Guild Wars 2

Lol considering all the other things mesmers can do doesn’t balance out Orr DE’s, as this is a big thing for late game. I don’t think half the people who posted here actually read the first post. The only thing I have found in DE’s is that sometimes when I can see mobs before they are already dead, iPersona shattering has had some good results. When there are less people gs/staff swaps actually works out really well. But 20+ people there, shatters really your only shot.

Lol it’s not useless, and I’m almost 100% sure it’s there for party support and for the iWarlock.

You could probably do this with anything, but considering the stats on mfind gear, 20/20/30 is probably the most effective option. Real powerful all around no matter how you do it. As in 20/20/0/0/30

Lol IMO just run staff/gs, mainly using staff but swap to gs for mobs. Run 20 Duel for Phant Fury/Dec Evasion and 20 Illu, take whatever first major you want, and Illusionary Elasticity for 2nd. I ran the cond dam/prec/toughness gear while leveling, and it may not have been super duper fast, it was fast enough and didn’t require pressing 3 million different buttons for simple tasks while grinding levels. Just spam staff clones with this.

As everyone else here said, condition damage can be a varied amount of playstyles. The main one you would call condition damage would be a staff build, working with C Storm and iWarlock. This is generally defensive though and more than likely used in PvP. The damage output just doesn’t match up to a power/precision build for PvE. Personally I have ran GS/Staff with Rampager’s gear for the longest time, but I’ve been wanting to get away from that even, just because of the difference between Rampager’s vs Berserker’s damage stats. Condition damage just doesn’t compare to the additional power and raw crit dmg that Berserker’s has. With SI your bleeds are are a bit weaker and a bit less consistent due to lower crit, but the damage added from everything else is much higher.

Lol underwater Mesmer = too good. But normally I find that I get 1 hit of confusion per stack each time I use it. Sometimes it might be 1 hit while it’s building, then 1 hit for all the other stacks. It effictively makes Frustration do considerably more damage, but still nothing compared to a Dom traited Wrack with crits.

Lol Domination’s first tier major trait that gives more Wrack damage, Berserker’s/Ruby to spike your crits and have huge power. For the biggest numbers, go WvW and hope you run into people that are scaled up to 80 without proper gear. Then you get numbers.

Lol what I’ve noticed about Confusion in general in PvE, at least with Mesmer standard duration is that unless it’s timed really well, you can pretty much count on each stack hitting one time. Running rampager’s gear, Wrack isn’t actually that much more powerful than Frustration. If you run zerker’s though, or anything without condition damage, wrack + signet of illusions active would be a lot stronger if you want to spam shatter. That is as far as just damage goes, not counting any other utility such as vulnerability.

REgardless of anything else.. 22% is quite a large number regardless. And also vs objects, rampager’s falls off hard as conditions can’t be applied. This I think is the biggest downfall.

That’s pretty awesome.

Lol rather than falling under, I’ve actually been ending up inside terrain with this now. The pink line is a huge nerf imo, it makes the skill useless for trying to confuse anyone with clones anymore. The only two positive uses I’ve seen is that when I don’t want to fight, it’s easy to evade past then use it to create big distance fast , saves me from turning, and it’s also a much better escape since it always moves you away. But you lose almost all ways to use this to confuse an enemy, and sometimes going up/down ledges isn’t always a good thing.

Lol I never ran into this problem. Though after a while I normally dungeon run with a fairly regular group or two of guildies.

For simple leveling, take Staff + Decoy/Mirror Images/Signet of Illusions and you get it easy, as staff clone’s Winds of Chaos does = condition damage to your own, even though it doesn’t have any viable base damage on the clones.

What server are you on!

Lol for me personally I run Rampager’s items. Traveler’s anything helps out with farming for non challenging PvE. If you aren’t concerned about condition damage at all, Berserker’s probably has a little bit higher damage output.

Lol I’m not sure why Mesmer’s damage is rated so low. The general rule is simply how much we can use our phants. If our phants up are up, chances are we can out dps every other class, though shatters help out even in fights where we can’t.

Lol I’m pretty sure Mesmer with 3 phants up, and 2/3 Phant dps increasing traits will probably out dps any other class as long as they are using power/precision gears. They are probably notably lower in any fights where you can’t keep them up, but shatters still help with that a little bit.

