Guild Wars 2

Daniel Handler.4816:

hendo. ranger runes don’t work with illusions. this has already been tested. ergo bad advice.

You’re a bit outdated. The sixth bonus is activated by illusions as of the 15th.

Ansau.7326:

Shatter boon-ripping is the one I enjoy the most, also is quite effective if 2-3 mesmers run it.

Being testing zergmower a little bit the last 2 days and I haven’t seen much Mimic procs. And the only ones have been against pug zergs, against guilds I haven’t been able to activate the block…

This can be an issue. Here’s the pattern I generally get into:

First hammercrash: dodge through, don’t rely on mimic. This is the time when the maximum number of pbaoe attacks are being released, the fewest projectiles. If you catch a projectile for mimic here it’s awesome, but it can be deadly if you don’t. Just drop a null field and keep moving.

After your first regroup or on your second movement before the regroup, use mimic. The biggest cooldowns will be blown here, and more projectiles will be flying, so you’ll be able to catch one with more reliability.

ICEing.9237:

Will it be worth giving my Mesmer my twilight or Is GS terrible? I see mesmers all the time mashing 1 on bosses with gs

Open world, GS is great. Long range decent damage is good stuff in open world PvE. In dungeons, not so much. There’s a couple very specific cases where GS is useful, and everywhere else it’s never good.

Conditions are in general not great for use in zergs…unless you use my Zergmower build. That’s a pretty niche application for them certainly, but it does work well.

Honestly, if you prefer to just burst someone as you’ve said, you’d be better off with a standard shatter build. The build you’ve posted here is basically just an inferior version of a standard shatter.

You’ve got the same gear, weapons, traits, utilities, etc with 2 single exceptions. You take Crippling Dissipation instead of Mental Torment, so all your mind wracks suddenly hit 20% lower damage. The other change is you take MD instead of IP. This means that all your shatters now apply a couple stacks of torment that does absolutely no damage because you have no condition damage in this build. You lose distortion on demand, daze on demand, and a massive boost to the strength of your mind wracks.

Not a good trade.

Phantasmal haste makes phantasms attack faster.

Illusionist’s Celerity decreases the phantasm summoning cooldowns.

Let me restate what the OP said:

Necros are strong.

I’ve never played ele, but here’s my opinion.

I’ve never played mesmer, but let me state a couple incorrect facts and then complain.

….wow.

How do you handle opponents with strong aoe pressure, like a bow warrior or an ele or an engie?

I ask this because you’re sacrificing a few other things that you didn’t mention. You’re sacrificing any and all phantasm hp modifiers, along with the two 15% phantasm damage modifiers. This means your phantasms will be both squishy and comparatively weak.

Well, here’s the problem. Whenever you take one trait, you sacrifice another. In this case, you sacrifice PU for BD.

Now, what are you getting out of BD? As you said yourself, the only useful thing you get is 3 stacks of might. You mention that you can keep 10 might permanently…but you could keep 7 without BD, so that’s really not much of a boost.

You sacrifice PU. PU gives regeneration, protection, and aegis every time you stealth. These boons are significantly stronger than just 3 stacks of might. You also potentially sacrifice CI. CI gives immobilize on interrupt, and in this build you have several quite strong interrupts.

The theory of shattering with the intent for the clones to die is a little iffy too. I understand what you’re getting at, but the problem is that it’s not always going to work. It’s an inherently unreliable mechanic, and you’ll often just end up wasting clones on a cry shatter.

Levetty.1279:

Are people going 20 in illusions for phantasmal haste? Is it actually working now and thus is it better then putting 15 in illusions and 25 in inspiration?

It is working now. It’s not stronger purely from a damage perspective than the 15% boost traits, but it provides higher reflect uptime combined with wardens.

Don’t you dare drop off the front page.

EverythingEnds.4261:

lvis.3824:

this is normal nowadays – look at this img …. crazy, this happend in 1sec

Btw, am I the only one, who is more impressed by the illusionary riposte, than by the Swordsmen?

It certainly shows how glassy they both were.

Shatters do not proc clone death traits. It is never worth shattering them for raw offense, only to interrupt your opponent or for distortion.

Probably not going to get fixed within the next year, lets be honest.

