Guild Wars 2

Incarcer.8036:

I’ve found it works great with Mender’s Purity and Mantra of Recovery. You have a heal at the push of a button. Maybe 2 as it’s 2 3/4 seconds. That PLUS the uptick on regen. I think you can take of advantage of it more than you suspect. In group fights, with aoe interrupt capabilities, it’s not hard at all to get an interrupt and heal a good chunk.

It’s a heal option that phantasm builds have sorely lacked for awhile imo. BUt, to each their own

Phantasm builds lack healing? What are you talking about? Phantasm builds generally go into inspiration, which means you have easy access to one of the strongest healing traits in the game: restorative mantras.

Also, have you actually run the numbers on how much it provides you? If you burn both charges of MoR, you’ll gain 800 healing from the trait. Restorative mantras only scales .2, so you’ll only get 200 healing from that trait. When you consider that the base heal from RM is already 2600, it’s absolutely worthless. Additionally, since mantras have a 2.75 cast time, it’ll be incredibly difficult to reliably get that heal off in the 5s duration of the boost.

On top of that, if you’re going 30 into inspiration, you have other traits that you need to take. If you care so much about healing, you absolutely need restorative mantras. If you don’t have warden’s feedback, then your build is bad. Those two traits take up your master and grandmaster slots, leaving no room for this trait.

It clashes in so many ways and has such a tiny boost to healing it’s ridiculous.

Incarcer.8036:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Incarcer.8036:

I just created a Tank-ish Interrupt build that used GS and s/f. Uses Disruptor’s Sustainment (6 pt inspiration) trait to give us the +1000 healing on interrupt.

It’s more of a power/toughness build that uses the +healing for sustainment, while still being able to pump out decent damage.

Yeah, don’t do this. If you have that trait, you made an enormous mistake somewhere along the line.

I’m curious as to why you’re opposed to this trait, Pyro?

Because it’s just useless. It gives you 1000 healing power for 5 seconds on interrupt. This doesn’t stack in strength or duration, so what are you actually getting out of this?

A couple ticks of regeneration? Maybe 1 heal if you happen to interrupt something precisely when you need a heal? Nothing. You get nothing out of this trait. Add that onto the fact that healing power scales horridly with almost everything makes it even worse.

It’ll make tick for 125 points more, so you’ll get maybe 500ish healing total from an interrupt assuming you’ve got regen running and you actually need it. If you have ether feast, you’ll get about 1000 extra healing…but this is only if you can use your heal when you interrupt, which isn’t always viable.

Basically, the concept is total crap. Think about it a bit. When do you usually really need to heal? You need to heal after you get hit by something big. When is a good time to land an interrupt? You land interrupts on big things. If you got hit by something big, that means you just failed your interrupt. If you succeeded your interrupt, you don’t need to heal. This trait just fails completely.

Incarcer.8036:

I just created a Tank-ish Interrupt build that used GS and s/f. Uses Disruptor’s Sustainment (6 pt inspiration) trait to give us the +1000 healing on interrupt.

It’s more of a power/toughness build that uses the +healing for sustainment, while still being able to pump out decent damage.

Yeah, don’t do this. If you have that trait, you made an enormous mistake somewhere along the line.

Undead runes are a good all-around rune for conditions.

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.

Additionally, if you intend on using this in PvE, you’re going in the entirely wrong direction. Condition damage is bad in PvE, and condition damage builds on mesmers are absolutely abysmal in PvE.

ToDblD.9413:

I wonder how long we will wait for a reply. I thought it was 2 straight forward questions, the fact they are either not going to respond or carefully crafting a response does not make our situation seem any more promising.

“They” haven’t seen this thread, and they don’t care.

Edit: This is why I shouldn’t post on the forums when I’m tired.

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.

Speaking from the perspective of someone that plays a full condie built mesmer…this trait doesn’t really trouble me at all. Even in a full condie build I have plenty of tools to do a bit of damage to an elementalist and start the condie load.

jihm.2315:

Zach.3264:

jihm.2315:

dont catch the L2P bait they keep saying it to keep frustrating you, even if you find the real mesmers and cc him he still stealths or swaps positions with his clones with constant offensive pressure ,it doesnt really matter if you find the real one you will still loose the fight.

Lol, ok.
You’re making it sound like Mesmer is the god class, why isn’t everyone playing them in SPvP?

a lot of them play mesmers and not all people enjoy playing such an annoying class

While there’s many reasons I play mesmer, one of those reasons is definitely because I enjoy the taste of tears like yours.

