Guild Wars 2

1. Don’t use deceptive evasion in PvE to solve that problem. That being said, it is a bit annoying, even in Pvp that DE clones don’t take your target.
2. Temporal curtain is the result of a bandaid fix applied in the betas to prevent infinite swiftness stacking. However, with Anet bandaid fixes become features :-/
3. Phantasmal warden is broken, yeah. They broke it a couple months ago. I don’t really have hope that it’ll be fixed soon. Maybe in 4-5 months?
4. Place your phantasms more carefully and that problem will go away. If you drop them right before a big aoe, they’ll die, so don’t do that.
5. Ever heard mesmers complain about horrible illusion ai? Neither have I. Having illusions tied to one single target allows us to avoid the horrible ai problems that rangers and necros encounter. Additionally it provides us with more flexibility for a skilled player by placing illusions on targets to spread out both your shatter effects and phantasm attacks.
6. Pretty sure the mine layer stun lasts 10s. Additionally, you can summon phantasms while it is vulnerable, and they persist during the invulnerable phase…which shouldn’t last longer than 2-3 seconds if you fight it properly. As far as summoning them goes, phantasms are attacks. Attacks don’t hit invulnerable targets. It provides some counter play to phantasm builds, and forces you to think just a bit before throwing out phantasms.

@AkkiChan: Lol. You realize that phantasms have around 4x higher hp in pve than in pvp, right?

For something as mind-numbing as open world pve, champ training, or personal story, anything will ‘work’. That being said, your build is bad.

Weapons are fine. However, your choices of the signet of Inspiration and pain inverter make no sense at all. You have these mantras and a ton of trait investment into making them stronger…for no purpose. You don’t need that sort of high output condition removal and healing in anything but wvw. You’ve got deceptive evasion, but no shatter support, and shatters are bad in pve anyway.

Will your build work? I guess. Will it do anything at all effectively? No.

Not really sure what you’re referring to here. Perhaps you could be more clear?

xXJonoDXx.3061:

a few words…. DON’T MESMER DUGEONS

Lol

bladeofky.3067:

Oh ic. Is the average dps higher in phantasm than shatter?

Much higher. Phantasm builds also are able to provide more support than other builds.

@bladeofky: Phantasm is the pve Mesmer build. There is no other viable way to play.

@OP: One thing I notice right away is that your trait setup is a little odd. You’ll want to move 5 points from dueling into inspiration, since that 25 minor in dueling doesn’t really do anything for you.

Swapping out some of your zerker gear for something like knights or cavaliers could be a good choice. While you eventually want to play in full zerker, if you’re getting downed all the time then having better defense could help. You’ll still want to learn the fights though, and once you find that you’re not getting hit as much, change back into more full zerker.

Just as a quick note about alpha. If you’re stacking properly, the vast majority of alpha’s aoes will not damage your phantasms. Alpha is actually one of the few bosses where you can truly maintain a full 3 phantasms of damage output.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Lot of respect for you two gents.

@ossicat Simply put, I don’t have the time for fractals. I know pyro is gonna bust my chops for this. WvW takes a lot of time as is. I would rather spend my time doing something I enjoy (WvW) rather than doing something I don’t (fractals) just so I can be better equipped at something I enjoy.

@pyro If you are doing that combo, how do you generate you clones to have 2 images out already? Mirror images?

@pyro, how do you stand being soooo slow? ie-No traveler runes/focus speed doesn’t last that long etc.

I’ll usually perform that combo during a fight, as a finishing technique, so I’ll have clones out from the fight.

For movement I have phase retreat swaps, as well as swapping in a focus for swiftness. Additionally I have 1200 range blink, so I can move very fast.

As far as fractals go, can’t really blame you. I haven’t been running them either. I’ll do a level 15-19 now and then, but that’s about it.

So although what I will describe doesn’t happen perfectly every time, PU conditions is more than capable of quite heavy burst damage.

Get 3 illusions out with at least 1 clone. Bonus points if you have the iMage out. Go into The Prestige, channel confusing images. The hits from those land around the same time. Start the block, block gets triggered. Dodge once, swap weapons, drop chaos storm and phase retreat.