YAY A NON QQ POST?!

- IMO at 40, run Staff with 20 Illusions(Compounding Power, Illusionary Elasticity), 10 Precision(Phantasmal fury) and work your way up to 20 Precision(Deceptive Evasion). From there on out, you can probably do whatever you want, but spamming clones(not phants) with Staff out and Illusionary Elasticity makes things super easy. Phants are more useful until you have Deceptive Evasion as clone production is much easier. After that though, it’s easy to put out three clones at the start of just about every fight. I ran Ether Feast, Decoy, Mirror Images and Signet of Illusions when doing this.
- No, power is not applied to condition damage. Just to the regular damage. There are formulas for how condition damage scales into each condition on the wiki.

Lol the prob with WvW is that it’s very unstandardized, due to anyone being able to join at any lvl. Mesmer barely got touched with the nerfs, this was almost more of a tweak than a nerf. I can’t believe how many people are whining about it, almost makes me regret that I’m the same class. The ONLY real reason I can think to whine is that it is a true issue of pve getting hit due to pvp balancing.

Lol if you have 3 phants up, it will still wipe a phant. But yeah, I would love it if this was a minor trait.

Lol Mesmer is fine. If you want aoe run GS/Staff. Zerker/Mirror Blade and Chaos Storm are fine, and quickly popping out some illusions to mind wrack around a tightly packed group is good. Deceptive Evasion and Mirror Images work wonders for this.

Lol this is more than fine the way it is. Removing this or adding another DPS item to it would actually make it OP. Illusionary Elas pushes this a ton, and doing this would really make people start calling it OP.

Lol I normally run Staff/GS for non WvW Pvp. Staff is a great defensive option if you run into a 1v1, as there’s no reason you should lose vs anyone by a long shot. When they start to run, swap to GS, cripple and profit. GS is also an always useful long range weapon.

Lol Mesmers are quite far from weak, and any fights where we can keep our Phants up I think we probably do more damage than any other class in the game for straight out dps wars. The biggest gripe seems to be with shatters, which I can kind of understand as I found them to be fairly useless without either A – a full set of level 80 gear to get some good stats out of, or B – a way to spam clones, I’m not sure how I’d play Mes without Deceptive Evasion. If you have a post THAT long about how you don’t like Mes, then you are probably just playing the wrong prof. As much as I hate to say this, I think the class is quite deserving of most of the nerfs it’s getting as it is, though that Chaos Storm one was kinda iffy. This is just a class with a really high learning curve.

Lol is this a troll post? If not, how the hell did you lose 90% from one zerker rofl.

Lol the only thing I can say to Anet is kudos for trying to keep this class in check, because I know if I was in their shoes, it would be like a living hell to balance a class like Mesmer. Cause seriously it’s super tricky right now! I’m just hoping our PvE doesn’t get totally nerfed into the ground due to our PvP.

Lol the only ISSUE I have with Mes is that tagging mobs is a pain. The only thing I haven’t tried is using MH sword, which was recommended by a few. But on any event where it’s just an aoe fest, it’s really hard to get anything as Mes, unless some of the aoe’rs mess up, and your phant actually gets a chance to have it’s attack go off before a mob dies to end his duratoin.

Can you please update all the tooltips ingame to properly display the effect of this skill? Using the word recharge, when it’s already used to reduced cooldown is extremely confusing. Please say that it reduces the wait time in between Phantasm attacks or something of the sort? Ambiguous skill descriptions are pretty annoying, and confusing to newer players for a class that is already complicated enough as it is.

Also on this note, Phantasmal Warlock’s tooltip cooldown not displaying properly with even one skill, as it wasn’t updated to 20 seconds with the change on most recent patch.

Lol this really depends on the situation. There are fights where they won’t last more than one attack, so it’s np to shatter them after they hit once. Then there are times where youc ould just summon a phant, swap and summon another one along with a clone. Then wait until phants CD is up again, shatter them all and resummon, though this would be particularly powerful with Phantasm fury trait, and Mind Wrack +crit and +dmg traits. The confusion shatter is weak no matter how you build for it, I’m using Rampager’s gear and the only time I would ever considering using that is if Wrack isn’t up. Maybe with Carrion gear, you could get enough damage out of it to try to control someone in PvP, but for PvE it’s no way.