Doomym.6182:

IM wondering who has bigger burst mesmer or elementalist ?

Elementalist, no contest. I love mesmer, but elementalist has the gnarliest burst in the game (though Vashury sure does get kitten close).

Doomym.6182:

Also who is more viable for SPVP

I’m going to assume you mean tPvP. Neither elementalist nor mesmer are super viable atm. They’re both sorta ok.

Doomym.6182:

and most important WvW?

It’s incredibly important to have a mesmer or two in any skilled WvW group. However, that’s really all you need. Adding more elementalists is never a bad thing in any sort of group.

Doomym.6182:

And who is harder to play?

Not an easy question to answer in any case.

Stormbolt.7293:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Stormbolt.7293:

The new patch changed quite a lot, and I haven’t had the time to really play around with it. I need a new WvW build since shatter went to hell. Both roaming and zerg builds are fine, I’m pretty open minded so long as I can be the most annoying, rage-inducing Mesmer possible.

There’s really no new truly viable builds.

For zerg mesmer, your choices are still incredibly limited. I believe my Zergmower build is still the best choice there for overall tagging potential (check the build list).

For roaming, PU condie is still best. You can do a condition shatter build like Zumi mentioned, but it’s simply not as good as PU condie. It’s more fun to play though, that point I’ll gladly concede.

I was hoping that the new grandmaster traits would add something. What can you suggest as far as builds for the two?

Erm, for the two what?

gartz.7013:

i did lose about 14k hp in, and i kitten you not, a split second. one minute I’m engaging with my sb the next I’m dead….wtf mate

Sounds like a learn to play issue to me. If you can’t accurately describe what killed you, then you obviously aren’t experienced enough to judge whether or not it was overpowered or bugged.

AsteriskCGY.5931:

I run the Chaos Maestro build for fractals if I want to go support. 0/1/6/4/3 The point of this build is throwing out all boons every Signet of Inspiration cooldown. S/F Staff. For the most part I feel more comfortable if someone can throw out heals periodically cause stuff goes wrong easily in fractals.

Note that you can always trait mantra heals in a standard phantasm build.

The issue with this mindset though, is that if stuff goes wrong in fractals, people end up dead, not just close to dead. This is particularly true in higher level fractals where so many mobs are 1-2 shots.

Stormbolt.7293:

The new patch changed quite a lot, and I haven’t had the time to really play around with it. I need a new WvW build since shatter went to hell. Both roaming and zerg builds are fine, I’m pretty open minded so long as I can be the most annoying, rage-inducing Mesmer possible.

There’s really no new truly viable builds.

For zerg mesmer, your choices are still incredibly limited. I believe my Zergmower build is still the best choice there for overall tagging potential (check the build list).

For roaming, PU condie is still best. You can do a condition shatter build like Zumi mentioned, but it’s simply not as good as PU condie. It’s more fun to play though, that point I’ll gladly concede.

Pretty much what colesy said. 10/20/0/25/15 is what I call the ‘flex phantasm build’, because it’s pretty much solid for whatever you want to do.

The most important part of being a good party member is that you have to really know the dungeons yourself. If you’re doing Arah, you need to know when and where and how to reflect. AC, know to bring an ele, and know how to do the mounds, etc. Same deal for everywhere else. Know what utility is required for the encounter, and modify your build so that you have it.

The advantage of a mesmer is that you’re able to do that last bit. There’s never a situation where you can’t provide the utility necessary. The key is knowing what’s needed, and knowing how to provide it.

One additional note is that you should have all weapons available to you. Sword/focus + sword/sword is really the bread and butter, but every single weapon has its place. Even torch I’ll use, for example, in CM to get past that one room and portal my party, or if someone screws up on the abomination in CoE and I need to portal them past. Staff I’d toss on if it came to it that I needed to solo subject alpha—phase retreat gets you out of crystals on a 8 second cooldown. Greatsword I needed to use the other night when it was necessary for me to solo the Molten Duo. Every weapon has its place, even if that place is incredibly rare.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, it is good to know you don’t know much about mesmer phantasms.

Right, lets see.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The berserker does damage in an AoE, hitting multiple enemies. The swordsman and warlock do not.

True, the zerker does aoe damage. This is a distinct advantage when it matters, and distinctly useless when it doesn’t.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The berserker maintains distance after attacking, keeping it out of danger and letting it live longer. The swordsman stays in close range, and dies quickly. The warlock does stay at range.

This is false. The swordsman leaps back out of range during the course of its attack. It attempts to maintain that ranged distance while idle. The zerker will also attempt to do this, but to a lesser extent.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The berserker’s damage is front loaded and quick to activate. The damage of other phantasms is more likely to be interrupted, or needs to stay alive longer to build up.

