Guild Wars 2

Mystogan.4157:

THIS BUILD OUT REGENS MOST HEALING SIG WAR.

No…no it really doesn’t. It doesn’t even come close. It approaches the regeneration of a healing sig warrior under 100% optimal conditions that will never ever happen.

Other than that, it’s an ok looking build aside from the lack of condition removal. Mender’s purity does not play nice in a build using the signet…particularly one that extolls the virtues of its passive regeneration. While sigils of generosity make up for this somewhat, they are inherently unreliable. Since they’re just as likely to proc when your only condition is 2 stacks of vulnerability as they are on 10 stacks of bleed, it’s a completely unpredictable effect.

You also actually really lack any strong mobility and disengage potential. You have 1 stunbreaker, and that’s it. Once you get locked down, you’ll die against anyone even semi-competent at chasing, such as a thief or ele.

frifox.5283:

Also, as in case of SEp2’s 1st boss traited Temportal Curtain will ignore defiance while untraited will not.

Yeah, you’d have to get a video of this distinction for me to believe it. It seems highly unlikely to me that traiting it has any effect on how it interacts with bosses/defiance, as the control effect it applies isn’t affected by the trait.

I…fail to understand what you’re trying to say.

Shockwave.1230:

In PvP I’ve been using portal. I try to keep track of when it’s about to expire and shortly before it goes on recharge I’ll create a portal exit, but the completed portal isn’t usable. Is this the way it’s supposed to behave?

I’m assuming it’s always done this, but it’s frustrating to have an active portal clearly there that you want to go through but it won’t let you no matter how furiously you press F. It seems to happen sometimes when I don’t use it to its full duration as well, I’l lbe in combat and unable to escape using this unusable two way portal.

To get a feel for the range, do this:

Drop your first portal. Run, out of combat and with swiftness, in a straight line for precisely 12 seconds. That is the absolute maximum range of portal.

xallever.1874:

The only thing I’d like to add to that is considering how things can often go wrong whilst pugging, you might want to switch to Ether feast if you’re not confident about the encounter and only switch to the MoR only when you’re confident about it.

Also, when no reflect is needed, just run any other mantra and switch to pistol instead of focus.

And worse comes to worst, slot a Phantasmal Defender there. I sometimes do that when doing fractals and most of the pug-team decides to range Old Tom.

Untrait your focus and toss on the sigil heal for old tom.

In addition to Teutos’ accurate analysis, saying that you have 3 illusions up at all times just because you use a clone-death build is absolutely false. You won’t have 3 illusions up at all times, it just doesn’t work that way, particularly against someone with a hefty amount of aoe such as a guardian, ele, or hambow.

Nabarue.3290:

Whew, so much new info to take in! I think I’ve been using the fall damage trait as kind of a crutch. It’s something I’ve just come to know in my current build, but I agree with you that the points I put in there for that may just be wasted. So I’m retooling the build a bit, adding in DE (in my opening post, I voiced this as a concern, especially since I wasn;t sure if scepter would be enough.), and dropping the extra 10 points in Inspiration and funneling it all into getting DE. As well as adding iDisenchanter. I may swap this out with Arcane Thievery (I also currently run this, and have come to love it), but I feel the Regen proc on IDisenchanter and the boon/condi strip may have some merit!

Also Retalitory Shield seems pretty good. Especially since one of the key skills on my scepter works off of this.

Thanks for the suggestions guys! Updating original post yet again with this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vgQQNArfWlknpRtlpxQNcrNicSB0JdoecdgHAUShudhA-zECBoOCi0CgUHBKTqIas11FRjV3ATxiIq2joIa1kCAi1AA-w

Retaliation scales off of power, so it’ll do next to no damage in this build. You’d get far more mileage from 1200 range blink.

Atherakhia.4086:

At some point things need to happen now instead of constantly using Blizzard’s ’SOON’tm where soon is any period from 3 months from now to never, but certainly never now..

Quoting this for pure truth.