Is it intentional for Illusionists Celerity trait to stack with the other traits such as Greatsword Training, which reduce the cooldowns of moves like that twice? Examples of this would be Mirror Blade and Phantasmal Berserker. It still displays 6 1/2 and 16 seconds cooldown with both skills respectively, but the actual cooldowns are what they should be ingame, about 4sec and 12 seconds, assuming the skills are meant to work together.

Lol the BIG PROBLEM HERE, is that the PvE facet was mainly ignored, and this was more a PvP balance issue. People whining about Mes doing too much damage in PvP. Unfortunately this made us a little bit worse in PvE, which I really don’t understand. Though I’m pretty sure in most fights where our phants don’t get killed, we probably out dps every other class anyway. My only issue is the higher CD’s on our major AoE’s make tagging harder, which is a pain while karma grinding. It can also be a pain when you end up getting multi mob spawns on top of you while farming.

About Confusing Enchants.. I really think these Glamour Traits, along with Glamour SKillls in general are meant to be used as background noise, not something that you are going to want to drop every trait in existence into focusing on and taking a bunch of glamour skills on your bar all the time. I could be wrong on that though!

Confounding Suggestions sounds cool at first, but considering daze already does half of that effect anyway, it limits that usefulness a bit. Daze though, like Confusion is a thing I’m not a fan of. Though if you got enough ‘on daze’ traits, having this to top it off could be a bit more useful. 100% would just make a daze a stun, which could make this op if you properly timed clones. The CD is pretty long however, but 3 clones + the AoE Diversion trait could be a little op.

If this is really the case for Confusing Enchantments than I agree, however when I was running 3 clones + Staff, I didn’t see bleeds with hugely different numbers as would be apparent if the clones didn’t get condition damage. Maybe it isn’t applied to all skills but it is to some?

Retaliatory Shield was one I never even considered as Mes doesn’t have access to something to block often enough. Maybe with the proper group setups, but for anything non group it looks really meh.

That change to Protected Mantras sounds good.

Blurred Inscriptions is another thing I haven’t even considered using. It could be just me, but I normally don’t use Mantras at all, and the actives on Signets not very often. The long CD’s for rather minimal effects just make it really hard. Other skills just seem much more useful.

Furious Interruption I dunno.. for this I find Fury to be quite a powerful boon. I think the only reason this seems lackluster is due to the lack of viability of using interrupts reliably.

Chaotic Revival well… I haven’t ever considered this. Not sure I would even with that kind of change. I’m not even sure what I would put on here, unless it was a guaranteed protection or regeneration boon. Maybe a Chaos Storm instead of Armor.

Some people have said that Debilitating Dissipation is a pretty awesome trait, but personally I don’t know about whether or not, or how con damage works with this.

Retaliatory Demise, also with OP, same as above.

Mirror of Anguish is something that I have been told is pretty good, but 90s seems to be an extremely long cd. This is more or less a balance aspect I guess. Maybe in general, too much is just expected out of traits.

I think your change for Chaotic Interruption is alright, though it seems like it might be too powerful for just being a trait.

Bountiful Interruption is really the same deal of course, but I think keeping them separate might be for balance reasons. I mean if they were both one trait, it would 100% be the grandmaster one, and not the level below. But even then it would be very powerful for one single trait.

Prismatic Understanding barely even feels like a useful trait to begin with, let alone a Grandmaster one. I’m not quite sure how this made it up to Grandmaster tbh. I don’t think it needs buffed, I think it just needs to be lowered a tier and replaced with something else.

For Mender’s, does this actually work with only your healing skill, or with other things that give you a heal as well, such as traited on illusion shatters? This trait along with Mantra of Rec would unfortunately make Resolve much less useful. Even for just heals though, being able to remove a condition with your heal is pretty strong. I don’t think two is really necessary.

Restorative Mantras I’ve heard is alright, but the way it works just doesn’t seem very smooth. Your change looks good here.

Restorative Illusions probably doesn’t need this, though this is one point where it could honestly bring some more diversity to Mesmers in general if it did. Just because more people might use it and build a bit more into support roles.

Precise Wrack I think is quite fine as it is, for being such a low level trait it’s actually pretty powerful. Of course though, Domination totally outdoes it, which is a little weird. Maybe with enough +critdmg, this might make more sense though. 15% might make it viable across the board, but 20% would make it a bit too strong with access to +critdmg.