What? The only phantasms that this actually applies to are the iWarden and iDuelist, and hardly even to the iDuelist. You don’t use the iWarden primarily for dps anyway, you use it for the protective bubble. The zerker’s damage is easily stoppable because it’s a melee phantasm. It can even be killed during its spin. The iSwordsman actually evades during the attack animation.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The berserker and warlock have the same attack rate. The warlock will only outdamage the berserker if you use phantasmal haste with plenty of conditions, or if the enemy is small and can’t take all hits of the berserkers spin.

On most mobs, the warlock and the berserker actually do incredibly similar damage…assuming no conditions whatsoever. However, once conditions start getting applied, the iWarlock rapidly outdamages the berserker. Consider a normal party. You’ll have vuln, bleed, burn, cripple, and weakness. Many parties will also apply poison, and with mesmer staff you’ll also get confusion from the ethereal field. That’s 7 conditions, so in a normal party your iWarlock will be doing 70% increased damage, blowing the iZerker out of the water.

The one truly useful characteristic of the iZerker is that it applies cripple. This gives it a use when you’re attempting to kite something nasty, along with greatsword offering better sustained ranged dps than the staff. However, the situations where this is necessary are rather limited.

Leo Paul.1659:

How much healing does 1k healing power add anyway?

This depends on the healing skill. Different skills have different coefficients.

Leo Paul.1659:

and if I interrupt 2 enemies do I get 2k healing?

No. This bonus stacks in no way whatsoever.

Esplen.3940:

Are you sure? It’s been a while, but I’m quite sure in stuff like CoF P1, when you do the Might Stacking, your Phantasms do a significantly larger amount of damage when using Signet of Inspiration as opposed to leaving them there. When selected, they had 25 stacks of might so I just assumed that was the factor…

I can tell you that signet of inspiration won’t hit your phantasms. If they get 25 stacks of might, it’s because someone was out of position.

Regardless. it’s a pretty easy thing to test in a controlled environment.

Esplen.3940:

(Might on you goes onto your phantasm, which means your Phantasms can have 50 “stacks” of Might).

No no, they can only have 25 stacks.

Might on you goes to your phantasms, and this is because phantasms don’t have stats of their own. Since they don’t have stats of their own, might on the phantasms does absolutely nothing.

Dammerung.6419:

I created a second mesmer right before the patch hit. I tried to struggle through leveling in PVE, but it was painful to say the least. So I ended up going to edge of the mists. It was like a 24/7 karma train. Just hop on a tag and go. I got about 20 levels this weekend alone, with a lot of gold and karma! And it was surprisingly fun. The zerg is a friendly bunch even though we were pv-door the entire time. Just make sure to keep up the chatter in chat, and the time will pass easily enough.

Give it a shot!

Not half bad advice actually. I’d recommend bringing greatsword/staff for this sorta thing. Gives you the maximum amount of ranged tagging ability.

Rentapest.6503:

2) Mesmer illusions should not have name plates or there should be an option to turn these off so you know which is which.

Phantasms have nameplates that clearly state that they are phantasms.

Clones are clones. That’s the point. Learn to play.

My suggestion is to go to pvp and get the level up tomes there.

holodoc.5748:

Pyroathiest.4168:

I give up. All you fools seem to be jumping on this bandwagon of mesmer illusions hitting harder than pre-patch.

Well, you’re all wrong. That’s all.

Says a guy with “The Immortal Mesmer” in his signature

Heh. I keep that link there just for nostalgia’s sake. That build was destroyed by the devs almost a year ago.

That being said, I fully tested out my illusions, because I like to know how my skills work. Everything is precisely the same as it was acting prepatch. The damage is all same as before.

I give up. All you fools seem to be jumping on this bandwagon of mesmer illusions hitting harder than pre-patch.

Well, you’re all wrong. That’s all.

Yeah, smoke bomb is the phantasmal rogue. It does an incredibly powerful attack. The mesmer was probably phantasm specced, so it hits even harder than normal. This is why you do your best to stomp the mesmer before they get to use that skill.

Hi. Fix our class please.

People just don’t seem to understand that warlocks hit like trucks.

In PvE, my warlock will regularly crit for over 18k damage on bosses with large numbesr of conditions. This phantasm has an insanely high damage potential.

4k-6k crits on players in PvP is absolutely ordinary.