WEXXES.2378:

Apparently its a power based build that just happens to apply a lot of conditions in the process of whatever they are doing. I tried it out just now, could apply bleed, burn, confusion, vulnerability pretty often but they didn’t really do anything. The main source of damage obviously came from shatter/phantasms/weapon.

With the addition of null field, traits, and sigils I can have 8-9 condi clears done in almost 5 seconds, so when someone is applying a lot of condis on me, it looks like constant condi removal but it isn’t.

@Dhampyr
I did. And I really don’t know what I’m talking about, which is why I asked. That is no reason for pyro to be an kitten to someone new to the profession’s workings.

What you listed was ludicrous and impossible. I prefer for people to do one of two things.

a. Recognize that they’re not skilled enough to understand what’s going on and proceed accordingly
b. Understand what’s going on and ask for help correctly.

Notice that neither of those include

c. Proceed to forums and make absurd accusations about how overpowered a class is.

Nope, there’s no weakness. You’re referring to the full shatter PU bunker clonespam confusion bomb shatter condie removal build.

mango.9267:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Pyroathiest.4168:

I’m definitely thinking that the torment sigils just don’t match up to double energy. Other than that, looks pretty good.

I concur with you on this one. Kind of regret buying torment sigil since one stack per 5 seconds isn’t doing much by itself. Any suggestion on sigil choice that applies more reliable condition? I already have the energy sigils on me.

If you plan on swapping weapons a lot, doom and hydromancy are both good. Mesmers don’t really have a reliable way of applying either poison or chill.

Avoid hydromancy. If you have that on a set and you swap in stealth, it’ll still do the aoe chill+damage, revealing you. It severely limits your flexibility.

Leo Paul.1659:

As an aside, the parrot gains the signet of illusion buff when u summon an illusion :/ i dunno if it’s just graphical or it actually adds HP to it though

Oh really? That’s interesting. I wonder if the rock dog does too now…brb.

Edit: It does. It seems to be a bit variable whether it’ll get the buff on summon. Sometimes I have to re-requip the signet. I’ll test more to see if it actually gives the hp bonus.

Star Ace.5207:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Leo Paul.1659:

Thanks… But what if I wanna use torch sometimes for the sake of variety? Will pack still be ok or should i just switch to ranger?

If you actually use torch in a fight in pve, you’ve made an enormous mistake and should reevaluate the choices that lead you to that decision.

In wvw, if you’re just tossing on torch for ‘variety’ then you should remain fine. If you intend on using it in a different build, then build appropriately for that new build.

It’s not an “enormous mistake” if that’s what he enjoys to play sometimes, though. He didn’t claim the Torch was the most powerful weapon in GW2, so I am sure he’s aware of its strengths and limitations-perhaps he just finds it fun/fitting to his/her playstyle, PvE or otherwise.

Play how you want is well and good, but I can assure you that I, and most good players will instantly kick a mesmer from a dungeon party if I see them using a torch in combat.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Ok, this may be a dumb question (which most of mine are) but wouldn’t this build be fairly easily countered by a LB/GS Ranger or one of those shout heal Warriors? I would think that being as they both have decent anti-conditions and high mobility that they would be able to kite the Mesmer around.

Sorry, I’m not trying to be critical as I honestly am trying to think moves and counter-moves against multiple classes/builds.

Shout heal soldier runes traited warhorn warriors are just an enormous pain to kill in any condition build. You can do it if they stick around long enough, but it’s honestly not worth your time.

I fail to understand how a LB/GS ranger would counter this. Poor active condition removal, poor mobility…

Leo Paul.1659:

Thanks… But what if I wanna use torch sometimes for the sake of variety? Will pack still be ok or should i just switch to ranger?

If you actually use torch in a fight in pve, you’ve made an enormous mistake and should reevaluate the choices that lead you to that decision.

In wvw, if you’re just tossing on torch for ‘variety’ then you should remain fine. If you intend on using it in a different build, then build appropriately for that new build.

Best dueling build is either standard PU conditions, or my overpowered pvp phantasm build, both located in the stickied build list.

