No, the OPs math is fine.
Basically, the trait is supposed to reduce the cooldown by 20%. The cooldown doesn’t start until the attack finishes, so you can’t measure how accurate the trait works with this analysis.
However, this analysis is accurate for watching total dps increase.
.so they messed up warrior and mesmer… my 2 main classses. great
Wrong lol, mesmer is super strong right now with strength runes and a battle sigil. My gs auto attack is scaling from 1k on first cast to 5k on fifth cast. I am currently running the famous 20/20/0/0/30 build. (PvP)
gs damage number that are appearing on screen are bugged and are tallying all your hit together it not actually hitting for 5k.
Not bugged exactly. It’s just appearing as a single channeled attack because of the rate of fire.
I’ll post in this thread as well, last night I interrupted my friends as he was stomping and he said they couldn’t stomp anyone again for some time. Can someone test if it just prevents stomps for 10s or more?
Ill have it tested within a couple hours.
Attack has never been a real stat. It was meaningless. If they’ve removed it, that’s a good thing.
The way it works is that unless the projectile source is effectively on top of the warden, the projectile will only be blocked, not reflected. Yes, they broke it. More. Again.
Awesome. I’m just not sure if it’ll ever get used. 30 domination is very awkward for a PvE build…and now it shares a spot with EM.
Basically, this is an updated version of the old signet troll build. It’s incredibly irritating to kill, but it’s not actually dangerous in any way.
So messing about this morning and we are fairly sure a mesmer was procing 6 secs, maybe more, fears on us so anyone going to own up knowing how if that is the case? The guy we suspect it is seems to be wearing TA gear, so its could be some bug with Nightmare, it doesn’t seem to be Sunless, but the procs are much more often than 90 seconds and much longer than the theoretical max of 4 secs with 100% duration.
Thoughts?
No idea, honestly. Mesmer has 0 access to fear normally.
without saved templates I doubt people would retrait every fight or for trash mobs.
Yep. I like efficient runs as much as the next guy, but I’m not willing to muck with my traits that much without templates. Just not worth it.
How much does 15 stacks do per tick?
6k if you’ve got 2kish ConD.
Anet: ah, sorry for the misunderstanding mesmers. The warden was actually the only phantasm not broken. We’ve updated the rest to proper functionality.
Tested Warden vs Ele + Icebow and Ranger + Longbow, both auto and non auto-attack skills. Here’s a vid of the Ele test:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JKHnfJ0uCwIn fact, while testing with a ranger even targeting the warden still didn’t proc the reflects. The animation happened, but not the dmg.
Ok, I couldn’t repro this, even with an ice bow. I tried in pvp.
Nm, just got a repro, but it isn’t consistent.
Ok, got a consistent repro. The reflect won’t hit properly unless the source of hte projectile was right on top of the warden.
(edited by Pyroathiest.4168)
Tested Warden vs Ele + Icebow and Ranger + Longbow, both auto and non auto-attack skills. Here’s a vid of the Ele test:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JKHnfJ0uCwIn fact, while testing with a ranger even targeting the warden still didn’t proc the reflects. The animation happened, but not the dmg.
Oh wow. This. sigh
Post it in my bug thread, would you?
My perspective.
- Warden is still broken
- Portal still has no range indicator
- IE is still broken
- Distortion trait is useless due to ICD, despite being dev confirmed to have no icd previously
- The fact that power block adds cd to thief skills and autos is potentially a bug
- PU condie builds and phantasm builds are even stronger in 1v1s than before
- Phantasm builds are still useless in large fights
- Mesmer is still borderline useless in large wvw groups
- Dungeon builds were ninja-nerfed with the harmonious mantra change
- Outfits don’t work with mesmer clones
Missing anything?
(edited by Pyroathiest.4168)
You missed a couple.
- Portal Entr/Exeunt: Despite previous statements, this isn’t a range indicator, it’s purely a tooltip.
- Phantasmal Warden: This skill is still broken.
So, the warden actually has new broken behavior.
The reflect from the traited warden will not reflect properly unless the source of the projectile is standing right on top of it.
(edited by Pyroathiest.4168)
Can confirm. Autos go on 10s cd.
Oh haha forgot something: the portal ’’idicator’’ is only a description of the max range which was already known, 5000 yards. There is still no indicator when it hits max range. How hard is it anet… really?!
HAAAaaaaaa…………..