Shaorune.2347:

im seeing 4.6k crits on warriors with around 3-5 conditions. due to how hectic pvp can be i cant say but yeah thats really rigged. they should really look into this before tournaments happen cuz if we see people having staff mesmers on their comp we would know why.

Again, 4.6k crits is perfectly normal. This is not higher than it used to be. I have no idea why everyone is flipping out about this.

Levetty.1279:

Some simple yes and no without the attitude would be nice.

How would them using sigils be broken?

Sigils have internal cooldowns to keep them more or less balanced. Imagine if you were able to proc a sigil like sigil of torment or air or fire multiple times rapidly. It would be incredibly overpowered, since the sigils are balanced around their cooldowns.

Illusions are separate entities. They don’t share the same ICDs as the mesmer, so if they were able to use the sigil procs, mesmers would be able to overload with on-crit and on-hit sigils.

Levetty.1279:

Ok now I am really confused.

Phantasms benefit from power, precision, vit, tough, ferocity and might but they don’t benefit from fury on the mesmer, sigils on hit effects or +% damage from runes?

Illusions take your basic stats. They do not take secondary modifiers.

Fury adds % crit chance. Is that a basic stat? No. The basic stat is precision.

Illusions do not use your sigils. They do not use sigils at all, because it would be broken.

Illusions do not use your runes. They do not use runes at all, because it would be broken.

Prysin.8542:

being able to get legendaries, precursors or any other sort of “high end reward” should never be “allowed” unless all forms of track progression is removed from custom arenas.

Custom arena progression is locked to 25% of one small level per day. Already done.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Yep, the warlock is bugged. crits 3k on heavy golem and 4.8k with some simple staff conditions. :p

That’s normal damage.

Colesy, there’s just a little bit of information that you often conveniently forget.

The only potentially challenging dungeon in this game is Arah.

You often link to videos/screenshots of Arah runs. You often cite the difficulty of bosses in Arah. Don’t you see the problem here? All of your arguments are based around 1 single dungeon, and most of your arguments are based around one single boss in that one single dungeon.

This is a problem, and even you should recognize that.

Sanderinoa.8065:

Honestly it was still pretty overpowered in pve :x daze mantra takes practically no skill to use to completely disable a boss through defiant

Honestly, power block just highlighted how bad GW2 bosses are. You disable 1 or 2 attacks and they just stand around like fools. That’s not an overpowered disable, that’s kitten boss design.

Raunchy.6891:

BD doesn’t offer the same survivability that PU does, also there are better ways to get the boons that BD gives you. Overall it’s a useless trait that doesn’t add anything significant to your build for the points invested.

Heh. I was trying to see OP’s rationale behind taking it before dropping that opinion…but yeah, pretty much.

hendo.1940:

-snip-

While I don’t personally have any problem with the stack-n-smack dungeon meta, I do see the fact that this strategy is even possible as a massive failure in dungeon design. Just because this game has massive amounts of active defense doesn’t mean that stacking in one spot should be possible or the optimal strategy. This is a result of substandard boss design.

Most bosses in this game have less than 3 attacks/mechanics. Usually they’ll have some sort of boring autoattack, some sort of aoe type thing, and maybe one additional booster. Lupicus is really the one single outlier in the entire game. He has 10 unique attacks (assuming I’m adding properly). However, Lupicus fights are quite vulnerable to the reflect mechanic, tending to trivialize most of his mechanics as long as the party is on point with the reflects for a fast kill.

Additionally, defiance itself makes boss fights bad. Defiance means that CC is not a consideration. This removes an entire aspect of support in this game that doesn’t normally conflict with dps like healing does. However, since cc is completely useless against bosses, this makes the fights that much more 1-dimensional. You saw this yourself with the few days of Power Block being a mechanic that could actually affect PvE through the use of CC.

This isn’t how boss fights have to be. Look at other games that have done bosses well. WoW is renowned for interesting and complex raid bosses. Dragon Nest has the best boss fights I’ve ever seen in a game—and they do it with just as much active defense/dodging as GW2 has.

Ultimately, the challenge that you guys find in GW2 dungeons is running them incredibly rapidly. You do this because there is no challenge in them otherwise, going full glass builds and attempting to beat it as fast as is possible is the only challenge you can dig out of these dungeons, and that’s sad. Sad because this is a great game, and it deserves more interesting content.

Dub.1273:

Those builds are all terribly bad in PvE (Dungeons/Fractals).
Well, whatever suits you best for open world.

Kai’s guide has always been primarily an open world and leveling guide.

If this topic has a purpose other than flamebait, I’m gonna need someone to inform me of it.

Edit: Aaaaand it’s gone.