In order to truly stack confusion to levels that matter, you must sacrifice all other aspects of the build, instantly making your stacked confusion completely vulnerable to the /dance defense.

Mystogan.4157:

Honestly you dont need DE. if you are spamming shatters your doing it wrong. yes you cn spam 1/2 shatter but the other two should be saved for special moments plus you need to watch the condi remove. if you stack burst to uch they will jst hit one cleanse and bye bye. but if you time out your shattesr correctly you should do fine with jst staff/ scep jst keep the autos up with scep

I mean, you say this, but I’ve yet to see any mesmer competently use a shatter build without taking DE. Yes, I know it can be done, but it can’t be done well, particularly in this build where you won’t even have leap/swap to ensure that your shatters actually hit, having as much clone generation as possible is absolutely essential.

Now, for other critiques. Taking a fall damage trait as something that you run with is nothing but foolish. If that’s truly what you think is your best choice in chaos, then you’d best put those points elsewhere.

Another problem with this build is you have literally 0 access to vigor or any other endurance regeneration. You will be dodge rolling once every 5 seconds at an absolute maximum, and that’s it. You could potentially fix this by taking vigorous revelation.

A note, though not exactly a criticism, is that despite this being a shatter build, you’ll still face the same problems that PU condition builds do, in that if someone doesn’t want to fight you, they can simply walk away and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. You’re also going to have to be incredibly careful with your shatters in this build. Without DE, shattering is a monumental expenditure of resources. If you shatter offensively and you need clones for defense or a boosted ether feast a few seconds later, you’re out of luck. Additionally, remember that shatters can be blocked, dodged, and evaded…unlike dissipation traits. Lastly, since you don’t have mainhand sword for leap/swap, you’ll need to be extremely on-point with watching your enemy’s dodging. If you shatter without being right on top of them, you’ll run the risk of having your shatter easily avoided.

Shtos Vant.4182:

The 3sec distortion will be used by PvE players.
With the MegaServer System (use the monster truck announcer voice in your head, complete with echos as you read it), Anet is aiming to for everyone to have “fun” with well balanced social interactions and successful boss runs in the PvE world.
This means lots of killing poor little npcs in droves.
You kill things fast enough in PvE to make use of 3sec of distortion.

Here’s what you’re forgetting. You kill things fast enough to make use of it…but you don’t need it because PvE is so easy. It also conflicts with empowering mantras.

rjinx.1378:

Skill: Illusionary Warden
Instance: Fractal, Solid Ocean
Enemy: Veteran Tentacles (excluding first two)
Bug:
If an Illusionary Warden is alive, in melee, and whirling at the time a Veteran Tentacle is killed, it will prevent the spawning of a crystal.

This was reproduced in multiple levels of Fractals.

I’m going to take a guess and say that you had focus untraited at the time?

Seras.5702:

Shtos Vant.4182:

1. More PvE focus

I hope so. I’m a PvE player and these new GM traits look to be very PvP/WvW focused.

The new GM traits are nothing focused. They’re almost all useless in almost all game types. It’s as if the devs just drew random mechanics from a hat and decided to try and shoehorn them into GM traits.

Mesmer brings a lot of utility and aoe damage to a fight. Shatter bursting is incredibly strong damage, with aoe boonstrip as a plus. Portal is incredibly strong, and no other class truly has access to the utility it offers. Lastly, Illusion of life is one of the strongest resurrection skills in the game.

Unfortunately, the counter to mesmer is thief. Unless the team is prepared to strip the enemy thief from their mesmer, the mesmer will either die or be forced to devote their attention to avoiding the thief, rather than doing anything useful.

So, in order for a mesmer to be worth taking over a thief, the team has to build completely around the mesmer. They need to be prepared to strip the thief quickly and effectively, run interference to allow the mesmer to do what they’ve been brought to do. This is possible, as demonstrated by one of the recent high level teams running a mesmer, but it’s difficult. Most teams will simply opt to take a thief and toss in another hambow, because why not.