Dazzling Glamours I think is ok.. it’s just a matter of not expecting too much out of those skills I think.

Sorrrrry my post is a bit of a mess, way too tired while putting this up here, maybe I should have waited until after I got some sleep. This kind of post just so attractiveeeee though.

Mantra of Distraction really same deal, it’s a huge waste of a fairly long CD + channel time to interrupt something as minimal as a 1 skill, and it’s not always a viable thing t o do depending on how many other people you have to keep track of. Another thing for 5’s pvp I guess.

Mantra of Pain I don’t think there are too many issues with, it’s just a matter of using it in the proper type of build. The damage seems a little on the small end for it taking both channel + cd time. But yeah, it’s something you either build around into full burst or probably just don’t consider period.

Mantra of Resolve also seems fine, and one where having both a CD and channel is sort of understandable, as condition removal is quite a powerful tool in certain situations.

Phant DE, I tried using this once when I needed conditions removed and it didn’t seem to do it any time that I needed it. The CD for utility phants is also extremely long considering that they can be shattered and all that. I thought both utility phants would be useful, but as I play more I find myself not using them at all.

Signet of Midnight… well I tried this out, and never tried it again. Blind is so dumbed down in this game that unless you can keep reapplying it, it’s pretty useless. That long of a CD for a single attack, especially when you hit like.. a 1 skill with it yeah. The boon duration increase is never something that I have totally traited into, and would probably only be applicable in PvP 5s. – just noting this here, as it applies much to skills like this, I believe Mes feels so weak PvE because of how situational the utility is. However spells like this one, and I think quite a few Mes skills would probably be quite strong in 5’s PvP when properly assigned a role on a team. I think when 5’s arena gets a huge mainstream crowd, this is the point where you will see true Mes diversity. PvE and 8’s PvP are really not the places it’s going to happen imo.

Mass Invis, like Veil I’m just kind of weird about. Very situational, but people have a damage mindset so something that doesn’t load out the dps seems odd to have an elite, and I’m trying to pull out of that mindset myself. Mes just isn’t a very straightforward class and replying to all of this has really made me feel that again.

This change to Moa would probably be fine, as it is a very strong CC skill. The long CD/duration are real strong for 8’s PvP. However in 5’s, lowering the duration might screw up the ‘effectiveness’ of really taking someone out of the fight. Having a shorter CD in a fight where it’s not going to go off again really makes no difference. I’m 50/50 on this issue myself, it’s just a tough skill to deal with due to it’s power.

Onto the traits..

Illusion of Vuln I never even pay attention to the effect of this, cause it’s real rough to make it a point to interrupt people at times. It seems like a trait like this being a passive thing, should mean that we should be interrupting often, but I just don’t see it. Too much micro to be constantly shattering 1 clone at a time to use the daze, while still keep track of what’s going on with everyone else in the fight at the same time.

Dazzling sounds fine, it’s just a matter of accepting that Vuln is more of a condition meant to be used by a group, not really by yourself. And since chances are you will be dazing in the middle of a fight, it’s probably in place pretty well.

Empowered Illusions … I sort of lol’d at you on this one. I imagine anyone who plays with any kind of damage focused build probably takes this trait. Even if it was 10% or even 5% most people would probably still take it, considering how core Phants are to 95% of builds that aren’t condition based. Seeing that you put REMOVE this is one of the sole reasons I decided to post on this period, and was one of the major things that made me wonder which facets of the game you normally play.

Veil I never looked into enough, due to the long CD time. As a matter of fact, it’s the
exact same as the Elite. So I guess you could use both together for some long time
invisibility, or just get rid of one skill or the other. Personally I don’t use either, but
I definitely know of some applications for them. Line zones are also very had to use for combos IMO. Real small.

Arcane Thievery I haven’t really even given a serious look. Full condition based builds
don’t seem very viable, or to have any real point. I mean sure you got ‘support’ but it’s
not really what people are looking for, and except in some very specific spots like maybe a group fight in a jumping puzzle? Or real small scale fights, this would be very hard to use without super coordination with the rest of your team to actually know when things are going to happen. I like the idea, but it’s extremely hard to use. For PvE, this spell probably has some very specific utility in certain boss fights, or self condition removal but that CD is huge, but with good reason which makes it very hard to use.