Khenzy.9348:

I know I’m going to get trash talked by other Mesmer players but… Osicat, can you please stop promoting PU builds or similar like these? Where perma protection, near perma regen, heavy stealth, AI (and other stuff I wont even mention, you know you class already) just outclass everything you encounter? Making these junk builds popular is definetly not good for the game as a whole.

Flame away fellas.

Osi isn’t a scrub. He plays to win, as many of us do. This means he uses the best builds he can make, with no regard to what scrubs think is ‘fair’.

BlackBeard.2873:

So I know every mesmer apologist will tell you that phantasm damage isn’t bugged and has always almost 1-shot people, but what about all the other AI in this game?

Its clear to anyone that Svanir/Chieftan received significant power increases, to the point that they are rarely worth doing anymore.

Even more silly, is that I am seeing Tropical Birds everywhere as everyone and their mother is running pirate runes to get those parrots that crit for 3K, and even as high as 4.5-6K against squishies. It even evades while doing its attack, and is hard to see too!

Rock dogs are critting as high as 4.5K, and the mist profession trainers are hitting for silly amounts. The ele hit me on a full zerker for 5K vapor blade and 10K arcane wave – values I have NEVER EVER EVER hit anywhere near on my ele.

So are all of these AI bugged, or are they purposely buffed up? Is everyone supposed to run as much AI as possible? I have tried pet ele, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be doing the same amounts of absurd damage.

Re: Rock dogs and parrots: I’m guessing they changed these to scale with your own stats, which would account for the sudden increase in power. Whether this was an intentional change, I can’t say.

Mesmer phantasms have always scaled with the mesmer stats, which is why they’re the same as always. If mesmer phantasms were suddenly hitting much harder than before, I can guarantee you that would be one of the top threads in the dungeon forums and the mesmer forums, but anyone that actually plays a mesmer knows they haven’t changed at all.

Svanir and the Chieftan have definitely been buffed, and the profession npcs have been turbocharged.

infantrydiv.1620:

Pyroathiest.4168:

gesho.9468:

will this take another 8 month to fix?

Probably longer, seeing as it isn’t broken, there’s just a high quantity of fools that think it is.

Yknow what I did when pets started dealing twice as much damage as normal? I reported it. I didn’t come on the forums claiming it had always been like that. Grow up.

And neither did I. I hopped ingame and tested out the iWarlock thoroughly. It has precisely the same damage coefficient and scaling as pre-patch. People are just having fits because of the strength runes and battle sigil combo boosting damage.

gesho.9468:

will this take another 8 month to fix?

Probably longer, seeing as it isn’t broken, there’s just a high quantity of fools that think it is.

Ignorance, arrogance, immaturity, idiocy, take your pick.

Signet of the ether is an amazing heal for a PvE mesmer. I highly recommend saving up for it as soon as you can.

Fantomic.5763:

I want to know, do the Phantasm proc the Air & Fire Sigil?

Also, I want to change my Amulet on the current build but since i use those 2 Sigils I need atleast 40% crit and having 1900 Toughness only with the berserk i’m feeling squishy.
So i’m trying Knight Amulet atm.

Or isn’t crit relevant for Mesmers? If so, what amulet you would suggest + Sigils on my GS?

Crit is most definitely relevant for mesmers, but that’s because your precision is transferred to your phantasms. Neither phantasms nor clones use your weapon sigils.

Pyroathiest.4168:

Osicat.4139:

Btw Pyro, you experienced the dubble dmg burn bugg? Seen it several time last night, see the burn ticks on the 2xranger fight in this vid and notice the last burn tick.

/Osicat

Woah. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Ok, here’s my tentative theory.

You’re using the updated condition floaters. These sum all the damage in the last second into 1 floater that you see. This is a client-side option, as indicated by the ability to change it back to the old one. The client simply sums the damage it’s been given, and displays it.

So now, assume that your client has enough lag that 2 seconds of server time pass in 1 second of time displayed from your client. It’s received 2 ticks of damage from the server, and sums it into one floater, appearing to be a burn tick of double damage.

It didn’t look like the ranger’s health spiked down any faster when that burn tick occurred, so I’m thinking this is the cause.

Osicat.4139:

Btw Pyro, you experienced the dubble dmg burn bugg? Seen it several time last night, see the burn ticks on the 2xranger fight in this vid and notice the last burn tick.