Skcamow keeps telling me I should stop being so pessimistic. I keep telling him I’m pessimistic for a reason. This. This sort of thing is the reason.
Phantasmal haste works though, with swordsmen anyway. They’re practically rapidfire with it.
Same problem.
/15char
iwarden still not properly fixed : <
still stands there and does nothing a lot of the time =_=
Take a video and post to the bugs forum please.
Good catch.
Wtf anet.
Not just you, anet just took a dump on leveling mesmers.
No.
LOL, can’t argue with that.
Basically, this patch doesn’t address any of the reasons why conditions are not viable in PvE. It also doesn’t address any of the reasons shatter isn’t viable in PvE either.
Conditions just don’t do enough damage. Same with shatter. Shatter has burst, but actually low sustained damage. Conditions just…don’t do even close to as much damage as power. Even less when you consider the condition cap.
Any chance condi or condi/shatter will be viable in PvE now? I doubt this change will make any difference since it doesn’t address the underlying problem with condi in PvE, but for those with experience, what do you think? I’d love to run a 0/20/30/0/20 build (linked in my OP), or some of the others you guys are posting.
No.
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.
Hmmmmmm… IP Condi-shatter can pretty much instantly get 12+ stacks of confusion (3-clone mindwrack, followed by mirror images and a dodge, then Cry of Frustration), while still putting decent general condi pressure with burns/bleeds.
In anticipation of the feature patch, I played the build (20/20/0/0/30) last night to pretty good effect. Folks are so conditioned for the war of attrition style condi mesmer (think Blackwater) that they aren’t really expecting the condi burst from a staff mesmer. Had a great time. :-)
Yes, the build works against bad players. The confusion lasts 4 seconds. All it takes is for them to pause momentarily and your burst is completely wasted. Anyone with even passable skill will never die to confusion burst shatter.
While I agree with you in theory, in practice, it hasn’t been working that way. Folks in WvW are so conditioned to seeing PU condi mesmers whose only strat is to outlast their opponent that they don’t expect to see 12+ stacks of confusion, on top of other conditions (soon to be torment and extra bounces from staff clones as well), and by the time they realize it, they’re on the defensive pretty hard. Also, with perplexity runes, the 33% trait, 20 in dom, and the 40% food, the duration is doubled (along with 60% duration increase to all your other condis).
I guess it pays off to not run the PU condi meta (at least, it has been that way for me). Mesmer mind games ftw.
Perplexity runes don’t work. You have 33, 20, and 40 for a total of 93% duration giving you about 6 seconds of confusion. Unfortunately, once you burst that confusion, you’ve now destroyed 100% of your other condition potential. You have no clones left. You’ve burnt mirror images.
Again, this works against bad players. By definition, only a bad player will kill themselves on confusion. You keep saying ‘people don’t expect the burst and so they kill themselves’. You are describing really bad players. If they don’t notice a Mesmer bursting confusion, if they don’t dodge easily dodgeable shatters then they are a really bad player.
My reaction to seeing 12 stacks of confusion would be to pop a condition removal immediately. Since my condition removals are on 20ish second cooldowns and your shatter burst is on a 36 second cooldown, you lose.
Im looking for something that works well with zergs and organized groups, any ideas?
What size organized groups? I’ll assume that you’re talking more about 15-25 as opposed to havok size groups.
As a Mesmer, unless otherwise noted, you’re responsible for bringing veil, and possibly null field. You’ll need to work around those descriptions, and you can go in a few different directions.
If you’re planning on doing GvG, disregard most of this.
You want to be able to do a couple things. You need to be able to provide cleave damage on your commander when they call for it. You need to be able to survive. Lastly, you want to be able to tag a lot of people. This isn’t strictly necessary, but I personally sorta like to get rewards, otherwise there’s no difference between following a commander and twiddling your fingers watching a tower.
Providing cleave damage means you need a sword. You’ll also preferably have some amount of power so that you can provide good cleave damage. This is pretty straightforward. Sword also gives you good defense with blurred frenzy, but be careful of getting caught in a bad position when using it.
Surviving can be done in a few ways. One option is to take a slightly more fragile build and blink. This allows you to survive through good positioning first and foremost. If you don’t get hit, you won’t die. You can also choose to build very tanky. My Zergmower build is an example of this. Tanky armor combined with tanky mechanics allow me to stay with the hammer train on engagements.