Illusion of Life I thought would be pretty cool.. really though I stopped using it after
very few attempts. Lower CD would probably be useful considering it isn’t actually a
revive, but I could see this being effective in maybe PvP tournaments, or later end PvE
fights.

Mimic I never even picked up, so I’m not sure about this skill. Projectile isn’t very
cleared stated, but it seems like it would be a huge waste of a CD if I absorbed some
ranged 1 skill, then had to wait another 25 secs to use it again. If you don’t take damage from the absorbed skill then I guess it’s a bit more powerful even if you do just get a 1 skill, but it’s hard to reliable pick out which skill they are using for you to be able to absorb.

Mantra of COncentration I don’t have enough experience with, but that’s because it didn’t really sound attractive, and quite honestly still wouldn’t even with a slightly longer duration. In a PvP tournament setting I guess I could see this being useful with some Mantra traits, since it’s actually very beneficial to stay alive in that sort of case if you got people focusing you first with some attempted chain CC. Otherwise though, this game is just too unpredictable.

For Zerker.. I don’t think he needs a predictable AoE path. The ONLY bad thing I can think of about this guy at the moment, is that he can’t be laid down on the ground to attack when mob’s spawn, sort of how people do this to farm karma at Penitent/Shelter’s gate. Otherwise this skill has a fairly large aoe that will normally hit anyone near him regardless. I think this AoE thing is a Mes weakness in general, as Chaos Storm is generally really weak for tagging. Either that, or at those events no one is really tagging anything, as everyone is just doing that much damage. As for the LoS, it is probably a bit OP, but no clones/phants need LoS as far as I’ve noticed? If you don’t have it, there are times when you might not get one, or you get a clone that just sits at the wall next to you. The only reason this is noticably different with Zerker, is the same as it is with Warden, and that is because it spawns on top of the enemy, or relatively close-by. As opposed to the others that spawn next to you then move to the enemy. Personally I prefer the ones that do to spawn next to the enemy, but I could see it being slightly op for things like attacking to the top of castle walls in WvW. Where it spawned would matter very little as far as PvE is concerned, except once again at those events with massive numbers of players, where timing is highly required to tag mobs.

Chaos Storm I think is fine, however this is because personally I don’t like putting a
Focus on unless I have to, so I use Chaos Storm for the speed buff while running, or
helping out with longer jumps in jumping puzzles/whatever when I’m lazy. Helps a lot in an area where you might actually have to fight, if you prefer Staff over MH/Focus.

Scepter in general to start.. I totally dropped this weapon and I don’t think I’ve looked
back once. The utility is in the clone creation on the third attack of 1, and I already
feel that Confusion is seriously weak. This could be a good weapon if you like to rotate through your shatters all the time, as it provides clones easily.

For Illusionary Counter, I think your idea is good. Mes has a lot of traits that affect
things like Confusion/Daze but not much access to them. I mean they do have a couple ways to confuse, but nothing I that I would want to even drop a trait into unless that was the ONLY focus of my entire build, in which case I would probably get stomped on totally by anything more than a 1v1. 1v1 ability just doesn’t mean anything in this game, though maybe if you weren’t focused being able to stack confusion could be powerful. I just really lack experience trying to make confusion work, because I don’t really like it period. This is obviously a recurring theme for me so probably a good point to look past my bias.

For ILeap, this really turned me off when I started using Sword. It should either have
increased range, or not let the spell even be attempted to be cast when not in range. It’s way too easy to lose this, and it’s an extremely vital part of playing MH Sword. Zerker phant shines here for that cripple utility.

Warden I find to be a real odd and hard to use skill, but extremely useful in the spots
that it’s effective. Really a super niche thing. I’m not sure if there’s anyway to make it
more generally viable without reworking the entire skill, but I see nothing wrong with
niche skills. I was actually amazed at how much damage this guy did once I hit 80 and had good gear. I think the last time I might have used this guy beforehand was back before I stopped using a focus at lvl 6 or 7. That proj reflection is real hard to use at times.

I don’t have anywhere enough experience with Torch to say anything about Prestige. I think the burn should go off as soon as the stealth is broken though, whether you break it, it ends on time, or it’s broken prematurely for any reason. Phant Mage, same as before, just wasn’t attractive to me, and I didn’t play with Torch for that reason.