Edit: Note that this is only applicable for organized team queing. If you’re solo queuing or solo queuing in team queue, there are multiple mesmer builds that work just fine.

For groups, you have a few options. One is to do more or less what you do already, as the zerker and shatters are all aoe, so should hit the whole group.

What I personally do is I use temporal curtain to group the mobs up on a wall, drop the warden, leap/swap and blurred frenzy, swap to drop the zerker and mirror blade, then shatter if necessary. That’ll take out pretty good sizes of groups.

ThiBash.5634:

Chaith.8256:

Could you consolidate these 4 ideas into one thread, instead of 4 threads?

I thought Anet wanted things brief and to the point? If I all put them in a single thread, that wouldn’t be the case.

You can be brief and to the point and still contain multiple ideas in one thread. Just make sure you have them parsed appropriately and clearly.

Reikan.2908:

i wouldnt mind them having their perma stealth if there were more options to reveal them. on my mesmer all i have is my null field which they can just avoid or go back to stealthing a second after it reveals them.

Yeah…that’s not a thing. Null field doesn’t touch stealth.

Wow. He’s actually clicking for dodge.

That being said, pro video right there.

adobo.1749:

I had the opportunity today to face a p/d perplexity thief and my question is, does my phantasms cause confusion damage on me? I can’t make sure because it doesn’t show on my combat log.

No.

Shan.1983:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3fUhFuUP-E

Give that man a like.

Oop, that’s true.

No matter what you say, Vashury is the undisputed king of dope burst.

A very glassy full phantasm specced mesmer can take a decap engie apart fairly rapidly. You’ll most likely get decapped, but the engie won’t last very long.

jportell.2197:

Osicat is the number one skilled mesmer of all time… Just saying.

Not gonna lie, I’ve got to hand that title to Supcutie easily.

I used to do a support role on mesmer. Mesmer can do a lot of really strong support. Boon-sharing with SoI combines incredibly well with guardians, you can do very strong aoe sustained heals with mantras, boon sharing with good rune choices combined with the extremely low cooldown mantra heal, aoe stability, aoe condition removal, you can get all of that in the same build.

Unfortunately, what you can’t do is get all of that and have the potential to get any loot at all. You sacrifice 100% of your damage potential for support.

Consequently, I’ve stopped playing a build that actually supports my group, and I simply take veil + a build that is able to do aoe damage.

Flytrap.8075:

I myself and numerous friends predicted last week that FA would put us in our place. A lot of the guilds on HoD revolve around karma trains and, coming from SBI, it is clear that our pugs and commanders are not as organized or skilled as they need to be.

Yeah, this much has been really clear to guilds on FA. It’s sorta a running joke that any engagement with less than 3:2 numbers is an easy mop-up for an organized FA guild.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of engagements with far worse odds than that, and of course all night long there’s not much resistance. Particularly that second bit will win HoD the match.

This is pretty decent looking. I have a couple suggestions.

First, ditch the ether signet. It’s not optimal for PvP in the best of cases…and you’re stacking a significant amount of healing power. The more healing power you have, the larger the advantage that ether feast gains over the signet. With your 1000 healing power, even if your signet ticks at 3 illusions every single time, ether feast will heal for roughly 1.5k higher than it every 20 seconds.

The other note is that there’s not really a huge reason to use Lyssa runes. They’re getting nerfed on the 15th, and your crit chance is still abysmal with them. I’d recommend going for melandru or hoelbrak to help deal with conditions.

Galadan.4562:

A quick question: After April’s feature pack, what do you think about perplexity runes?…Will they be still viable or the good old undead runes will be a better choice?

Hard to say. On the one hand, the lovely confusion application on hit is being neutered into confusion application on being hit. On the other hand, the confusion duration modifiers are (presumably) going to be fixed, as they currently don’t work at all.

Ultimately, I’ll withhold a decision until the patch is released. If you’re gearing up for this build, my recommendation is to use undead runes until the patch, simply because they’re dirt cheap. Since the patch is going to be introducing large changes to many rune sets, it’s entirely possible that a different rune set altogether will be appropriate for use.