Lastly, you want to tag. This is the hardest part. The most efficient way I’ve figured of doing it is with my Zergmower build. However, you can tag with other mechanics too. Well placed shatters or phantasms can do very significant damage to enemy groups, it’s just a matter of getting that placement accurate.
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.
Hmmmmmm… IP Condi-shatter can pretty much instantly get 12+ stacks of confusion (3-clone mindwrack, followed by mirror images and a dodge, then Cry of Frustration), while still putting decent general condi pressure with burns/bleeds.
In anticipation of the feature patch, I played the build (20/20/0/0/30) last night to pretty good effect. Folks are so conditioned for the war of attrition style condi mesmer (think Blackwater) that they aren’t really expecting the condi burst from a staff mesmer. Had a great time. :-)
Yes, the build works against bad players. The confusion lasts 4 seconds. All it takes is for them to pause momentarily and your burst is completely wasted. Anyone with even passable skill will never die to confusion burst shatter.
Yeah, you’re going to want to ditch staff and go for sword/focus. Take those 20 points out of illusions and toss them into inspiration to trait the focus. You’ll also want to drop DE, it’s not necessary in PvE at all, in any way, and it will cause problems with overwriting phantasms. Instead of DE, trait your sword.
Going sword/sword sword/focus in dungeons isn’t as imperative for someone that’s leveling, but it’s good practice regardless, so I’d recommend starting to try that out to see how it goes. Sword/focus is a must though.
So something like this?
I wasn’t sure what traits to use in Domination line, but figured that even though I want my phantasms to stay alive, it doesn’t hurt to shatter them when target health is getting low, and an extra 20% on mind wrack is pretty good. Thoughts? Next 20 goes into illusions until I’m 80, have access to GM and can retrait?
Yeah, since anet is kittening leveling chars over, that’s pretty much the best you can do.
Wow maxinion, thanks for all the advise! It remains to be seen if I’ll lose access to GM traits tomorrow, but at least getting to 60 means I can keep my master traits (like DE!!!). I’m getting better and better with playing mesmer, and I feel good with my performance. I’m exited to get to 80 and really open up the possibilities.
I really like the flexibility of attacks/defense/shatter with the GS/Staff combo. I know it’s not ideal, but I’m only doing PUG story mode in AC/CM/TA for now. I just started using mirror images again because I’m enjoying experimenting with all the different shatters. I had blink there but idk, I’m too slow with targeting where I want to be that I find it’s more often a hinder than a help. I’m sure all I need is practice. I also JUST got my 10th pt in Illusions and picked IE because I want to see how staff clones will be starting tomorrow.
Yeah, you’re going to want to ditch staff and go for sword/focus. Take those 20 points out of illusions and toss them into inspiration to trait the focus. You’ll also want to drop DE, it’s not necessary in PvE at all, in any way, and it will cause problems with overwriting phantasms. Instead of DE, trait your sword.
Going sword/sword sword/focus in dungeons isn’t as imperative for someone that’s leveling, but it’s good practice regardless, so I’d recommend starting to try that out to see how it goes. Sword/focus is a must though.
Also watch out for your illusions attacks. Im not sure if they count as an attack to or if they can proc crit sigils but im pretty sure they do since they do dmg and they crit. Jst not sure if intelegince would apply to illusion autos
Until the damage log is improved to standards of other modern mmos, it’s really really simple.
Does the damage appear in your damage log? No? Then it doesn’t count.
Also, please do not use Greatsword. The offhand sword is much, much better for DPS because of how good Phantasmal Swordsman is. Suggesting using Greatsword when optimizing for DPS is just… wrong.
new players m8, and ya I forgot about how many bugs this class has lol.
I wonder has anyone did any hard testing on whether the extra 8%+ crit/multiplier is really more dps from reflections etc.. than the power +15% phant damage. I guess a lot of it would be subjective though depending the encounter.
It’s easily far more, especially when you remember that phantasms inherit both precision and damage. By only going 15 into dueling, you’re losing 15% crit damage and 150 precision, which makes your phantasms hit far weaker.
Yeah, something like that. You can play with your adept major in inspiration. Phantasm hp, glamour mastery, and mender’s purity are all valid choices depending on the situation.
Hi guys. I just got to 80 recently and I’m trying to find some good builds for doing dungeons. Is a phantasm build good for doing dungeons? Or would a shatter build be viable too? If there are other builds I’d like to here about those.