IMO Mantra of Rec and Mirror are both super outshined by Ether Feast. The bonus healing from clones is just too good. WIth Mirror, I’d probably be trying to use it for the reflect, rather than the bounce which is just no good for a healing skill. MoR I tried, but it got a little too tedious for me to keep recasting the spell considering how often heals are used in this game. To me it feels like with the long channel time on Mantras, they should only need to be used once PERIOD, or should have their CD’s removed so they can be rechanneled without waiting, and then a longer channel time would be more than acceptable, and make more use out of a trait like Protected Mantras.

Lol some of these ideas I like, some of them I don’t like at all. The general gist though is that a lot of these upgrades would simply make them too powerful for different situations in the game. I’m curious as to what game mode you play primarily. Personally I feel that a lot of the traits are fairly balanced, but the place to look into changing them would be for the ones that just about no one uses. The fact that this class has to RELY on clones is the reason that there isn’t much diversity. There’s only so many ways you can go about making it effective.

I think some of the skill changes are okay, but again some are just.. no. As far as Wrack goes, I’ve found that as I’ve played more, I pop one clone + both weapon phants until the CD’s are up, then shatter and recast both. Since I run with Phantasmal fury it makes sense, as it gives a reason to shatter. I think it probably lacks a little effectiveness though, since you have wait until your clones have been shattered before you can start summoning new ones. Personally I think they should disappear the instant you cast a shatter spell from your clone count. I think making them shatter instantly would be a bit too much though, even with a trait. The damage for shattering clones is fine really, considering how many builds can pump out clones. Phants on the other hand, it would be nice if they had an added damage bonus just for being shattered as Phants. From what I know now, they might even have one but I haven’t looked close enough at the damage from Wrack. It’s really hard to tell sometimes. PvP dummy tests I guess.

CoF – I don’t know about this.. I only use this skill if Wrack isn’t up. I find Confusion
to be extremely weak in this game. It’s probably just due to the nature of the game, even with a full condition damage build, it doesn’t offer the kind of control over another character’s actions that it needs in order to actually control them. It’s sort of just a glorified amount of added damage, but nothing you can really rely on. The duration is far too short, however at the same time if it was longer it could quickittenurn OP. I don’t think shorter duration with higher damage is the answer, but maybe double duration with half the damage? It might make people think about just how much they are going to be attacking. I think how weak confusion is right now is probably why there are so many phant toting Mes out there at the moment.

Diversion I find quite useless outside of PvE encounters, as the time it takes for a clone to run up to someone just makes it hard to use an interrupt on demand. I guess with the trait, an AoE daze could be quite powerful, but probably quite a lackluster skill without it considering you throw away all your clones/phants. Maybe if this skill in particular was made to only throw one at a time per-target.

For GS SS ; It seems to me this would make no real difference. As a Mesmer, it’s normally super easy to tell which one the Mesmer is vs another Mes just by watching who moves what direction. Clones are so very predictable it’s not even funny. Changing attack speed isn’t going to change anything at all. Lol personally for me, Staff spam clones + high toughness and Signet of Illusions makes all your clones take a super long time to kill, while still doing some decent damage through conditions. You can really make people second guess which one they are attacking when all your clones die at nearly the same speed as you with the HP buff.

For Mind Stab.. I don’t think this is really meant to even help burst to begin with. The
damage is about = to your auto at third range, the amount of time it keeps you locked prob equiv to the channel time. The problem is that it roots you, so it’s not worth using unless you are out of the way, and you have more than one person to hit, unless of course there’s a killing blow that needs to be dealt. A slightly larger aoe would make aiming this ability a bit easier though. It’s quite easy to miss with it, simply due to the volatility of player movement. Vs PvE mobs this is rarely a problem.

Lol I’m really not sure about the extra might. Personally I would prefer if it didn’t bounce back to allies at all, unless there was nothing else for it to bounce to. I also say this for Winds of Chaos.

Lol even if you lose your target, it will auto target closest nearby. So normally even if you lose target it would still summon something. If it’s the giant that I’m thinking of though, there’s a very good chance it’s his aoes. Normally any time I run into this, then learn a mob’s attacks, it’s been AoE.