I do that combo with 2100 condition damage and perplexity runes. It executes fully in about 3 seconds. Here’s what it does.

The Prestige applies burning. Confusing images + the iMage apply 8 stacks of confusion, and perplexity runes bring that to 11. People tend to attack after you pop out of stealth while channeling, so you put up your block and immediately apply 5 stacks of torment, creating a clone. That clone pops another one applying 3 stacks of bleeding. You dodge, switch weapons, drop chaos storm and phase retreat. That pops 2 more clones, applying 6 more bleed, and then chaos storm has the chance to apply poison or proc interrupts for 5 more confusion.

Total: Burning, 5 torment, 9 bleed, 11 guaranteed confusion. Potentially poison, 16 confusion.

Total damage: 853 dps burn, 1106 dps (moving) torment, 1327 dps bleed, 2447 damage per skill guaranteed confusion. Potentially 294 dps poison and an additional 1112 damage per skill confusion.

Added together, this is guaranteed 3286 dps + 2447 damage per skill. This combo executes in <3 seconds if performed correctly. This ticking for 2-3 seconds plus the usage of 1-2 skills will down a thief/ele/guard easily, and a bit more will down medium hp classes too.

So assume he had a rating of 2000 mmr, and you had a rating of 1500. You both drop by 100 mmr. However, at the top of the leader board, there appears to be wider gaps between people, because there are less of them. So, his 100 mmr drop to 1900 caused him to go down 7 people.

However, where you were there are many people with a similar mmr. So, although you both had the same mmr change, the 100 mmr drop for you made you lose many rankings. Conversely though, an mmr increase for you will make you gain many ratings.

Carighan.6758:

It’s not an unnecessary nerf at all if you look at DE separately. It’s way too required.
Now imagine I set two devs down. One is to look into a way to nerf DE, the other into enhancing base clone generation. Assume the first one finishes first. Would you patch the change? I would, but it’s a very unpopular thing.

I wouldn’t, because that would be stupid. You don’t make balance changes like that piecemeal, you do it at once so that you fix the problem, not make it worse.

darkwindwalker.2479:

or I end up right next to the clone and end up getting spiked anyway.

The stealth protects you for long enough that you will not get spiked if you use the skill properly.

A nerf to power builds doesn’t make condition builds any less useless in PvE.

Deception will stop any number of stomps with 100% certainty as long as you have something to target. The only stronger downed skill 2 is Elementalist vapor form. It does not need a rework or change.

Raunchy.6891:

solo queue and both

If you’re looking for solo queue as a mesmer, be sure to check out the guide in my sig.

Yeah, both PU and phantasm builds decimate hambow. Shatter is a bit tougher.

The clones will melt in the aoe. This means you can’t be lazy about setting up shatters. When you go for a shatter it has to be fast and hard. Mirror blade > leap > dodge> swap> shatter/bf. The longer you leave your clones sitting around, the more likely they’ll go to waste.

So that’s how you do your damage, how you output the burst. Inbetween burst you can keep up some pressure with phantasms, and let the warrior chew on those. You also need to stay alive though. This means dodging the big attacks. You need to dodge earthshaker and combustive shot. While difficult, you also need to try and dodge pin down. That one is hard to dodge, but if you have no condition removal it amounts to a free full hammer combo for the warrior.

Also don’t forget that the fiery greatsword mentioned, or the lightning hammer or ice bow that eles drop can be picked up….by the mesmer. Then you get all the dps from those AND your phantasms.

Malediktus.9250:

I despise them because even if you achieve 100% win rate it takes 2hours per day.

I know why you despise them, but I couldn’t care less about farming achievement points. I’m just happy for the increased pvp population that is composed of people trying to win.

bhagwad.4281:

Pyroatheist.9031:

bhagwad.4281:

garethh.3518:

bhagwad.4281:

Red Raven.7824:

bhagwad.4281:

And the benefits of showing glory buffs?

To remind you to use your Glory Booster.

But how does it add value to the enemy seeing it?

So… out of all the issues in GW2… you think Glory Boosters showing up on the buff bar is a serious issue worth an immediate fix…

What.
The.
kitten.

I hope you’re not being serious.