Thanks!
There’s really just a couple viable builds, all phantasm based.
Your two options are 0/30/0/25/15 and 10/30/0/20/10. I personally prefer the 0/30 one.
The weapons you’ll want to use usually are sword/focus + sword/sword. There are some very (very) few situations where either greatsword or scepter mainhand are appropriate, so have them with you too.
Generally, you use the focus for providing reflects along with feedback. If you’re in a situation where reflects aren’t necessary, you can swap out the focus for pistol….but honestly, I very rarely bother. Focus works fine.
You’ll usually want to run heal mantra, condition removal mantra, and mantra of pain, with feedback or some other utility more suited to the encounter. There are a few places where you might want to take the signet heal instead, or other things like that, so don’t be afraid to swap utilities around.
Your gear should be all zerker. This, however, can be a bit tough to play if you don’t know the encounters well. Feel free to toss in pieces of knights and cavaliers to boost your survivability as you learn more, and then you can replace them with more zerker gear as you get better.
I personally run a Retaliation build with Soldier stats.
Don’t do this. Please.
Would be funny if someone find this overpowered and ask to nerf this “bug fix” though.
You must be new here. That’s practically an axiom of balance in mmos.
Thx Pryo. I was writing my long-winded answer while you were posting the efficient response.
It seems hard to come up with a scenario where it’s worth consuming two sigils just to get a good chance to proc an on-crit effect. Maybe the numbers will all be different tomorrow…
Yeah, I would strongly advise against trying to proc on-crit sigils just with the intelligence sigil. There’s going to be a lot of on-hit sigils tomorrow, so you’ll want to keep an eye on those.
Yes – their is an on-crit vuln sigil (frailty), but I think it’s changing to on-hit tomorrow. All of the on-crit sigils have a cooldown, so as soon as the first crit happens, the sigil procs – you won’t get multiple procs.
I’m playing around with a build that has a horrible base crit chance. So I was wondering if I put sigil of intelligence and an on-crit sigil on the same weapon, how many chances would I really get to proc the sigil.
For example, let’s say I put sigil of intelligence and sigil of fire on a staff. I swap to the staff and send in three clones to do mindwrack and let’s say there’s one other mob standing next to my target (so inside the range of the shatter damage). The clones run up to the target and shatter. So now there are six total hits that happen – each clone that shatters hits two targets. I’m guessing that each hit is done in sequence, so the first clone that explodes uses two of the 100% crit chances because it hits two targets. Then the second clone uses the last 100% chance.
With a 30% chance to proc sigil of fire on crit, this isn’t that great. It’s expensive to use two sigils for this. But if each clone is guaranteed a crit on both targets, that’s six crits and now it gets more interesting. And if this really only took one of my three guaranteed crit attacks (pressing F1), then it’s even more interesting because I could do something like throw down chaos storm and get more multi-crit chances.
I guess it needs some testing – but if anyone has played with this, I would love to hear
As I said before, each individual entry in the damage log is 1 attack. You don’t get to doubletap just because an attack hits 2 targets.
Of course, there’s the detail of the syntax: the sigil says " your next three attacks." Do those clones count as your attacks, or only the single instance of pressing F1? I would think that they would not count as your next three attacks.
Each entry in the damage log is one attack. This is why pistol whip thieves do not use hidden killer.
@Pyro. You arguments work for pug zergs, but in dedicated guilds or GvG, even a mesmer dying can mean your team losing.
Of course this trait wont makes us unkillable, but not only will be useful to not to die, the moment you see a yellow number you’re free to do whatever you want, it will prevent CC, spike damage, condi spam…
I currently run with an organized guild, both in zergsmashing and GvG. My survivability will not be enhanced by this trait. Win or lose, I survive based on other factors. If I’m running my Zergmower build, I survive because that’s what it’s designed to do. If I’m running a glassy pick group spec in a GvG, then I survive based on good positioning and smart bursting.
Basically, here’s the issue. If people you’ve tagged, as a mesmer, are dying, it means one of 2 things. Thing 1 is they have a ton of downs, and you’re applying cleave damage to keep them down, and they die. In this case, the trait is unnecessary. Thing 2 is you’re using Zergmower, because that’s the only build I’ve ever encountered that is capable of tagging mass numbers of people without being up close and personal, and in that case the trait is once again useless.
First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.
