just allows the squishies a chance to fight back.

@savage: There is no possible balance reason for having a self root after the shadowstep. The point of the skill is to guarantee 2 hits and a gap closer. As is, the skill guarantees 1 hit, a gap closer, and a second hit if the target is afk…

Domination 3 has effectively no effect on clones. It also does not affect condition damage, just direct damage.

Looking at your build, it seems that you are trying to do a shatter build. Unfortunately, the torch is a horrific weapon, full stop. The prestige is a decent skill, but the forced 3 seconds of stealth is a nasty dps drop, and you also don’t get the aoe burning if you are forced to dodge while in stealth, making a lot of the damage from it effectively useless.

Phantasmal mage is easily the worst phantasm in the game. The recharge on its skill is 6.9 seconds, not affected by phantasmal haste. That means that every 6.9 seconds, it might apply 3 seconds of retaliation to a maximum of 1 ally, and it applies 1 stack of confusion. It has almost no damage, almost no condition damage, as 1 stack of confusion is useless, and almost no party utility. Additionally, it is on a very long recharge, and since you are doing a shatter build, you will be shattering constantly.

Much better choices are sword or pistol offhand. Both of these weapons have very low cooldown times on the phantasms, meaning you can spam the phantasms to an extent, and not lose nearly as much damage from constant shattering. This also allows you to take out the torch trait, and put in either vulnerability on shatter, or removing boons on shatter, both of which are extremely strong in a shatter build.

Since you will have a high crit chance, your 10 points in inspiration are not needed. You will be getting very high vigor uptime for the crits you do. I highly recommend putting these 10 trait points into illusions instead, thereby giving you the illusionary persona trait. Being a shatter build with a close fighting sword style, the extra shatter is a massive amount of damage, as well as more stacks of confusion on your targets.

As far as whether to choose sword or pistol offhand, it depends on how you want to play. Pistol gives much better bleed stacking due to the 8 rapidfire hits it does and sharper images. However, the cooldown will be somewhat longer on it, since you wont have it traited. iSwordsman will only give 1 stack of bleed, at best. However, it will have a lower cooldown, and also is a leap combo finisher, giving yourself good auras and whatnot.

Stealth is a problem right now. It is overpowered in its current implementation because of an inherent bug with the design. It is designed so that on an attack out of stealth, the character is instantly revealed, and blocked from re-entering stealth for 3 seconds. Unfortunately, there is inherent rendering lag client-side (I think) that causes the actual stealth attack to go more like this: Character attacks, stays invisible for ~2 more seconds, and then becomes visible on the screen.

This causes 2 massive problems. The first is that the damage of thieves is extremely frontloaded, due to the initiative mechanic. I’ll use the CnD+steal+backstab combo as an example. This combo does too much damage, but that has nothing to do with the stealth. The problem is that after the combo finishes, the thief should be vulnerable to counterattack if it doesn’t kill the target. However, due to the uncloaking lag, the thief has enough time to use 2 HSS before unstealthing. This completely unbalances the action/reaction play of pvp, since it simply isn’t possible to retaliate effectively against the stealthed thief.

The other massive problem that the untsealth lag causes has to due with the restealth timer. The timer is designed to give the thief 3 seconds of vulnerability before being able to disengage with stealth. However, since the lag on uncloaking is 1-2 seconds, the thief effectively only is vulnerable for ~1 second, before restealthing.

The second problem is the simpler one to solve: simply increase the restealth timer to ~5-6 seconds, and that will result in the originally intended unstealthed time for the thief.

The problem with massive frontloaded damage coming out of stealth with no chance to respond is a trickier problem to solve. It needs to be fixed, and I’ve come up with a possible solution, so feel free to criticize/add/subtract/change what I propose.

To offbalance the difficulty of responding to an attack on stealth, all damage from an attack made from stealth will be severely reduced, to the point that the damage is not consequential. Replacing this will be powerful conditions. Each weapon will apply 1 common condition, and 1 unique condition (number of conditions up for debate maybe?). The common condition would be 25 stacks of vulnerability for 3 seconds. This allows the thief to get the massive damage advantage from a stealth attack, but also allows a player with very fast reactions to counter it via condition removal. The length of this condition could possibly be longer, but with vulnerability duration buffs, the 25 stacks could be chaincasted in pve with a longer base duration, and I don’t think that should be possible. Another idea is to replace the 25 vulnerability stacks with a unique stealth attack condition that boosts all damage the target takes for the next 3 seconds by 25 or 30 or 50%, so that vulnerability clashing isn’t a problem.

The other condition applied by the stealth attack would be some sort of disable. Give daggers a 4 second daze, sword a 4 second immobilize, pistol a 4 second cripple, shortbow a 4 second chill. These secondary conditions are, of course, changeable in both types and durations.

The overall effect of this change is to still allow the thief to get a large damage boost by attacking with a stealth attack, while allowing the target to mitigate this damage through quick reactions, which is the sort of action/reaction play that GW2 pvp was designed around. Because conditions are immediately visible, the unstealthing lag does not end up affecting the reactionary measures the target can take, thereby fixing the problem.

This probably isn’t a perfect solution, but it seems to be a big step in the right direction. Comments and advice are greatly encouraged.