Well, it would give me an incentive to use my booster stacks before glory becomes useless no?

A skilled mesmer plays in such a way that assumes the enemy always knows which one you are. A skilled enemy will always know which one you are, so you should play assuming a skilled enemy. No buffs showing up on your bar matter in the least amount.

I notice that it definitely makes a difference in practice. Guess pretending to be a clone does actually work huh? The bottom line is that the buffs do make it easier to identify the real mesmer. And why should I hand my foe an advantage no matter how small?

Yes, in practice it works against unskilled opponents.

If you are a skilled Mesmer, you should be thrashing unskilled opponents anyway, so why neuter your playing style because of them?

yanniell.1236:

Yep, completely forgot those traits. I’ll probably get some dire though.

Another question: Lately I’ve been seen A LOT of elementalist using the Diamond Skin trait. It’s just closely to impossible to cause enough damage with the staff or scepter for the conditions to start work . And when I do, they just heal. Am I missing something here or it’s the perfect counter for PU Condition builds?

The 2 skills you want to focus on to break the diamond skin are confusing images and the iWarlock. Both of those will do pretty good damage even in a full condition build. The iWarlock alone sometimes is enough to crack diamond skin in 1 hit.

…yay I guess?

Writetyper.1985:

You probably should have censored that dude’s name.

Idk, I like it better this way. Send him useless stuff though. Dull claws or something.

bhagwad.4281:

garethh.3518:

bhagwad.4281:

Red Raven.7824:

bhagwad.4281:

And the benefits of showing glory buffs?

To remind you to use your Glory Booster.

But how does it add value to the enemy seeing it?

So… out of all the issues in GW2… you think Glory Boosters showing up on the buff bar is a serious issue worth an immediate fix…

What.
The.
kitten.

I hope you’re not being serious.

Well, it would give me an incentive to use my booster stacks before glory becomes useless no?

A skilled mesmer plays in such a way that assumes the enemy always knows which one you are. A skilled enemy will always know which one you are, so you should play assuming a skilled enemy. No buffs showing up on your bar matter in the least amount.

treborIRL.4521:

i guess you didn’t read the part where i said any GOOD phantasm build. duelist can crit 6k+ all hits, duelist is highly superior to a swordsman, just one 6k hit? sooooo… all i’m saying is inspiration phantasm builds are better than any other so called “phantasm build” players like to look past the regen, protection on regen, retaliation for phantasms. phantasm increased health + signet, movement speed for each phantasm out, and also including that 15% more damage for phantasms.

You must have failed to understand that domination III is exactly the same as inspiration 25. There is no effective difference between the 2 traits.

With regards to pistol phantasm vs sword phantasm, both are very good damage, and both have weaknesses. Duelist will suicide on retal and reflects, as well as attacking slower. The swordsman only attacks once, so less bleed stacking, and can be denied by the environment due to the melee leap.

The strongest dueling phantasm build I know of (mine) takes both.

Yep, definitely still bugged. Quite a shame it doesn’t seem to be important enough to fix.

Valarauka.2719:

Nothing beats Sword/Focus + GS for leveling. Sword and Pistol offhands are both far too single-target to be very useful in the open world (unless you’re doing specialized things like soloing champs); comparatively, the warden and the berserker chew through entire crowds really fast.

This is accurate. Sword/focus+ greatsword is absolutely the optimal leveling build.

Malediktus.9250:

Archaon.6245:

Malediktus.9250:

Yes average pve hero who is almost rank 49 without farming hotjoin

You’re so cute….r65 with 4.5k+ tournaments and playing only pvp since beta here…so? Going tpvp while lagging and knowing you can dc and leave your mates 4v5 just for stupid achievements should be punished..probably dishonor is not even enough for ppl like you…if you want to farm achivements pve and wvw are there for you. Even if since 2 months i only go pug in tpvp i always play for win no matter if my team is bad or not even if we get terrible matchmaking vs premades…if ppl want a competitive game they should always play for their team and for win otherwise they could delete tpvp already…no wonder why competitive side in this game is almost dead..

Not my fault anet added these dailies.
And I think my 1.5k tourneys are above average, too.