This is incredibly false. As has been discussed before, the dueling GM trait will only be useful if you’re already winning, and then you don’t need it
Not to mention, it’s so ridiculously easy to survive without it now, making one wonder why they’d ever want to take it in the first place. It just has no practical value for a mesmer.
I still don’t agree on this. Try surviving when running (nearly) full zerker shatter. The thing that kills you atm is not the damage of the enemy but the retaliation. The distortion will most likely cause you to be immune against that as it does already now with F4.
You’re not winning a 20vs 50/60 when you killed 5 guys or 10 guys. You’re winning when they are down to 25-30. Also not to mention everlasting tower/keep fights. You want them dead as fast as possible. You’re not really helping yourself by going full tank that way. Having that 3 sec distortion every now and then can be pretty usefull.
In theory? Maybe. In practice? Not really. Go back and look at your own videos. Actually watch them carefully. I did this back when the trait was first released, and you posted a video as proof of how it would be effective. I watched your video and counted the number of times you got a kill in a situation that would have mattered. If I recall correctly the number was something around 5 times. 5 kills out of the multiple hundreds shown in your video that would have been useful. The rest would have been you just running around permanently invulnerable as RG mopped up another pug group.
Bumping this. I will record some gameplay after tuesday’s patch has landed, but so far I’m loving it! I did change the force sigil to accuracy as force doesnt affect phantasm damage and shattering is less frequent than in the standard shatter build. More crit chance for everything is thus better imo.
Accuracy also does not affect phantasms.
In a sword/s or f + GS or staff phantasm build with MoD it may be worth it. It all depends on if it is +5 sec per interrupt (5 target focus pull interrupt=25 sec) or if it can only last max 5 sec. In the latter case it wold be pretty bad.
It does not stack in any way. This was dev confirmed.
First of all, on Tuesday new GM traits will come, and if it does what it seems to do, the new Duels GM will be mandatory, so will need to add 10 points into Duels. 3s of distortion per kill is too good not to have it.
This is incredibly false. As has been discussed before, the dueling GM trait will only be useful if you’re already winning, and then you don’t need it
Hm guess I’m also learning something new everyday, still 3 ppl is ’’aoe’’. :p
Oh yeah, for sure. Just thought I’d mention that since aoe often refers to 5 targets, with cleave aoe referring to 3.
Lol sorry but… you serious? This might be one of the shortest aoe (yes aoe) immobilizes in game and you prefer spamming 1k damage instead of your ’’zerg’’ killing up to 5 ppl you just immobilized instead? This is one of the reasons what makes mesmer a little bit usefull against blobs.
Just wanted to mention, I’m pretty sure it acts as a cleave, not a full aoe. 3 targets, not 5.
but if it does, most are pretty helpless.
Not sure how you figure this. Most PU condition builds run with at least one source of condition removal: traited torch. That’ll drop high intensity conditions pretty effectively.
I personally run with the pDisenchanter as well. I don’t die to conditions when I play that build unless I have the equivalent of a full condie engineer + necromancer loading me up simultaneously… and I’m out of defensive cooldowns.
Only 1 stack will apply if you get both traits. Just get confusing enchantments to get the same confusion but only using 1 trait
This is not accurate.
The 2 traits work in different ways. One functions at the moment you drop the glamour (dazzling glamours). It blinds, and then confuses. Confusing enchantments, however, only functions as a boundary condition, which is the source of its strength. This does mean though, that you’ll only get a stack of confusion when your enemy crosses the boundary of the skill, not immediately when you drop it.
Then his remarks are probably about that inconsistency. If it is reconciled you can expect it to be a nerf to IR rather than a buffing SS. But I doubt they’ll do anything at all.
They are different traits with different mechanics. One adds an outgoing effect to the shatter, the other is consistent with every other self buffing trait that stacks cumulatively with shatters.
I’m saying Shattered Strength should give us a bit more might, and you can help solve that by making it have synergy with IP.
Shattered strength is a potentially extremely powerful trait, so it needs to be handled carefully. It used to be worse, it was buffed in a patch to provide 3 stacks of might per illusion shattered. This lasted for about 3 weeks of hilarity with shatter mesmers having >15 permanent stacks of might, and >20 while bursting, before it was nerfed.
Shatters are already very strong. The weaknesses of shatter builds lie elsewhere than their capability for damage. This is a trait that could easily push shatter damage from very strong, to unbalanced.