/Osicat

Woah. I’ll get back to you on that one.

zelrok.3546:

IGN: Zelrok Saegrid
Server: Eredon Terrace
Playstyle: Everything
Role: Scholar
Playtime: EST 6am-8am or 6pm-8pm

You have full guild memberships.

trooper.2650:

Talking about conditions

I think that a balance between intensity and duration is the ideal solution but… conditions can be cleared so, wouldn’t be better to try to deal as much damage in a short time frame than watered damage in a longer period?

I’m going to disregard any non-damaging conditions because your question inherently disregards them.

In general, stronger is better than longer. This is because the longer a condition lasts, the more of its damage is susceptible to being cleansed. Now, if someone has no condition cleanse, then obviously duration is better. However, I generally try to aim my building at the highest level I’m likely to find, not the lowest.

Something else to keep in mind, though, is that conditions tick once per second. If you can extend the tick duration to another second, it could potentially be worth it, but not always.

Fantomic.5763:

Pyroathiest.4168:

When you say sPvP, do you mean just hotjoin, or tournaments?

Tournaments

Take a look at the guide in my signature.

When you say sPvP, do you mean just hotjoin, or tournaments?

None of this surprises me even the littlest bit.

I’m definitely thinking that the torment sigils just don’t match up to double energy. Other than that, looks pretty good.

hendo.1940:

~ podcast talking about pve mesmers
~ three pvp’ers discussing the topic
~ bold claim about dungeon meta not being changed

lol

Tis a lie. I covered the crap with the mantras.

Arius.7031:

But what happens when the lowest and the highest server gang up on the middle server? Is that working as intended? Is that cool, does it promote fun play for all involved? Let me give background.

Yes, it is working as intended. WvW is a 3 player game. 2v1 happens. Anet has said that this is intended, they said it last season when SBI got hit with a gnarly doubleteam. Nothing has changed now.

That’s what happens when you use the tonic exploit to aura-stack a legendary. It’s not your side, it’s directly caused by that guy exploiting.

Anet made some behind-the-scenes change to the time limit for the running total damage. Engineer flamethrower continuously fired also demonstrates this running total.

It’s the same mechanic that adds up duelist unloads or blurred frenzy damage. It’s not a bug that it exists, just that it’s occurring.

Alasteir.7031:

sirrealist.1360:

Alasteir.7031:

Iluth.6875:

Wyrden.4713:

its ground targetted, so u gotta move ur mouse on ur enemy…

^ dont get me wrong, not making fun of u, just in case u r an only keyboard user, u might not have noticed it

Ohh I see. Yes I have instant ground targeting enabled so I had no clue what was happening Thanks.

A player who doesn’t have ground targeting enabled? I-I think I’m going to cry! It makes me cringe whenever I see an Engi using nades and aiming with the ground circles with every ability.

Can you elaborate on this? I have the option where when I activate an AoE ability, I get the circle that I position using the mouse. That is “best” option for Mesmer, right? Just making sure I’m not missing out on some setting I should be using.

There is an option where the ability is used automatically on the area where your mouse is aimed at. No green circle. It saves a little bit of time. Once you get used to it, it is more efficient than targeting with the green circle.

It’s less precise though. For an engineer spamming grenades, you don’t need that precision. For something like precision blinks…you do.

So. Dat bugfix.

skcamow.3527:

Also another comment, Pyro perpetually seems much lower in volume than Shan and Chaos.

Yeah, I was fighting with this the whole time.

4/20 – Shan, Pyro and Chaos discuss and demonstrate at great length the changes in the April feature pack from both a Mesmer’s and non Mesmer perspective. This is a big one, covering nearly every feature of the feature pack, and going over every change affecting mesmer.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-mesmer-podcast-mesmerized-episode-23/

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

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

The next podcast will go live on Sunday, May 4th, at 6:30 pm EST.

Jambas.6204:

Pyroathiest.4168:

However, there are some other considerations. Carrion gear is a poor choice for mesmer. No matter what build, no matter how you run it, carrion gear is bad. The stats just don’t work with how the mesmer traits and abilities function.

Could you plz elaborate more?