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

Antitoxin Spray

You actually recommended using that heal.

/facepalm

considering the new meta since the patch is condi – with torment and poison being the main forms of condi… absolutely.

The heal is bad, I don’t care how much torment and poison you have on you.

If you really need additional condition removal, you should trait mender’s purity and use ether feast or the mantra heal. You can also take some utility based removals as well. Using a crappy heal isn’t a good choice.

Raawk.7584:

Ya by all means go ahead. So BD in the grandmaster slot was a way to provide some regen and protection which is why i didn’t want to choose prismatic understanding since its buffs are weak compared to BD.

What?

Super.2749:

1- warlock ignores toughness and can hit guardians for 8k+

If it ignored toughness, it would be hitting guardians for just a little bit more than 8k.

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

Antitoxin Spray

You actually recommended using that heal.

/facepalm

Before I critique this build, I’m curious as to your understanding of a couple traits. You do realize that the GM chaos trait is one particular non-stacking boon per shatter, right? You also realize that debilitating dissipation doesn’t function with shatters?

I see no difference in my phantasms.

@LunarRXA: That bug has 0 effect on phantasm stats, because phantasms don’t have basic stats, they simply use ours.

Jareth.4813:

Well, the news that it’s just one piece of armour instead of a set has pretty much killed my incentive to finish these dungeon tracks. :p

On the flip side, these dungeon tracks are by far the best way to get dungeon weapons.

JorneMormel.9850:

hexecute.7612:

Welp, looks like it’s been fixed with a broad Mesmer nerf (no rune bonuses of any kind for clones anymore).

Smiter’s Boon’ed, you mean.

I wouldn’t say that. Clones never got rune bonuses before, at all. The only way they acquired rune bonuses was through this bug. If you weren’t wearing a complete set of dungeon armor, you’d have never seen this occur. Clones also don’t have stats, so the stat bonuses from this sort of rune bug didn’t affect them either.

As much as I was planning on having a lot of trolly fun with nightmare armor…this was a bug, it wasn’t balanced, and it’s properly fixed now.

Advent.6193:

And folk wonder why Pyro’s so bleeding pessimistic. Obviously, Mesmers aren’t allowed nice things, and ANet can’t admit that Defiant is an absolutely garbage concept that needs to be reworked. Meh.
Hmmm … wonder when Bless or Black Desert’re getting an English client …?

Yeah, I certainly didn’t start this way. Playing this game has honed my pessimism to a fine edge, I must admit.

Jackums.3496:

calavel.6249:

Xyonon.3987:

• Sigil of Battle grants 6 stacks perma might, wich results into 210 power wich is about 7.5%-10% more damage for YOU AND YOUR PHANTS

How are might stacks on you (the mesmer) giving more phantasm damage? They have their own boons and only inherit base stats as far as I know.

They inherit the Mesmer’s stats, including any additional stats gained from might, sigils, runes, etc. If the stat boost shows in your Hero panel, then they benefit from it.

Almost right. They inherit basic stats, not base stats. This means that secondary stats such as crit chance are not inherited, so fury on you doesn’t affect the phants, but might does.

Jackums.3496:

For PvE in any situation, the greatsword is superior to the staff.

Just want to nitpick a bit here.

At world bosses, iWarlocks will hilariously outdamage anything else in the game except fgs.

Jhughes.8341:

andddd IE is still broken why?

Because mesmers working well is obviously more of a problem than mesmers not working well.

Regenerator.7326:

Pyroathiest.4168:

If you’re running fractals, you should be using neither staff nor greatsword. For any PvE content that isn’t open world, you need to be using a full damage build sword/focus sword/sword.

Also shatter is a horrible choice for PvE. Do not use it.

yea thats what i read on the forum so far, but im not sure about 2 sets of swords? they share the same cd and im missing the flexibility of a ranged weapon. staff gives ethereal field with boons and 2 emergency buttons so i thought it might be of better uses?

The reason you use 2 swords is that sword is our only power melee weapon.

In a dungeon group, you want to stay in melee range because that’s where all of the boons are. You’ll be getting might, vigor, regen, protection, aegis, etc, to protect yourself and your party from attacks. If you go ranged, you’ll lose all of this, so you’ll end up dying easier and doing less damage.

The problem with staff is that its autoattack does absolutely no damage. It actually has a very powerful phantasm, but this fact is outweighed by its horrible autoattack (for power builds).

Lastly, shatter builds actually do really poor dps. They have very strong burst, but their overall sustained dps is quite low, which is why they aren’t good in PvE.