Lol wouldn’t it stop most things period, if you did something like add a buff tag to a character every time they kill a mob to earn credit for an event. ANd then if they weren’t in the area during the end of the event, this would turn into a debuff that lowered event rewards by 10% per stack up to 10 stacks. The current stack would disappear at the end of the event, as long as you were in the area. I’d think a good time for it to last would be somewhere within 30 mins to an hour. This would stop anyone from simply attacking a mob, then running to the next event. And as for the players who aren’t particularly farming events, even if they did pick up a random tag on accident, a stack or two of the buff wouldn’t matter, as chances are it would be gone by the time they actually wanted to farm events.

Lol well this is what I ran into myself.. I went event hopping for about.. 30 minutes? And this wasn’t even just smacking a mob and running to the next, but finishing each event until completion. At this point I was definitely down to getting 200 karma per event from Cursed Shore’s. This is kind of ridiculous considering the massive amount of karma it takes to make legendaries as it is. Considering there are no mid-point goals to even keep people looking at them, nerfing karma gain is really going to deter those people from even looking at making legendaries. For me personally, I’m 80 now, saving up some G to buy some crafted exotics, and farming events to save up some skill points and karma to start chipping away at the legendary. However when I start getting 1/2 the standard amount for no real reason, even when I’m not leaving events early or anything, what gives? And how do you expect people to actually get one. If you guys really underestimated how fast people would be able to farm karma, and thought legendaries should take longer to make, then you should say that it was your mistake to begin with imo. That’s about the only reason I can really see that it would matter. It’s not like getting ANY exotics is actually difficult, and it’s really all for looks. It’s not hard to get enough g for 6 pieces of armor and an 80 transmute stone.

I also only got 45 from my last exp dungeon run. Last one was yesterday on a diff dungeon, and wasn’t completed. Everyone picked the same choice, and everyone else got 60, I only got 45. It was in CoE.

IMO Staff + Clones for Chaos Wind condition adds, you can fight lots of 1v1’s like this without kiting, and win some easy 4 at a times if you do decide to kite and spread the clones around to make use of the bouncing attacks.

I think this is just because Mesmers have one of the highest learning curves to play against, due to knowing how to pick out a clone. Playing a Mes myself, I find it fairly easy though.

Also in a small match like 5v5, Mesmers are probably real strong esp if you have such a high number of them, and they have a fair focus on survivability, or good organization. They just have too much ‘free hp’ to throw around. HOnestly balancing them out will be no joke, because it’s really hard to find a smooth playstyle with a Mes as it is.

Fix bugged skill pts before you disable free server xfers? Really now. I didn’t notice the 1 day time you guys decided to add on, and I did what became a ‘standard’ server hop to get a bugged skill point and now I’m on the wrong server for a day. I understand this is screwing up WvW, but your buggy skill points have been screwing us up PvE for a long time too. There was one point where someone said they had been to EVERY US server and none of them were working. Was Bayt Fallahin in Malchor’s to note.

Lol really, being able to ctrl + t a mesmer really screws up the whole point of them having clone skills. IMO the way Mesmer is OP in PvP is in a 1v1 fight, and if you find yourself in many of those, you or your team are doing something wrong. As the numbers get higher, whether they stay even or not, Mesmer really seems to scale downwards. It’s much easier to burst them down with multiple players if you catch them at all. And until there is a rated PvP type for 1v1 matches, who gives what the best dueling class is? It doesn’t mean anything at all.

Lol I won’t lie, I went my first 40 levels going back and forth with weapons, and spent most of the time with Scepter/Pistol. However once I tried Staff, I haven’t gone back out yet with a clone spamming build and condition damage. You get solid damage, good mitigation due to clones, and an AoE and using GS as a secondary can really help you wreck a mob if you need to.

Vs multiple enemies, if you are alone stick with the staff. Every time you target a new foe, pop another illusion, preferably a clone for the bouncing attacks. This allows you to ‘tank’ many enemies while still dealing nice damage with the clone conditions, even though the base damage is rather low, the condition damage is dealt in full the same as your own. Round them up into a circle if you can, and use Chaos Storm to bring them down faster. Optionally swap to GS after Chaos Storm and use 2-4-3 and then 5 to finish if they are still in position for it. Just clear the fight with GS then swap back to staff to start. Alternatively when in a party setting, maybe running for a fast map clear or going through events, I tend to mainly use GS as the upfront damage will actually get you kill credit, which is an issue with staff condition damage not always going out fast enough, though Chaos Storm is good. 2-4-3-5 is almost always the order I would use my skills in to maximize damage. You could also Mind Wrack after this if you are sure it will finish the enemies off, however if there are a lot you might be better leaving your clones up to eat some damage rather than getting dived on by the targetless mobs.