Zypher.7609:

I just started building my Ascended armor set for this build. Should I hold off from making the Rabid set pieces until after the 15th when this build might change up?

It will still use rabid.

Mercabre.7123:

^Where is this coming from? The hating? You must have some personal problems IRL. I’m here for you sweetheart anytime you want to talk. If not we can always arrange a little GvG to get some of that Testosterone out and knock you down a peg.

If you actually want to GvG, send me a PM and you’ll have a GvG set up with [GODS] within a day. We’re eager to find more HoD guilds to smush.

Ptolemy.5086:

My point about Traveler runes is to have + 25% all the time without using any skills. No heal no tonics. For me it is annoying constantly clicking something during run. Especially when i need to skip trash mobs or traps.

So what you’re trying to say without actually saying it is that you’re lazy. That’s fine, but not all of us are like that.

Ptolemy.5086:

Decoy actually transfer target from mesmer to clone

This is not true. I’m not sure why you would think this.

Yeah, this is nothing new. I refer to this build as the ‘flex phantasm build’, because it’s pretty versatile, great at nothing, but pretty good at whatever you want to do.

Carpboy.7145:

PU is completely useless in yolo queue and tpvp because stealth decaps points. So have fun in 8v8 zergs

Not accurate. Properly played PU builds can be extremely strong in solo queue. See the guide in my signature for more details.

No significant changes. Condition damage is not viable for pve on any class, including Mesmer.

Ptolemy.5086:

BTW centaur runes are for poor people. If you have money go for traveler if not runes of speed.

I can have 100% swiftness uptime with centaur runes. That’s better than traveler, and it costs less.

Dragothien.4210:

Seems like a really interesting concept and I’d like to try it..but question:

Considering that the only glamour you’ve got slotted is veil, is it really worth devoting two glam related traits to? I know that you could (and probably do) swap it out periodically for other glam utilities, but in my case I have to have veil on my bar pretty much all the time.

With the lack of condition removal in mind as well, I wonder about giving up CE or Glam mastery for traited torch or mender’s purity.

And what were your thoughts on torch vs focus (traited or not)? I love focus..but typically only when I’m traited for reflection too.

I’m definitely considering dropping confusing enchantments. That being said, veil still is a glamour of course, and you can use it offensively. It’s exceedingly rare to use veil after the initiation of a fight, so once it comes back up you can go ahead and use it as any glamour for confusion spreading.

Condition removal really isn’t an issue. As long as you have an organized group composition, you’ll have enough removal from warriors/guardians to be fine.

I haven’t yet experimented with torch much. Temporal curtain really is just an incredible skill, great for aoe cripple and pull, yanking people off of walls and ledges, just overall control. While it is better if traited, it’s still a strong untraited weapon.

Now, torch gives some nice aoe damage and burning for sure, so I’ll definitely experiment with it soon.

jefferson.8317:

I will gladly duel your 1v1 build.

Edit: I’m not a forum tough guy. I never post. Don’t get defensive because I insulted your build.

Good, for once someone willing to put out.

You aren’t a forum tough guy because of quantity, but because of the quality of your posts.

Iavra.8510:

To be fair, there is a difference between PU power builds using active attacks and Phantasm/Clone-Death builds.

I’m not a PvP player but for sure i would fight you, Pyro, if only for the fun and training. Sadly, i can’t use Traveler in PvP but i will find a substitute.

Sure, I’m willing to fight anyone. You’re not a forum tough guy of course though. You haven’t been posturing, bragging, and insulting about builds people run, so you have no reason to be embarrassed or worried of the outcome.

jefferson.8317:

It’s not an interesting perspective. It’s clear as day. Ask any skilled pvp’er outside your circle of “pro mesmer forum posters” and they would agree. The build is mindless and relies strongly on non-active combat.