I think in a Hybrid Build Carrion can be an option, is just a matter of mixing gear till u have the stats that u want.

The first and biggest problem is that carrion gear has no precision. Crits are really the lifeblood of most mesmer condition builds, and carrion provides no access to them. Additionally, if you’re going for a hybrid build, crits will be very important on the power side as well, more so than power itself often times, since crit is your access to on-crit sigils, vigor, etc.

Next, carrion gear has vitality instead of toughness. You again got this pretty right. A lot of mesmer stuff scales well with toughness. We’ve got a lot of things that scale with toughness. Illusions scale with toughness of course, and not with vitality. Chaotic transference is 10% toughness to condition damage. Undead runes are another 7% of toughness. Even tuning crystals (and other associated utility foods) scale stronger with toughness than they do with vitality. On top of that, mesmer already has pretty good base health, so stacking that vitality is less of an issue.

If you’re doing a hybrid, you’ll want to do a mix of rabid gear and berserker gear. What this allows you to do is have survivability from the toughness (this would be severely lacking in rampagers gear). It also allows you to boost your crit chance quite high, and that allows you in turn to make effective use of the critical damage you get from the berserker gear and any food/traits. Carrion gear would boost your power more…but you’d lose out on a ton of crit chance, and that severely impinges on your strength of both power damage and condition damage.

You can see 7.8k illusionary sword strikes in that image as well. I’m fairly certain that this thief was either glassy beyond belief, or partially naked.

Sinaya.4201:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Zach.3264:

Staff is good with carrion build

Fraid not. If you’re using carrion on mesmer in any build whatsoever, you’ve made a serious mistake.

I’m curious as to why.

I’ve seen Pyro state this on the Mesmer forums fairly frequently, but while I have a general idea of why it could be a poor choice compared to say, Rabid or something, I’d like to know the breakdown of how it compares.

My gut reaction is that it’s because Vitality doesn’t do much for a Mesmer since it doesn’t apply to Illusions in the same way that Toughness does. Vitality also doesn’t boost Condition Damage in the same way that Toughness does if you’re going down the Toughness Line or using Undead Runes or something similar, (Although Scavenger Runes grant a Condition Damage Boost from Vitality, which might be another option)

I can also see how Precision (Which Carrion lacks) is important for a Condition Mesmer mostly because of the Sharper Images trait in the Dueling line (for Illusion Bleeds).

That all said though, Carrion seems like a decent candidate for a WvW Hybrid build of some sort, since it’s the only main-stat condition damage gear that also offers power. (Rampager could be an alternative too maybe, for much more precision at the cost of health and condition damage)

Is it really that bad of an option?

You’ve actually touched on most of the major points, but I’ll go through them again.

The first and biggest problem is that carrion gear has no precision. Crits are really the lifeblood of most mesmer condition builds, and carrion provides no access to them. Additionally, if you’re going for a hybrid build, crits will be very important on the power side as well, more so than power itself often times, since crit is your access to on-crit sigils, vigor, etc.

Next, carrion gear has vitality instead of toughness. You again got this pretty right. A lot of mesmer stuff scales well with toughness. We’ve got a lot of things that scale with toughness. Illusions scale with toughness of course, and not with vitality. Chaotic transference is 10% toughness to condition damage. Undead runes are another 7% of toughness. Even tuning crystals (and other associated utility foods) scale stronger with toughness than they do with vitality. On top of that, mesmer already has pretty good base health, so stacking that vitality is less of an issue.

If you’re doing a hybrid, you’ll want to do a mix of rabid gear and berserker gear. What this allows you to do is have survivability from the toughness (this would be severely lacking in rampagers gear). It also allows you to boost your crit chance quite high, and that allows you in turn to make effective use of the critical damage you get from the berserker gear and any food/traits. Carrion gear would boost your power more…but you’d lose out on a ton of crit chance, and that severely impinges on your strength of both power damage and condition damage.

Holy wow. Everyone in this thread is 100% missing the point made by the OP.

The OP isn’t talking about PPT or that sort of points. They’re talking about the odd discrepancy where despite beating YB and SBI every single week they meet, FA is still losing in matchup point totals to SBI and YB as an artifact of how the matches end up flipping.