Dungeon Runs – Mainly GS for clearing ‘trash’ mobs going through the instance. Great way to burn through the non silver/gold mobs that often accompany them, feel free to switch to staff after they are dead, or to pop Chaos Storm on top of the GS combo. Staff is normally pretty reliable single target dmg with Phantasmal Warlocks once all the little stuff is dead.

I would classify most bosses into two types. The type where you can actually keep Phants alive and the kind where you can’t. In the ones you can, chances are you will want to stick with staff and keep up 3 Phantasmal Warlocks as they deal some wicked sustained damage in party or world events with how many conditions get put on. You might lose some auto damage with the staff’s conditions being overstacked, but the heavy damage from the Warlocks is quite good.

The other type is the ones where they have constant AoE’s and your Phants won’t stay up long enough to get off more than 1 attack. This is probably the only time I rely heavily on shatters, I’ll through up my illusion making abilities and simply Mind Wrack every time its up. This build specs into making illusions quite quickly, so putting up 3 every 15 seconds isn’t much of an issue at all. I also normally run GS for these types of fights. Against world bosses your staff damage will get totally eaten due to overstacked conditions. In dungeons it can still vary, but the actives on the GS will probably put out more damage than just auto attacking with your staff would.

I think that just about covers the standard directs for fighting. Gear wise, for leveling greens start with condition damage at lower levels, and build into precision/toughness until you can get Rampager’s items 60+. Could probably put more into this but at the moment this is what I got.

General PvE

Staff/GS

10 Domination
Illusion of Vulnerability – Empowered Illusions
20 Dueling
Critical Infusion – Phantasmal Fury
Sharper Images – Deceptive Evasion
10 Chaos
Metaphysical Rejuvenation – Illusionary Defense
-note Decent Into Madness has much use in WvW or Vista hunting.
30 Illusions
Illusionists Celerity – Compounding Power
Illusionary Retribution – Illusionary Elasticity
Shattered Strength – Phantasmal Haste

Standard Heal = Ether Feast – almost always have illusions up, easily heal of choice.
Standard Utility = Decoy, Mirror Images, Signet of Illusions – simply ways to make your illusions more persistent. Easy to always have something up, or to make them last longer for free hp tanking.
Standard Elite = Moa Morph (Really use whatever you need, these are all really situational.)

Writing out the key points behind each of the traits..
Illusionary Elasticity ; Helps to buff up your own auto attacks, and apply conditions faster. This also pushes your GS damage with 2.

Sharper Images, Critical Infusion ; Adds more crits to stack the bleeding on, and also the Vigor helps to be able to evade much more often once you start critting.

Phantasmal Fury, Phantasmal Haste, Empowered Illusions – For pushing out damages in those fights where you can keep your Phants up. Also help out a nice bit with GS Phant while taking down mobs of enemies.

Illusionary Defense, Compounding Power ; Useful considering you will almost always have some illusions up.

Deceptive Evasion, Illusionists Celerity ; All ways to help you push out more clones as they go down. They save you HP and add importantly to damage.

Metaphysical Rejuvenation – Some extra hp to help out. Not a key point I guess, but worth mentioning.

Illusion of Vulnerability, Illusionary Retribution, Shattered Strength – These three are more or less just there to me, as I normally don’t shatter much at all. With the exception of those fights where you just cannot keep the clones alive, then these are somewhat useful.

The main playstyle is to basically have 3 illusions down at the start of every fight. Normally walking around with staff out.

Phase Retreat + Mirror Images = 1
Phase Retreat + Decoy + Phantasmal Warlock = 2
Phase Retreat + Phantasmal Warlock + evade(Deceptive Evasion = 3
Normally one combination of these will be up at some point to be able to be used vs a single enemy. (Feel free to use evade as needed, this is probably one of my most pressed keys with the Deceptive Evasion trait.)