Honestly, I love the new dailies. Achievement farmers don’t get their achievements if they don’t win the tournament matches. That’s a nice incentive to play to win. I’d even go so far as to say that a higher percentage of achievement hunters are playing to win than other people because of this.

frifox.5283:

I fear our phantasms will start using Ferocity stat instead of Critical Damage just like precision, which means all flat Critical Damage modifiers (not Ferocity modifiers) from food/etc once again will get ignored by our phantasms.

Ferocity would still be a basic stat. No problems here. I imagine they’ll also change critical damage on foods into ferocity for consistency.

Godmoney.2048:

Im not sure why more people aren’t using it to balance out their crit to dmg ratio.

Probably the same reason as me. Already have a zerker set, don’t care enough to get an assassins.

msalakka.4653:

Pyroatheist.9031:

msalakka.4653:

Is there any way to be able to see and listen to all of the episodes using Downcast? I use it for other podcasts that I love, to keep track of new episodes and listen to old ones. Unfortunately I can only see nine episodes of SOAC on it…

Which 9 do you see?

Hey, thanks for replying. I see the following:

Arrow to the knee – ep 11
Mesmer awards – ep 16
But of corpse – ep 39
Advanced mesmerics – ep 15
But of corpse – ep 38
But of corpse – ep 37
Phat loots – ep 14
But of corpse – ep 36
Mesmerized – ep 12

Ok, so apparently the podcasts before that were on a separate RSS feed that you would have to find. I’m not entirely sure how to find it, but I think it still exists.

01/26/14 – Shan, Chaos and Pyro discuss hints and tips for the wurm and marionette content as well as review the potential impact of the sigil, rune and trait changes from the Anet live stream of 17th Jan 2014.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-mesmer-podcast-mesmerized-episode-18-mesmer-puppets/

Past episodes can be found here: http://sittingonacouch.com/podcast/guildwars2/mesmer-gw2/

The podcast stream can be found here: twitc.tv/soacgaming

The next podcast will go live on Sunday, February 9th, at 6:30 pm EST.

Nameo.6842:

It already happened to me, i think it is due to the Necro DS skill #2, it teleport the caster to the target, but because the projectile is reflected, you become the caster and you are teleported on the middle of the zerg.

There was something similar with the thief D/P skill #3, but this skill is now unblockable and thus unreflectable.

This is correct. Several months ago there were patch notes saying that dark path is now unblockable to prevent this from happening, but Anet is very bad at actually doing things they intend to do, so that never actually got changed.

Krispera.5087:

I guess it will take a Dev to answer the mechanic behind it.

Or just test it out. I don’t have the skill and I don’t intend on getting it, but what you’ve described would only take a couple quick tests to figure out.

For the first just find a buddy on an enemy server in wvw and test it with that. No need for the pollen, you’re not really testing that part of it.

For the second…same thing basically.

Carpboy.7145:

That is the correct clip i was talking about, thank you for linking it. And how do you think the build in the OP would fare in comparison? Using focus pull to set up unavoidable zerker/iwarden? I just like 20 in illusions for faster recharge, and theyll attack faster making it hard to mitigate. But thoughts?

Phantasmal haste is broken. Works only on duelists and mages.

Good stuff.

/15char

cyyrix.6105:

Close but a few things are off. She has Deceptive Evasion, Debilitating Dissipation and Illusionary Membrane, which you didn’t include.

My guess is 10(III)/20(II,X)/15(V)/25(IV,V)/0

I believe this is correct. She definitely has at least 15 points in inspiration for the phantasm regen, along with illusionary membrane in chaos as you noticed.

After playing a few fractals last night, I can safely say that it’s definitely still bugged.

Linking the recording might be a good start.

Lordrosicky.5813:

C – rappy feedback from bad players is acted upon in testing/forums.

S – kyhammer – they thought this would be fun – shows their testers I guess.

Honestly, I have a hunch that if they listened to whatever testers they have, things might go better. It just seems like there are so many things that are so incredibly dumb that have been done that I find it hard to believe that whatever testers they have are just nodding their heads ‘yes’ through all of it.

skcamow.3527:

Pyroatheist.9031:

skcamow.3527:

I’m curious why you took compounding power over precise wrack. Have you noticed a dps difference?