Of course you’re not willing. Rarely is any forum tough guy willing to actually put their money where their mouth is. You’ll talk all day long about how one play style is superior to another, and how you’re better than other people because you play a certain build, but never are they willing to actually step up and show how good they are.

Xyonon.3987:

Fact is that 12 stacks might grant insane passive damage if the team can make use of it. Meaning they already got 0-13 stacks might. 12 stacks might increase the damage approximately by 15-20% (depending on base power / bloodlust / banner / …) for everyone. It’s not like you can’t swap back to GS after it, but I really don’t know why Guards don’t swap for it. Staff 1 hits for 5 instead of 3 too if I’m right aswell does the GS pull and spin attack have their own CD (reason to swap?). I really don’t know how much the damage difference between staff 1 and gs 1 is. But it has to be huge to ignore the staff.

So staff is a great weapon…to stack might before a fight and then swap out. 12 might is only roughly a 15% damage boost…, but for the majority of that boost you’re stuck in staff doing no damage, and so the party damage ends up lower as a result.

jefferson.8317:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Iavra.8510:

Cute, a PU clone-death spammer pretending to be skilled.

Cute, a player that thinks he’s better than someone else by putting down others.

I play PU condition. I also play phantasm builds. On occasion, I play shatter and lockdown as well, but I don’t like those as much.

Do you think that I’m not skilled because I prefer PU condition and phantasm builds? If so, I invite you to put up or shut up.

PU condition is a disease in this game. It requires little to no skill. I would assume anyone who plays this build does so because they lack success in a more skilled build.

That’s an interesting perspective. Are you willing to back up your assumption with actions?

jportell.2197:

mrauls.6519:

To be honest if confusion was toned down I’d be happy. That’s the ONLY thing making condi spamming professions so ridiculous right now. If they didn’t have access to crazy amounts of confusion it’d be an even playing field

Come the 15th Warriors are gonna be better confusion spammers than mesmers….. Which bugs me why does blinding befuddlement have such strict ICD’s and the confusion doesn’t even last as long as the ICD when distracting strikes has NO ICD and it will stack with runes of perplex…. Come the 15th condition interrupt warriors will rule… FML.

Because the devs are [redacted to avoid infraction].

http://imgur.com/89HANHg

Edit: But seriously, this is an incredibly flawed question. All stats are important in various builds. There’s no way to answer this appropriately.

The only thing that can be said is that healing power is the worst stat, but that has nothing to do with mesmer.

quercus.9261:

Pyroathiest.4168:

quercus.9261:

Go on the thief boards and ask thieves what kind of warriors they fear and it is shield axe for stun/evis.

It’s because of statements like this that I just have a hard time taking anything you say seriously. Thieves and mesmers both have loads of easily accessible stunbreakers. Thieves also have a ton of blind application. No good thief or mesmer will get hit with your shield stun. If they do, they’ll break it and dodge your eviscerate.

Basically, shield/axe is a noob-stomper build. You’ll destroy people that aren’t good enough to actually dodge things, but anyone that is decent at dodging will be untouchable.

Again with the one on one. In large scale WvW fights people flow
like rivers . You don’t look at individual people you look at the flow and attack the stream and cut off the back line. I guarantee that you are not looking at skills. In fact this is the reason why Mesmer interrupt builds are never going to be anything but dueling specs in WvW. If you are not saving your dodges for avoiding the hammer train then you will likely die.

There has only been one reply on this thread that even remotely seems to understand how WvW works and it wasn’t by you.

You seem to ignore the fact that every time I mention 1v1 situations, it’s quoting something of yours that pertains only to 1v1.

Ithilwen.1529:

Please invite me.
Tinuwyn
Devona’s Rest( NA )
I need to improve skills in general and would like to be good at shatter.
Role Choice: Scholar
Playtime usually late night / early morning.
WvW , pvp and dungeon running.

You have maximum guilds.

quercus.9261:

Go on the thief boards and ask thieves what kind of warriors they fear and it is shield axe for stun/evis.