The numbers have been crunched previously, and I’m fairly certain that compounding power gives a larger damage increase under most situations. In this particular build, since damage multipliers are multiplicatively added together, compounding power is definitely the best choice.

This?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Shatter-Blds-Prec-Wrack-or-Comp-Power-Trait

Looks pretty close overall but yeah, like the OP said there, math doesn’t lie.

Yep, and then remember how damage modifiers are calculated. So with just compounding power, that’s 1.03* 1.03 * 1.03= total modifier of 1.0927.

However, since this build is taking 3 mantras at 1.04 each and scholar runes at 1.10, the total effect looks something like this:

1.04 * 1.04 * 1.04 * 1.1 = 1.237
1.237 * 1.03 * 1.03 * 1.03 = 1.352

So, since there’s already damage modifiers that compounding power then modifiers further, it has a larger effect than if it was just by itself.

skcamow.3527:

I’m curious why you took compounding power over precise wrack. Have you noticed a dps difference?

The numbers have been crunched previously, and I’m fairly certain that compounding power gives a larger damage increase under most situations. In this particular build, since damage multipliers are multiplicatively added together, compounding power is definitely the best choice.

Why the toxic stones?

aussieheals.6843:

Ryan.9387:

Please have everyone start on EQUAL FOOTING.

A day 1 player MUST have the same capabilities as a 2 yr player.

In which game has this been the case?

Guild wars 2 PvP. That’s the game in which this is the case. Full stop, end of story. GW2 PvP was advertised and released as something awesome that everyone has access to with no restrictions of any sort. This breaks that.

bumpity bump.

/15char

Viking Jorun.5413:

Have you fought a sword thief? One word: cleave.

Sword thief don’t care what he hits. As long as you aren’t running cripple on shatter, you’ll lose to any decent sword thief.

Not entirely sure why you think cleave is a hardcounter to anything. Mesmer can cleave too…as can warriors and engineers and rangers and…

Qaelyn.7612:

My guess is that good engineers can kill pretty much anything 1v1 with the right build. Just as a good mesmer can. A fight between the two would likely come down to skill, and it’s also quite possible in PvP for a duel to stalemate.

Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. It also comes down to builds to some extent. The phantasm build I used will kill even the tankiest bunker engineer, it just might take too long. A PU condition build, on the other hand, can have a huge amount of trouble taking out that same engineer depending on how aggressively they play.

RedCobra.7693:

Hey pyro

You dont see so much using the counter setup anymore in power :P would you mind me giving this a try, i use this setup in WvW but without the pistol, how would it fare against outnumbered as im pretty familiar with the counter setup and understand its a pain to focus dps when you have more than one enemy, do you think it can stand up against a GS boonstrip shatter?

In an outnumbered fight, things can go really bad really fast. It’s very tough to keep up the pressure and properly avoid incoming damage from multiple people just using active defenses. I roam with it in wvw, but you’ve got to be very aware of how many people you’re getting into a fight with.

As far as standing against a gs boon strip shatter, yes. Basically, this build is incredibly difficult to fight for anything that doesn’t have strong and reliable access to blinds and/or interrupts.

@hihey: both.

So in general there are a few basic builds to choose from:

10/20/0/25/15 Sword/focus + Sword/sword

That’s sorta the most general use one. It’s pretty good in pretty much every situation. You can’t really go wrong with that.

0/30/0/25/15 Sword/focus + sword/sword or Sword/pistol

This is a bit trickier to run. You’ll be wanting to use mantras to maximize your damage potential there, but it optimally can do a bit more damage than the first one.

You never ever want to use a shatter spec in any sort of PvE content past open world exploration, as it simply doesn’t do very good damage. You’ll generally want to use zerker armor, although assassins armor actually has slightly higher dps in some situations.

Carpboy.7145:

How is this compared to the power PU build that is becoming very popular?

More offense, less passive defense. Much more of an emphasis on active defense: blocks, dodging, evades.

Qaelyn.7612:

Also, this isn’t a “fotm”, it’s from last April.

I suppose he didn’t say which month it was the flavor of…