It’s because of statements like this that I just have a hard time taking anything you say seriously. Thieves and mesmers both have loads of easily accessible stunbreakers. Thieves also have a ton of blind application. No good thief or mesmer will get hit with your shield stun. If they do, they’ll break it and dodge your eviscerate.

Basically, shield/axe is a noob-stomper build. You’ll destroy people that aren’t good enough to actually dodge things, but anyone that is decent at dodging will be untouchable.

Lorelei.7809:

Well, I’m also going for a Rabid Twilight Arbor set (keeping the Nightmare runes) for when I focus on condition damage and less on interrupting.

I’m wondering if Carrion would help without sacrificing a bit of defense (vitality) and something condition related (damage). I currently have the karma set from Orr (of Lyssa).

Thoughts?

I still need to play around with interrupt builds to see what I’m comfortable with, but given the other armor sets I have, do you think Carrion + Mesmer Runes would be a good third (at least for a start)?

Thanks for all the info though. Too bad the Mesmer runes aren’t working perfectly though

Carrion is bad for mesmer. There’s no exceptions I’ve found for that yet. You need the precision in a condition build, and we have high base hp, so the toughness is more valuable than the vitality.

quercus.9261:

The point being that on the most successful WvW servers mesmers and thieves are non-factors.

That’s a bit odd to me. In my experience mesmers are continually in short supply. Nobody plays them, and everyone needs them.

quercus.9261:

Umm there are no reflects because the JQ/BG hammer trains run retaliation only. What the EU guilds have been doing to beat the hammer meta is piercing projectiles and ranged kiting. I have been trying it and it is very effective vs clumped melee.

Running with no reflects whatsoever is rather unique, and quite foolish. Every competent group I’ve seen has several methods of providing reflects when they engage, as reflects instantly nullify many methods of high damage from range.

quercus.9261:

And yes whenever I see a Mesmer I literally just stand there and shoot clones and phantasms and maybe dodge a zerker. I am not mocking mesmers I am kittened off that my Mesmer is basically useless in T1 WvW.

You keep saying things like this that make no sense. On the one hand, you’re always talking about how you only do zerg combat, and then on the other hand you talk about times where you have the leisure to shoot clones and phantasms…which is most definitely not zerg combat.

I’ll assume that you’re just lying about only doing zerg combat. If you actually fight any skilled mesmer, you will get destroyed. If they’re PU condie, you’ll be able to escape if you’re good enough. If shatter or phantasm, not so much. No highly skilled mesmer would lose to a warrior, let alone a warrior using such a silly build as axe/shield+rifle.

03/30/14 – In this episode of Mesmerized, Pyro and Shan discuss their honest evaluations of the new traits and balance changes coming out with the feature patch.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-podcast-mesmerized-episode-21/

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

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

Iavra.8510:

Cute, a PU clone-death spammer pretending to be skilled.

Cute, a player that thinks he’s better than someone else by putting down others.

I play PU condition. I also play phantasm builds. On occasion, I play shatter and lockdown as well, but I don’t like those as much.

Do you think that I’m not skilled because I prefer PU condition and phantasm builds? If so, I invite you to put up or shut up.

Reikan.2908:

if anyone can show me a video of a mesmer killing a geared guardian or warrior that would be nice to see how they do it

I have some old videos from my immortal build. You cold also check Osicat’s and Vashury’s videos for more recent things.

Azo.5860:

anyone ve ever tried something as this build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgEQNAsfWnsISZaWhGeoB/aGRQ9o7AvvjUBXr0De7C3NA-zEyAoLBRiREJII0HgsXR0YLjFRjVZjpeJiqJFATCjA-w as a commander i think its very fit for zerg commanding (atleast with some ability with pugs groups that can answer your commands as push regroup etc..) can ability to push in front of your melee train, and can tank as well ? and comfortable with movements to organize your group movements.

The idea behind that build makes sense. I think that particular build isn’t very well optimized for the purpose, but the general concept is sound.